Transforming Transportation: The art of developing transportation infrastructure.

• Author: Anderson, Tasha

While some Bush pilots will do their best to land a plane just about anywhere, adventurous boaters might eye any piece of shoreline as "not impossible," and some drivers feel roads are optional, for the majority of transportation professionals, ports, airports, and terminals are pretty important. By the end of the year Span Alaska will be operating a newly constructed terminal to increase efficiency and better serve its customers, and the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport and Port of Nome are both pursuing projects that will build economic opportunity for the communities they serve.

Span Alaska's Anchorage Service Center

Span Alaska specializes in the transportation of consumer and retail goods and is the state's largest less-than-container load freight forwarder. "We'll haul just about anything," says Span Alaska Vice President of Operations Chuck Onstott. To meet that mission, Span Alaska is constructing a new freight terminal in Anchorage on Electron Drive near Minnesota Drive and International Airport Road The new, 54,000-square-foot cross-dock terminal is designed with eighty-eight doors and is situated on a sixteen acre parcel of land.

According to Onstott, the main drivers behind the new terminal are efficiency and capacity for long-term growth. In 2015, Span Alaska purchased Pacific Alaska Forwarders, which at the time was approximately the same size as Span Alaska, "We were able to merge all facilities together with the exception of Anchorage where neither building was large enough to handle the combined freight volume," he says. For the last four years, the company has been operating two terminals to serve the Anchorage area with combined capacity of approximately 25,000 square feet of warehouse space, compared to the 40,000 square feet of warehouse space at the terminal currently under construction.

With an eye toward the future, "We built this facility to provide ample capacity for growth," Onstott explains. He says that Span Alaska is optimistic about the future of the transportation industry in Alaska: "We see a lot of prosperity and we want to be a big part of that. In order to do that, you have to have capacity."

Watterson Construction is the general contractor for the project, and Bettisworth North Architects designed the terminal. Beyond the additional capacity, another request for the design was for the warehouse to be wider than Span Alaska's current facilities, which allows the transportation company to stage...