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New Bedford’s airport redesign is about to enter a critical phase.
The long-planned, $70 million project will replace the 75-year-old terminal and control tower at the New Bedford Regional Airport. In the coming months, airport officials plan to hold meetings with city officials and the public to decide what the redesign will actually look like.
The existing terminal building is deteriorating and doesn’t meet modern safety standards, airport officials say. But the project is also about improving an economic asset for the city — it could attract new passenger flights or other aviation businesses, they say.
To attract that new business, the airport needs to look inviting, said Scot Servis, the airport’s manager. The road to the current terminal is confusing, and the terminal itself is visibly dated.
“This airport has kind of fallen apart over the years and fell by the wayside on stuff, and I think some of the business has suffered because of that,” he said.
Airport officials have already completed much of the unglamorous preliminary work, like environmental assessments. The location for the control tower is already decided, and its design will largely be based on “boilerplate” federal specifications.
Designing the terminal comes next. Over the next few months, airport officials plan to start making decisions on the first 10% of the terminal design — the general shape and look of the building, and what amenities it will have.
“The 10% design is really the kind of exciting part of the whole thing,” Servis said.
That’s because this early design phase will decide key questions about the new terminal and tower. How large should the terminal be? Aesthetically, what qualities should it have? Will there be a restaurant attached?
Airport officials plan to gather input this summer from city leaders and the public to answer those questions. They say budget limitations will play a big role in the design. While the vast majority of the project will be paid for with state and federal funds, many discretionary design decisions will fall on the city, which is facing a significant budget shortfall.
Servis said the visual look of the tower and terminal have become an important concern in his meetings with the mayor’s office. The city wants “something that isn’t going to drive the cost up significantly, but is aesthetically pleasing,” he said.
It wouldn’t be the first time Mayor Jon Mitchell has taken a stance on the aesthetics of a state-funded infrastructure project. He has advocated for visually pleasing designs for the South Coast Rail pedestrian bridge and (unsuccessfully) for the New Bedford-Fairhaven Bridge.
Fennick McCredie Architecture, the firm that designed the pedestrian bridge, will also design the terminal.
Airport officials hope to finish the 10% design this fall, but they say the process could bleed into winter, depending on how outreach goes.
Aspirations for a new aviation experience
The existing terminal was built in 1951, and it’s not in great shape. The building has leaks and its heating system doesn’t work at all in some rooms. The outdated building is “making the maintenance and daily upkeep a costly challenge,” officials have determined.
“We’ve got chairs down there that, I swear, are straight out of the 1950s, when the place was built,” Servis said.
The structure also doesn’t comply with a post-9/11 federal requirement that the control tower and terminal be housed in separate structures.
Cape Air runs flights from the airport to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, and Bridgewater State University uses the airport as a base for its flight school. Private jets use the airport on a daily basis, too. A 2019 MassDOT study found the airport generates nearly $30 million in economic output each year. But airport officials say the facility could do much more with a new terminal.
They haven’t decided exactly which types of air travel the new terminal will support, and that’s intentional.
“We want to try to future-proof the design as best we can,” Servis said.
That means making the new building adaptable to many different uses: commercial passenger service, cargo shipping, helicopters for offshore wind projects. The current building is “obsolete” and can’t accommodate those uses, said Matt Provencher, who leads the Airport Commission.
New Bedford airport officials have looked to other projects in the region for inspiration. The new terminal at the Cape Cod Gateway Airport in Hyannis, built in 2011, attracted new seasonal flights, Servis said. Tweed New Haven Airport in Connecticut is expanding to accommodate Breeze Airways, a small, budget airline that recently started operating there.
Future technology, like electric planes, could open up opportunities that the city can’t foresee today, Servis said.
Larger airports are pivoting more to long-haul routes, which could create an opening for smaller airports like New Bedford to take on more regional flights, he said. He also said that the country’s shortage of air traffic controllers may lead federal officials to cap the capacity of larger airports. He believes that could give New Bedford the opportunity to take on some flights that currently operate out of Rhode Island’s T.F. Green Airport.
Airport officials want the new terminal to be at least as big as the current one, so it can include comfortable passenger waiting areas and a security screening area. The parking lot and roadways leading to the terminal need to be easier to navigate, Servis said.
How the project will be funded
Funding constraints are shaping the redesign, even in these early stages.
Airport officials have estimated the project will cost roughly $70 million on the high end, but the final budget depends on design decisions they will soon make.
The Federal Aviation Administration will pay for about 90% of project costs, including the tower, airport officials say. But the agency only pays for public spaces, which wouldn’t include a manager’s office, conference room, or rental car area.
The Massachusetts Department of Transportation has agreed to pay about 5% of the costs, airport officials said.
MassDOT funding also has limits, Servis said. For example, in other airport redesigns that included a restaurant, the state agreed to pay for the building shell but not the floor or lighting.
The city will have to take out loans to fund whatever the state and federal governments won’t pay for. The designs will be shaped by the need to limit the local share to a number the City Council is willing to approve, officials said.
It’s not the best time to embark on a big public building project. The city is facing tough choices this year amid a $32 million budget deficit, and it’s a tight year for the state budget.
If the airport generates revenue, that would go toward the loan, Servis said. That means city funds would only go toward the project if the airport budget doesn’t break even.
The airport has needed city funds to stay afloat in recent years — the manager said the facility has about $1.4 million in costs each year but only makes $1 million to $1.2 million in revenue. The city has subsidized the shortfall with taxpayer money. He called it “almost a wash,” though, because the airport also pays the city about $250,000 each year for services like payroll and legal representation.
“We’re trying to get new business, trying to get new hangars built, trying to get people in, that hopefully will change that math,” he said.
Email Grace Ferguson at gferguson@newbedfordlight.org
