The Gainesville Regional Airport continues moving forward on a series of infrastructure improvements, including a new general aviation terminal and expanded fuel farm.  

The Gainesville-Alachua County Regional Airport Authority met on Thursday and approved Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) grants for an updated master plan and new baggage handling system.  

Allan Penksa, CEO of the airport, updated the authority on a series of projects.  

Columns will come in September for the four-story parking garage, and the airport will finish taxiway improvements on the general aviation side in the coming weeks.  

Penksa said they’ve pushed to have the construction finished before the first UF game, but the work will continue for a couple more weeks.  

The airport also wants to expand its fuel tanks, adding a 25,000-gallon tank and creating redundancies. The authority received two bids in July, but both were “substantially” above the engineering estimate.  

The authority voted to rebid the project. Penksa said a new firm attended the pre-bid meeting with another one interested, hopefully signaling more interest and better bids. Those bids will come in early September. 

Penksa noted that rebidding can be tricky.  

“You never know when you do it; sometimes it works against you,” Penksa said. 

He noted that the next step is for the airport to receive a special use permit from the City Plan Board. The airport sits inside the tertiary wellfield for the city’s water supply, requiring special steps for activities like fuel storage.  

The airport also plans to rebuild its General Aviation terminal in the coming years and voted to hire Michael Baker International as the design firm.  

The General Aviation terminal is primarily run by the University Air Center (UAC) operating as the airport’s fixed-based operator (FBO). Based on previous direction, Penksa returned with a three-year extension to the contract with UAC to serve as the operator.  

The authority approved the contract on Thursday, allowing the current structure to remain through the construction process. Plus, Penksa noted UAC would likely be in the best position to deal with construction interruptions while continuing the work of a FBO. 

“The idea was to keep the continuity as we design and build a new FBO terminal [and] that UAC would be in the best position to utilize existing buildings and a new building and the hangar that they own.”   

The airport has already received some design and construction grants for the project, and Penksa said the team will pursue more.  

Penksa ran through traffic numbers with the authority and noted that July was a record month compared with previous years. He said the airport had about 4,000 more passengers than in the past but added that the load factor, how filled each plane was, dropped because airlines had added some flights.  

He said those numbers will improve as the fall semester gets underway at UF. July and August are always rougher months for the airport, Penksa said.  

He added that the Miami flight provided by American Airlines had had a lower load factor than would be liked. Penksa said a part of this is the schedule of when the flights take off and arrive from Gainesville.  

American Airlines decided to pause the Miami flight from Sept. 4 through the first week of October before the route returns with a different schedule. Penksa told the authority that the same thing happened last year with the route.  

“We’ve always said Miami’s a tough cookie, and it’s always been a rough route for us to support,” Penksa said. 

He said he wished they’d left the route in place as Gainesville traffic begins to trend upward and rise toward the end of the year—the normal seasonal pattern, Penksa said.  

The airport will also begin an update of its masterplan and has received a FAA grant offer to cover 90% of costs. The Gainesville City Commission will vote to accept the grant in September.