The airport has advised passengers not to drive this holiday season.

CLEARWATER, Fla. — Plans to improve St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport’s parking moved forward Tuesday after a key vote by the Pinellas County Board of Commissioners.

The commissioners voted unanimously to approve a contract with Finrock Enterprises to begin the design and build phase of a new parking garage set to open in late 2027.

The project would take the airport’s current Strawberry Pie Lot and turn it into a $60 million, four-story parking garage that would add 1,500 additional spots — increasing PIE’s parking capacity from 3,300 to 4,800.

An airport spokesperson said expanding parking is PIE’s top priority, as the airport has seen historic growth this year with a record 2.6 million passengers — a 15% increase year-over-year.

But the airport doesn’t currently have the parking to accommodate all those passengers and had to even urge passengers to take rideshares during the busy Thanksgiving travel week.

“We’ve just been running out of parking,” PIE public relations director, Michele Routh, said. “On weekends, we’ll be closing long term. We might close our primary economy lot. We don’t want any passenger ever to miss a flight because of that.”

Allegiant Air has even notified passengers traveling through PIE to seek out alternative ways to get to and from the airport.

The hope is that the design for this new parking garage will be completed by 2026 with construction starting in 2027. The goal is for the new 1,500 spots to be usable by the end of 2027. 

Some commissioners expressed concern that PIE would need to build another garage if this growth continues, but the airport insisted this garage would meet its needs for the foreseeable future.

PIE has also already secured the funds for the garage, including roughly $6 million from an FDOT grant, nearly $30 million in airport reserves and over $24 million from a customer facility charge that will be a surcharge placed on rental cars. 

This is one of just three projects set to improve PIE, in addition to a new $15 million taxiway approved last month and a planned $110 million terminal improvement project to include more seating and new jet bridges. 

Ahead of the busy Christmas travel week, PIE is still urging passengers in the meantime to have their rideshare apps handy and understand a solution is coming soon.

“We hope all of that will go smoothly, and we won’t have to warn passengers from parking at the airport anymore,” Routh said.