Ticket counter next project planned at Lawton airport

It’s a good problem to have.

The contractor building a new secured passenger holding area at Lawton-Fort Sill Regional Airport is moving closer to its destination, completion of a new 120-passenger area on the airport terminal’s northwest side. Completion of that area means more shuffling inside the terminal, as Herring Construction’s attention then turns to the airline ticketing counter and TSA areas on the building’s north end.

“Construction is moving right along,” said Airport Director Barbara McNally about Herring Construction’s work on the passenger holding area, adding construction is moving faster than anticipated.

Construction of that new holding area — which will hold twice as many passengers as the old one — meant significant shuffling when work began in earnest in early 2023. Contractors first built a temporary holding area on the south end of the terminal, near the new baggage claim area. That meant blocking off general public access and creating corridors for passengers boarding flights after going through TSA screening and those getting off planes to enter the terminal, as well as a new external access point for those passengers.

When Herring Construction moves into the ticket counter/TSA screening area early next year, that will mean moving those functions elsewhere, then securing the site so crews can work safely away from the public.

“We’ll block off that wing,” McNally said of the area used today by passengers getting their tickets from the American Airlines counter, as well as loading their bags for screening and stowing.

McNally said the Military Welcome Center in the center of the terminal will become the new home for those functions. It’s an attractive alternative because of its location, as well as the fact it has a back door into the baggage area, she said. Work on the north end of the terminal is projected to begin in February and take six to seven months to complete.

But that project also means finding a new home for the Military Welcome Center. McNally said that is why the airport won’t completely restore the area now walled off for the secured passenger holding area. The welcome center will be placed in that area until the ticket counter/TSA space reopens, so the center can return to its long-time home.

McNally said the work will mean some uncomfortable shuffling of airport functions, necessary to create safe construction space in a building where the public enters and exits seven days a week. But the end result will be a modern airport terminal, one that hadn’t been updated in decades before the baggage claim area was remodeled in 2021. That was the first of a multi-phase project to upgrade almost everything in the terminal, to include its entrance.

The holding area, complete with a portable walkway, is the largest project in this final phase. McNally said contractors have indicated the work will be done by April 1, with the entire terminal renovation completed by Christmas 2024. Airport officials plan to celebrate the passenger holding area reopening, McNally said, adding she expects work to proceed uninterrupted now because the remaining work is inside.

Celebration of that major milestone has a Lawton City Council committee looking at a plan to find funding for repairs to King Road, the access point into and out of the airport. Ward 5 Councilman Allan Hampton, a member of the Lawton Metropolitan Area Airport Authority and the council’s Streets and Bridges Committee, said upgrades to the deteriorating King Road — especially in front of the terminal — is important and should be done in conjunction with a mill and overlay project already underway by Ellsworth Construction. The Streets and Bridges Committee will consider that request at a Dec. 28 meeting.