Passengers at the state's largest airport will have to take what they can get for a while longer if they want to charge their smartphones, electronic tablets and laptops at the state's largest airport.
The $6.2 million project to upgrade the concourse at Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport/Adams Field, including the addition of electrical upgrades to improve the airport's limited power outlets and allow charging stations at each seat in the building's 12 gates, is expected to take an additional three months to complete after airport officials had to add a $500,000 automatic fire sprinkler system at the recommendation of city building code officials.
The original contract called for the work to be substantially completed in 270 calendar days from Aug. 1 this year, said Shane Carter, the airport spokesman. The sprinkler work will add another 90 days to the project, he said.
"We are still looking at the end of 2017," Carter said.
But airport officials said that the sprinkler system would be less expensive to install now because it could be incorporated into existing work involving the ceilings and electrical systems.
"It would cost less with us doing the work down the concourse now, to take a little bit of a delay and go forward and do it now than it will to do it later on and have to rip out all of the ceilings and stuff and start over," Ron Mathieu, the airport's executive director, told members of the Little Rock Municipal Airport Commission's lease committee Wednesday.
The commission awarded a $6.2 million contract to Flynco Inc. of Little Rock last month to redo the 12-gate concourse, which comes about three years after the airport completed a $67 million makeover of the passenger terminal.
Under the terms of the contract, the flooring, wall and ceiling finishes and millwork will be replaced, the exterior roofing and flashing will be repaired and the heating and cooling and electrical systems will be upgraded. Two cooling towers and two air-handling units also will be replaced.
The improved electrical system will handle the estimated 800 seats that will be replaced under a separate contract estimated to cost $700,000, which the commission also approved last month.
As part of the new amenities, each new seat will include AC outlets and USB ports to allow passengers to recharge smartphones, computers and other portable electronic equipment while waiting for flights and allow them to take full advantage of the high-speed Wi-Fi service about which airport officials like to boast.
Such outlets are at a premium in the existing concourse, which was built long before the proliferation of personal electronic devices.
Also related to the concourse improvements is a $4.4 million contract to replace five passenger boarding bridges. The existing bridges are between 32 and 45 years old and have reached or exceeded their useful life.
Carter said much of the work will be limited to the airport's off-peak hours to minimize inconvenience to passengers.
But he cautioned the concourse will be "an active construction area with some of the work... required to be done during the day."
"There will be times when gates will be reassigned, ceiling tiles will be removed and changes to flooring will be visible," Carter said.
The airport plans to"provide proactive updated communications to our passengers so they will know what to expect, where to find their gate and the overall benefits they can look forward to once construction is finished," he said.
When the concourse improvements were initially designed, airport officials hadn't expected to add the sprinkler system because no major changes were being made to the building, Mathieu said. "We had the concurrence of building and code service at that point in time."
By the time the contractor began obtaining permits for the work, things had changed, he said. One change was the update of the airport's long-range master plan, a process that is now only beginning. That process looks ahead 20 years or more to anticipate capital projects and when they are scheduled.
The airport has a long-range plan to replace the concourse based on passenger forecasts. About 2 million passengers go through the airport annually. The master plan will establish a threshold in terms of passenger levels, years of use and other possible triggers to tell airport officials when they need to replace the concourse.
Given that, building code and services "made a recommendation that we consider" installing a fire sprinkler system since the airport doesn't know when it will replace the concourse.
Any significant additions in recent years, including the upgraded passenger checkpoint security area and bathrooms that were added on the concourse, have included sprinkler systems, Mathieu said.
"So this is just a natural evolution," Mathieu said. "We considered the recommendation thoughtfully and we looked at a number of things, the time involved in doing it now and cost and our ability to fund it."
The airport expects to receive Federal Aviation Administration approval to pay for the sprinkler system through reimbursement of its passenger facility charges, which is the $4.50 that is added to the cost of every ticket used by a passenger boarding at Clinton National. Much of the concourse improvements, which total about $20 million, are being paid for with passenger facility charge revenue.
"We are requesting an increase in the budget by about $500,000 with the understanding that we will go to the FAA and seek future PFC reimbursement on this," Mathieu said. "So it will cost less to do it now than to do it later and we can get reimbursement for this and, as we are totally committed to the safety of our passengers in the concourse, we felt it appropriate to take a step back at this point in time and move forward and install the sprinkler system in the gate hold areas and down the concourse."
Metro on 08/10/2016