We need a new airport!!!

[WoodDraw]

They need to reach financial close. That's for sure. I don't even know if they're still aiming for 30% design. But they need to close.

After that they can blame shit on other people, but they're in charge of financing. We need a final agreement and financial close.

[aknowledgeableperson]

expanding the gates by 4 didn't cause a year delay. That's insanity.

The facility had to be "redesigned" to not just have 4 more gates but also the support structure for 7 more gates and be designed in a way for 15 more to be built. I'm saying that all these factors came together to create a delay of a length that hasn't been determined yet. This adds a lot of complexity as the developer, airlines, ownership, and the design team try to figure out what is needed when, where it's needed, and how much the airlines are willing to pay for. It a very complicated process. Many, many, many options and plans have to be examined. There complexities are obviously new and not anything that any other proposal took into consideration.

Back to the FAA side. It sounds to me like everyone including the city thought that issuing RFPs was acceptable. It also sounds like FAA in DC may think the same. I guess we will know more next month. The few months of delays that have been caused by these 3 issues pales to the delays the city caused in pushing back building the new terminal over the years.

How long have they been talking about the size of the terminal and the number of gates? And now they want more gates, and expansion possibilities. Come on now, this should have been settled a long time ago. This is on the airlines not Edgemoor.

[aknowledgeableperson]

They need to reach financial close. That's for sure. I don't even know if they're still aiming for 30% design. But they need to close.

After that they can blame shit on other people, but they're in charge of financing. We need a final agreement and financial close.

How can you have a financial close when you don't even know what the building requirements are? If they are trying to keep all of the additional changes within the current budget constraints there will definitely be problems with cuts made to stay within budget.


Big problems in the near term are the rising interest rates and higher steel and aluminum costs with the new tariffs.

[WoodDraw]

They need to reach financial close. That's for sure. I don't even know if they're still aiming for 30% design. But they need to close.

After that they can blame shit on other people, but they're in charge of financing. We need a final agreement and financial close.

How can you have a financial close when you don't even know what the building requirements are? If they are trying to keep all of the additional changes within the current budget constraints there will definitely be problems with cuts made to stay within budget.


Big problems in the near term are the rising interest rates and higher steel and aluminum costs with the new tariffs.

I agree with you. My understanding is that the airlines have said what they want and now they're trying to reach a design requirement needed to close.

[KCPowercat]

Already mention of 2023 in this article.

http://www.kansascity.com/news/business ... 91204.html

This is the most frustrating part to me:

At a September 2017 briefing, he told the council that a guaranteed price would be locked in by February or March of this year.

they said they could close faster than everybody else....they misled due to their inexperience at best, malice at worst.

The cost increase I totally get due to many factors, but the one factor we were supposed to benefit from with Edgemoor was getting started faster.....and that's not happening...and it's costing all of us money and time.

[normalthings]

Already mention of 2023 in this article.

http://www.kansascity.com/news/business ... 91204.html

This is the most frustrating part to me:

At a September 2017 briefing, he told the council that a guaranteed price would be locked in by February or March of this year.

they said they could close faster than everybody else....they misled due to their inexperience at best, malice at worst.

The cost increase I totally get due to many factors, but the one factor we were supposed to benefit from with Edgemoor was getting started faster.....and that's not happening...and it's costing all of us money and time.

You can’t set a quick price when 1.your clients change what they want built(which was good) 2. Your clients don’t sign any agreements . The MOU wasn’t even signed until February.....

Obviously the timeline is going to get pushed back for those 2 reasons. The other bidder’s timelines would have been pushed back for the same obvious reasons.

The 2023 opening being talked about is entirely the choice of the city per the article. October 2022 itself sounds like a symbolic opening since that would be the 50 year anniversary of the current terminal.

Let’s say the 1 year delay is 3months MOU delay,3 design changes delay, and bigger building construction delay. A 6month delay for a 25% bigger building doesn’t sound bad.

[earthling]

Time to rename this thread... 'New airport' or something.

[KCPowercat]

Already mention of 2023 in this article.

http://www.kansascity.com/news/business ... 91204.html

This is the most frustrating part to me:

At a September 2017 briefing, he told the council that a guaranteed price would be locked in by February or March of this year.

they said they could close faster than everybody else....they misled due to their inexperience at best, malice at worst.

The cost increase I totally get due to many factors, but the one factor we were supposed to benefit from with Edgemoor was getting started faster.....and that's not happening...and it's costing all of us money and time.

