CLEVELAND — For Cleveland-Hopkins International Airport, the spring break travel season is a case of good news-bad news. The good news? Passenger volumes have returned to near or at pre-pandemic levels. The not-so-good news? The airport’s all-too-familiar parking crunch has returned with a vengeance due to ongoing rehab work at the large parking garage.
Airport officials are encouraging travelers flying out of Hopkins to consider — or at least be aware of — other options when it comes to getting to the airport. As many as 2,000 of the airport’s 7,000 total parking spaces are expected to be unavailable for the next few months as crews continue work at the airport’s smart garage. On Wednesday and Thursday this week, the smart garage, red lot, blue lot and orange lot were all listed as “full.” The off-site brown lot, which shuttles passengers to and from the airport, still had spaces available.
“I’m going to tell [travelers] right now to plan on the smart garage being full. We’re going to be cutting capacity by about 50%,” said Dejan Radosavljevic, the assistant commissioner of airport operations at Cleveland-Hopkins. “It’s not because we want to do that. We have to do that.”
The landlocked airport has long had to contend with a relative shortage of on-site parking compared to peer airports, including Columbus and Pittsburgh. Although Hopkins services a greater number of passengers on an annual basis, both Columbus and Pittsburgh’s airports have at least double the number of parking spaces.
To help mitigate the tightening parking crunch, airport officials will be opening a temporary lot — nicknamed the gray lot — north of the terminal. The gray lot is expected to bring 1,000 parking spaces online on or around April 17.
“Our focus was to alleviate or mitigate the hurt. We’re doing the best that we can with what we have. We’re working with our partners to try to solve a very complex problem. It’s a complex but good problem,” Radosavljevic said. “From an industry standpoint, aviation standpoint, this is great to see that traffic has rebounded… as we add those flights and those seats, that means more people on the other side that constrains us. Unfortunately, we are very landlocked. What we are doing right now is encouraging all of our passengers, especially local passengers, to look at other options.”
Those options include the off-site brown lot, multiple nearby private parking lots (Park ’N Fly, Fast Park and Park Place), ride-share services or RTA’s Red Line, which drops passengers off inside the airport’s lower level.
Long term, airport officials are expecting the pending demolition of the shuttered Sheraton hotel to free up additional but limited space for more surface parking. Demolition of the hotel is expected to begin in the fall. The surface parking lot would not be available until 2024 or 2025, airport officials said.
As the airport continues to work on projects associated with its master plan, the amount of parking at Hopkins is expected to fluctuate. Hopkins lists the status of its parking lots on its website.
