New parking garage at airport?

Austin airport officials, at the urging of rental car companies cramped for space, are considering building a second parking garage at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.

The Austin City Council next week is expected to consider authorizing $454,000 to study the feasibility of constructing what officials envision as a four-story, 4,800-space garage just north of the existing garage on what is now surface parking Lot A.

Rental cars would occupy the bottom two floors, and the upper two floors, a total of 2,400 spaces, would be used for public parking. Also , the upper floor of the existing garage, now used by rental cars, would be converted to public parking, adding another 1,200 spaces.

After losing Lot A's 1,800 spaces, the airport would gain a total of 1,800 public parking spaces, potentially at little or no cost to its bottom line because the construction would be paid for with a surcharge on rental car charges.

Rental car companies, meanwhile, would double their near-terminal spaces to 2,400, along with moving fueling and car-washing facilities from a current, more remote location. This would reduce the need for rental car companies to shuttle so many cars around the airport, cutting their operating costs.

As demand grows, the alternative could be moving rental car operations off the airport site and shuttling customers from the terminal in buses as happens at many large airports, according to Jim Cousar, an Austin lawyer representing the rental car group. "That's what we're trying to avoid," Cousar said. "People get dissatisfied with those long wait times for vans."

But from the city Aviation Department's vantage point, added parking at the airport may be an idea whose time has not yet come.

"It's a big question, considering the current state of the (aviation) business," said Jim Smith , the department's executive director. "A lot of thinking in the industry is, you're not going to see any growth for three to five years."

The cost of building a second garage — Smith said the "very rough estimate" is $180 million — would be financed by selling revenue bonds to be paid back by an as-yet unknown increase in the $1.92 a day "customer facility charge" on rental cars at the airport. A consortium of rental car companies would pay for the feasibility study, then be reimbursed from a surplus in a city fund fed by that customer facility charge.

"We'd be asking customers to pay a significant increase in their customer facility charge for a project that might not be needed five years out," Smith said. "We would like to have the cost increase to the customer tied to when (the garage) is really needed, and not way in advance."

The airport, which opened in 1999, had its busiest year in 2008, when 9.2 million people departed or arrived. But passenger traffic fell to 8.2 million last year, Smith said, and has been essentially flat so far this year.

The upside of a new garage, Smith said, would be an extra 1,800 public spaces financed entirely by increased rental car charges, as well as potentially another 2,400 spaces in about 20 years when the garage bonds are paid off and the entire garage reverts to public parking. The airport now has 11,775 public parking spaces, including 2,397 in the garage.

The garage and Lot A, averaged over a year, are at 50 to 60 percent capacity, airport spokesman Jason Zielinski said. But Zielinski said that at certain times of the year — March, when several big events hit the city, and during Thanksgiving and Christmas — the surface lots and occasionally the garage reach capacity.

The downside for the city: During what would be about two years of construction, people who currently park for $10 a day in Lot A would either pay $7 a day in Lots B through H or perhaps begin using the city's two private parking competitors outside the airport on Texas 71.

And the daily rate in the new garage would likely be higher than the $10 daily charge for Lot A, though less than the $20 per day it now costs for the existing garage.

The city depends heavily on parking revenue to pay for its airport operations. Under federal law, airport operators cannot make a profit off of airline customers. An airport can charge those companies (in the form of landing and gate fees) only its actual debt service and operations costs.

But the airport can, and does, make a profit on parking, concessions and rental cars.

Last year, Smith said, the city's net on parking was $27 million. Its operating budget, Smith said, was $45 million.

So as the city considers the results from what is likely to be a 90-day feasibility study, and then decides whether to move forward with a garage agreement with the rental car companies, Smith said it will consider what effect the construction and the garage will have on that stream of cash. "We may want to sit on it for another year or 18 months," he said.

bwear@statesman.com; 445-3698