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Airport Construction
After years of debate, Orange County’s John Wayne Airport project will finally take off this summer
By David Silva
After years of often-contentious negotiations with noise- and traffic-sensitive neighbors, John Wayne Airport’s long-sought terminal enhancement project is about to take flight.
Airport officials accepted bids for the $652 million effort through March, and are expected to award contracts in June. Work on the multi-pronged project could begin as early as mid-June.
Plans for the 250,000-sq-ft project call for adding a third terminal (Terminal C); significantly enhancing terminals A and B; demolishing a 1,200-space parking facility and replacing it with a 2,000-space structure; resurfacing the runway; and adding permanent facilities and increasing parking for commercial air services.
A federal customs and immigration facility capable of processing 300 international travelers per hour will be added.
Terminal C will include six new passenger gates and six security checkpoints and will feature a food-and-beverage area and retail stores in an area called “The Marketplace,” which will serve all three terminals.
“We are kind of unique in Orange County because we operate under a federal settlement agreement that limits us to the number of average passengers and departure flights per day,” says airport spokesperson Jenny Wedge. “That agreement was supposed to go to 2005 and now goes through 2015. We made amendments to the agreement and that’s how it got extended.”
John Wayne is located in an unincorporated area of the county near Newport Beach.
Wedge refers to a 1985 court settlement of a lawsuit by local activists and neighboring cities over the county-owned airport’s master plan. Amendments to the agreement allowed the airport to raise an annual cap on passengers from 8.4 million to the current limit of 10.3 million. The cap rises in 2011 to 10.8 million passengers annually.
“One of the main goals of the program is to build facilities affordably and only build what we need,” Wedge says. “We have a number of components to the overall program and those would be built in stages depending on funding and need.
“Right now, John Wayne is a facility built for 8.4 million passengers, and we served almost 10 million passengers in our Terminal A. A new facility will give passengers more room and allow us to continue to provide comfortable and convenient service.”
The project, representing the first major renovation of the facility in nearly 20 years, is expected to be completed by late 2011.
Orange County chose Parsons of Pasadena as program manager for the enhancement program; Tustin-based Barnhart Inc. as construction manager for the Central Plant (terminals A and B) and parking structure projects; Walker Parking Consultants of Denver as general contractor for the parking structure replacement project; and Gensler of Los Angeles as project architect for Terminal C.
PinnacleOne of Laguna Hills and Nuprecon LP of Snoqualmie, Wash., are in charge of demolition of the existing parking structure.
“The direction we were given was that the overall architectural character of the new terminal had to be complementary to the existing facility,” says Gensler principal Keith Thompson. “That set some of the ground rules of our design. At the same time, due to code changes, there were some aspects of the design that we couldn’t keep the same.”
The first airstrip on the grounds was constructed in 1923, when Eddie Martin founded a flying school on land owned by the Irvine Co. It was purchased through a land swap by Orange County in 1939 and remains under the county’s ownership and management.
Originally known as the Orange County Airport, it was renamed John Wayne Airport in 1979.
John Squillace, senior project manager for Barnhart, says the 2,000-space parking structure will use buckling-restrained beams, or BRBs. The steel beams have a core plate covered with a restraining part to keep them from buckling.
“Typical parking structures are really simple -- concrete and rebar,” says Squillace, a certified construction manager and LEED-accredited professional. “This BRB system helps out the ability of the structure to withstand a greater force than a typical concrete beam. The reason it’s used in the parking structure is because the structure is considered an essential facility if there’s an earthquake.”
John Wayne plans to fund the massive effort with a combination of cash reserves, revenue from a $4.50-per-ticket passenger facility charge and by floating about $300 million in bonds.
Airport spokesperson Wedge says the ongoing economic slowdown has proved beneficial to the airport’s bidding process.
“It’s most definitely a sought-after project,” Wedge says. “Putting it out to bid at this time worked to our benefit and has made the process more competitive. Hopefully, that means we’re getting more quality bids.”
The John Wayne Airport Project Team:
Owner: Orange County
Program Manager: Parsons, Pasadena
Construction Manager (Central plant/Parking Structure B1): Barnhart Inc., Tustin
General Contractor (Parking Structure B1): Walker Parking Consultants, Denver
Project Architect (Terminal C): Gensler, Los Angeles
Structural Engineer (Parking Structure B1): IDS Group, Irvine
Architect (Parking Structure B1): Rosetti Architects, Newport Beach
Monster Structure
Precast figures prominently in SJ Airport’s garage project
At 1.8 million-sq-ft and $270 million, the new eight-level parking garage going up at Mineta San Jose International Airport is one of the largest precast projects in California.
“It’s a monster structure, the biggest I’ve ever been on,” says Jeff Fredericksen, project manager for Greeley Colo.-based Hensel Phelps, the job’s construction manger.
It is also the biggest precast project ever for West Sacramento-based Clark Pacific, which is in charge of erecting the 3,350-space garage, says Don Clark, the company’s president of business development.
Both men say the city of San Jose, the project’s owner, chose precast over traditional cast-in-place primarily because of time savings.
“By going with precast, the owner is able to get about 70,000 sq ft of floor area per week [erected], which is more than twice as fast as cast-in-place,” says Clark, whose company is working on a $35 million contract.
Clark adds that the precast amounts to a five-month savings over the course of construction.
The consolidated car rental garage project is part of a major expansion and renovation of the airport. Also under construction currently is the North Concourse of Terminal B. Five of the 12 new gates will open this summer, with the entire terminal opening in mid-2010.
The design-build project is being built as a consolidated parking garage for the airport’s rental car agencies. When complete it will include 3,000 rental car spaces, 350 public spaces, and a 200,000-sq-ft, three-level quick turn around facility where rental cars are fueled, washed and maintained.
The new facility will make San Jose International more competitive with the region’s other air transit hubs by placing rental cars within a short walk or onsite bus trip. No secondary transit mode will be required to reach the rental car centers as is the case at San Francisco and Oakland airports.
Construction is highlighted by a seismic method that included post-tensioning the precast beams with an array of cables, eliminating the need for extensive interior sheer walls.
“[This] was the best solution to meet the client’s need of wide open floors for the rental cars and to minimize the number of sheer walls,” says John Purinton, CEO of Watry Design Inc. of Redwood City, the project’s architect.
Because the structure is going up at an operating airport, the project team had to deal with space and mobility issues, Fredericksen says.
“We have an extremely tight site – 6.5 acres for a building with a six-acre footprint -- and we are completely surrounded by active roadways at the airport that have to remain open and not impacted, so we had to carefully map out our site utilization and staging,” Fredericksen says.
“But being a precast job has helped because so much of the [structure] is manufactured offsite and brought in by truck, so we have a lot less concrete to pour onsite.”
The project broke ground in February 2008. The precast topping out is scheduled for May 22.
When finished in August, the massive structure will have consumed 3,817 precast pieces or 32,600 cu yds of concrete, including 2,457 double Ts, 644 rectangular beams, 154 L beams, 84 inverted T beams, four transfer girders, 204 gravity columns and 212 spandrels.
-- Greg Aragon
Project Team:
Owner: City of San Jose
GC: Hensel Phelps Construction, San Jose
Architect of Record: TranSystems, Kansas City
Structural Engineer: Watry Design Inc., Redwood City
Parking Planning: Watry Design Inc., Redwood City
Precaster: Clark Pacific, West Sacramento
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