FILE - Officials say the Eugene airport, shown in this May 17, 2025 photo, has reached its full flight capacity and needs to expand to accommodate growth expected in the future.
Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB
The number of passengers in and out of Eugene Airport has been relatively flat since 2021. Airport officials say that’s because flight capacity is pretty much full, prompting talk of expansion.
Work to expand seating in Terminal A is underway, as are a variety of other projects.
But the big ticket item on Lift Off EUG, a website of plans for the airport’s future, is a third terminal and expansion of other areas, such as ticketing and baggage claim, to accommodate more gates.
Information from that website has been presented to a variety of groups from City Club of Eugene to the Eugene City Council.
On Tuesday, Airport Director Cathryn Stephens presented at a work session of the Lane County Board of Commissioners, where she said that funding sources to grow the airport could include federal, state and local government.
But she also mentioned a model used by the University of Oregon, where benefactors pay for facilities, then hand off control after construction.
“Same concept for the airport,” she said. “Come in, build it, then turn it back. It’s an immediate economic boost, and we operate just as we are today but with eight additional gates.”
Stephens said they could not find an instance of this exact model of funding expansion at other airports.
“We’ve seen some naming rights here and there. We saw some much smaller scale benefactor funding at, say, Provo, Utah, but this is much bigger,” she said. “And I really have to give credit to the University of Oregon and their great benefactor base because that is really where this idea is coming from.”
Lift Off EUG identifies three projects without identified funding. They include Concourse C design and construction, and expansions of the ticket counter and baggage claim areas.
The three projects together would cost nearly $241 million.
Correction: A previous version of this story misspelled the name of Cathryn Stephens, and contained an incorrect name for Lift Off EUG. KLCC regrets the errors.
Zac Ziegler is a reporter with the KLCC newsroom. This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.
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