A nearly two-year-old parking ramp at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport's main terminal that has won awards for its commanding design needs more than $2 million in repairs to correct flooding and potential cracking issues, airport officials say.
A Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC) committee on Monday unanimously approved a measure to fire the original contractor for the $245 million ramp and hire a new firm to fix issues that cropped up during construction.
The glittering Silver Ramp at Terminal 1 is hard to miss from Hwy. 5. The 11-story structure added 5,000 parking spaces to the airport complex, a new rental car hub, and a transit center for buses, shuttles, bicycles and light-rail.
"It truly is a beautiful structure, and with multi-modal capabilities it will benefit travelers going forward for many, many years," said Bridget Rief, the MAC's vice president of planning and development, during Monday's meeting.
The Silver Ramp has drawn many accolades, including the Grand Award from the Minnesota chapter of the American Council of Engineering Companies, which noted the building's "exceptional innovation, complexity, achievement and value."
One of the structure's most-distinctive elements is its façade, which uses special tubes that feature darker colors near the ground and lighter tones at higher levels. On sunny days, the building seemingly fades into the sky. And it features Minnesota's longest escalator at 56 feet, besting the one at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.
But some issues have been cropping up since construction began in 2017.
In more than 100 locations between the second and 11th floors, water that failed to drain properly accumulated in small "ponds" until it evaporated, MAC officials said.