The FAA has selected a sustainable design for new air traffic control towers that will be used primarily at municipal and smaller airports.
The design by Practice for Architecture and Urbanism (PAU) of New York meets key sustainability requirements and can adjust the tower height to meet each airport’s traffic and sightline requirements, while also reducing construction and operational costs, according to agency officials.
The design incorporates sustainability elements, such as:
- All-electric building systems
- Materials and products free from chemicals known to pose health risks
- Thermally efficient façade
- High-recycled steel and metal products
- Renewable mass timber when usable
- Ground-source heating and cooling in some environments.
The FAA’s preferences included that the design have standardized elements to reduce construction and operational costs while allowing for the building to be tailored to local climate and location issues such as very high and very low temperatures, wet and dry environments, and high winds.
The initial set of 31 control towers at candidate airports would replace towers that are functioning beyond their intended design life, according to FAA officials. The towers will range in height from 60 to 119 feet.
The FAA has set aside more than $500 million from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to support site evaluation, preparation, and early construction activities.
The first groundbreaking could begin in 2024, FAA officials said.
Kent: that is the most true thing I’ve heard all day. Why waste all of this TAXPAYER MONEY on replacing perfectly fine control towers when it could be used to repair airports that actually need repair!
What Kent said!
Brick and mortar towers are just that. Now the eco-weenies need 500 million dollars to do a ‘study’? How a out rerouting that money for actual construction and equipage! How about figuring out who will man these new towers and how they’ll be paid!
$500M / 31 towers = $16.1M per tower (average) for “support site evaluation, preparation, and early construction activities.” Are these people for real? If you handed me $16.1M and said, build me a tower … I’d be able to construct a Taj Mahal and have a helluva profit, to boot. These people are spending money like water … STOP IT!
At the sleepy airport I spend my summers at in WI, a new FBO building was built ~10 years ago for >$500K using AIP matching funds. IT is heated and cooled by a very complex geothermal system the likes of which even engineers shake their heads at. And local builders say they could have built the place for less than half what the Govt paid. All the self-imposed constraints to meet “Govt Standards” is getting nutty!
As you say, Henry, if these people can’t control themselves, it’s time to put them on a very strict diet. Stuff like this is what’s inflating our economy.
I’ve designed airports for four decades. I’ve never heard of federal standards for something more expensive like geothermal heating. Those are decisions made at the local level by Owner and their architect. That expense must be approved by the FAA to be eligible for AIP funding. But the FAA never pushes to spend more of their very limited dollars. Betcha the locals paid for the extra.
The town is 2,200 people and everyone pretty much knows everyone … they didn’t want such a HVAC system, Reg. It was forced on them. Their 5% was barely affordable as it is. We’re lucky that the small town sees the airport as one of its economic engines and supports it 100%, Lots of Airventure bound pilots now use it when OSH shuts down or the last easy fuel eastbound.
The good news for those of us using the airport … WI is trying to go to renewable engerny (sic); the town voted to allow a PV solar farm onto a portion of the property. So now what WAS a beautiful vista that literally took my breath away when I walked out of my hangar will become a sea of collector panels. The tradeoff is that the panels will essentially ensure that the airport will exist in perpetuity and our ground leases won’t get nutty year-on-year.
This sort of woke government /crony business infomercial makes one sick. First of all, the entire “sustainability” nonsense is based on two false premises (1) that CO2 (what plants call food and humans exhale) is somehow a hazard to the Earth, and (2) that resources are limited – unless of course one includes the Ultimate Resource, the human mind and its ability to solve problems when government and others do not interfere with entrepreneurs (read Julian Simon). There is not one single item in the list of “sustainability elements” that has not been used at airports for at least the last half century, long before all this enviro-mumbo-jumbo was used to justify higher prices taxpayers are burdened with. Who would build a structure housing humans that pose a health risk? Duh. The bulk of all steel is recycled these days, thanks to great engineering from Nucor and other electro-steel companies whose focus is profitability, not “saving the planet” from fabricated crises. “Renewable mass timber – Mass timber uses state-of-the-art technology to glue, nail, or dowel wood products together in layers.” Oh, you mean plywood and wood laminates? I suspect Noah used this method to build the Ark thousands of years ago. Nothing new. Ground source heating and cooling have been used for centuries to save money, not keep the “oceans from boiling” as Al Gore claims they are. The ancient Egyptians used it to cool houses. Why do governments and some CEOs go woke and push this enviro garbage? Read Professor Paul Cwik’s great explanation in “Wilson, Waldo, Woke CEOs, and Ways Forward”
Well said and should be said more often. Thank you Kent.
Robert
You’re quite right Mr. Robert Norrell.
Thank you, Kent, for this thoughtful summary. Wokeness is maddening, especially when they are using our tax dollars. Never mind the deficit…..