© 2025 WGCU News
PBS and NPR for Southwest Florida
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

'Terrible mess': Stalled Southwest Florida International Airport expansion tries to take off again

Expansion work at Southwest Florida International Airport, RSW, has been stalled for a year in a dispute over the project design and other issues. The contractor has until roughly mid-March to submit timelines and costs to the Lee County Port Authority, to strike another deal to resume work.
Mike Walcher
/
WGCU
Expansion work at Southwest Florida International Airport, RSW, has been stalled for a year in a dispute over the project design and other issues. The contractor has until roughly mid-March to submit timelines and costs to the Lee County Port Authority, to strike another deal to resume work.

The clock is running for a contractor to put together plans, timelines and costs to complete one part of the expansion of Southwest Florida International Airport — known by its FAA designator as RSW.

That work was supposed to have been done three months ago. Instead, most work has stopped for the past year, as Manhattan Construction and the Lee County Port Authority wrangle over costs and other issues.

“I’d say this whole thing is a terrible mess,” Lee County Commissioner David Mulicka said. “I’m shocked and horrified. I am frustrated and astounded. And the more I dig, the worse it gets.”

Manhattan has until about March 20 to give airport officials new plans and cost estimates to resume phase one expansion. Then the Lee County Port Authority (LCPA) Board of Commissioners will set a special meeting to decide whether to stick with Manhattan to finish the work, or find another contractor.

As county commissioner Mulicka serves on that board, he and fellow commissioners set policy and directions for LCPA, which manages RSW and Page Field.

Mulicka also is president and owner of Honc Marine, which contracts to build seawalls and docks. And he’s experienced in the demolition and recycling businesses. Three generations of his family have owned and operated construction companies in this area.

Mulicka was elected commissioner last November, and has been poring over thousands of pages of diagrams, change orders, letters and other communications about phase one of the expansion.

Port authority staffers realized six or seven years ago that RSW needed to expand beyond the current terminal, and it needed to do so quickly. Passenger counts were increasing steadily.

So phase one of the expansion envisioned adding on to the existing terminal, which has three concourses for gates. The work would connect the terminals, provide more space for TSA checkpoints and generally make the existing terminal more comfortable for travelers and airport workers.

LCPA signed contracts with two companies: Atkins Realis, headquartered in Montreal, to design the plans; and Manhattan Construction, based in Oklahoma, to build the extra space. Cost: about $331 million. Atkins also operates with the name Atkins North America, with offices in Tampa and Orlando.

Mulicka said the two companies just never meshed. It was a bad marriage from the start.

He showed WGCU two letters between executives of the companies. Manhattan’s letter made some unflattering remarks about the work of Atkins. The Atkins executive wrote back that he was at a loss for words to respond. All he could write was that he was ‘gobsmacked’ by the comments from Manhattan. This was the level of interaction between executives of companies that do hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business every year.

He said the two parties did agree on one thing.

“Both the contractor and the engineer said they’ve never seen a project go this bad, this fast, for this long,” Mulicka said.

It culminated with Manhattan saying the design plans were flawed, and could cause the roof of the expansion to collapse in category 5 hurricane winds — those greater than 157 miles an hour. Manhattan communicated that such a roof collapse then could expose the existing terminal to high winds, and cause even more damage.

Atkins said the concerns about attaching the new part to the existing building likely were valid. It refunded several million dollars to LCPA. Work stopped not long after that.

“Manhattan says it’s all Atkins’ fault, and Atkins says it’s all Manhattan’s fault,” Mulicka said. “And I think they’re both right. I think they’re both to blame.”

The commissioner also admitted that staffers at LCPA should have caught on to the in-fighting and problems between the two companies. He said the blame is like a three-legged stool, with one leg for Atkins, one for Manhattan, and one for LCPA. Several LCPA staffers resigned last summer, and former authority director Ben Siegel retired in the spring of 2024.

"it very often happens, especially public, large scale, projects that the project faced cost overruns, project delays," Professor Long Nguyen, chair of the Whitaker College of Engineering at FGCU, said. "Some research says like 85% projects experience overruns and delays. There are many uncertainties, like the design. It has a compounding impact. So basically a cascading effect. By the time we know it already — big, significant delays or cost overruns, it too late to, you know, bring the project back on track."
  
Mulicka also discovered that Manhattan damaged the existing terminal by drilling into a concrete beam. He said Manhattan realized the mistake and wrote itself a non-compliance action. That means Manhattan acknowledges it may have violated the terms of its contract by doing something not in the contract, or something that could endanger the safety of a building.

Mulicka explained that Manhattan drilled into the rebar — the reinforced steel rods — that add strength to the concrete beam. That occurred in October, 2023, according to Mullicka, and the non-compliance item still has not been resolved. That means Manhattan has not repaired any damage that may have been done.

LCPA emailed a statement to WGCU saying all its buildings are safe.

Now Manhattan wants as much as $387 million, on top of the original price tag of more than $300 million, to complete phase one of the expansion because of higher building and labor costs.

Mulicka said he is astounded by that figure, and strongly encouraged a much lower number.

“We just deserve better as customers right now,” he said, adding that legal actions against the contractor and design firm are possible. He also said that if there is no agreement in March, it might be wise for LCPA to start over and hire a new contractor to do the work.

Atkins sent an email to WGCU news, making no comment on the situation with RSW expansion. Manhattan Construction has not responded to several phone and email messages asking for comment.

The money for the expansion does not come from Lee County property taxes. Rather, it comes from bonds backed by fees that airlines pay to use RSW, and by state and federal government grants.

All this means that passengers at RSW are seeing unfinished work including concrete slabs and exposed rebar, while going to their concourses and gates. As we move into peak visitor season, an already busy airport terminal becomes packed, and lines at security checkpoints are longer than ever.

Joe DiBlasio of Lee County was looking at the abandoned work near Concourse C, while waiting for his daughter to fly in. He said the unfinished work is not an attractive calling card for the airport or area.

"I am disappointed that this is happening," he said. "It makes me pleased that I take the autotrain," referring to how he goes between Lee County and the Pittsburgh area twice a year.

Lori Marks of Pittsburgh said the airport is so busy, something needs to be done to provide more space. She said she hopes the parties can work out their differences and complete the job. "It's not a good feeling," Marks said. "I mean, if we can't rely on them to resolve something like this.
I'd be upset if I traveled through here all the time."

To sum it up, Mulicka called the phase one expansion at RSW the second worst construction mess in Southwest Florida in modern times — meaning after World War II. He said only the unfinished C-43 reservoir project in Hendry County has had longer delays and bigger cost over-runs. That reservoir is part of the Everglades restoration, mostly funded by the federal government.

Mulicka called RSW the number-one economic driver in the region, and a vital draw for visitors and residents.

“This is a link to every one of our businesses,” he said. “Look at the new Arthrex million-square-foot plant.” That’s a plan for a major expansion of Arthrex, a global medical device company, in this area.

“The number of people and visitors that will come here and visit us and bring their families and their businesses here all require this to be successful,” Mulicka said. “We will fix this. We will succeed. And it’s going to be faster than what’s proposed right now. And for a lot less money.”

WGCU is your trusted source for news and information in Southwest Florida. Mike Walcher is a reporter with WGCU News, and also teaches journalism at FGCU.

Forty-one-year veteran of television news in markets around the country, including more than 18 years as an anchor and reporter at WINK-TV in southwest Florida.