The shakedown for concessions in return for organized support of the new-terminal election is now officially underway.
On Tuesday, Clinton Adams, counsel to the black political organization Freedom Inc., and Gwen Grant, president and C.E.O. of the Urban League of Greater Kansas City, went down to The Star and told the editorial board they wanted a guarantee that 40 percent of subcontracting firms on the airport project be minority owned and 40 percent of the actual workforce consist of minorities.
You could see this coming a mile away. A week ago, after the special airport committee’s surprise recommendation that low-profile Edgemoor Infrastructure & Real Estate get the terminal contract, I wrote the following:
Edgemoor will have to move quickly to convince the Kansas City Labor Council that it will provide plenty of local jobs.
Every significant voting bloc, such as Freedom Inc., the firefighters union, the Committee for County Progress and the Citizens Association, will have to endorse it (for it to pass). Freedom Inc., the city’s leading black political organization, will be in a particularly enviable position because it will be able to extract just about whatever concessions it wants and will be able to demand payment of tens of thousands of dollars to help finance its get-out-the-vote effort.
So, here we are. Freedom Inc. is smacking its lips and getting ready to chow down. The Labor Council is surely poised to saw away at this big, fat hog, too. I bet we’ll be hearing from the firefighters’ union at some point. Maybe they’ll want leather La-Z-Boys in the fire stations.
This goose is laying dozens of golden eggs and a lot of hands are going to be reaching into the nest.
As has been clear all along, the vast majority of voters are not charging the doors of City Hall demanding replacement of the nostalgic dump up I-29. If this issue does make it to the ballot in November and it happens to pass, it almost assuredly won’t be by more than a few percentage points. So, like I said last week, proponents are going to need every conceivable constituency. And that puts every organization that has a constituency — however small — in an excellent bargaining position.
The unsettled nature of the situation is a big reason Freedom and the other influential organizations are wasting no time in striking.
Although the selection committee chose Edgemoor, the full City Council will have the final say on contractor selection, and the selection of Edgemoor is no sure thing.
Burns & McDonnell, the committee-spurned “Hometown Team” appears to be continuing to sniff around the edges, looking for an opportunity to elbow its way back into the picture. (A neighbor told me she had a call from a polling firm asking questions that seemed to be pushing her toward favoring a local firm. Now I wonder who that might be?)
And even if a council majority should vote in favor of Edgemoor, a memorandum of understanding (in effect, a contract) must be developed, and it, too, will require council approval. Developing and approving an MOU could take weeks, and then — whoosh! — we might find ourselves just days away from the Nov. 7 election.
It’s not a pretty picture, is it? So much has gone wrong already that it’s difficult to see how things are going to start falling into place and the pendulum is going to swing from opposition or indifference to avid enthusiasm for a new terminal.
With about half the sand already settled at the bottom of the hourglass, the two biggest questions are still unknown:
:: What will the new terminal look like?
:: Who will build it?
I’ve said all along this process has been completely ass backwards: Mayor Sly James and the other council members should have first chosen a firm to create a design and then put the project out for competitive bids. That would have positioned a selection committee to methodically compare bids side by side, point by point, before recommending the “lowest and best” bidder.
It wouldn’t necessarily be easy doing it that way, but it would be a heck of a lot easier and a lot less painful than what has taken place the last few months.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
No wonder KCMO is so dysfunctional. And The Star is no watchdog. Good thing airports only get built every 50 years or so.
That’s too broad a brush to swing, KB. The city does a lot of things well. In this case, a majority of the council members got sandbagged by Mayor James, Councilwoman Jolie Justus and Councilman Scott Wagner on the Burns and Mac, no-bid proposal. James jumped at it because he was frustrated at the lack of progress from the conventional route, and he dragged along Justus, aviation committee chairwoman, and Wagner, mayor pro tem. They could have bucked him, but they owe their positions to him, and that would have been pretty hard.
As for The Star, they’ve done an excellent job of reporting this story, and as I’ve said before, the editorial board has done its best to guide the city toward the best possible outcome, given the upside down nature of the process. The Star correctly wants to see a new terminal constructed, and it’s trying to salvage that hope for the sake of the city.
From what I can tell from friends, there is zero buzz on the airport proposal. Most of this is probably because people are yet paying much attention, but time is beginning to draw short. And if it looks like groups are going to all line up for their perceived share, I see that loading down a proposal that is going to have a hard time passing anyway.
If there is any uncertainty, people almost always veer toward saying no. It’s not too late to pull the November vote and wait until April. That would allow more time to get a complete package together to sell to the voters.
