The Airport and the Calculus of Retail

Abstract

Eero Saarinen's desire to evoke an upward soaring quality in his TWA terminal at Kennedy Airport seems innocent now, and almost irrelevant against a backdrop of demographic and market studies that tell us: the average annual income of the 23 million passengers traveling through Philadelphia International Airport is $75,000; the average yearly income for all U.S. airline passengers is $50,000 to $68,000 while the income of an average shopping mall customer is $29,000 annually. Further, the average expenditure per departing passenger at the Pittsburgh Airmall is $9.50. Before the Airmall, passengers spent an average of $1.70. The average Japanese passenger leaving San Francisco International to go home spends an average of $200. The average passenger at Chicago's O'Hare Airport is there for eighty minutes of buying time. Travelers at the Detroit Airport spend an average of ninety minutes of "dwell time” there. Seventy per cent of them pass through the 125,000 square feet of retail space. At Heathrow's 600,000 square feet of retail space, the average expenditure per passenger is $25. Heathrow employs 55,000 workers who are also potential retail customers. A typical urban retail space earns about $600 per square foot; airport retail earns $1200 per square foot.1 (figure 1, figure 2) New types of buildings and public spaces are produced and shaped by consumer culture as it intersects with design and demographics. The activities of shopping, leisure and consumption have served to create a convergence of several types of buildings into few. Pure retail space (i.e. the shopping mall) begins to disappear as buying and entertainment space is incorporated into other building types, and goods, services and experiences are made available to potential consumers in many different settings. There is a parallel in what has happened to farming and to the deregulated airline and banking industries”that is the many have become the few and the small have joined to become the conglomerate. (figure 3) The new building types of the 20th century, the parking garage, the shopping mall and the entertainment complex have converged at the airport.2 (figure 4) The behavioristic diagramming and computer animation of predicted consumer activity, marketing and demographic studies of consumers, and retail design