May 23, 2023

The Sioux Falls Regional Airport is hoping to start design yet this year on up to five more gates — an attempt to position itself for federal funding that will be needed for construction to move forward.

The estimated $130 million project is the first phase of a larger plan to expand the airport as part of its master plan.

“From an operational standpoint, we could use two to three more gates right now,” executive director Dan Letellier said.

In some cases, airlines considering the addition of routes were told “we can’t accommodate you” because “if you want to start a new route, come in late at night, and leave first thing in the morning; we just don’t have the gates overnight to do that anymore.”

There are only six gates capable of hosting the larger aircraft that airlines are moving toward, a response to limited pilot availability for the smaller regional jets, he added.

Funding the construction, of which the price has escalated in recent years, likely will require support from the federal government as well as state and local governments, Letellier predicts. A study last year found the airport has a $400 million positive economic impact annually, he added.

Here’s a look at the phased improvements planned at the airport.

“From the federal side, there’s a couple programs that are expiring in the next year that we believe would provide us an avenue to get as much federal money as possible toward this project,” he said. “So we at least need to have a preliminary design, a good handle on construction costs, so we can get our application in in a timely manner and at least have a chance for some of this funding.”

There’s a lot of competition though. One program offering $1 billion a year for five years to airports received $15 billion in requests the first year, he said.

A funding request for state and local governments hasn’t been developed yet.

The hope is to have a design team in place by midsummer.

Meanwhile, the airport is making progress on its current major construction project: the new parking ramp that will be attached to the main terminal.

“It’s amazing to see the little army that’s going on out there,” Letellier said. “They’re getting close to getting all their initial concrete columns; they’re going to start paving the second floor the first or second week in June.”

The goal is to complete the exterior and have the building enclosed by early November.

The airport also is making progress on adding 500 parking spaces onto the south end of the economy lot, with paving scheduled for mid-June.

“We’ll have the 500 spaces available to us, and more so for next February and March, when we still have spaces occupied with the construction of the garage,” Letellier said. “People will have to take a shuttle ride from basically across from the water plant all the way to the terminal building, but we’ll have continuous shuttles moving back and forth. We had planned to do it anyway, but it became more critical after we almost ran out (of parking) last year.”

Travel continues to be strong, he said. The airport set an all-time record in March and is 11 percent ahead year over year through April.

The number of seats available is a little ahead of last summer, and “going into the fall — September, October — we have quite a few additional seats over what we had last year,” Letellier said. “A lot of it depends on the economy. Do people feel comfortable going on a big trip to Disney? Tickets are certainly more expensive, hotels, travel in general is a lot more expensive. So I’ll be curious to see, but so far this year, that has not slowed anybody down.”