I tend to think more than five months’ distance (November-April) would be needed to purge the detritus of this tangled process. If the election is canceled, I think we should wait until Sly is out of office and start all over with an entirely fresh slate, under a new administration.
Let’s keep in mind the original master plan that recommended a single terminal was published in 2008. The city has fumbled this for almost 10 years with no resolution. Other peer cities have no problem embarking on new construction or major renovations (Ft. Lauderdale, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Sacramento) . I highly doubt the next mayor would want to touch this topic to save his or her’s political reputation.
Keep in mind that Mark Van Loh botched the single terminal issue from the get go because he wanted to create his own private fiefdom with the airport as the centerpiece. That wasted seven years because of his political aloofness. He then just mysteriously disappeared with no real explanation.
Pittsburgh has an albatross of a terminal because they built it out as a U.S. Air hub and went into big time struggle mode when U. S. Air pulled out their hub. The financial state of their airport was pretty precarious for a while: https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/flights/todayinthesky/2017/09/13/pittsburghs-resurgent-airport-plans-sleek-new-1-billion-terminal/663823001/
The other three projects were already in motion prior to the 2008 economic downturn. But the reality is that the Indianapolis and Sacramento new terminals have not been the economic mojo their boosters purported them to be.
Fort Lauderdale is in whole other category because of tourist traffic – something the other 3 plus KC will never have.
The current proposal has issues because it came out of the blue after the whole terminal issue was cast aside last year after much rancor and most people considered shelved for a few years.
I’ve contended here in the past it is silly to make all these promises that a new terminal is going to bring some kind of economic nirvana and enhanced air service to KC. The airline industry has dramatically changed in the past 10 years and mid sized metros like KC are the ones most affected by it. And none of the industry analysts see the air service situation improving for metro areas like KC. And for those who hold out the idea of a hub here if we get a new terminal, forget it as airlines are looking at phasing out all but a handful of big fortress hubs in the largest metro areas in the country. That the proposals circulating around for the new single terminal only have 35 gates tell you that powers that be have realized this. The increase in air travel in the world today is not from domestic flights, but international traffic and that can easily be handled from the big hubs.
While not sexy, I would try to sell it as a practical and necessary as the old terminals are just wearing out. Such ideas sell better to the middle America population. Not over promising means no bitterness when a new single terminal opens and there is no big blast of new flights or new business flocking into town.
Bill there are many other airports our size that have embarked on ambitious re-builds or renovations past the downturn.
New Orleans – study began in 2011 and construction in 2016.
Nashville – project announced in 2016, construction began in 2017
Portland – project announced in 2017, construction hasn’t begun
Dallas – Love – project announced in 2009, construction finished in 2014
Meanwhile in KC, we continue to poke holes in Mark VanLoh’s proposal, call Sly James a back-room dealer and pretend that we all know more about aviation than the experts. It is just a prime example of KC being KC, sad but true.
Brian: As someone who worked in the aviation support business for 20 plus years and was one of four people who wrote a national airspace support plan for the FAA within the last several years, maybe some of us know a little bit more of the inside than you may think.
Bill – I don’t disagree, the city has oversold this deal by a mile. The process leading up to today is confusing and backwards. Those who have taken the time to educate themselves (or worked in the field) on the issue know that a new terminal won’t equal flights/economy stimulation, etc. The average Joe who will vote on this issue will be largely uneducated and any bias they already have will sway their vote. That is the disappointing part; city needs to improve their most important asset but how they have chosen to approach and sell this could end up backfiring.
Brian – Everything so far with the airport modernization seems to be done in the shadows with preconceived ideas on how the result should be. That is why this is so prolonged. We are in the heart of the area of the country that right now is dragging its heels about making changes and looking to the future. Just look at what the state political scene has been in both Kansas and Missouri the past 10 years, and no one would say it is a very forward-looking environment. While one may not like it, it reflects the voting populous and their views at this time.
Don’t oversell! That does not work here. I can guarantee you in any campaign for the airport that projects like the Power & Light District will come up. Personally, I see P&L as a success because it has re-energized downtown. But there are many who see that the city made a bad deal and will be using taxpayer dollars to support the project for years and years.
I know that any airport plan does not use tax dollars, but taxpayers in one way or another will play for it through fees, parking, etc. And any campaign needs to detail what the true extra costs will be to airport users. All the plans (whether new or remodel) still depend on drastically raising the Passenger Facility Charge which so far has gone nowhere in Congress. What is the alternate plan if that does not happen for filling that funding gap?
