Austin’s airport has been one of the fastest growing in the country for several years. Their main terminal needs to grow to accommodate this – at peak times passengers are packed in so tight it’s barely possible to move. Gates are in constant use with no real room for more flights, either.
One way the city-controlled airport planned to manage growth was with a separate ‘South Terminal’ for low cost carriers. They leased space to a private company for 40 years, which built the terminal, and has been housing Allegiant and Frontier. The terminal is just six years old, but the airport changed its mind.
The new plan is for a midfield concourse that requires an underground tunnel and relocating taxiways. And to accommodate that they need to tear down the South Terminal. So they:
- Offered less than $2 million to buy out the lease though the terminal cost 5 to 10 times that much to construct.
- Naturally rejected, they moved forward with eminent domain to take back the terminal.
This was a very strange use of eminent domain, which is supposed to allow government to forcibly take private property, with compensation, for a public use. But here they were trying to take public property that they already own.
The private company which built the terminal sued, winning a $90 million judgment in February. The city made noises about an appeal, but underscoring just how weak their case was the City Council agreed to pay out an $88 million settlement using airport funds.
Austin airport needs to grow. This is a plan to grow, although initially the midfield concourse may only offer 10 new gates and they lose capacity by eliminating the South Terminal as well. In order to build the connection from the main terminal to the new concourse, they’re going to lose gates, which is why they’re first building new gates on the West side of the terminal.
These types of reckless, brain-dead screw-ups are easy when you’re spending other people’s money.
Most people call that PPP disease. What a waste of tax dollars. I live in Texas, I’m sure state dollars are involved in this somehow, either directly or indirectly, so my tax dollars are going towards their lack of planning skills. I mean, you plan for long term growth. Unless this is completely paid for by airport funds, and I see that is possible, the decision makers don’t have to pay for that. People need to be fired. Why did they do that in the first place?
Gary. In this article you stated: “but the airport changed it’s mind”.
The airport doesn’t have a mind. However, the Idiots that run (ruin) the airport, changed their minds.
My takeaway on this situation is: Just because some clown is appointed to an airport commission doesn’t mean they are smart enough to be there. Typically, government clowns do not have the vision to see the big picture and they fail most of the time.
Austin airport is on my avoid list.
That’s Austin for you. Build it too small (Long Center, Convention Center, City Hall) and patch as you go. I’m glad the South Terminal users got just compensation. What the City tried to pull was scuzz bucket shenanigans. And what genius (not) came up with the original layout of the ABIA terminals?
When I first saw it I thought “well, this will serve a city nicely. A city like Zapata, Texas. You know, because cities never grow…..
Dare I say it? It’s time for a second airport on the north side of the county. Preferably NOT in the middle of a residential neighborhood…..
Is there info on which idiots approved the 2016 contract so voters can ensure they’re not in office anymore?
As a Texas resident, I’m embarrassed by these fools. Hopefully they will soon be removed from power.
America is going down the tubes because of poor management. Short and medium term solution: bus gates.
The only folks who benefited from this fiasco we’re the lawyers
SAT needs a new airport too and the obvious answer to many in both Austin and San Antonio is to build a regional airport between the two cities. This has been tossed around for years but cities officials in both cities have been unwilling to even start discussions on a shared airport. Both cities want to be in charge of their “own” airport (SAT & AUS).
It’s not poor management everywhere in USA. Example: SLC.
Eminent domain to undo contracts is perfectly fair if they pay just compensation: the value of that contract today.
@Ben – (1) it’s not clearly supported by Texas law (2) it makes contracts with the local government not contracts – it’s one thing to undo a private party contract in order to facilitate the taking, not to under a contract that the government itself signed (3) that makes it much more costly to do business with the government, government has to pay more to compensate for risk, which could be a huge cost for large capital projects.
@JetAway that’s not obvious at all, since it’s less convenient to both population centers, and it would be bad for attracting businesses and top talent to those businesses
Being a resident of another State with pretty crowded airports, but also pretty successful planning and execution of new or renewed airport facilities, I’d have to opine that the San Antonio airport situation sounds like the classic “cluster****.” That’s too bad, and what recourse does the public have to “encourage” a review and change of plans to something more effective…likely none. Follow the money.
