JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The Jacksonville Aviation Authority is estimating a $38 million cost to rebuild the southside of the hourly parking garage at the Jacksonville International Airport.
Action News Jax told you Monday when it had been exactly one month since the car fire that had damaged both the garage and dozens of cars parked inside at the time.
JAA said more than 700 cars were in the garage when the fire started, and now only three remain. Those include the BMW that originally caught fire and the cars on either side, which JAA said will soon be removed for a separate investigation.
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Lost revenue and rebuilding costs
JAA went over the cost to rebuild the garage in its board of directors meeting on Tuesday morning. Michael Stewart, JAA’s Director of External Affairs, says JAA will be paying.
“It will be a combination of the insurance coverage,” said Stewart. ”That’s the investigation is going on to see the specifics of what happened. And JAA cash will be involved.”
We asked Stewart if the insurance company for the car that first caught on fire will be responsible for paying a portion of the reconstruction costs. He says they don’t know yet as the cause of the fire is still under investigation.
“We don’t have any specifics on how the break out of who’s going to be paying for what, but we want to get that back, obviously, as quickly as we can,” said Stewart.
The authority said it will be losing $3.6 million it expected to make from parking this year, which is about 11% in revenues lost.
Possible improvements and the absence of sprinklers
During the meeting, JAA also went over the possibility of adding another floor to the hourly garage when it gets rebuilt and installing sprinklers in all of the garages at the airport.
None of those ideas were approved, but Action News Jax told you after the fire first happened that a sprinkler system is something the garage did not have.
JAA confirmed with Action News Jax that the hourly parking garage was built in 1989. According to the National Fire Protection Association, it wasn’t until 2023 that fire sprinkler systems were required in new parking garages.
“It’s what we consider an open parking garage and it’s also standalone,” said JFRD Battalion Chief Charles Drysdale. “There’s no offices or residents attached to it. So your life hazard is reduced.”
Drysdale commanded the firefighters during the garage fire at JIA. He tells Action News Jax he is glad JAA is talking about retrofitting sprinkler systems into their garages.
“We’d appreciate it to make our job easier in case another car catches fire,” said Drysdale.
Lack of parking
Something else travelers won’t have are extra parking spots while the garage is rebuilt.
JAA says it is expecting to have 500 fewer parking spots at the airport through at least June 2026, during the reconstruction of the hourly garage and the construction of the new garage.
JAA tells Action News Jax it doesn’t believe finding parking will be a problem, despite being down 500 spaces.
“We want to say to the traveling public that we do have parking available in all of our garages and the economy lots,” said Michael Stewart, director of external affairs for JAA, “we’re telling travelers to come on out and park at the airport again.”
JAA, right now, says part of the hourly garage will need to be demolished before it can be rebuilt, though it says it’s still looking into just how much will need to be torn down.
“It’s still very, very unstable in certain areas of the site. So our primary goal is to make sure nobody is injured during this process,” Stewart said.
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