Massive expansion of MSP airport will bring years of demolition and disruption

Terminal 2 will more than double in size. Concourses and parking ramps at Terminal 1 will be reconstructed or demolished. And an “automated people mover” may ferry travelers between the two terminals.

These are some of the changes included in a $9 billion expansion of Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. The Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC), which operates MSP, recently approved a comprehensive plan that will fundamentally change the airport’s terminals, parking and airfield to accommodate growing throngs of passengers through 2040.

The plan “is a roadmap, a recipe, if you will, and it’s all subject to change,” said Bridget Rief, a civil engineer who is the MAC’s vice president of Planning and Development. “We’re very good here about building when we need things, we don’t build things and then wait for people to fill it up.”

The plan takes into account demand for air travel in the post-pandemic era, the fickle cycles of the airline business and the economy and the challenges of growing in the confines of its urban Twin Cities location.

Efforts to craft the long-term plan, which is required by the Federal Aviation Administration and the Metropolitan Council, were delayed nearly 15 months due to the COVID-19 outbreak, which decimated air travel.

Leisure travelers have since returned to the skies with a vengeance: MAC officials predict the number of annual passengers will surge by nearly 50% to about 56 million by 2040.

Terminal 2 continues to get bigger, with the addition of 21 gates by 2040.

In the near-term, 11 gates will be added to the south side of Terminal 2. Work is already underway on a $240 million two-gate expansion, with construction beginning on another two gates later this year.

Terminal 2 is home to Minneapolis-based Sun Country Airlines, as well as Allegiant, Condor, Frontier, Icelandair, JetBlue and Southwest. Rief said the gates under construction have not been assigned to an airline yet.

“We’re actively planning the phasing and what the structure will look like,” Rief said. “This is due primarily to Sun Country’s growth.”

The plan also calls for Terminal 2 to be converted to geothermal power, a renewable energy source that has a smaller carbon footprint than fossil fuels.

The Orange and Purple parking ramps at Terminal 2 are expanding. This includes includes two more levels of parking atop the Orange Ramp and seven additional levels at the Purple Ramp.

The second level of the Purple Ramp will be reconfigured for passenger pick up and drop off, with access to the terminal through the skyway. A similar configuration could result at the Orange Ramp.

“We have congestion at certain times during the day and during the week and this will hopefully help,” Rief said. “It’s not a ton of space and we want to see how well it works and see if we can divert people into the parking ramp.”

The Federal Inspection Services Facility in Terminal 1 will be improved to move international passengers arriving at MSP more efficiently.

At Terminal 1, Concourse A will be reconstructed to accommodate larger aircraft and Concourse B will be demolished. The two currently fork off the tip of Concourse C.

Both were designed when 50-seat aircraft were common, but MSP dominant carrier Delta Air Lines no longer flies them. Post-pandemic, Delta and other airlines are increasingly relying on larger aircraft with 130 seats or more to meet growing demand, according to industry group Airlines 4 America.

The plan calls for Concourse F at Terminal 1 to be reconstructed to handle larger aircraft and some international flights. All told, the plan calls for nine fewer gates at Terminal 1 by 2040.

The aging Green and Gold parking ramps will be reconstructed into a new multi-purpose facility that will include parking and Federal Inspection Services for processing passengers from international flights.

This work will complement an effort to widen both levels of the roadway serving the terminal for departures and arrivals, which can clog with vehicles picking up and dropping off passengers at peak times.

“The whole renovation of the Green and Gold [ramps] creates a huge opportunity to do all kinds of things,” Rief said.

Nine more gates on the north side of Terminal 2 will be added, allowing for airlines to expand there, and accommodating reconstruction of the Terminal 1 concourses. This will require the relocation of fixed-base operator Signature, which provides business and private aviation service to the public, elsewhere at the airport.

Terminal 1′s Concourse G is slated to expand by seven gates, and Concourse E will be reconstructed, absorbing Concourse D. That will make it necessary to rename all of the concourses in Terminal 1.

“What we’re trying to do is better balance the number of passengers between the two terminals as a long-term play, so we’re not so heavily over-weighted at Terminal 1,” Rief said. “Recent growth at Terminal 2 has kind of organically provided some of that balance already.”

And there’s a plan to construct an automated people mover between Terminals 1 and 2, eliminating the need for passengers to use Blue Line light-rail service to travel between the two.

“The basic idea is that, like many other airports, you would have gone through security and, while on a secure side of the airport, you could get on a tram or a bus or something that would take you between the two terminals,” Rief said.

“That’s very long term and a significant undertaking,” she added. “What it would look like hasn’t been defined.”