Beyond the Terminal

Four Other Projects Ready to Fly at Indianapolis Airport

by Steve Kaelble

It’s hard to miss the huge new Indianapolis International Airport terminal being built at midfield, but there are other pieces of the huge project that will help the airport run smoothly and safely.

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Included in the project are a new airport operations center, emergency operations center and fire station. And there’s new parking a huge amount of it all squeezed between the airport’s two main runways along with the terminal and the relatively new air traffic control tower.

A 7,100-Car Garage

The biggest and costliest public project outside the new midfield terminal is the airport’s parking structure. Senior project manager Andy Wishart of the Turner-Trotter Joint Venture of Indianapolis, which is building the structure, says it’s both a parking garage and the airport’s ground transportation center the place where passengers connect with rental cars, shuttle buses and taxis.

He adds that the entire first floor of the five-level garage will be filled with rental car fleets, and the remainder of the 2.5-million-sq-ft, 7,100-car garage will be available for public parking.

The $103 million, post-tensioned facility started in March 2006 and should be wrapped up by July.

“We split it into 11 separate bid packages to maximize local involvement,” Wishart says. Turner-Trotter took special care to spread word about the bid packages among the historically under-represented business communities to encourage involvement, he adds.

The parking structure is linked directly to the terminal building, and its third floor is level with the terminal’s main entry and concourses.

Three external ramp systems allow vehicles to move from one level to another, including helical ramps on two corners and a speed ramp reaching the second and third levels on the west end of the structure.

Wishart says it wasn’t easy coordinating the 160 concrete pours needed to put 120,000 cu yds of concrete into place. The site is fairly tight, bordered by the terminal, various infrastructure and sites for hotel projects, and specifications called for a microsilica concrete mix that is more durable but sets up more quickly.

“Through the heat of the summer and the freezing winters it was a challenge to keep the finish consistent,” Wishart adds.

Though thousands of vehicles will fit into the new structure, the airport project needed additional surface parking, which also was handled by Turner-Trotter. Construction manager Randy Cline says the surface parking covers 150 acres to the west of the garage and will include more than 11,000 spaces.

It’s an asphalt lot, with most of it covered by 4 in. of asphalt over a subgrade base. Higher-traffic bus lanes are getting 12 in. of asphalt for extra durability. The $16.5 million project got under way in spring 2007 and should be completed this spring.

New Fire Station (with Pole)

A roughly $6 million piece of the Indianapolis midfield project is a new fire station, located just north of the airport’s control tower.

Don Cruser, onsite owner’s representative and construction manager for Garcia Construction Group Inc. in Indianapolis, says the station includes about 23,000 sq ft, four drive-through bays and room for six on-duty firefighters plus several administrative personnel. Construction began in November 2006 and wrapped up in December.

Living quarters for the on-duty firefighters include small, individual bunk rooms; a day room; and large kitchen and dining area. The station also includes office space, training room and three-story tower outside that can be used for training and for hanging up fire hoses to dry.

The two-story station includes a brass fire pole, though firefighters also may choose to use the stairs.

Materials include split-face block, metal and glass, with a design marked by curves and sharp angles. Cruser says that despite its location between two active runways, it’s relatively quiet inside, thanks to sound-reducing glass.

Among the biggest headaches was installing some special systems, including a foam-suppression system that loads fire trucks with a fire-smothering foam suitable for fighting aircraft fires, he says.

Also requiring extra expertise was installation of an air-cleaning system designed to evacuate diesel exhaust from the fire truck bays. The automatic system is triggered when the station gets a call requiring it to start up its vehicles.

Because construction was taking place in the middle of an active airport, there was extra security.

“Any person on the jobsite had to be badged, and all vehicles had to be preregistered and be a company vehicle,” Cruser says.

Now that the building is operational, it serves as part of the fence line of the midfield construction site, “and if you cross that fence line you have to have security with you,” Cruser adds.

New Operations Center, Other

Located on the opposite side of the control tower is the new airport operations center and emergency operations center. It’s a $6.8 million, 15,000-sq-ft project that started in July and should be substantially complete this month, says Ty Wooten, owner’s technical representative for Harmon Construction of Indianapolis, the contractor.

It’s a reinforced concrete building, “and about 80% of the building is able to withstand a direct hit by an F-4 tornado” in the Midwest’s tornado alley, he says. That means there are only a limited number of windows, and those are made of ballistic glass. Doors are reinforced, and two of the walls are bermed for added protection.

The building houses the airport’s day-to-day operations, including police and fire dispatch; maintenance; and controls monitoring many of the functions at the terminal, including climate control, lighting, escalators, moving walkways and fire alarms. Part of it is designated an emergency operations center, where personnel would set up a command center during an emergency.

Other major projects at the airport include a major expansion of the FedEx Indianapolis hub, the air-express company’s second-largest hub after its Memphis headquarters. Announced in May 2006, the project called for a 400,000-sq-ft, five-bay expansion; addition of a 175,000-sq-ft, secondary-sort building; and two maintenance buildings totaling 48,000 sq ft.

FedEx already operates a 1.9 million-sq-ft sort facility at the airport.

The company declined to comment about the latest expansion project.

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