But starting next week, all departing passengers will be routed through the airport's new $4.2 million addition on the west end of the terminal. Arriving passengers will continue to pass through the current checkpoint, which opens into a recently expanded “meet-and-greet” area.
The addition tacks on another 18,000 square feet to the building's original 102,000 square feet, and is designed to move departing passengers through security more efficiently, said airport director Cris Jensen.
“One of the major goals of the project was to eliminate the bottleneck, the congestion, we have at the current checkpoint,” Jensen said.
The new screening area sports high ceilings and skylights, and an architectural concept meant as a memorial to the prehistoric “Lake Missoula” that once covered 3,000 square miles, then disappeared with the Ice Age.
“Some people in geological circles feel that Glacial Lake Missoula was one of the most significant events in history and we wanted to elevate public awareness in the airport terminal,” said architect Terry Van Sant of the Colorado-based Van Sant Group, which has undertaken nearly 70 other airport projects in the Northwest.
The first passengers to see the new addition for themselves are slated to depart at 6:10 a.m. Friday on Delta Connection Flight 3935. The last passengers to leave through the old security checkpoint will depart the night before, on Horizon's 7:25 p.m. flight.
The terminal expansion, Jensen said, is really just the first phase of what will eventually become a new terminal building. It is his hope, he said, that the addition will one day become the airport's center when another wing of gates is added.
For now, however, the airport is concentrating on the list of renovation projects large and small that make up its five-year, $38 million capital improvement plan.
The airport has already completed eight remodeling projects over the past year, including the new “meet-and-greet” area. In fiscal year 2007, the plan calls for $15 million in projects, including a new
$9 million control tower.
This fall, Missoula's commercial and firefighting traffic will work around a three-week period of “rolling closures,” during which the airport will scramble to complete a $5 million runway repaving - the first in 15 years. The closures will be in effect from Monday evenings to Friday mornings starting Aug. 27, with the exception of Labor Day.
Airport officials purposely limited the number of major construction projects undertaken at any one time so they would not add up to overwhelm passengers and personnel, Jensen said.
Plans to expand the parking lot, for instance, are another two years away.
“Parking's a big issue for us,” Jensen said. “We actually overflow our parking lots on a regular basis.”
The various expansion and improvement projects are necessary, he explained, to accommodate the airport's steady growth. Missoula International Airport saw more than half a million passengers last year, and is expected to almost double that number by 2015.
“Our traffic continues to lead the state in growth,” Jensen said.
In fact, Missoula's airport is the only one in the state with a positive passenger growth rate. In 2006, it showed a passenger traffic increase of 3.1 percent, while Billings's airport saw a relatively flat rate of 0.6 percent and Bozeman's traffic fell by 5.5 percent.
Reporter Tyler Christensen can be reached at 523-5215 or at tyler.christensen@lee.net
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