Airport has more than enough land to expand, says CEO

The wall-to-wall windows that surround Rick Piccolo's office on the third floor of the terminal building provide a bird's-eye view of the airfield activity at Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport.

Sitting at a window-side round meeting table, he points across the tarmac and says, “If we ever need to expand, we can always do it over there.”

“Over there” is the northeastern portion of property owned and managed by the Sarasota-Manatee Airport Authority, of which Piccolo is president and CEO. There, a collection of commercial businesses lease space from the airport.

Southwest of the terminal, the airport owns more than 100 acres with plans for future revenue-producing commercial development along University Parkway, shared rental car preparation and staging area plus additional parking, which will be needed when sometime in the future it goes vertical on the short-term lot with a four-level parking structure. 

There, plans are for the first two levels to house quick-turn car rental service below two levels each with about 500 parking spaces. That construction will include a new arrivals roadway, which will separate arrival and departure passenger traffic. Baggage claim will also be relocated there and the current luggage pick-up space repurposed.

If expanding “over there” ever were to become necessary it would be well beyond 2050 based on SMAA and the more conservative Federal Aviation Administration passenger count projections.

The SMAA forecast projects 4 million boardings will require 29 gates by 2050, four shy of the airport's complete build-out plan of 33 gates. Boardings, or enplanements, are departing passengers, meaning the total passenger count through SRQ is approximately doubled.

Projections by the FAA are lower. It forecasts growth rates of 1.2% per year from 2026 to 2030 with an aggregated 1.2% growth rate between 2024 and 2040 and also between 2024 and 2050. Both growth rate projections are low compared to SRQ's recent growth and the FAA's national forecast for domestic passenger enplanements.

Boardings forecast for 2024-2050

* = Calculated from 2023 enplanements

At issue is the ongoing attempt by SMAA to sell 31 acres currently leased to New College of Florida, where its East Campus is immediately adjacent to the loop road around the airport’s parking lot. 

Piccolo has appealed the FAA’s rejection of the plan to sell the property to New College for $11.5 million. Former SRQ Director of Facilities John Schussler, who retired in 2017, has actively opposed the sale and as such has lobbied the FAA, insisting the airport will need that land for future expansion when the 99-year, well-below market-rate lease with New College expires in 2056.

More parking on the way

The airport's master plan at full buildout, Piccolo said, indicates the site occupied by New College is disposable. Parking is not a concern to him as a new 500-space remote lot opened at the corner of University Parkway and Old Bradenton Road late last year, and another lot just north of the terminal is under construction. More as-yet unpaved lots along Rental Car Road are also currently available for overflow vehicles.

In all, 1,100 spaces will have been added by the time the new five-gate ground boarding facility opens late this year, the first of a three-phase project that will eventually bring 15 new gates, a net of 14 gates with the loss of Gate B2 to the construction.

Courtesy image

Piccolo said there is adequate parking included in the expansion plans, but wonders if even that will be necessary.

“Thirty years from now are people still driving their cars or using some other means of transportation?” Piccolo said. "A quarter of millennials don't even think they need a car, and so how does it affect your parking? When you build a parking structure, today it costs about somewhere between $40,000 and $50,000 per space, so you do a revenue bond and 25 years from now, how many of those people will be parking cars in order to pay off the bond?

"Those are the kinds of things we have to think about when planning for parking.”

The evolution of self-driving vehicles, he added, that won’t need to park and wait for their owners to return, and the anticipation of vehicle sharing rather than individual ownership will require less parking demand even as the airport grows.

The airport’s current master plan shows $35 million in parking improvements and expansion that will take it to 2040 when, if passenger projections hold true, more will be needed. That is unless alternatives to personal vehicles abate parking requirements.

“If you go vertical you’re virtually unlimited,” Piccolo said.

Sarasota-Manatee International Airport Long Range Gate Plan

Based on 140,000 annual boardings per gate.

If not parking, the New College land could be used to generate revenue, but not without considerable cost. Between now and 2056, the undervalued lease is anticipated to generate only about $3.5 million. Afterward, the costs to remove any structures there at that time would likely be even higher. 

Photo by Andrew Warfield

“It would be 2056 before you'd have it available anyway, so you live with this tremendously undervalued lease for another 31 years. Even if we need it in 31 years when the lease expires, do you think they wouldn't fight us?" Piccolo said, transitioning his thoughts to the New College perspective. "It’s our 100-year anniversary and you want to kick us off because you need to put some parking here? Put your parking someplace else or let's work cooperatively.”

Cooperatively as in build a parking structure along General Spaatz Boulevard large enough to meet both airport and college needs.

“There are many ways that this could be done,” he said.

Enough capacity through 2050

Between 2017 and 2023, boardings at SRQ experienced explosive growth, from 593,830 per year to 2.16 million, largely fueled by post-pandemic travel beginning in 2021. The SMAA projections anticipate a slower annual growth rate of about 2.7% starting in 2026.

“We had this fantastic growth that was unprecedented, but it wasn't going to continue forever," Piccolo said. "We're projecting probably a 2% increase in passengers next year, because things are starting to bottom out a little bit because of a number of factors.”

Those include aircraft safety issues experienced by both Boeing and Airbus, impacting production and limiting the supply of new aircraft and reducing the number of total seats in the air. 

The five new ground boarding gates have already been leased to Allegiant, which has yet to announce routes and the number of flights per day. Piccolo said he anticipates the new gates to bring 2.2 million more passengers traveling through SRQ.

When, or for that matter if, an extension of the new Concourse A is built to connect with Concourse B, that brings a net gain of three gates, followed by a future expansion of another five ground boarding gates. Depending on travel trends at that time, SRQ's expansion could be done for several years.

Currently, gates at SRQ average about 166,000 passengers each per year. The projected future average is 140,000. The current expansion alone will take SRQ to about 3 million boardings per year, or about 6 million total passengers.

“The FAA forecast says that we will hit just under 3 million enplanements in 2050, so I can make a cogent argument right now that when we finish the Terminal A extension, we will have enough gate capacity to go another 25 years before we would even need to build Phase 2 of this terminal. Theoretically, this will be enough without adding Concourse C until 2050.”