President Trump on Wednesday unveiled a $22.5 billion plan to remake Washington Dulles International Airport, pitching a renovation that would scrap the airport's long-running mobile lounges, add a new underground U-shaped aerotrain and reshape the way travelers move through the property.
Trump made the announcement from the Oval Office alongside Sean Duffy after his team reviewed more than 30 proposals. He said Dulles was a “terrible airport” that “was incorrectly designed,” and he has also complained privately about “parking that's two miles away” and the current mobile lounge system as “crazy.”
The overhaul would reach into nearly every part of the airport. It would add moving sidewalks, move parking closer to the main terminal and create four new linear concourses where the current A, B, C and D gates stand. The existing aerotrain now serves the A, B and C concourses, but not the D concourse, where United Airlines gates are located. The C and D gates were built in 1985 as temporary terminals for United Airlines and have lasted for more than 40 years.
Trump has also tried to keep one piece of the airport's identity intact. He wants the iconic sloped-roof main terminal designed by Eero Saarinen preserved, even as he criticizes the airport's original layout. Under the plan, the main terminal would be refurbished with an open foyer and new ticket kiosks for the airlines.
That preference leaves the contest over the airport's future design with a sharp edge. Ferrovial had proposed a new main terminal with a wavy roof. Jacobs proposed a bridge passengers would cross between terminals, built high enough for planes to pass underneath. HNTB proposed a new airport built from scratch with an additional main terminal at the other end of the property. Trump had tabletop models taken back and forth to the White House for review, and earlier this year he asked competing design and engineering firms to build three-dimensional models as advisers tried to settle on a direction.
The next step is the one that matters most: choosing which proposal, if any, becomes the airport's final blueprint. Wednesday's rollout showed what Trump wants Dulles Airport to become. It did not say who will build it.
