A traveler waits for a ride at Pittsburgh International Airport on Nov. 8, 2021. The Biden administration’s bipartisan infrastructure bill allowed the smaller regional airport to receive a full $1.5 billion for upgrades and improvements. (Steve Mellon/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/TNS)

Lebawit Lily Girma | Bloomberg News (TNS)

The ski resorts at Gunnison and Crested Butte, Colorado, are so close to Aspen that you might think the area doesn’t need its own airport. Its glamorous neighbor is just 48 miles north as the crow flies, though that’s about 150 miles by road.

But for people flocking to the laid-back town of Crested Butte, for its extreme ski slopes and epic mountain bike trails, there’s a new reason to avoid farther-flung Aspen: the destination’s shiny new airport, opening in January 2023.

Not only is the Gunnison-Crested Butte Regional Airport’s terminal easy to navigate at just 40,000 square feet, it’s also heated and cooled by geothermal energy and features triple-pane windows to keep travelers warm in a city considered one of the coldest places in the United States.

And Crested Butte is not the only small town airport being modernized.

Across the United States, at least a dozen small and mid-sized facilities are being renovated and, in some cases, built from scratch—typically with budgets in the eight and nine figures. This contradicts the long-held belief among aviation experts that these regional facilities are destined to gather dust and die out.

During the pandemic, smaller U.S. airports actually fell out of favor. With business travel virtually nonexistent, airlines scaled back their offerings to focus on more profitable private routes between major hubs. Planned facility improvements were also put on hold. Even as those problems subsided, severe pilot shortages forced major airlines to cut more routes, realizing that profit margins on smaller loads simply aren’t as high as they were a decade ago. It was a confluence of crises that seemed to have doomed small airports forever.

But some of those factors have since evolved. For one, second-tier cities are experiencing a sustained population boom, a trend that began with the urban exodus during the pandemic in 2020 and continues as remote workers seek cheaper places to live. A large number of unsold seats on these classic leisure flights have also proven to airlines that it’s time to rethink their route plans, explains Brian Sumers, aviation expert and founder of the newsletter Airline Observer. Not to be overlooked is the high level of customer satisfaction associated with these smaller facilities, which are thankfully free of stress-inducing crowds and endless concourses that take forever to navigate.

Of course, money plays a big role, too. The Biden administration’s bipartisan infrastructure bill has pumped at least $9 billion into improving airports across the country since 2022, complementing public and private funding at a more local level that has helped revitalize a number of additional facilities. Although budgets can change all the time, Knoxville and Memphis in Tennessee have invested a total of $830 million in airports; Des Moines, Iowa, has budgeted $445 million to transform its facility; and Pittsburgh can expect a full $1.5 billion.

In other words, the renaissance of small American airports is officially underway. Here are a few examples of upcoming redevelopments that excite us—think of them as emblematic of what could soon happen in a small town near you.

The challenge of expanding a small airport is to maintain its family atmosphere, says Brent Mather, the Denver-based design principal of Gensler, a leading architecture firm that is leading a number of such projects. Being able to arrive 30 minutes before departure and still get through security and onto the plane, he says, “means a lot, especially for the people who live there. It’s a huge selling point.”

At the newly renovated Eagle County Regional Airport near Vail, Colorado, for example, it takes less than five minutes to cross the entire 6,000-square-meter hall, which opened at the end of 2020. By comparison, it is 2.33 kilometers from the commuter train at the airport terminal to the gates at Denver International Airport – about 30 minutes on foot.

That philosophy is the basis for the design of a $2 billion, 1 million-square-foot terminal at John Glenn Columbus International Airport, scheduled to open in 2029. A market-like dining hall will sit in the center of the single concourse. The idea, says Tim Hudson, head of aviation at Gensler, is to create a seamless passenger experience where you can eat, drink and shop in a hyper-accessible space from which passengers can see at least two-thirds of the airport’s gates and many flight monitors. “It’s a big concourse, a central security checkpoint and a concession program – where passengers have access to the entire building.”

The new terminal, which will completely replace the existing one, is being co-designed by Gensler and Columbus-based Moody Nolan and will have 36 gates – seven more than the current airport – and a parking garage for 5,000 cars. Groundbreaking is scheduled for early 2025.

“Our current terminal opened in 1958 and was built for a different time,” said Joseph Nardone, president and CEO of the Columbus Regional Airport Authority. “With a more efficient, streamlined and sustainable design, we will be able to meet and exceed travelers’ expectations and support our growing community for years to come.”

The number of travelers to this central Ohio city is expected to grow from 8.7 million passengers in 2023 to an estimated 13 million in 2033 – an increase driven by Columbus’s development into a technology and business center in the Midwest.