Denver International Airport and the Transportation Security Administration are set to begin a $120 million renovation on an underground level to consolidate the final screening of checked bags.
The City Council on Tuesday night approved a three-year contract for that amount with Lakewood-based Ludvik Electric Co., the main contractor.
A DIA spokesman said the project was separate from a planned massive overhaul of the Jeppesen Terminal — called the Great Hall project — that’s still in negotiations with a preferred bid team. But the long-planned changes, requested by the TSA, likely will kick off years of construction within the nearly 22-year-old terminal, in and out of public view.
Elements of both projects are geared at accommodating the security and efficiency needs of the TSA, an agency born in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, in an airport designed without those requirements in mind.
DIA spokesman Heath Montgomery said the airport and the TSA have discussed the screening project since 2011.
The federal agency is chipping in $50 million toward the cost, and DIA plans to cover the rest from its capital improvements fund.
TSA employees conduct final screening, by hand, by opening up checked luggage that sets off an alarm or needs secondary scanning to resolve any suspicions. That happens in nine cramped areas that the TSA staffs 24 hours a day on the terminal’s underground Level 3, on the same level as the tunnels to the concourses.
The project calls for retaining the two screening areas for oversize luggage while consolidating seven main final screening areas to two.
“This will, in essence, construct a looped baggage system on Level 3 that allows bags to be checked into any (check-in) area and then be sent into this loop that goes down to two consolidated rooms,” Montgomery said.
Those conveyors then will return the screened bags back to the airlines’ baggage handlers. They also will connect to a new baggage drop-off counter near the transit platform for the University of Colorado A Line to downtown and to future valet and parking garage drop-offs, according to a DIA presentation.
In a separate vote Tuesday, the council approved a nearly $3 million, three-year contract with Baggage Airline Guest Services Inc. That company ran a six-month test-run last year of the transit drop-off counter, which allows travelers to check bags — up to 90 minutes before a flight’s departure — as they get off the train.
Unlike the regular airline-run check-in counters, DIA is footing the cost. Councilman Kevin Flynn urged DIA officials to consider asking participating airlines to share the bill when the contract comes up for renewal.
The council approved both contracts in a block vote.
Other terminal renovations will depend on the outcome of the Great Hall project negotiations between DIA and a team led by Ferrovial Airports and Saunders Construction.
DIA is aiming for a private partnership that calls for the bid partners to front much of the money for construction. Changes would include moving the main passenger security screening checkpoints upstairs from the open area on the main floor, consolidating the airline check-in counters to make room for screening, and adding add public plazas, attractions and more money-generating shops and restaurants to the main floor.