The Manhattan Regional Airports terminal expansion project hasn’t broken ground yet but a change order has already been submitted.

Peter Van Kuren, Airport Director, informed the Airport Advisory Board Tuesday morning that the change order was needed in order to, “provide some temporary space to process passengers through the ticketing for the airline, and also the Transportation Securities Administrations check bag area.”

He did say that they did analyze that in the initial design but after analyzing the design further it appeared they needed to provide a little more space than originally thought. The current solution is to a three wide modular to the west side of the existing terminal for the airline ticket area. They will then expand an exterior storage area for the T.S.A. bag check space. The change order also expands the passenger holding area as well.

“Once folks go through the T.S.A. screening area for carry on bags, once they go through that area we want to increase that hold area to accommodate up to 177 people,” Van Kuren said.

Van Kuren reported that he doesn’t have the exact amount of what the changes would cost at this time but did estimate them to be between $75,000 and $100,000.

Currently the terminal at the airport is 12,500 square feet. The expansion will increase that to around 42,000 square feet. A tentative groundbreaking date has been set for November 1st.