The Red Lake airport terminal building is the first thing you enter after flying into the municipality, serving both as an introduction and farewell to the community.
It’s because of that first and last impression the municipality ranks the construction of its new building an important one.
“I think it’s going to be a significant focal point in the community,” said Duane Riddell, Red Lake’s airport manager. “There are not too many structures here in that sort of beautiful condition, so to speak.”
At a cost of approximately $7.7 million, the project has been under construction since late 2009 and is scheduled to be completed by June 1, 2011.
There are three components to the construction of the building that equal the total price tag, according to Riddell.
About $6 million will go towards the building, with $870,000 towards an access road to the building, and $800,000 for a new parking lot.
The combination of FedNor, the Building Canada Fund, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, the Green Municipal Fund and the Municipality of Red Lake helped pay for the project.
“We were in a very good position when the Building Canada Fund opportunities came up during the recession,” Riddell said, “because we were shovel ready on the project.”
The construction became a must after the old terminal building became inadequate and dated and no longer met the needs of the community.
Passengers going through the terminal in 2005 were estimated at 32,000 while last year’s numbers rose to approximately 36,500.
Red Lake also saw the number of flights going through the community go from 18,600 in 2005 to 25,000 in 2010.
“We’re accommodating larger numbers of people, at any one time,” Riddell said. “At some points, we have more than 100 people in our tiny building. It gets quite congested.”
On several occasions, the municipality had to turn people away, due to the building being at full capacity.
Because of the large number of businesses who operate in the area, there’s often no room to accommodate anyone else.
“This is the first step in increasing the number of businesses or the number of airlines who are able to service the community,” he said.
Bill Greenway, Red Lake’s economic development officer, said the building has been specifically constructed to take care of the growth, and it should alleviate all problems.
“One of the things you have to realize is the projected growth is about four per cent per year,” Greenway said. “So we’re prepared for it.”
The new airport terminal building will be five times bigger than the previous, totalling 11,272 square-feet, as opposed to 2,211.
The construction team will salvage the old building to take as much value out of it as they can, and then demolish it at a later date.
“It was built in the 1960s,” Greenway said. “It has definitely reached its serviceable life.”
The new building will also provide several new services. For the first time, concession areas totalling 94 square metres will be built in three separate locations within the building.
The previous building had three vending machines.
The space will be looked at carefully, but Riddell said there’s a good chance it could be a restaurant or coffee shop.
“This airport ends up being the only facility in that part of the community,” said Riddell. “If we end up with a restaurant or a coffee shop, it would be the only place to have that. So we can see some great potential in people coming into the building that aren’t necessarily flying, but coming to use the business.”
The building will also go from two ticket counters to five. According to Riddell, they got a firm commitment on four of them, and are waiting on the other.
“We’re kind of looking forward to the increase of revenue that everything would entail,” he said.
Two full-time and part-time positions are expected to be created internally because of the expansion, and perhaps more from “whatever we create from our commercial spaces,” he said.
