The city and the Aviation Department grounded facts that the mayor’s KCI task force should have seen

In March 2013, the Kansas City Aviation Department hired local public-relations firm Global Prairie to sell the city at large on the idea of building a shiny new single-terminal airport.

For its fee (the firm got about $63,000), Global Prairie worked the local media, including The Kansas City Star, Kansas City Business Journal and The Pitch. It pushed a smattering of rationales for why Kansas City International’s three-terminal design had become obsolete, and backed them up with behind-the-scenes tours of the airport led by Aviation Department Director Mark VanLoh. Accompanied by Global Prairie officials, VanLoh showed reporters cracks in the foundation of airport walls and evidence of flooding in parts of the terminals unseen by the public.

The PR blitz also emphasized the idea that KCI in its current form posed an environmental risk. Like the terminals, the runway system was outdated. In this case, there was a consequence: The runways couldn’t capture enough of the chemicals used to de-ice planes on cold winter days.

City officials distributed a fact sheet in April 2013 that said KCI couldn’t meet U.S. Environmental Protection Agency guidelines for capturing de-icing runoff.

“The current terminal infrastructure does not allow the airport to meet the EPA’s new standards for capturing deicing fluids, which require capturing about 30 percent of the run-off,” the fact sheet reads. “The new single terminal will capture nearly 100 percent of the runoff and resolve Environmental Protection Agency issues the airport is currently facing.”

But there is no such EPA guideline.

Two EPA officials contacted by The Pitch could not identify any published guidelines that call for the capture of 30 percent of de-icing fluids.

Airports built after 2012 must collect 60 percent of those liquids, but the EPA has not established a percentage limit for existing airports such as KCI.

As for the EPA “issues” mentioned in the fact sheet: KCI appears not to have any currently.

The EPA over the past 10 years has taken only one compliance action against KCI. That was in 2010, when the federal regulator issued what’s called an administrative compliance order after inspections during the preceding two years showed that too many contaminants were running off at the airport, according to standards set in the airport’s storm-water permit (which is actually issued by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources). When those contaminants bypass the airport’s drainage system, they seep into Todd Creek, a tiny tributary that connects with the Missouri River 6 miles away.

Administrative compliance orders do not involve fines or court orders, like the one Kansas City shouldered when a federal judge ruled that the city had to overhaul its sewer system, to the tune of $2.5 billion.

“Typically, issuing a compliance order is a low-level activity,” EPA spokesman Christopher Whitley tells The Pitch. “Our objective is to get them in compliance.”

But the Aviation Department was trying to get its act together before it received the notice from the EPA. In 2009, the airport began installing an $11 million storm-water collection system that was supposed to resolve the runoff problem. And it seems to have worked. The Missouri Department of Natural Resources followed up on the EPA’s order with a June 2013 inspection, which found that KCI was in compliance, according to DNR spokeswoman Gena Terlizzi.

Kansas City officials, who were eager to present the case for a single-terminal airport a year ago, are now more guarded about the issue.

The Pitch contacted the Aviation Department in May to discuss KCI matters, including its environmental compliance. A meeting was set up for the afternoon of May 27 but was called off when word of the scheduled interview reached City Hall.

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Chris Hernandez, the city spokesman, fielded questions instead. He could not identify where the 30 percent figure came from.

“[K]eep in mind that in the prior years we did have multiple occasions where we were out of compliance,” Hernandez says. “Also, going forward, regulations regarding airfield runoff will continue to change and we want to ensure that we are positioned to comply.”

The reticence may be the result of a year’s worth of mixed messages and contradictions since that initial PR campaign. Some of the claims made a year ago have not withstood scrutiny.

There may be a strong case for a single-terminal airport, but the city has run into trouble trying to sell what could amount to a $1 billion capital project, one of the biggest in Kansas City’s history.

“I think the way it was presented, I think if we had to do things over again, I think we would start with the commission and then go from there,” says City Councilman Ed Ford, an initial single-terminal skeptic who says he now sees the current facility’s deficiencies.

The commission that Ford mentions is the Airport Terminal Advisory Group, or ATAG. Mayor Sly James hand-picked the 24-member task force in May 2013, as discussion over the city’s push for a single-terminal KCI grew louder.

Kansas City mayors traditionally opt for task forces and advisory groups whenever City Hall is tackling weighty issues, and James’ ATAG assemblage adheres to a playbook basic: familiar faces. Among those tapped were former Kansas City Mayor Pro Tem Bill Skaggs and original KCI designer Bob Berkebile, a co-chairman alongside retired audit-firm manager David Fowler.

