For many, the St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport serves as a popular gateway to the Tampa Bay, Florida area. Over the past few years, the airport experienced a steady growth in the number of air travelers, necessitating a comprehensive renovation to its terminal building to make it even more appealing and welcoming to travelers. In 2006 the airport embarked on a three-year renovation project and in November 2009, just in time for the holiday travel season, the St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport re-opened its doors revealing a fresh, new look. The new design was intended to update and unify the appearance and feel of the terminal, which was originally built in 12 different phases, and to create a comfortable environment that could help the traffic flow smoothly from one area to another. Bloomsburg Carpet along with Kelly Taaffe Design, Inc. created a custom carpet to incorporate beauty, durability and sustainability as a “connective tissue” for the desired unifying effect of the $12 million airport renovation.
The custom Bloomsburg carpet material featured a unique pattern that Kelly Taaffe Design, Inc. created especially for the St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport. To translate the design into the more than 65,000-square-feet of carpet needed for the project, the design studio worked closely with Bloomsburg’s computer technicians and artists to turn their creative inspiration into a reality. The carpet reflected the natural indigenous beauty of the surrounding flora and fauna of the Tampa Bay area through a color palette of greens, blues, sands and black. The six-foot by six-foot pattern swirls and repeats itself throughout the terminal, bringing a fresh, unified look and leading travelers through the airport. The Zeftron nylon 6ix fiber adds to the overall aesthetic appeal of the carpet and provides increased durability. “The biggest design challenge was unifying the look of the whole terminal building. It looked disjointed at first, so selecting the right products, from the carpet to the ticket counters, was essential to the success of this project,” said Kelly Taaffe Noto, owner and principal of Kelly Taaffe Design, Inc. Ultimately, the carpet tied each terminal of the airport together and helped achieve the project design goal of a unified and fresh, new look.
In addition to strength and low maintenance costs, Zeftron offers a fashion-forward color palette that allows for creativity – limited only by the designers’ imagination. “I’ve been using carpet made with Zeftron nylon for over 15 years and it has performed beyond expectations,” said Kelley Taaffe Noto. “I like their approach to solution dyeing and the guarantees that come with the fiber, as well as the yarns technical configuration which adds inherent strength, durability and color reflectivity to the carpet.”
Zeftron’s 6ix Again Carpet Recycling Program exhibits the company’s commitment to recycling and renewing its materials. This patented process does exactly as it sounds: it closes the traditional recycling loop and enables nylon 6 to retain all of its original quality – performance, durability and coloration characteristics – each time it’s recycled. This process enables nylon 6 to be recycled over and over again.