A new creation: airport car rental garage first of its kind in the nation.

• Author: West, Gail
• Position: BUILDING ALASKA

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Once again, Alaskans lead the nation in building a better mousetrap. In this case, it's the new rental car center at the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, and its inventors are the rental car agencies, Venture Development Group and the Anchorage airport.

The new center, the first of its kind to be built by a limited liability corporation (Venture Development Group, under contract to the rental car companies as individuals), rather than by an airport as a capital improvement project, is a four-level, 618,000-square-foot building. Inside is space for all of the Anchorage rental car agencies--Alamo/National, Avis, Budget, Dollar/Thrifty, Enterprise, Hertz, and Payless--for more than 1,200 cars, and more than 200 employees. There are eight fueling lanes with 16 fueling and cleaning stations, 12 car washes, and nine vacuum stands in the building, and developers say 94 percent of all water used in the car washes is recycled.

"There is also a 24,187-square-foot customer-service building with counters for all the agencies connected to the terminal by a tunnel," said Mark Pfeffer, co-founder of Venture and developer of the center.

The center was designed by kpb architects and built by Neeser Construction.

'TIME IS MONEY'

Expansion of the airport has been on the radar screen at the State of Alaska Department of Transportation for years, and in 2000, the State took a hard look at it and concluded airport growth and short- and long-term parking areas would need the rental car space. At that point, the State hired a Chicago consultant to plan a rental car campus away from the terminals.

According to Pfeffer, one of the solutions the consultant came up with was to build a car-rental campus in Connors Bog, a state-owned piece of land at the airport.

"We were told the plan for relocating us would cost $46 million," said Andrew Halcro, a director of Avis Alaska. "But that didn't take into account busing. It didn't take into account the property they were considering was questionable, and it didn't factor in cost overruns or delays."

Halcro said the agencies began to meet together in late 2000 or early 2001, and "we said we have to look after ourselves. We needed a long-term home, and we needed to come up with some ideas of our own."

The agencies called on Venture, and Halcro said Pfeffer offered to invest his effort to come up with a project scope and to pitch it to the airport.

"The car rental industry said 'no way' would...