Airport aims to build global gateway amid budget constraints

 Art Makes Airport Attractive To Travelers

By Kelly Yamanouchi

Hartsfield-Jackson's International Airport's new international terminal, now set to open in two years, will be one of the first impressions of Atlanta or even the United States for many travelers.

Making it a good one is a challenge, especially when the airport is completing the terminal under the pressure of tight budgets and issues involving the design, negotiations with main tenant Delta Air Lines and bond financing.

The international terminal, named for the late former Mayor Maynard H. Jackson Jr., is touted by the airport as the "new global gateway for the city of Atlanta." It will consist of a terminal and a 12-gate concourse, totaling 1.2 million square feet and all connected to the existing airport on the end of Concourse E, where most international flights now operate. That will provide much more direct access for international passengers, who now must ride the train from the main terminal.

A rendering shows a spacious, open terminal with large skylights, trees and high ceilings.

"It's a very bright and airy space," said Hartsfield-Jackson assistant general manager Dan Molloy, who oversees the international terminal project. "It should be very pleasing and functional."

Design and cost a controversy

Photo from www.atlanta-airport.com

Construction of the basic terminal structure is nearly complete and the work on the interior is beginning, following years of fighting over the design and cost of the project.

An airport plays a role in "communicating the community's image to the rest of the world," said Jeff Loeschen of the Architectural Alliance at a recent national symposium in Atlanta on airport planning, design and construction. "It's a first and last impression."

But, said airport manager Ben DeCosta,"We're all under the same pressure to meet the demands of airlines for efficient projects and the demands of communities and the demands of businesses."

The original design in 2001 was for a $1.2 billion project, which was deemed too expensive by the airport and Delta. The second design was originally estimated to cost $983 million, including a giant glass wall with a view of the Atlanta  skyline, but that increased over the following years). The airport eventually fired the design team, which then sued in a case that continues today.

In the second round of designs, Molloy said the airport was not looking to make a big "architectural statement" with the building. "The first design did have a bigger, larger facade overall," he said. "We did downsize that, we simplified the glass curtain wall system." He said there will still be a view of the city skyline.

Delta demanded changes

Airlines -- which indirectly help pay for terminals through rents and fees -- have a big stake in holding down costs. Delta more than a year ago demanded $400 million in cuts  to the international terminal project, which now is budgeted at $1.35 billion today due to delays and reworking.

"The changes we made are changes that will largely be invisible to the passenger, but would result in us being able to get the facility for a little less money," Molloy said. The design modifications included changes to the design of the parking deck, for example.

Delta has agreed to help the city seek bond financing for the project, an effort that the airport has been working on for more than a year. The city expects to finally go to market to sell bonds in the coming months.

Making Airport Attractive

It's not the first time Hartsfield-Jackson has faced balancing utilitarian and cost-effective with attractive and inviting.

The current version of Atlanta's airport was designed in the 1970s and opened in the 1980s, said Robert Kennedy, assistant general manager of operations at Hartsfield-Jackson. Until the atrium was added to the main terminal in the early 1990s, the design was very utilitarian, he said. Domestic concourses also got makeovers to add a bit of style during the '90s.

"They listened to the customers," Kennedy said of the atrium project.

This time, Molloy said management is trying to serve both form and function from the ground up.

"We have a facility that is a very welcoming facility, one that will be a very good front door to Atlanta (for) the rest of the world," he said. "At the same time, we're being very cost-efficient, very cost-effective."

Art Makes Airport Attractive To Travelers

Budget issues matter little to the end user, often a harried traveler who sees getting through the airport as a necessary hassle.

As Pat Askew, of Perkins + Will, said at the recent symposium, passengers want to get in and out of airports as quickly as possible, but "you can get stranded at the airport, and then it becomes important" to make it a place that people can enjoy.

Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport makes itself attractive to travelers with art exhibits around the terminal and concourses, such as the collection of stone sculptures from Zimbabwe in the lower-level walkway between the T concourse and Concourse A.

"We're looking at creating a sense of place, using some art to do that," Hartsfield-Jackson assistant general manager Dan Molloy said. It can "maybe help the passenger relax -- give them a distraction they can focus on, if you will, while they wait."

The airport plans $5 million worth of art for the international terminal, including a large-scale project  of "functional art" -- a 1,000-foot wall of glass panels laminated with patterns of tree bark along the tunnel between Concourse E and the international terminal. Its function will be to divide passengers who have been cleared by U.S. authorities from those who haven't.

One of the key benefits of the international terminal will be allowing arriving passengers to avoid rechecking bags before leaving the airport, as they now must do in order to get baggage to the main terminal.

Functional art allows the airport to get multiple benefits out of the requirement in the public art master plan that to set aside 1 percent of certain monies including airport construction funds for art.

"It is a factor that we do consider," Molloy said. "If we didn't put this piece of artwork in, we would have to do something else for a wall."

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British Royal Couple Want Privacy For Baby’s Birth

Prince William and Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, are trying to find ways to limit publicity about the upcoming birth of their child, who will be third in line for the throne of Great Britain.

After royal birth, a labor for privacy

The Search For Privacy

After royal birth, a labor for privacy

The Search For Privacy

By Anthony Faiola

Washington Post

LONDON — Outside the private Lindo Wing of St. Mary’s Hospital, the global media hordes on Royal Baby Watch have marked their turf with duct tape and stepladders like so many predators. But starved for material in a world where Mother Nature and Buckingham Palace are the last two holdouts from the 24-hour news cycle, loitering reporters trying to set a tone of breathless anticipation have resorted to interviewing each other.

