Pensacola hopes to add 434 parking spaces at airport before Thanksgiving

Pensacola hopes to have 434 new parking spaces at the Pensacola International Airport before the Thanksgiving travel season this year.

The Pensacola City Council approved a resolution on Thursday to accept a $2.2 million Florida Department of Transportation grant to build a new 434-space parking lot in what now is mostly a grass lot on Tippin Avenue used for overflow parking.

The total cost of the project is expected to be $4.4 million, and the city's airport fund will cover the remaining costs.

The empty lot, which is mostly only used when all other airport lots are full, will be paved to allow for regular parking. The new lot will include sidewalks, electric vehicle charging stations, bus shelters and security call boxes.

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Pensacola International Airport Director Matt Coughlin told the City Council that the new parking lot will increase the capacity of 3,600 parking spaces by about 10%.

The airport recently converted an employee-only parking lot to be open to the public, adding 100 spaces, and has been finding other ways to boost parking capacity.

Pensacola Mayor D.C. Reeves said last week that the airport has added more than 300 spaces over the last five months.

The airport is continuing to set record passenger counts. Reeves said Tuesday that Sunday was the busiest day at the airport so far in 2024, with 11,600 passengers. That record only lasted 24 hours, as Monday saw 12,000 passengers.

"Maybe we'll keep setting the record every day, but obviously, we continue to stay busy," Reeves said. "We expect it to increase rapidly as we get into the summer season."

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Reeves also thanked the Travel Security Administration for increasing the number of agents at the airport for the summer and said wait times are now averaging about six minutes. The longest wait time over the past weekend was 13 minutes, according to TSA figures provided to the city.

While the funding is now officially in place for the project, the city was already working on getting the project moving.

Reeves said the city has already held a pre-bid meeting, which 11 companies attended to find out more information on the technical details of the project.

Reeves said he's aiming for the project to begin as close to July 1 as possible, which is when the FDOT funds will transfer to the city, so it can be completed before the 2024 Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday season. The city is offering an incentive bonus to whichever contractor is selected for an early completion of the project.

"We're eight, nine, 10 years ahead of our master plan of how much parking we thought we'd need already, and we still need more," Reeves said.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Pensacola International Airport looks to increase parking this year