The current process has been beneficial because roughly $500 million in cost was trimmed from the Burns and Mac proposal. Of course, that $500 million could have filled a lot of pockets to get support. This is why an open proposal process is always preferred to cut down costs.
Who doesn’t want leather La-Z-Boys? Naugahyde is just tacky…
The airport soap opera is a prime showcase of KC being KC. Unable to pull anything together without drama and ultimately wasting more and more time. Meanwhile, airports like Pittsburgh are rolling out a 1 billion dollar new terminal to replace one that was built in 1994 because they recognized the airline industry has changed and they need to evolve too. Meanwhile in KC, we are all criticizing one another about the airport and we continue to lose valuable time.
Here’s a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story (in today’s edition) about the Pittsburgh airport project. They plan to start work on a new building for ticketing and security in 2019. The city would finance construction “through 20- to 30-year bonds, grants, passenger facility charges, and revenue from natural gas drilling on airport property.”
http://www.post-gazette.com/business/development/2017/09/12/Pittsburgh-International-Airport-Allegheny-County-Authority-board-vote-plan-new-landside-terminal/stories/201709120131
Bill H. — To your point about the changes in the airline industry, the Post-Gazette story says Pittsburgh will be going from 75 to 51 gates. KCI would also reduce, which is smart, given the new business model. And, yes, the hub concept is definitely fading; you just don’t hear people talking about that much any more, and it really doesn’t make much difference as long as you can get from here to where you want to go.
Good story about the struggle of small to medium sized airports to get additional service.
https://skift.com/2016/07/07/u-s-airports-struggle-to-attract-new-service-from-any-airline/
Note the new KC to San Antonio service from Southwest is discussed in the article.
This NY Time article from 2012 is still true today:
I’ve flown into and out of Tucson in non-tourist season on business and it is one dead airport.
I don’t always agree with Mike Boyd’s take on aviation issues, but he has been pretty spot on about this issue the past several years.
MCI has enjoyed 39 months of consecutive YOY growth. Not sure how much struggle MCI has had to endure lately, the data would disagree.
Jim – The Star has been doing an excellent job covering the airport process, but I was very disappointed with this morning’s editorial regarding Amazon search for second headquarters. In it, the hunt for a new terminal comes up and there pops up the oversell for a new terminal – it will get us direct flights to Europe. Highly unlikely based on other cities experience and the current airline’s marketing/utilization plan.
Perhaps The Star should look into how many airports in the comparable KC range are paying airlines to provide international flight(s) (direct subsidies) and how much that would add to the yearly costs for the airport that customers would need to pay. I know Pittsburgh at one time was paying $3 million a year to maintain one international flight.
And after reading the front page story about all the rancor by the unpicked bidders (particularly Burns and Mac), there is no way this issue passes in November. In fact, one has to think at this time that Burns and Mac would like to see it lose to see it come back again sometime in the future.
I didn’t see the part where the board said “Amazon needs a city with a new airport, here in KC once we build one we will enjoy a number of flights to Europe – not to mention we will land every corp. headquarters looking to relocate”
All they said is that we are now the largest city w/o N/S to Europe, which is true.
Brian: The implication of the editorial and the accompanying article is that we don’t have international flights to Europe because of the existing terminal constraints. It also implies that building a new terminal will solve these problems and by direct implication that those type flights will appear.
I would not hang my hat on getting the general voting public to use this as a reason to vote for a new terminal and for a service that 95-98% of KCMO voters would never use.
There are plenty of solid practical reasons to persuade the average person about the advantages of a new terminal and to vote yes. Let’s stick to those.
In another post you mention KCI has had 39 months of consecutive passenger growth. Yet The Star article today talks about Southwest is moving flights away from KCI to St. Louis (St. Louis had nearly double the increase in passenger volume from 2015 to 2016 than KCI did – so there are other reasons than the terminal). And don’t think there are not other airports out there are experiencing comparable growth which are competing with KCI for additional flights.
Here are the actual 2015 to 2016 passenger boarding numbers from the FAA:
https://www.faa.gov/airports/planning_capacity/passenger_allcargo_stats/passenger/
A few short years ago, Kansas City was the 32nd busiest airport in the U.S. It is now 39th. KCI has a passenger growth rate of 4.57% between 2015 and 2016. These airports ahead of KCI all had greater growth rates:
Los Angeles (hub), New York – JFK (hub), Denver (hub), San Francisco (hub), Orlando, Newark (hub), Boston (hub), Fort Lauderdale, Baltimore (hub), Salt Lake City (hub), Portland OR, Dallas Love (hub), St. Louis, Nashville, Houston Hobby (hub), Austin TX, Oakland and Raleigh.
