Forklifts are moving and drills are whirring — signs that the construction crew building a new two-story wing of Sitka’s airport terminal is hard at work when I visit the site on August 12. They just finished pouring concrete slabs over the weekend, but one is ever-so-slightly smoother than the other–evidence of a classic Southeast Alaska building challenge.
“The rain was making it kind of bubble up and have this little slime layer on top. So scrape that off, you can almost tell the difference between the two pours,” says Sitka’s airport terminal manager Joseph Bea, pointing to one of the slabs. “This one was done on Saturday with much better weather versus that one.”
Bea says they’ve had a lot of good weather recently and that’s helped the construction team move quickly.
“We have our roof installed, all the pan decking [for] the snow and ice, all that’s installed on the roof, so that’ll keep our escalator nice and dry and protected while we build everything around it,” he says.
That’s good news because the escalator arrived earlier than expected, and they’re eager to install it. The nearly half-a-million-dollar marvel came up on the barge in a single shipping container.
“It was so tightly packed into that cargo container, they had to use a forklift to kind of wiggle out the escalator from the cargo container and then bring the crane over, lasso it around the middle, and then kind of, just very carefully, scooch it out,” Bea says.
Now it’s waiting in a corner of the lot, wrapped tightly in opaque plastic. No one has set eyes on it yet. That will soon change. They’re installing it today. But it’s a delicate operation, maneuvering around the construction.
“We’re gonna take the crane and we’re gonna drop it through our skylight up here, and we’re gonna bring it down, attach it to our escalator, which has been sitting over there for a couple weeks,” Bea says. “We’re gonna attach it to that, and then use a cargo forklift to pull it through the side.”
Sitka’s first escalator is part of a major terminal expansion project that’s costing around $45 million dollars. Most of that is federal grant money stemming from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act. Sitka is among many airports around the country taking advantage of the airport improvement and airport terminal funding programs to make necessary updates.
Over the next nine months in Sitka, they’ll complete the 2-story addition, which will include a new jetway to the passenger boarding bridge, passenger screening, restrooms, and a new concessions area. Right now, we’re standing on what will be the first floor of the new gate lounge area.
“This is going to be the sterile holding room for the passengers,” Bea says. “They’ll go through TSA over in this section here, and they’ll come out into this area, and this will all be post security.”
Perhaps more exciting than the escalator is the increase in space and seating. The gate lounges will be five times bigger. Bea says the downstairs lounge will have around 140 seats, and the upstairs will have a similar capacity. Bea estimates that right now there are 40-50 seats in the holding area.
“It’s gonna be a significant improvement,” Bea says. “The FAA identified this as a critical deficiency, and that’s what we’re trying to correct with the project.”
The new section of Sitka’s airport terminal is scheduled to open in May of 2025. Bea is optimistic that the construction team will meet the deadline.
“The challenges are real, but I got to give a lot of credit up to the team. Nate, on procurement, he’s done an amazing job. It seems like whenever I look around, I turn around and right what I need, exactly what I need, just shows up right on time. So that’s been almost magical,” Bea says. “The team has been really aggressive about trying to get ahead of schedule and when they can work getting it done. So that’s a huge reason of why we are where we are, is because these guys are working really hard.”
Once the new departures addition is complete, crews will turn their attention to remodeling the existing airport building, with plans to complete phase two by the summer of 2026.