James also cleverly appointed Kevin Koster, the Northland marketing executive who had started the savekci.org website and was among the most visible single-terminal nonbelievers. His inclusion gave ATAG a semblance of balance, defusing criticism that the committee was stacked to deliver a specific outcome: namely, the single-terminal direction that the city appeared to favor.

James said at a May 7 press conference that he didn’t know how any member of ATAG felt about the airport except Koster, who had made his position clear with his website. But Berkebile had made his position known publicly in a 2012 Kansas City Star article, in which he said KCI’s design was outdated.

ATAG committee members had three options to pick from by the end of a year’s worth of analysis:

• Construct a single terminal.

• Build a new centralized receiving point for passengers that would connect to the three terminals.

• Expand and repurpose existing terminals, with each having its own centralized security checkpoint.

ATAG in May delivered a recommendation for a single-terminal airport.

“It’s striking that the do-nothing option did not prevail,” James said during that May 7 press conference that revealed the ATAG endorsement.

That’s because a “do nothing” option — one calling only for basic renovations — wasn’t made available to ATAG members in making the final proposal. It was on the table early in the discussions but seemed to disappear as ATAG deliberations approached an end.

Berkebile, the principal architect in local firm BNIM who co-chaired ATAG, tells The Pitch that the minimal-renovation option went away because the money required would have done nothing to resolve the current airport’s problems.

“It felt like [for] us to pick that as an alternative, knowing that spending that money didn’t accomplish the removal of any of the current deficiencies, was an irresponsible recommendation,” Berkebile says.

But fiscal responsibility wasn’t at the heart of ATAG’s decision. The group had few cost estimates available for any of the three plans it discussed.

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City officials have backed away from the $1.2 billion figure for a single teminal that emerged about a year ago, a number that included construction as well as soft costs such as financing fees.

“We’ve outlawed the use of that number in that committee,” Fowler said at a January 14 ATAG meeting.

Fowler, who built his profile in Kansas City as the manager of accounting firm KPMG, wasn’t dissuaded by the missing numbers. He told The Pitch after the May 7 press conference that he felt it was better to analyze the three alternatives in the absence of cost because ATAG members might have gravitated toward the cheaper options had firm numbers been available.

Besides, he added, developing solid dollar figures might have required hiring another consultant, dragging out the ATAG’s work.

But not every ATAG participant was fine with the missing cost estimates.

Nia Richardson abstained from voting on any of the alternatives. “Because we have a great deal of information missing, like the affordability of it … I just thought I would abstain,” Richardson tells The Pitch. “I said, ‘I’m not picking one. We don’t have enough information.’ “

Koster also abstained, for similar reasons.

“We have been told we will not have these answers and to simply give it our best guess,” Koster said in written comments submitted alongside his final votes, which were obtained by The Pitch in a Missouri Sunshine Law request.

But cost wasn’t always so repellent to the committee or the city.

ATAG was presented last September 10 with a detailed financial analysis that assumed a new airport would cost up to $1.2 billion. The analysis also said that annual airline revenue would increase with the new airport, from $29.3 million, in 2012, up to $111.7 million, in 2022. It’s a lofty projection that would shake up KCI’s current business model. If that increase occurred, airline revenue would become the leading moneymaker for the airport, accounting for 52 percent of projected revenues in 2022.

Airline revenue made up only 27 percent of KCI’s income in 2012. That year, parking fetched the biggest slice of the pie, accounting for 46 percent.

The 2022 projection presumes a drastic increase in airline business. But executives from Southwest Airlines warned ATAG not to expect that kind of bump.

Commercial airline business has remained largely flat since September 11, 2001. Kansas City has been more stable than some cities, such as Pittsburgh, but no industry forecast calls for sizable increases in airline business.

And new terminals by themselves don’t lure airline business. That’s a function of competition and demand. If anything, new terminals pose risks for bottom-line–minded airline executives; operating in a new terminal can increase costs.

“If the airlines are expected to pay more money out of that facility, then there has to be a commensurate, a corresponding need to produce more revenue to offset those higher costs,” said Ron Ricks, a Southwest Airlines executive, at a January 14 ATAG meeting. “Because while higher costs don’t necessarily translate into higher fares, because fares are based on competition and demand, higher cost without a corresponding ability to increase revenue to go along with it means less profit. And if you have less profit, higher costs can lead to less service, not more.”

So ATAG lacked cost estimates for the options under discussion. The expected thumbs-up from the airline industry was now also absent. And these elements weren’t the only information gaps.