You can’t set a quick price when 1.your clients change what they want built(which was good) 2. Your clients don’t sign any agreements . The MOU wasn’t even signed until February.....

Obviously the timeline is going to get pushed back for those 2 reasons. The other bidder’s timelines would have been pushed back for the same obvious reasons.

The 2023 opening being talked about is entirely the choice of the city per the article. October 2022 itself sounds like a symbolic opening since that would be the 50 year anniversary of the current terminal.

Let’s say the 1 year delay is 3months MOU delay,3 design changes delay, and bigger building construction delay. A 6month delay for a 25% bigger building doesn’t sound bad.

I agree with most of your comments although I'd say the other bidders were bring more realistic in their timelines and would not have suffered a year delay to their timeline for the same changes....they were probably rightly anticipating them....and Edgmoor didn't probably due to inexperience in the industry or market.

The casual mentioning of 2023 wasn't by accident. It's socializing that now so they can say "told you back in 2018"....

I don't just blame Edgmoor here....I think the airport officials were misleading the council too.

[flyingember]

I don't think anyone was realistic in their timelines. They were all giving rosy projections.

If I'm reading it right the 2009 study which covered the south terminal had a timeline which didn't have construction beginning for 7 years and opening in 2020. That's 11 years to get to operations from a final recommendation.

This process began ~2012 and had a detailed document around 2015 so if we assume 2009 = 2015, we're now expecting to complete construction 7 years rather than six.

(the Dec 2015 update is roughly similar to the 2009 document in terms of plan maturity even though they're not the same kind of document)

The project isn't delayed, it's trending back towards normal rather than super fast.

[cityscape]

$1.4 billion sounds much more realistic as does the 1 million sq feet. The previous size and cost always concerned me that we were building on the cheap and that the airport would feel small. I don't have concerns with that anymore. Get this built!

[KCPowercat]

agreed.

[beautyfromashes]

The original plan called for the ability to expand to add gates in the future. With this new plan, are we just doing that expansion now, or will we still have the ability to grow even further in the future?

[cityscape]

Take a look at slide 6. This shows that the extra sq footage is going to be an overall increase which means more amenities and physical space per passenger than the initial proposal.
http://www.flykci.com/media/7671/21jun1 ... -final.pdf

The original plan called for the ability to expand to add gates in the future. With this new plan, are we just doing that expansion now, or will we still have the ability to grow even further in the future?

My understanding is that the new proposal will allow expansion of 3 more gates to bring us to 42 without having to expand security/baggage/etc.. There is also the ability to expand to 50 gates total, but that would require expansion of the core services listed above.

[beautyfromashes]

https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/edit ... 21729.html

KC Star calling for Pat Klein to be replaced as Aviation Director. Having watching the council meetings about the airport, I tend to agree. He seems a bit in over his head.

[KCPowercat]

I'd agree with that.

[moderne]

New renderings coming out next month.

[KCPowercat]

Pretty positive meeting this month...guess got all the bad news out of the way last month (for a while)

[TheLastGentleman]

New renderings coming out next month.

Legitimately excited to see em

[KCPowercat]

A few details I pulled from the presentation graphics yesterday...sorry to go all super dorky on maybe not finalized stuff

* 20 security lines!
* 4 gates that could handle international arrivals
*5 banks of toilets....this doesn't include single family ones and only for the departure floor (assume bathrooms in immigration room and baggage claim (19 in todays terminals...to show how much unnecessary redundancy we have)
* 9 baggage claim carousels (same as now but infinitely more efficient)
*Depature lanes not totally covered from weather (thought this was a big want)
*No sky bridge (although still pictured in rendering on first page)
* covered below ground walkways to garage where buses appear to be getting room to (un)load, keeping them out of the front drive
* Retail spaces not all detailed out that I could see
* Roof gardens!
* 100 steps from curb to closest gates (big guess here)

[bobbyhawks]

20 lines is a nice deal! Any backups will not be for lack of capability, so I hope they keep them staffed to keep the average wait down. I arrived around 20 minutes before boarding for my Southwest flight a few weeks ago with an A boarding pass and just jumped into line in the middle of the B boarding. The Monday morning TSA pre-check line was such a mess (like 40+ people, including the normal % of folks who didn't realize it's pre-check only until the last minute).

Side note, has there been any mention of airport "elite" lounges?