ACV Airport parking infrastructure undergoes changes

For those of us who travel, the Arcata airport might seem a little bit more convenient than others. But until September, there are going to be some changes. 

“Folks that are familiar with parking out here at ACV, sometimes when you have to park in the current lot, well away from the terminal building, you’re trying to climb stairs with your luggage, and it’s just really inconvenient getting to and from your vehicle to and from the terminal”, says Cody Ruggatz, Humboldt County Director of Aviation. 

New additions include replacing the current long term parking lot and adding more advanced kiosks.

“We’re flattening that whole surface out over there. So it’ll all be one level, easy to roll your bags, wherever you’re parking in that lot. In addition, the lot we’re standing in here today, was a space that we utilized for parking for the past several decades for another purpose, not paid parking. But we saw an opportunity to utilize this space for paid parking, just with more airlines that we’ve gotten, more seats that we’ve gotten, more routes that we’ve been able to get here in recent years, that demand continues to increase”, Ruggatz said. 

In the meantime, there’s going to be substitute parking in different places. 

“We will be shifting away from portions of the main lot. We have some temporary parking spaces set up, actually, out on the terminal apron. We’re about to open that up where we normally park an airplane. We’re turning that into vehicle parking temporarily. And that’s really to try to account for some of the spaces we’ll lose during construction. but we won’t be at full capacity”, he said. 

The end goal is to increase parking by 40%. 

“So we’re really excited to bring these changes, to the community, and to our users here at AV. We will be wrapping up in September. We won’t be 100% complete by then. We do have some long lead time items where we’ll have to be back in the spring to really button everything up, but it should have minimal impacts next spring on users and folks parking out here”, Ruggatz said.

 Story by Tucker Caraway