When Kansas City International Airport’s new terminal opens in 2023, passengers will be welcomed with interior design completed with furniture from Kansas City-based Freedom Interiors.
Founded in 2011, Freedom Interiors is both a woman- and minority-owned business led by Carol Espinosa, who is 2019 recipient of the Kansas City Business Journal's NextGen Leaders award. She’s a 16-year veteran of the commercial interior design and furnishing business.
The contract is expected to be between $2 million and $3 million. Espinosa said the exact value of the contract is yet to be determined, since it’s a design-build project, and the details haven't been completed.
While the KCI contract isn’t the largest ever for Freedom Interiors (it’s done some larger contracts for the federal government), it certainly is the most high profile and highly visible project the company ever has tackled.
"To know that our company has a little role to play that I’ll see every time I fly and will use as well, will give it a very special place in my heart,” Espinosa said.
The contract doesn’t include tandem seats people use before boarding, but it covers nearly everything else. Freedom Interiors will provide furniture for charging stations, common spaces, meditation rooms, sensory rooms for kids, nursing rooms for mothers, and all of the employee workspaces that make up the half of the airport customers never see.
There are 213 Kansas City-area firms completing work on the new terminal, which is now more than halfway finished. Throughout the project, 64 minority-owned and 57 women-owned businesses are involved. In terms of dollars paid for professional services, Edgemoor at the end of June was at 19.3% of its 20% minority-owned business participation goal and 15.8% of its women-owned goal of 15%.
For construction services hired and paid, the developer was at 25.2% of its minority-owned goal of 20% and 19.3% of its 15% goal for women-owned businesses.
The job is a welcome score for Freedom Interiors, which suffered during the pandemic.
“We had to figure out how to adapt. We did our best to stay close to our customers and work through projects that were canceled or postponed. We had to take a hard look at our budget and tighten our belts to make sure we stayed financially sound, and we’re ready for a good 2021.”
Espinosa said the Paycheck Protection Program allowed her to keep key employees in place until things settled down and projects started to come back online. Now the business is growing and hiring again.
Espinosa said her company spent a lot of time working with customers to help them pivot themselves to the “new normal.” They’ve been consulting with clients to make sure they made good investments in office furniture that took care of immediate needs during the pandemic. Freedom Interiors also helped them be ready for the future after the pandemic without having to spend more money.
“We thought through this whole thing that the office would never go away as a physical space,” Espinosa said. “However, the way we use the office has changed and will change. I don’t think we’ll ever go back to the way work was done prior to the pandemic, but people will still continue coming to an office, and kids will continue going to school. They still need that environment.”
