Alaska is getting a new tallest building

An international firm is set to design what will become Alaska’s tallest building in the years ahead.

The structure, an air traffic control tower, is planned for the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport.

“The preliminary design calls for the air traffic control tower to be approximately 300 feet,” said Giovanna Gambardella, the Anchorage-based tower project manager for Stantec, an international design and architecture firm headquartered in Canada.

Currently, the tallest structure in Alaska is the ConocoPhillips building in downtown Anchorage, which stands at 296 feet. Once the new air traffic control tower is constructed, it will have an advantage of about 4 feet — roughly the length of a legal bull moose rack in most state game management hunting units.

The Federal Aviation Administration is commissioning the new tower, which will be twice the height of the current structure used to guide planes flying in and out of Ted Stevens, as well as the Lake Hood Seaplane Base, the world’s largest seaplane base. Ted Stevens has also grown over the years into the country’s second-busiest airport for cargo in North America (the first is in Memphis, home to FedEx’s main hub), and the fourth globally.

The current air traffic control tower dates back to the mid-1970s, and in the decades since then, the airport has expanded terminals, added runways and seen an explosion in the volume of passenger and cargo traffic.

“Operations have changed here at the airport,” said deputy airport manager Trudy Wassel, adding that the control tower is “mission critical for us.”

Airport managers work hand-in-glove with the FAA and tower operators on everything from tracking landings and takeoffs to coordinating snow removal during the recent spate of heavy winter storms, Wassel said.

The project does not yet have an official price tag or clear timeline for completion.

“A cost estimate has not been publicly released by the FAA,” Gambardella said. “The procurement for construction is not disclosed information yet. For a project like this, it is typically a few years for design, and procurement for construction would follow after that.”

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“The additional space and upgraded technology in the tower cab allows for more operational control positions, which in turn allows the (air traffic control) specialists to accommodate the increased complexities and workload that the Anchorage airport has experienced over the decades since the last tower was commissioned, without interfering with or impeding current procedures or operations,” Gambardella said.

In addition to the more spacious new tower, the designs also call for a 35,000-square-foot building at its base for radar-approach operations.

The designers noted that the tall new building is going into a seismically active part of the municipality. The 1964 Good Friday Earthquake destroyed the airport’s original air traffic control tower, and Stantec’s plans call for “designs to accommodate significant ground motion.”