(Christopher Smith/The Beacon) KCI will finish paying for the airport in 2058 A public art installation in the new KCI terminal. There’s enough space for an additional three gates, two baggage claim devices and two security lanes, if an increase in airport traffic makes another upgrade necessary. The larger size of the terminal will also allow the facility to be expanded in the future. This increased the budget to $1.68 billion, he said, which the city and the airlines negotiated down to a maximum budget of $1.5 billion. “And when we looked at the numbers, they actually wanted to build a 39-gate facility.” “In 2017, we started doing some of the design stuff, and the airlines said, ‘Here’s what we plan on flying in Kansas City,’” Klein said. Once voters approved the project in November 2017, the city reentered negotiations with airlines to finalize the project’s budget. Pat Klein, director of the Kansas City Aviation Department, said that during the initial airport evaluation in 2016, called “Exhibit K,” the city recommended a $964 million airport terminal that would contain 35 gates. Why the changes? In short, the terminal got bigger. Initially, the estimate sat around $964 million, and it fluctuated around from $1.3 billion to $1.6 billion before settling on its current budget of $1.5 billion. The cost estimate for the terminal has varied greatly since the project was approved in 2017. The shifting projected budget versus the final price tag Here’s a breakdown of the terminal’s finances. So where does $1.5 billion to pay for the terminal come from? And why is it $500 million more expensive than initially anticipated? And according to the measure that voters approved in 2017, it explicitly cannot receive city funding beyond airport revenue. It promises accessibility improvements, locally owned concessions and plenty of public art.īut the new terminal is a massive - and expensive - undertaking. Nearly six years and $1.5 billion later, the new terminal is set to open in just more than a month. Even now, controversies swirl around the process by which the developer was selected.īut after the city selected Edgemoor Infrastructure and Real Estate to design and finance the terminal, Kansas City voters overwhelmingly approved the project. Serious conversation about a new terminal began a little less than a decade ago, and the road to the terminal’s opening has been turbulent. 28, and the public will get the chance to see the city’s costliest infrastructure project at an open house on Feb. The opening date for Kansas City’s new airport terminal is Feb.

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