Ready for Takeoff - Page 2

Like so many monumental projects here—including Uni-Gov and bringing the Pacers downtown—this one began under Mayor Richard Lugar. Legend has it that in 1975, Daniel Orcutt, whom Lugar appointed director of the Airport Authority, sketched out his vision on a napkin for his staff: a new terminal lying between two long, as-yet imaginary runways. At the time, it must have seemed farsighted almost to a fault. Indy greeted only 2.6 million passengers a year then. On the table was a plan for a facility that could host at least 15 million. And Orcutt’s scribbled plan included 760 acres of family farms adjacent to the current airport that would take decades to acquire.

But the city’s population growth (17 percent in the 1960s) demanded attention. “You can’t plan a project this large when you need it,” says Kish, the airport’s current executive director. “You have to plan it before you need it. Even in the late ’70s, the existing terminal was starting to max out. And it had nowhere to grow in order to add additional gates. I-465 was right there to the east, and railroad tracks were right there to the north. It was pinned.”

Using only the fees paid by airlines to operate here and the passenger facility fee ($4.50 per ticket), the Airport Authority began acquiring land piecemeal as farms came on the market. By 1990, enough of the land had been purchased to build the two long runways that immediately began serving the old terminal and would eventually flank the new one. But what would that new airport look like?

The Airport Authority assembled a team of 10 consultants from around the world—a group joined in 2002 by Ripley Rasmus, director of design at the architecture firm HOK in St. Louis (responsible for Victory Field and the Convention Center, as well as airports in Washington, D.C. and Orlando). Together, they planned the terminal’s form and function. During the design process, Rasmus says, he drew inspiration from great gateways around the world such as the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and Kansai International Airport in Tokyo. But HOK’s early sketches, which in retrospect Rasmus says were too careful based on budgetary constraints, underwhelmed both Kish and then-mayor Bart Peterson. They went back to the drawing board. Rasmus designed a more dramatically arched roofline that became a theme in the dozen presentations HOK made to the city over the next year.

While the architects focused on the big picture, consultants concentrated on the details. They surveyed passengers about desired services, resulting in a call for free Wi-Fi throughout and more charging stations for laptops. A cell-phone parking lot for those picking up passengers also made the list. And while the old airport met the legal requirements for handicapped accessibility, the new one offered an opportunity to design those features into the bones of the building. The entire passenger route should reside on one level, consultants decided. Ticketing counters should rise just 34 inches high.

HOK constructed a physical model of the new airport that the city approved in 2003, and by late that year, all that remained was to finalize the budget and build it. The total cost amounted to $1.1 billion, with $120 million coming from federal grants and the rest shouldered by the airlines and Airport Authority.

Rather than flown-in materials, most of the steel and concrete arriving at the airport site that summer came from nearby addresses—part of an initiative to keep the construction project local. On September 25, three decades after that drawing on a napkin, former mayor Bart Peterson thrust a ceremonial shovel into the dirt between the runways. The largest civic project in Indy’s history was underway.

Click here for extra photos of the new Indianapolis Airport.