With billboards touting the Oct. 13 opening up of Love Field routes overhead, a freshly leveled lot along Mockingbird Lane awaits paving for a Southwest Airlines parking lot. (Terry Maxon/Staff)
UPDATED, 2:20 p.m.: Motorists along Mockingbird Lane may have noticed the disappearance of the Soft Touch car wash and the Thrifty and Dollar rental car lots near the Dallas Love Field entrance.
That block just east of the Cedar Springs Road entrance to the airport has now been leveled off as construction crews prepare to pave the property for a parking lot. In fact, we understand, that block and almost all the two blocks to the east will eventually be used for airport parking.
Southwest Airlines has owned the 11.3 acres of land for some time, and went to the Dallas City Planning Commission earlier this year to have the three blocks combined into a single parcel.
The request included all the land bordered by Mockingbird, Aubrey Avenue, Hawes Avenue and Collville Avenue except for one 5,650-square-foot parcel on Hawes owned by Harrison Real Estate.
Things are going to get a lot busier in less than seven weeks, and the airport needs more parking spaces.
The Wright amendment, a federal law that limits flights out of Love Field, expires on Oct. 13. As of that date, airlines will be able to fly nonstop anywhere in the United States from the Dallas airport.
Southwest is adding flights to seven cities on Oct. 13, eight more cities on Nov. 2 and two more on Jan. 6. After Jan. 6, it’ll have 153 weekday departures from Love Field.
Virgin America plans to launch flights to three cities on Oct. 13, a fourth city on Oct. 28 and a fifth city by February. By the end of next April, it plans to have 18 daily departures.
Between the two, that’s about 50 more daily departures than the airport now has. If we assume 80 percent load factors on those flights, that’s probably about 6,000 more passengers departing each day. Many of them will need a parking space.
By the way, the Dollar and Thrifty lots have been relocated to new facilities north of their old site.
Southwest spokeswoman Brandy King said that all workers at the airport, including those employees of airlines, vendors and the Transportation Security Administration, “will be relocated to a city operated garage off of Lemmon Avenue.”
You may know it as the parking garage for people who used the old Legend Airlines terminal along Lemmon at Lovers Lane. A nearby car dealer had been leasing the garage for vehicle storage.
As to Southwest’s property on Mockingbird Lane, “we are expanding the area on Mockingbird to help accommodate the anticipated passenger growth at Love Field. We are in the early stages and do not know who will be operating the parking lot, but the current plans allow for roughly 900 new spaces,” King said.
“We anticipate that the combination of the existing Love Field parking, upcoming city garages and the new spaces will be more than sufficient in handling the customer growth and employees” after Oct. 13, she said. (Upcoming city garages?)
(NOTE: Based on a previous conversation with a Southwest rep, this item originally said the Mockingbird property would be used for Southwest Airlines employee parking. Please note the change.)
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Source: southwest - Google News http://ift.tt/1qJzOHP
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