Whether you are travelling by car or SkyTrain to or from Vancouver International Airport’s (YVR) terminal building, the partially built new parkade structure is impossible to miss.
Construction on the massive six-storey parkade structure, situated immediately west of the existing parkade structure and SkyTrain’s YVR Airport Station, came to a sudden halt in early 2020 upon the sudden onset of the pandemic.
The parkade was one of several partially built projects YVR decided to suspend indefinitely in September 2020, with the other projects being the utilities building and geoexchange. At the time, Vancouver Airport Authority indicated it had spent $525 million on these projects, and that several hundred million dollars more would be required to reach completion. Only construction on the new Pier D international terminal building expansion resumed, which reached completion in early 2021 and opened in Summer 2022 when recovering passenger volumes warranted the capacity.
When it was planned before the pandemic, this major parkade structure was originally intended to provide a net gain in vehicle parking capacity to meet YVR’s long-term growth.
During a Greater Vancouver Board of Trade event last week, Tamara Vrooman, the president and CEO of the Vancouver Airport Authority, told the audience a decision would be made within a year on the parkade’s strategy for completion and possible revised uses.
The partially-built new parkade at Vancouver International Airport. (Google Maps)
“We are looking at ways to think about the best and highest use for that parkade, [as] we are seeing less demand for parking overall. That doesn’t mean that people don’t want to park closer to the terminal, which is where that parkade is located,” she said.
Geoexchange to be finished
Additionally, Vrooman shared at the event that YVR will now complete the partially built geoexchange system, which will serve to provide a clean energy source for heating and cooling the terminal building’s vast interior of 4.1 million sq ft of floor space and reduce the reliance on systems operated on electricity and fossil fuels.
The geoexchange’s mechanical systems are designed to be housed within the basement of the new utilities building, which is also partially built and situated just to the east of the new parkade. This utilities building, constructed to a post-disaster standard as envisioned before the pandemic, was also intended to house 10 emergency backup generators for the airport.
Partially-built skeleton structure of the previously planned Central Utilities Building, now envisioned as the Airport Commerce Centre. (Google Maps)
Artistic rendering of the Central Utilities Building at Vancouver International Airport, now envisioned as the Airport Commerce Centre. (Vancouver Airport Authority)
In March 2022, YVR announced its strategy to seek an investor and tenant to finish the new utilities building, which is currently only a skeleton of a structure. It was marketed to become the “Airport Commerce Centre” with 300,000 sq ft of industrial space and potential office space, with contiguous floor plates of over 60,000 sq ft and generous ceiling heights. These commercial and industrial uses for the building do not preclude the geoexchange.
“We also are completing one of the largest geoexchange systems in our country to allow us to offset power usage for heating and cooling,” said Vrooman.
Just before the pandemic-induced pause on construction, crews had achieved the task of drilling over 800 wells to a depth of 152 metres (500 feet or 50 storeys) to enable the geothermal heating and cooling process deep within Sea Island’s river delta sand. At the time, in 2019, the geoexchange project had an estimated cost of $350 million.
2019 construction of the geoexchange pipes at Vancouver International Airport. (Division 15 Mechanical)
The geoexchange at Sea Island supplements YVR’s new $135-million strategy to become one of the world’s greenest airports by the end of the decade, with the aim to reach net-zero carbon emissions on the airport authority’s terminal building and airside operations (not to be confused for airline operations). The strategy was first announced in October 2021, and the investments will be made over the next five years through 2030.
The strategy includes installing more heat pumps for the terminal building, introducing additional renewable fuels for the operations vehicle fleet, replacing aging vehicles with new, greener ones, and installing battery-electric vehicle chargers. This effort has already resulted in the installation of over 100 specialized airside chargers, which now power more than 50% of the airport’s licensed electrical ground support equipment.
Additionally, YVR is looking to reduce the emissions of its key business partners, the airlines, such as the short-term measures of upgrading jet bridges that enable aircraft to plug into the power grid — similar to the “shore power” plug-in infrastructure for cruise ships at Canada Place — and introducing air conditioning systems that allow fresh air to flow into the aircraft. The airport is also making long-term investments in reducing aviation emissions, specifically its partnership with the provincial government to explore the feasibility of low-carbon fuels for aircraft and to partner with Airbus to examine the use of hydrogen as a future aircraft fuel source.
“We fully recovered from the pandemic”
YVR is now making these investments as the airport has turned a significant corner in its recovery from the pandemic.
“We fully recovered from the pandemic. In fact, we’re stronger than ever,” said Vrooman.
