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Lovely!! Now they can hopefully get cracking on a consolidated rental car facility we will really be in business! That would be the finishing touch for the airport. And of course more hotel and gas options in the immediate airport vicinity.
Sheetz is less than a mile past the airport exit, how much more immediate were you hoping for? And there has to be somewhere near ten hotels within a mile, I'd think they have that covered quite well.
It just makes it easier to get to the rental car facility. If I've rented from Hertz but for whatever reason the Hertz shuttle takes FOREVER while I've seen the Avis shuttle go by 5 times, I'm going to get a little frustrated. One shuttle going to one place makes it less of a hassle.
This, and if you travel enough, you'll eventually get to your reservation to find out they don't have a car for you, or the price went up, or something. Much nicer to be able to walk next door and get one.
But now that I think of it, RDU is the only airport in the country that I really don't care about the rental car facility. (Since I live here....)
That would be great. I love airports that do this. (They could build a deck slightly off-site, run constant shuttles full of people for all renters, and then free up a TON of spaces closer to the airport by vacating the prime property right on site.)
^Or even better, build an office park where the renta-cars are/were, and not develop half of Crabtree Park....
The Urban Land Institute was out advising RDU about various approaches of what to do with all of the airport's extra land and some of these items came up.
RDU has thought about building a CONRAC (consolidated rental car facility) off Pleasant Grove Rd. near I-540 and Airport Blvd., with bus or perhaps people mover/train connectivity back to the airport. One factor in locating it there would be to have a bus (and eventually rail) connection to whatever regional rail transit systems emerge.
Apparently either the ULI or focus group attendees pushed back on this a bit and suggested using a portion of the main garage for the CONRAC or building it adjacent.
And yes, part of the strategy is for RDU to allow intensive development of much of that forested land you fly over when coming in for a landing.
The RDU Airport Authority was chartered by the NC General Assembly to build and operate an airport, not to engage in commercial real estate development. If RDU has excess land, they should just auction it off. The ULI proposal is insane. The problem is that John Kane and Robb Teer, two of the top commercial real estate developers in the Triangle, sit on the board of the RDUAA.
If the CONRAC is abandoned, then the people-mover to the CONRAC will be abandoned with it -- and this complicates the question of ever getting rail transit into RDU.
Sheetz is less than a mile past the airport exit, how much more immediate were you hoping for? And there has to be somewhere near ten hotels within a mile, I'd think they have that covered quite well.
Or were you being sarcastic?
I was being serious. There is a abundance of underutilized space at the airport. There are several really nice hotels near the airport but they are all hidden and tucked away. A nice midrise hotel in close proximity and other substantial options would be nice. That combined with a rental car facility via maybe the rail would really take RDU to the next level.
I had no clue there used to be a hotel in the center between the two terminals. But the idea of really nice multistory hotel kinda connected there seems like a nice concept. Especially in the event peoples flights get cancelled and they have to stay at the airport; or we have a blizzard, hurricane or something.
In-airport hotels usually thrive in only the larger airports that support connecting flights, and rely on a significant volume of in-and-out business meetings and conferences.
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