SINGAPORE Changi Airport is set to undergo a massive facelift over the next decade, adding a mixed-use development codenamed Project Jewel and two more terminals in order to stay ahead of regional competitors.
The project was first unveiled by Singapore prime minister Lee Hsien Loong during the city-state’s national day rally over the weekend, with details revealed by Changi Airport Group in a press release today.
Project Jewel, to be constructed on the 3.5-hectare car park site fronting Terminal 1 (T1), was designed by a consortium of design consultants led by the renowned Moshe Safdie and will boast an external glass and steel façade, and a large-scale indoor garden with a waterfall.
Visitors would find in Project Jewel aviation and travel-related facilities, retail outlets and leisure attractions meant to draw not just travellers but also Singaporeans, said Lee in a report in The Straits Times.
To make up for the loss in parking space, Project Jewel will also come with a multi-storey basement car park. The complex will also serve as a node linking the terminals and in due course, provide a central communal facility for the airport community.
T1 will be expanded to allow more space for the arrival hall, baggage claim areas and taxi bays, boosting the facility’s passenger handling capacity to 24 million passenger movements a year.
Meanwhile, Terminal 4 (T4) will be constructed on the site of the old Budget Terminal, which shut on September 25 last year (TTG Asia e-Daily, August 31, 2013). T4 has a planned capacity of 16 million passengers a year, and construction is set to begin end-2013 and complete in 2017, according to The Business Times.
On the other hand, construction on the airport’s fourth runway located in Terminal 5 and the terminal itself, should be wrapped up in a decade, doubling airport capacity.
The Business Times places Changi Airport’s capacity at 73 million currently.
