Tampa International Airport recycling old concrete to help build Airside D

It’s a rocky start for Tampa International Airport’s future Airside D – but in a good way.

Looking out at the site of TPA’s first new Airside in nearly 20 years, visitors to the Airport can currently see mounds of broken concrete and rocks. Workers have been carefully removing more than 467,000 square feet of concrete apron formerly used as a space for aircraft to park overnight at TPA.

But that concrete isn’t heading to a landfill; almost all of it is in the process of being recycled to help build the new Airside.

Heavy equipment has been jackhammering the grid that outlines the new Airside. The big chunks of concrete that result are sorted and sifted to remove rebar, wire mesh and other debris, then crushed into smaller bits being piled up on the side of the worksite.

Those smaller rocks will be reused in several ways, including as gravel for the foundation of the new Airside and its drainage system, and as a base for construction and access roads being built around the worksite.

The process has been moving swiftly, with work starting March 31 and on track to wrap in the next couple of weeks.

This concrete demolition project was part of a $91 million enabling contract awarded by the Hillsborough County Aviation Authority Board of Directors in December to kick off the onsite work, which also includes installing security fencing, establishing contractor offices and utility work, among other things.

At approximately 600,000 square feet, Airside D will be the largest Airside at TPA when it’s completed. The project has a preliminary cost of $1.5 billion and is scheduled to open to the public in 2028.

The facility is being built to the northwest of TPA’s Main Terminal, in space that once was the home of the original Airside D, which existed when the Airport opened in 1971. That outdated facility was closed and demolished in 2007.

The new Airside D is a centerpiece project of Phase 3 of TPA’s Master Plan, a blueprint for how the Airport will deal with projected traveler growth. The Airside will help TPA, which currently serves an estimated 25 million passengers annually, serve up to 35 million annual passengers by 2037.

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