5 Things To Know About Proposed Tuscaloosa Airport Master Plan

TUSCALOOSA, AL — The Tuscaloosa National Airport (TCL), along with Atkins Aviation, held an open house Monday at the airport's main terminal to present options and solicit feedback for a proposed airport master plan.

The 20-year capital investment plan is designed to highlight infrastructure and operational needs to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which will be providing 90-100% matching grants for the projects at TCL, according to airport manager Jeff Powell.

"Every fall we submit a five-year list of projects to the FAA," Powell explained, before mentioning a recent $9.4 million federal grant to repave the airport's major runway . "We go through the city and they look at those projects and that’s how you see these grants. So when we got the runway grant money, that was through our five-year plan. If we have a project we want to submit to the FAA, it has to be on our (master) plan."

Tuscaloosa Patch spoke at length with Powell and Atkins Aviation Planner Connor Haskin on Monday to learn more about the plan's high points and the vision for the future of TCL.

First, some TCL fast facts ...

• The airport employs 441 people and sees 12,460 visitors annually.
• TCL generates an estimated annual economic impact of $48.5 million, along with $2.8 million in state and local tax revenue.
• The top market destinations from TCL are: (1) Gulf Shores, (2) Destin, Florida, (3) DeKalb-Peachtree Airport in Atlanta, (4) Birmingham and (5) the Fulton County Airport in Atlanta.

*Source: Atkins Aviation market study

1. Primed for growth

TCL, like other institutions in Tuscaloosa, is working to keep up with the seemingly exponential growth and demand from its market. In terms of operations — defined as a single take off or departure from an airport — Atkins predicts an increase just below 20% by 2037, coming out to a forecasted total of 48,102 annual operations.

"Essentially, this is going to show the future growth of the airport to get them federal funding, so we're trying to show them there is stuff out there," Haskin said. "There’s future forecasted operations growth at the airport, so we can see that as a reason to develop the airport and for further expansions."

2. What you'll get

Powell said four or five proposed plans were constructed from market research and analysis conducted by Atkins, with the preferred option and a couple of alternatives on display for the public on Monday.

What sets the preferred option apart from the others is the emphasis on the expansion of TCL's major artery, Runway 4-22, which is currently 6,500 feet. The proposed expansion would see the runway lengthen to 7,600 feet, while reducing the smaller Runway 12-30 to 3,300 feet in length.

"For a lot of our economic development projects, one of the issues more times than not is that the runway is not long enough," Powell pointed out. "Our first problem we had with our runway is it wasn’t strong enough, but we solved that and now our issue is length."

Other additions in the proposal include a cargo ramp for customers like Mercedes-Benz U.S. International, along with a solar farm to help offset electrical use on the airfield, as Powell mentioned sustainability as a focus for the airport. What's more, he said the airport would continue to preserve space for the growing aerospace industry.

A part of looking around at re-tooling the airport's available space will also be geared toward making the facilities more attractive to the business community. To accommodate this, the preferred plan calls for adding 85,100 square feet of conventional hangar capacity, 24 T-Hangar units and nine shade port units.

"We’ve been at 100% for years and we’ve been trying ways to crack the code to get low-cost hangers ... a good portion of our tenants use aviation as part of business operations," he said.

3. Funding

As is the case with most longterm capital investment projects, the overall price tag is far from its final tabulation, with officials from both TCL and Atkins underscoring that the plan is an overall outlook for the next two decades — functioning as more of a road map than a wish list full of demands.

"I don’t have those [price] numbers today, so we’ll take all the comments and whatever we calculate today, there will be more changes and we will have to recalculate," he said. "This is over 20 years, so we only request per project each year ... We’re not going to try to tackle it all at once."

As previously stated, Powell reiterated most of the projects will only require, at most, a modest match from local coffers, which can expect returns under its predict trajectory as the airport's operations expand.

"We’re not asking for a large capital investment from the city and county, it's really just a match," he said. "We just need the projects to be justified to be selected by the FAA."

4. Cargo Room

The demand continues to boom with the growth of large-scale manufacturers in the region and TCL plays a crucial role in the logistics that keep many lines humming.

Haskins said this sustained growth, however, also presented a need for the airport to undergo extensive renovations on a scale to keep pace with the industrial growth around it. At the same time, he also mentioned a potential challenge with the continual growth of larger commercial service airports that cut in on the regional market shares that smaller airports depend on.

"The biggest aspect of our forecast was our cargo operations," he said. "So emphasizing on the cargo capabilities, we also proposed a larger cargo operation at the airport to kind of facilitate Mercedes and all the other cargo operators that are in the community ... it’s easier to use an airport than to truck it in."

Powell also stressed the need for cargo-focused improvements, going on to say that, at present, large cargo aircraft landing at the airport may be required to have a reduced load.

"So that solves that problem and this is a challenge all airports have gone through as they’ve gone from small to big," he said. "Eventually, they need either more runway length, more taxiway or more parking."

5. A look ahead

The coronavirus pandemic proved to many, especially in the aviation field, that it is impossible to predict the future and what it could bring in terms of impacts to your day-to-day operations.

However, both Haskins and Powell struck an ambitiously optimistic tone in saying the suggested improvements are a symptom of growth and a sign of things to come for Tuscaloosa.

While the Atkins and TCL teams work to justify the requests, Powell also said a primary component of the plan's eventual implementation will be founded on community feedback, which was the primary objective for Monday's open house.

"This gives us a planning document on how we see capital development moving forward," he said. "We’re not going to plan it in a vacuum. We want to see what the public thinks of the things we are providing from a technical standpoint."

The proposed master plan is currently in its "recommendation" phase, with only aviation demand forecasts and the airport's layout plan receiving FAA approval thus far. Before its implementation, the FAA must approve the capital improvement plan and phasing, along with its financial feasibility and final report.

Digital copies of the proposed master plan will be published on the City of Tuscaloosa's website following Monday's open house.

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