In 2023, YVR recorded 24.9 million passengers — the third best-performing year ever for Canada’s second-busiest airport. With 19.96 million passengers already recorded over the first nine months of 2024, YVR is on track to exceed last year’s volumes and potentially come very near or even exceed the all-time record of 26.38 million passengers in 2019.
Other than passenger volumes, cargo is another key metric for aviation traffic. With 320,000 tonnes of cargo recorded in 2023, it was YVR’s second-highest annual cargo volume ever, and the airport is now approaching the previous record of 338,000 tonnes in 2018.
Vancouver International Airport. (Daniel Chai/Daily Hive)
The surging growth in passenger and cargo volumes is reflected in YVR’s robust financial picture. Vrooman noted that 2023 was the highest year on record for the airport authority’s revenue, and YVR now has the highest credit rating of any airport in Canada.
“Our financial performance is very, very strong,” she said.
Although YVR has returned to a strong financial position and is nearing all-time passenger volume records from consecutive high year-over-year growth, Vrooman says there are no plans to pursue another major expansion of the terminal building — at least not yet.
In an interview with Daily Hive Urbanized, Vrooman says the new Pier D expansion of the international terminal building provides additional capacity to handle the expected growth for the next while. She also says there is a new focus on optimizing the use of the existing terminal space.
Pier D’s 300,000 sq ft expansion, built at a cost of $300 million, added eight additional gates (four double jet bridge gates and four bus gates) and additional space for new retail, food and beverage services, and amenities.
The outdoor atrium of Pier D international wing expansion at Vancouver International Airport, as of June 3, 2023. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)
For example, later this fall or winter, the international terminal’s Plaza Premium Lounge is relocating to a new 10,800 sq ft permanent space within the Pier D expansion, providing a significantly larger lounge than the previous location near international security, which will become a new duty-free shop. A spokesperson for Plaza Premium Lounge previously told Daily Hive Urbanized the new international lounge at YVR will be their new “Canadian flagship” location.
Prior to the pandemic, YVR was in the early stages of planning for its new additional Pier F terminal building — a major seamless expansion immediately east of the US transborder terminal’s check-in hall. This project was previously expected to be built in the 2020s, sometime after the opening of the Pier D expansion.
“We still have room to grow into that new [Pier D] terminal, and that’s what we’re doing,” Vrooman told Daily Hive Urbanized.
“For the rest of the terminal, there’s areas where we can see that there’s a need to add extra lounge facilities and more passenger amenities, but we’re able to do that within the footprint that we have. We’re really focusing on making the footprint that we have more modern, digitized, and easier to navigate, and the uses a little more flexible before we have to do any major terminal expansion.”
Artistic rendering of the new Plaza Premium Lounge at the international terminal of Vancouver International Airport. (Plaza Premium Lounge)
New x-ray security screening machines at Vancouver International Airport’s domestic terminal, allowing travellers to keep their electronics and liquids in their bags to greatly speed up security screening times and reduce the floor area needed for queuing. (Vancouver Airport Authority)
The digital twin — a dynamic interactive visualization of the airport, including the terminal building’s interior — is being extensively used to optimize the capacity, operational efficiency, building systems, and energy use of YVR. The digital twin of YVR combines historical and real-time data into a platform and can be presented through 2D or 3D visualization for data-driven decision-making and collaboration.
Vrooman says the use of the digital twin has been a “game changer” for the airport.
Using video game engine Unity, the digital twin was developed by YVR staff, in partnership with Vancouver firms GeoSim Cities and Thynkli.
At the peak of the pandemic, when YVR’s revenues from aviation suddenly bottomed out, the airport authority was able to access $1 billion in interim bridge financing for the required cash flow to continue critical airport operations, perform maintenance work, and innovate, which includes the creation of the digital twin.
“Bankers freed up about a billion dollars, which is really what carried us through the pandemic challenging, but we used that time wisely,” she said.
The airport authority took advantage of the pandemic downturn to perform critical maintenance on the terminal building and airfield, work that could not be done when the airport was busier.
Digital Twin of Vancouver International Airport. (Vancouver Airport Authority/GeoSim Cities)
Digital Twin of Vancouver International Airport. (Vancouver Airport Authority/GeoSim Cities)
Nearly three years after creating the digital twin, YVR has received dozens of applications from other businesses and organizations interested in creating a digital twin for their own uses, including other airports and marine ports, providing the airport authority with a potential new ancillary revenue source.
In addition to expanding the airport’s passenger capacity through the construction of Pier D, YVR has also significantly expanded its airside cargo warehouses in recent years, now reaching over 1.6 million sq ft of cargo storage and processing area. Vrooman notes that this increased focus on the airport’s cargo business will support YVR’s new strategy of growing its position as a major intermodal transportation hub for BC.