Expansion of airport takes step

Locations decided for parking, planes

After over a decade of planning, permitting and pulling different agencies together, visions of a spacious new airport terminal flickered at a special meeting of the Border Coast Regional Airport Authority on Monday, but the decisions at hand were grounded in broad strokes of concrete.

Commissioners directed staff to pursue a concept with a 120-space parking lot situated to the south of the new terminal building with the apron for aircraft located to the north, in keeping with the original plan approved by the Coastal Commission a year and a half ago.

Deciding what the building will actually look like, inside and out, is the next phase.

The latest drawings of the terminal design show a generic red box with curved sides, two stories, an open center atrium, a southerly facing waiting area and all the nuts and bolts of a basic rural airport: baggage claim, ticketing and rental car counters, a security holding area, bathrooms and offices.

In choosing where to put the exterior elements of the terminal commissioners wrestled with a long list of knowns and unknowns — what is needed now, what federal funding might cover, what will afford the best views, and what might be needed 50 years down the line to accommodate larger aircraft.

Placing the parking lot to the south of the new terminal keeps the option open for expansion of the apron to the north, without necessarily picking a future fight with the Coastal Commission about sensitive wetlands, said Airport Manager Jim Bernard.

Architects Charles Slert and Chris Barkley proposed a flipped layout, where people would see planes, rather than cars, as they approached the airport from Dale Rupert Road or watched the waves crashing against Castle Rock from a south-facing waiting area.

While commissioners prioritized giving the apron room to grow, either way “there’s nothing in the design that would preclude any views of Castle Rock,” said Barkley.

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