The group early on identified what it called “key stakeholders,” a list that included representatives who could speak to the airport’s environmental concerns. No one from the EPA was contacted to speak on the matter. No one from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources testified.

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“In the end, as we were trying to make space and time for everyone, the assumption was, those regulator issues were mandatory — it wasn’t an either-or situation,” Berkebile says when asked why no one from the EPA was summoned. “I didn’t see it as critical to us to hear from those stakeholders.”

Given that KCI doesn’t appear to be in the EPA’s cross hairs, despite the city’s contention that the facility doesn’t meet the regulator’s standards, perhaps such testimony wouldn’t have been productive.

But when other so-called stakeholders did testify, they sometimes contradicted other Aviation Department claims. For instance: on the matter of airport security.

The Aviation Department pressed media, including The Pitch, on the idea that security at KCI was inefficient in its current state. The argument seemed logical enough; many airports had to drastically change their layouts to meet new security protocols after 9/11. The April 2013 fact sheet said the Transportation Security Administration’s Pre-Check program was impossible at KCI because of the airport’s circular gate configuration.

Pre-Check is a relatively new TSA program that allows preapproved travelers who don’t pose a security threat to pass more quickly through security screenings. The program is thought to alleviate strain at security checkpoints, and it’s friendly to businesspeople who travel often.

But the Aviation Department’s April 2013 fact sheet was the same one that said KCI didn’t meet nonexistent EPA standards, and it was wrong again. Pre-Check started in Terminal B in October 2013.

City spokesman Hernandez deferred to the TSA questions regarding why Pre-Check materialized at KCI.

“They change the rules rather often,” he says.

TSA spokesman Mark Howell says the availability of Pre-Check depends on capacity in a concourse, adding that Southwest Airlines and Delta Airlines can accommodate the service in Terminal B where there’s room for multiple lines.

“It’s nothing that’s changed with the rules,” Howell tells The Pitch.

The security rationale didn’t fare better this past March, when John Della Jacono, the TSA administrator in charge of KCI, testified at City Hall. He told ATAG that there would be no appreciable difference in security between KCI today and any KCI of the future.

“I’ve been there for five years,” Jacono said on March 25. “You can tell why citizens of this city love this airport. They don’t wait.”

Jacono painted a picture of an airport that runs efficiently from a security standpoint, one that can process 150 passengers an hour at each checkpoint and can move a high volume of baggage.

“One system processes 400 bags an hour in the bowels of the airport,” Jacono said. “We have more than enough capability and capacity to handle anything the airlines can give us as far as bags are concerned.”

Jacono said a centralized security checkpoint probably wouldn’t have an effect on passenger wait times, which now rarely exceed an aggregate 10 minutes.

“It really doesn’t matter how you configure it,” Jacono told ATAG members. “We’re going to staff that configuration, and our goal is going to be the same: under-10-minute waits.”

Some ATAG members were displeased with Jacono’s testimony.

“I think he was being politically correct and saying, whatever the design, they would be able to make it work,” says Forestine Beasley, a real-estate agent and ATAG member.

Beasley was one of a few ATAG members who did not vote in favor of a single-terminal airport design, opting instead for renovation because cost estimates were not made available.

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“We still need to look at what the cost would be in working from what you have as opposed to starting over,” Beasley tells The Pitch. “It could still come to the fact that when you look at the price, it would be more sensible to do the new one. But we aren’t there yet.”

Berkebile also questioned Jacono’s testimony.

“I felt he was reading a federal script, frankly,” Berkebile says. “What we understood from any number of sources is, we have the most inefficient security operation in America. We have more TSA employees per passenger than anyplace else.”

Not so, says the TSA, which stands behind Jacono’s testimony.

“Bottom line, we adjust to passenger volume to maintain efficiency,” TSA spokeswoman Sari Koshetz tells The Pitch by e-mail. “Consolidated checkpoints can lead to more efficient operations, but current day checkpoints at MCI [KCI] are efficient. The average wait times are under 10 minutes.”

Jacono’s March 25 testimony was preceded by an appearance from Jon Stephens, interim president and CEO of the Kansas City Convention & Visitors Association. Stephens told ATAG members that travel writers and conventioneers weren’t keen on KCI’s aesthetics.

When former Unified Government of Wyandotte County/Kansas City, Kansas, Mayor Joe Reardon asked whether Kansas City had ever lost a convention due to KCI’s appearance, Stephens said no.

Of course, Kansas City has made the cut as one of four finalists for the 2016 Republican National Convention, one of the biggest convention draws in the country.

GOP officials who have already visited Kansas City apparently weren’t too put off by KCI’s inadequacies. Or maybe they didn’t notice any.