Gunnison airport master plan to include terminal renovation

“The bones of the building are good”

By Alissa Johnson

Consultants hired to develop an airport master plan are recommending a renovation of the Gunnison-Crested Butte Regional Airport as part of a 10-year plan. In a December work session with the Gunnison County commissioners, the consultants outlined rough cost estimates and the rationale for the renovation.

“The bones of the building are good and with a renovation there are opportunities there to improve the building,” said Andy Remstad, an architect with Jviation.

After conducting surveys of the airport’s tenants and pilots as well as holding focus groups and meeting with community members, the consultants found the community likes the rustic, “wild west” feel of the airport.

Yet there are opportunities to improve the overall facility and land site, including the possible expansion of the terminal, making the second floor ADA-accessible, and improving traffic flow and landscaping outside of the building.

Rick Lamport, airport manager, explained that the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) requires airport master plans to be updated every 10 years. The FAA considers the projects identified in those master plans when it distributes funding.

“Our master plan identified that runway and aeronautical operational facilities are adequate for the amount of service we have now,” Lamport told the News. As a result, he believed the master plan process ought to focus on terminal work and the land site.

“Our terminal is old, antiquated, and needs to be reconfigured. Of course the question was going to be, do we build a new one or renovate the existing one, so during that process, we evaluated all of those things,” Lamport continued.

The purpose of the December 8 work session was to ensure that the commissioners were on board with the idea of including a renovation in the master plan.

Early estimates from Jviation suggest that the overall cost of the renovation would be just over $34 million, with an FAA contribution of around $18.5 million and a $5.5 million contribution from the county. The rest would come from the Colorado Department of Transportation, private contributions, and a small portion from the airport itself. Those numbers are preliminary, however.

Steve Berrado, Jviation’s senior aviation planner, told commissioners the FAA is supportive of a Gunnison-Crested Butte renovation but there are some factors that will affect its level of funding, including two large projects on the horizon in Aspen and Durango. The FAA airport improvement program also expired in September, and it’s unclear when Congress will renew that and how that might change the numbers.

County manager Matthew Birnie confirmed that the county has already set aside some funds for the project. “We did start setting aside money several years ago without any plan, knowing that down the road we were going to do something so it would be prudent to set some money aside,” Birnie told the News.

“This configuration of the board agrees with the recommendation to do a renovation of the existing building rather than tearing it down and starting over, but that is informal at this point,” Birnie continued.

Lamport explained that the final airport master plan, which includes the terminal renovation and the airport layout plan (map-sized documents that outline the facility’s details) will come before the county commissioners after the first of the year with a resolution for approval. The documents will then be submitted to the FAA, which will review them and sign the layout plan before both documents come back to the county one final time.

In order for the terminal renovation to move forward, Lamport said, the next step is a design and concept study. “We all agreed we need to do something with the terminal. Now we need to look at it and say, what is it that we need to do?”

In the timing outlined by Jviation, that study, environmental analysis and coordination with CDOT and the city of Gunnison would take place between 2016 and 2018. Design would take place 2017 to 2019, and construction would take place 2019 to 2020. Final timing would be influenced by funding availability.