The airports from 40 to 60 that had greater passenger growth than KCI were:
San Jose, Orange County CA – John Wayne, Sacramento, Indianapolis, Columbus OH and Cincinnati.
And amazingly, many of the airports you listed doing terminal projects have experienced nearly double or more the increase in passenger volume than KCI did last year. Think maybe there is a correlation?
And look at where the strong job growth is:
Again a pretty good correlation between passenger boarding growth, new terminal construction and job growth.
Passenger demand is driven by how well the local economy is doing as well as increased population. Economic and other policies pursued by the both adjoining states (especially Kansas) have done little to grow the metro area economy plus we are not attracting enough skilled people into the metro to fill what new tech level jobs are being created (again mentioned in The Star article about the Amazon HQ). If you look at the list of airports with more traffic growth than KCI, they can all point to tech job growth as large part of their growing local economy.
Also I’d like you to address the question: Should the airport subsidize an international flight to Europe (if that is what it takes) and at what cost? I can tell you answer from my KCMO neighborhood – the answer is zero dollars.
Bill – I am really confused by your post. Earlier you were sharing articles about how hard it is for airports like KC to grow and get new service and that growth is only due to international service? Now you are sharing articles showing that airports experiencing growth have completed or our planning new facilities. You don’t need to convince me on a new terminal, I am all in and have always been and know the benefits that come with it.
As for subsidization, I don’t believe the airport currently has a line item in their budget to entice airlines for service. Subsidies at mid-size airports are fairly common, not sure how you measure the ROI unless you are able to get rid of the subsidy without losing air service.
I think other airports realize they have to pay to play in this highly competitive industry. KC can choose to join the competition or risk being left further behind.
Would be curious what your KCMO neighborhood has supported over the years as it relates to positive change for the city? Not taking a shot at your neighborhood as we may well live in the same but I am tired of the anti-progress attitude in this city.
I think you’re absolutely right, Bill — Burns and Mac is now relishing the role of spoilsport. I said in a post two or three weeks ago the firm was capable of bringing down the election, and it looks like they just might try to do that. What we need now is for The Star’s editorial page to start cracking two-by-fours over the firm’s head. The Star could badly dent Burns and Mac’s reputation. That might be the only threat that would bring their Edgemoor-destruction campaign to a stop.
Brian actually nothing to be confused about. KCI, like most mid-market airports, are not a great position. It really is about local mid-high income job growth and jobs that can push the need to get more service. That is not happening as vigorously here as other places for some of the reasons I’ve already outlined. With the many airline mergers we’ve had, the airlines look at the bottom line even more and feel no need to really compete with each other anymore. Hence the dog and pony shows the one article references that often comes with no results. All airports feel political pressure and all want more service than they already have. Even the so-called “Southwest effect” has gone away the past 15 years or so as their fares have risen to the level of their competitors in many cases.
As I have posted here before on Jim’s other airport posts, I can look out the west windows of my living room and watch aircraft arrive and depart all day at KCI on the dual north-south runways. I live in KCMO north of Weatherby Lake in middle level subdivision that I view happily has some diversity in it. When I bought my home, I had to sign an noise agreement with the city acknowledging the aircraft noise factor. So people in my area see and hear the airport daily.
There are some in this area who depend on the airport for work and some who do not. In the adjoining subdivision of starter homes, there were a number of foreclosures as result of the economic downturn several years ago. There are still houses in that adjoining subdivision that you can still are in foreclosure as they as they are empty with all of the paperwork across the windows. Some have been through multiple foreclosures. We even had one a block and half from me on my street in the past 2 years. Our subdivision has pretty well recovered, but people watch their money closely. We are in the Platte County portion of KCMO and the Platte County portion has a mixed record of supporting city proposals. If I recall right, the last city bond issue passed in Platte County. If things are clear on the airport proposal, I expect the Platte County portion of KC to vote yes.
My La-Z-Boy is over 25 years old and the blue plaid is so-o-o-o-o cozy (especially with a heating pad).
If you don’t build it, you can’t steal from it.
Dearest Fitz, unless you’ve had cancer and been treated for it (and probably not even then), please don’t use that as a metaphor for something as comparatively trivial as choosing a new airport. I haven’t experienced it, but I accompanied a friend to each of her many chemo sessions at the KU Cancer Center where I saw some of the bravest, strongest people I’ve ever seen. It was inspirational to see them keep on keeping on in the face of great pain and sometimes overwhelming odds. The process of getting a new airport is totally insignificant by comparison.
Good point, Karen…Bad headline and bad kicker…I’ve changed both.