Building of airport car park begins

THE DUBLIN Airport Authority (DAA) has begun construction of a €14 million short-term car park beside the new Terminal 2 (T2) building.

The car park will comprise 1,000 spaces for users of Dublin airport and 350 for car hire.

But the DAA has postponed plans to build a 400-bed, four-star hotel on top of this car park until there is a recovery in the economy and a rise in visitor numbers.

The DAA’s original 10-year planning permission also allowed for an additional 1,200 car park spaces but these have been put on hold given the economic climate.

Irish group Bowen is the main contractor on site and it has already worked on site clearance and foundations piling for the three-storey car park.

About 50 people are employed on site at present but this will rise to 100 later this month as the building frame is installed.

It is understood almost all of the precast concrete is being prefabricated off-site by Ergon, a subsidiary of CRH, Ireland’s biggest listed company, at facilities in Tallaght and Bunclody, Co Wexford. The car park will be linked by a bridge across the pick-up and set-down kerbs to T2. This bridge is already in place.

There will be a separate access for motorists to each terminal building and to their specific car parks when T2 becomes operational in November.

The new terminal building is set to house Aer Lingus’s operations, the US long-haul airlines and Etihad, which flies to Abu Dhabi.

The DAA currently has 2,100 short-term spaces at Dublin airport and more than 14,000 long-term spaces. Critics might argue that the new car park is not needed given the decline in traffic at Dublin airport, which has fallen from a peak of about 23 million annually to some 18 million.

But the new spaces will replace surface parking and car-hire facilities removed during T2’s construction.

Meanwhile, T2 has won a construction award in Britain. It was one of four structures to win a gong last week at the 2010 Structural Steel Awards ceremony held in London.