The state's largest airport has added parking spaces reserved for people with disabilities and consolidated almost all of them into one location after a federal review found too few handicapped parking spaces.
The new arrangement at Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport/Adams Field was rolled out earlier this month, but not without generating a "a number of questions and comments," according to airport officials.
Under the new configuration, Clinton National now has 66 handicapped parking spaces located in the airport's west short-term lot, which is on the west side of the main passenger terminal.
The airport also has 16 handicapped parking spaces in its parking deck, one in its metered parking area and one in the airport's east lot for a total of 84 handicapped parking spaces, up from 50 such parking spaces before the new arrangement.
"When all is said and done, we will have more handicapped spaces than required," Ron Mathieu, the executive director at Clinton National, said at a meeting last week of the Little Rock Municipal Airport Commission's lease and consultant selection committee.
A site survey conducted by the Federal Aviation Administration's civil-rights office as part of an airport disability compliance review found the airport 26 handicapped spaces short of what it was required to have.
But the survey didn't include the the airport employee lot, which would bring to 34 the total number of additional handicapped parking spaces required, according to Clinton National officials.
Those 34 parking spaces were added to the 23 handicapped parking spaces already in the west lot. The airport relocated another nine handicapped parking spaces -- eight in the east short-term lot and one in the south long-term lot -- to the west short-term lot.
To add the handicapped spaces, the airport used a project to rehabilitate the surface of the west lot.
"The total cost for work in the lot, including change orders, was $77,266.93," said Shane Carter, the airport spokesman.
The lot reopened Sept. 4.
Meanwhile, the number of regular short-term parking spaces, including both the west and east short-term lots, has fallen to 457 spaces from 514 before the new arrangement.
Clinton National officials also plan to rehabilitate the airport's other parking lots and, in the process, eliminate the other handicapped parking spaces. They used last week's meeting to make sure commission members were aware of that.
Consolidating the handicapped spaces in the west lot means they also are close to the entrance to the terminal with "no street traffic to navigate between the parking space and the building entrance," according to a summary of the new arrangement.
Using the west entrance to the terminal, the summary said, also will allow "handicap patrons ... immediate access to an elevator and be at the intersection of the ticketing lobby and baggage claim."
Mathieu and other airport officials acknowledge the new arrangement might confuse regular airport users who might not be able to park at the same spaces they previously used.
"We're probably going to get some complaints," commission member Meredith Catlett said. "I'm not sure how you get the word out."
Another commission member, Gus Vratsinas, agreed.
"If you've always parked in one particular area, you're not going to be able to park there" now, he said.
Airport officials said a temporary message board has been installed at the airport entrance to inform arriving motorists where the handicapped parking spaces are located. They said they also will use the airport website to inform airport users.
Catlett and Vratsinas, as members of the lease and consultant selection committee, also voted to recommend the commission make it airport policy that people who use the handicapped parking spaces be charged the airport's lowest parking rate.
For as long as anyone can remember, the practice has been to charge the lowest parking rate to people using the handicapped parking spaces, according to Mathieu.
The lowest daily rate now is $8, Carter said.
Metro on 09/18/2017