The ski resorts at Gunnison and Crested Butte, Colorado, are so near Aspen that you simply might think the world doesn't need its own airport. Its glamorous neighbor is just 48 miles north because the crow flies, though that's about 150 miles by road.
But for people flocking to the laid-back town of Crested Butte, for its extreme ski slopes and epic mountain bike trails, there's a brand new reason to avoid farther-flung Aspen: the destination's shiny latest airport, opening in January 2023.
Not only is the Gunnison-Crested Butte Regional Airport's terminal easy to navigate at just 40,000 square feet, it's also heated and cooled by geothermal energy and features triple-pane windows to maintain travelers warm in a city considered one in all the coldest places within the United States.
And Crested Butte is just not the one small town airport being modernized.
Across the United States, at the very least a dozen small and mid-sized facilities are being renovated and, in some cases, built from scratch—typically with budgets within the eight and nine figures. This contradicts the long-held belief amongst aviation experts that these regional facilities are destined to collect dust and die out.
During the pandemic, smaller U.S. airports actually fell out of favor. With business travel virtually nonexistent, airlines scaled back their offerings to concentrate on more profitable private routes between major hubs. Planned facility improvements were also placed on hold. Even as those problems subsided, severe pilot shortages forced major airlines to chop more routes, realizing that profit margins on smaller loads simply aren't as high as they were a decade ago. It was a confluence of crises that appeared to have doomed small airports endlessly.
But a few of those aspects have since evolved. For one, second-tier cities are experiencing a sustained population boom, a trend that began with the urban exodus through the pandemic in 2020 and continues as distant staff seek cheaper places to live. Numerous unsold seats on these classic leisure flights have also proven to airlines that it's time to rethink their route plans, explains Brian Sumers, aviation expert and founding father of the newsletter Airline Observer. Not to be missed is the high level of customer satisfaction related to these smaller facilities, that are thankfully freed from stress-inducing crowds and countless concourses that take endlessly to navigate.
Of course, money plays a giant role, too. The Biden administration's bipartisan infrastructure bill has pumped at the very least $9 billion into improving airports across the country since 2022, complementing private and non-private funding at a more local level that has helped revitalize a lot of additional facilities. Although budgets can change on a regular basis, Knoxville and Memphis in Tennessee have invested a complete of $830 million in airports; Des Moines, Iowa, has budgeted $445 million to remodel its facility; and Pittsburgh can expect a full $1.5 billion.
In other words, the renaissance of small American airports is officially underway. Here are just a few examples of upcoming redevelopments that excite us—consider them as emblematic of what could soon occur in a small town near you.
The challenge of expanding a small airport is to keep up its family atmosphere, says Brent Mather, the Denver-based design principal of Gensler, a number one architecture firm that’s leading a lot of such projects. Being capable of arrive half-hour before departure and still get through security and onto the plane, he says, “means a lot, especially for the people who live there. It's a huge selling point.”
At the newly renovated Eagle County Regional Airport near Vail, Colorado, for instance, it takes lower than five minutes to cross your entire 6,000-square-meter hall, which opened at the tip of 2020. By comparison, it’s 2.33 kilometers from the commuter train on the airport terminal to the gates at Denver International Airport – about half-hour on foot.
That philosophy is the idea for the design of a $2 billion, 1 million-square-foot terminal at John Glenn Columbus International Airport, scheduled to open in 2029. A market-like dining hall will sit in the middle of the only concourse. The idea, says Tim Hudson, head of aviation at Gensler, is to create a seamless passenger experience where you may eat, drink and shop in a hyper-accessible space from which passengers can see at the very least two-thirds of the airport's gates and lots of flight monitors. “It's a big concourse, a central security checkpoint and a concession program – where passengers have access to the entire building.”
The latest terminal, which can completely replace the prevailing one, is being co-designed by Gensler and Columbus-based Moody Nolan and could have 36 gates – seven greater than the present airport – and a parking garage for five,000 cars. Groundbreaking is scheduled for early 2025.
“Our current terminal opened in 1958 and was built for a different time,” said Joseph Nardone, president and CEO of the Columbus Regional Airport Authority. “With a more efficient, streamlined and sustainable design, we will be able to meet and exceed travelers' expectations and support our growing community for years to come.”
The variety of travelers to this central Ohio city is predicted to grow from 8.7 million passengers in 2023 to an estimated 13 million in 2033 – a rise driven by Columbus's development right into a technology and business center within the Midwest.
In Nevada, Reno-Tahoe International Airport is preparing for 2 latest concourses, with construction set to start in 2025 and be accomplished in 2030. An influx of recent residents, fueled by the airport's family-friendly status and a growing number of information centers, is predicted to spice up Reno-Tahoe's annual passenger count from 2.3 million today to three.7 million by 2046. The airport's expansion could have two priorities: increasing gate size to accommodate larger aircraft and adding more food and beverage options.
Another consideration is the sense of place. Mather is well aware that flights to and from regional airports are typically costlier than their larger, international counterparts, and with that premium comes the expectation of higher service and more inspired design.
“We want people to arrive and say, 'Wow! OK, I'm in Reno, this is going to be a really great experience,' whether they're traveling for business or pleasure,” he explains.
In Columbus, the central stall will offer floor-to-ceiling views of the runways and resemble town's historic North Market, a fancy of farm stands and restaurants popular with visitors. That also needs to boost spending: At San Francisco International Airport's Terminal 2, the same redesign that converted regular airport restaurants right into a farmers' market-style dining room led to a 23 percent increase in sales, Hudson says.
At the Gunnison-Crested Butte, the important restaurant and lounge feature brightly painted stripes on a sloped roof harking back to the colourful Victorian facades in downtown Crested Butte, and wraparound windows frame stunning mountain scenery in all places.
Reno's future airport will even have a continuous concourse with panoramic views of the world's distant peaks. Mather says he thought in regards to the feeling of leaving a ski resort in Tahoe and catching a flight home from Reno when he designed those partitions of windows. “I want it to feel like it's an extension of the vacation,” he says.
Originally published:
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