Sorry…correction to my comment. I meant AUSTIN, not SA, per the article.
Agree AUS screwed the pooch on this one. Glad to see Watson taking charge and putting the expansion on a fast track. Settlement was paid using airport funds. AUS has already stated the new concourse will have at a minimum 20 gates when it opens.
Well, I think it’s a bit hyperbolic to suggest that….”no contract signed by the City of Austin could be trusted if it could be voided at will (without following a procedure laid out in the agreement itself)”. This was a specific contract between two specific parties. The contract contained specific language applicable to the parties of this particular agreement. No more.
“This was a very strange use of eminent domain, which is supposed to allow government to forcibly take private property, with compensation, for a public use. But here they were trying to take public property that they already own.”
It is somewhat common – depending on project scope – for airports to lease airport owned land to developers for infrastructure development that’s intended to be long-lived. Once such a contract is executed, the developer – with specific exception(s) – controls the parcel in question.
Perhaps the questionable aspect was the absence of a provision to buy the improvement, or early termination of the lease.
@aaway “This was a specific contract between two specific parties. The contract contained specific language applicable to the parties of this particular agreement. No more.”
False. The city wasn’t just availing itself of termination language in a lease. They were pursuing eminent domain. They wanted to void a 40 year contract they agreed to six years earlier in a manner a judge said was invalid and illegal.
Austin is horribly mismanaged
When they built the south terminal, they did not really take carrier needs or wants into mind. They tried to force others like Spirit there, but they refused to accept anything but the Jordan terminal because of complete lack of amenities, even rental cars, in the south terminal. Many in the industry predicted this terminal would be temporary at best, was a bad idea, and was not what the airport needed – before it even opened.
Glad they settled the issue. Just don’t screw up the expansion. It needs to actually meet the needs of passengers.
@ Gary. I completely agree with you on contracts, both with government and individuals. I do disagree with your statement about the ABI main terminal (“at peak times passengers are packed in so tight it’s barely possible to move.”) I suspect you are referring to the ABI Admirals Club . . . hold on, maybe not since it’s ALWAYS packed in.
@JetAway – NOBODY except people who would benefit from development wants a regional airport an hour away (at best) from most of the people in either SAT or AUS. It’s not like the traffic on I-35 is bad enough already.
Signing a 40 year lease on what was always going to be a temporary terminal based on long-standing airport.vision & expansion plans is absolute idiocy. I have been casually looking at various airport expansion plans in place for nearly 20 years and all of them include growth and new construction to the south, eliminating small infrastructure buildings, and any pop-up terminals there. That should’ve been a five-year lease with a five-year option at best. Now we pay $88 million to break the lease that idiots signed.
Also, your gate math is wrong. There are only three gates in the south terminal. Removing them is inconsequential and any expansion in that direction will be significantly larger than the afterthought it replaces.
Yes, the executive director of Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, Jacqueline Yaft, announced her resignation March 1. This was a few months after the new Mayor took over from the last one who was SUPRISE an eminent domain lawyer. Takes all kinds in politics, sadly Austin’s mis-management leaves a lot to be desired as the 10th largest city in the USA.
This is classic small time Texas think in action. While nobody could have predicted the recent rapid growth in Austin, even basic fundamentals at that airport are missing (e.g., they still deliver fuel with trucks to the plane) at a relatively new airport that’s just over 20 years old.
Their attempted eminent domain approach was sketch, but building a new terminal is the right thing for the future, no? And if they have to overpay a little to do it, that’s the cost of being in a boomtown. Other boomtown airports would gladly pay big money to expand (think SEA), but they’re space constrained and can’t.
$88 million is a drop in the bucket when they’re building a $6.5 billion terminal. At least now they’re thinking bigger.
$88 billion pissed away through incompetence. The fool who authorized a 40-year lease on a virtually unnecessary building with a 5-10 year MAXIMUM lifespan better not be a city employee anymore. No vision of an expanded ABIA leaves room for that “pimple on the butt of progress” and none ever has. It was doomed to be razed the moment it was erected, and some fool signed a 40-year lease–one they now have to buy out expensively. Everything about this is dumb..