Airport News Japan

Construction of Airport Park around Ibaraki Airport Terminal - Symbol of Air Gateway

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Construction plan of Airport Park around Ibaraki Ariport Terminal.

Ibaraki Prefecture is proceeding on a project to build a 19.3 hectare Airport Park (provisional name) around the terminal at Ibaraki Airport in the city of Omitama. The airport is scheduled to open at the end of this fiscal year (March 2010).

According to the project overview that appeared on April 13 on the Prefecture’s Important In-Progress Projects page at the prefecture’s Japanese website, the project plan schedule, which runs until 2013, has a seven-hectare area where Symbol Plaza, a regulating reservoir and other facilities are slated to open along with the airport itself at the end of the current fiscal year. The design for Symbol Plaza will reportedly have landscaping representative of the prefecture that includes a plum grove, befitting for the “Northern Gateway to Tokyo,” as Ibaraki Prefecture is known. The plaza’s width will span approximately six hectares.

In other areas, further facilities to be built include the two-hectare Observation Plaza where families and children on field trips can play while they watch the aircraft land and take off, the four-hectare Multi-Purpose Plaza with sports and recreation facilities that will also be used for aviation-related events, the three-hectare Grass Park to protect the environment around the airport, and parking.

By March of this year, overall construction work was 94% complete on facilities that will lay the foundation for the park, which includes land acquisition, clearing the land for Symbol Plaza, digging out the space for the regulating reservoir and drainage for rainwater. Work over the next year up to the airport’s opening will focus on projects such as Symbol Plaza, as well as the surrounding garden paths, illuminations, vegetation and the regulating reservoir.

According to the prefecture, the park will become a public space that all local residents can make comprehensive use of, in addition to being equipped with facilities to serve as a large disaster preparedness center in case of emergency.

Ibaraki Airport (Ibaraki Prefectural Government)