Perhaps nothing could be more appropriate. As Prince William and his wife, Catherine , the Duchess of Cambridge — formerly known as Kate Middleton — prepare to carve out a new life for their budding family in the glare of the spotlight, the press is poised to be a major part of the story.

The scene here amounts to a déjà vu of June 22, 1982. Then, another young couple — Prince Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales — stepped out of the same wing of the same hospital with an infant William and into what would become a stormy, love-hate relationship with the press (and each other) that would come to define palace politics for decades. Some — including, reportedly, William — still blame the media for Diana’s 1997 death in a Paris car crash during a chase with rabid paparazzi.

To be sure, the British tabloid press is a different beast today, as is the palace PR machine, with one more tame and self-restraining and the other far more professional and controlling. Nevertheless, the media and inquiring minds on both sides of the Atlantic might be in for a rude awakening as they clamor for a piece of the glamorous couple after baby makes three.

After a brief choreography for the cameras as the couple leave the lavish hospital wing with their newborn, royal watchers say they might disappear for while, or least try. The move to escape the public eye as they set about becoming parents could mark the beginning of what observers are describing as an attempt by the couple to build a far more private life than the one constructed by William’s parents.

“This will be very different from watching William grow up, and it has a lot to do with the characters this time around,” said Roy Greenslade, former editor of the Daily Mirror and now a journalism professor at City University in London. “William hates the press and will show even less accommodation once the baby is born, and Kate, unlike Diana, is clearly very shy of doing anything that would breach palace secrecy.”

Kate Is Popular

For the press, any retrenchment by the young couple couldn’t come at a worst time. Cover stories and inside montages of Shopping Kate, Official Kate, even Dog-Walking Kate have driven print sales and online hits in a manner not seen since Diana’s heyday. The feeding has been no less frenzied in the United States. Since 2011’s blockbuster royal wedding, the Duchess has graced the cover of People magazine more times than any other celebrity.

When innocuous and orchestrated — say, a Will-and-Kate wand duel at the Harry Potter Studio Tour outside London — that publicity is just what the doctor ordered for a House of Windsor looking to endear a 21st-century monarchy to the public. But royal coverage has, at least in the palace’s eyes, veered dangerously off course on occasion, suggesting the thin ice separating now from the days of behind-the-bushes press. 

Photo by Getty

Think, for example, Unauthorized Photos of Topless Kate, as seen last year in the gossiping press from Paris to New York. Even British publications, cowed after Diana’s death and facing a massive public backlash from a phone-hacking scandal, has skirted the line. Recently, the Daily Mail sicked no less than three reporters on the Duchess’s home turf of Berkshire to sniff out details on royal-baby cravings that only the most lurid reader would demand to know. (Okay, okay. Sour candies and vegetable curry.)
The challenge domestically to keeping a lid on the helicopter flyovers and bugged baby buggies, said Richard Palmer, royal correspondent for the Daily Express, is the wild card of foreign competition at a time when the couple have reached beyond even Hollywoodesque celebrity.
Press Rules Different
Limits in Britain on reporting that a woman is pregnant before she reaches her 12th week, for example, meant that U.S. commentators were buzzing about the “royal baby bump” before the domestic press could seriously enter the fray. And in a world where European and American tabloids unbeholden to the palace don’t always play by the rules — and where everyone with a smartphone is a potential paparazzo — the British press is fearing the worst. Will the casual shots offered up by the palace of the Duchess walking Lupo, her black cocker spaniel, on the grounds of Kensington Palace be sharply cut back once she’s walking with a stroller instead?
“We’re treading a tightrope all the time with the royal couple, and that’s only going to get thinner with the baby,” Palmer said. “One of the things we worry about is that we’re very unlikely to run snatched pictures of the baby in the coming months, but what happens if the Australians and the Americans do? When readers can go anywhere now, how will that hurt us?”

The Search for Privacy

By Anthony Faiola

Washington Post

 In the search for privacy, Prince William and Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, might be swimming against the tide.
Whereas the notion of a fairy tale and, later, a train wreck of a relationship drove public interest in Charles and Diana, the image of a modern young couple — at once accessible and a world apart, and seemingly able to do no wrong — appear to be driving the story. That interest seems set only to grow after the addition of the littlest Windsor.
Compounding that is commercial pressure for every detail of their life. A photo of the Duchess leaving a retail store with a white baby basket sent sales of similar items soaring. Ditto after the mere whiff of a rumor that she had chosen a sky-blue stroller. Pundits have called on her to “set an example” to women everywhere by breast-feeding. And the hot story line is that she isn’t “too posh to push” — as some had suggested — and will opt for natural childbirth. The question, many here say, is where to draw the line between reasonable privacy and duty to chronicle the royal family?
In some ways, William’s upbringing might be a model for a modern couple who most view as wanting to follow a path similar to Diana’s — she fiercely guarded the privacy of her sons but also wanted them to grow up as normal as possible. She took them on outings to McDonald’s and Disneyland. And unlike Charles, who went to a boarding school in Scotland, she and Charles sent William to the closer, if still quintessentially highbrow, Eton College near London. While William was at Eton, the family struck a deal with the tabloid press: They would back off in exchange for periodic updates on his life.
But will those periodic updates be quite as periodic with the baby, who will be third in line to the throne, regardless of the sex? During William’s early years, Arthur Edwards, a dean of the royal press corps who works for London’s Sun newspaper and is credited with a number of the most famous shots of Diana, recalls regular press calls by the palace for photo opportunities with William. There was the baptism. The day he took his first steps. His first international trip. But while Will and Kate will need and probably want a photo documentary of the life of a child who would be monarch, Edwards and others believe those calls are likely to be fewer and farther between.
“I don’t think we will get quite that access,” he said. “I suspect they will be more private.”