Des Moines International Airport is moving forward with plans for a new consolidated rental car service facility that would greatly improve the efficiency of the rental companies and quality of the rentals.

The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design-certified facility, which has been in the works since it was identified as a need in reports dating from 2006, will be on 5.55 acres of land about a half-mile from the airport on the airport’s frontage road directly west of the intersection of Fleur Drive and Army Post Road, said Kevin Foley, deputy aviation director for landside operations and maintenance.

The service facility, which has been designed to meet long-term (20-plus years) forecast capacity, will be used to wash, clean and fix rental cars before they are re-rented. The facility will be shared by the rental companies and have enough parking capacity to handle up to 480 vehicles that are waiting in queue to be serviced.

The project includes a 23,360-square-foot building with six office areas and maintenance bays leased to individual companies, five common-use car washes and five common-use fueling islands.

Currently, Foley said, the rental car companies each have service stations scattered around the airport, and in some cases, the companies have multiple rental locations in the city but do their servicing at one location away from the airport.

“It makes them inefficient, in that they have to shuttle their cars miles,” Foley said. “There was a need and a desire for some type of consolidated rental car service facility. The rental car companies didn’t object or oppose.”

The inefficiency created by the scattered locations can have a negative impact on the quality of service the cars receive.

“From an airport’s perspective, this is very important, because maybe they are not doing some of the things, the cleaning or even vacuuming after each passenger, simply because, well, you look at it and maybe it isn’t quite that dirty and maybe we can go ahead and re-rent it,” Foley said. “And from a customer service perspective, that is not what we want at the airport.”

Foley said that the new facility will allow the companies to very quickly take a car to the service facility after it’s returned, get it serviced and ready to be re-rented.

“This will enhance the customer service in that the cars (can be turned) more quickly, and they are going to get a better servicing simply because we can turn them quickly,” he said.

If the rental car companies are more efficient, then the hope is the savings will be passed on to the customers.

“Some of the facilities that the rental companies are currently operating in are antiquated, relatively old and in need of an update,” Foley said. “This is a way that it helps them offset some of their expense, and hopefully will keep the rental rates down a little bit in Des Moines.”

Foley said environmental requirements are getting more stringent as well, which made this facility more attractive to the rental companies.

“Some of these facilities that are around the airport are old enough that they might not be in compliance with the new regulations,” he said. “Not that they aren’t in compliance with regulatory requirements right now; it’s just that if they did any updating, it would be costly to update them.”

The total cost was originally estimated to be about $6.55 million, but the low bid, from Neumann Bros. Inc., came in 14 percent under the estimate at $5.58 million, Foley said. The winning bid will not be selected until contracts with the rental car companies are finalized on June 14 and the airport holds a special board meeting to accept the bid the following day.

The airport is paying for the facility through customer facility charges, which are small fees charged to rental car customers.

If everything goes according to plan, construction would begin shortly after the bid is accepted. Foley said that despite getting a slightly later start to the project than anticipated, the airport hopes the facility will be fully operational by fall 2011.