Plans for improvements continue to move forward at the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).

The Los Angeles City Council approved a request on Tuesday from the Los Angeles World Airport (LAWA) Board of Commissioners to begin searching for contractors to complete projects as part of its larger West Campus Redevelopment Program. The program will focus on an approximately 100-acre piece of land between the North and South runways at the airport, which the LAWA Board considers underutilized.

Projects that will be part of the program include demolishing existing facilities at the campus. They will be replaced by new aircraft parking and maintenance areas, storage areas, aircraft support equipment, and Ground Service Equipment (GSE) facilities built as a series of small and medium-sized projects.

“Right now we have some office buildings there; we have some maintenance facilities, many that are end of life,” LAWA Chief Development Officer Terri Mestas said of West Campus during a presentation at the January 18 LAWA Board of Commissioners meeting. “So [this] is a great opportunity to use this land more effectively.”

Additionally, temporary facilities will be built to support efforts during the 2026 World Cup and the 2028 Olympics. The specific nature of these facilities has yet to be determined but may include more aircraft parking or areas to process guests or athletes that come through the airport, Mestas also said.

Other general improvements will also be made in the area, including the reconfiguration of an existing groundwater treatment compound and the improvement of existing firewater and deluge systems for fire safety.

But before any work can be done, LAWA must have an ordinance written and instituted to begin the search for contractors because it seeks to use methods outside of the traditional RFP process to select them.

With the World Cup just 26 months away and the Olympics 41 months away, LAWA did not feel like the traditional RFP process would work for several reasons — time being one of them. These alternative methods also allow for more collaboration between LAWA and the contractor during the planning process, which they argue is necessary to coordinate the projects.

“Alternative Delivery Methods will be required to efficiently deliver the projects with multiple parallel tracks of planning, design, construction, and activation of each scope Component,” a report on the West Campus Redevelopment Program presented at the January 18 meeting said.

Using these alternative delivery methods to select contractors has become a common practice recently, according to a City Administrative Office report presented with the motion at Tuesday’s City Council meeting. The Airport Police Facility and the Automated People Mover are just two of several recent airport projects where these alternative methods were used to select contractors.

“There has been a gradual rise in requests for ADM…to the extent that the vast majority of LAWA’s recent construction project awards have almost exclusively utilized these methods,” the CAO report said.

While there is an urgency to have additional facilities for the upcoming international traffic, the entirety of the West Campus Redevelopment Program is currently planned to be completed in multiple phases over the next five to 10 years according to the report.

Following the City Council’s approval, the Mayor must give a final approval before an ordinance can be instituted and the search can begin.

Photo of LAX from Google Maps with West Campus Highlighted