PORTLAND, Ore. — The $2 billion renovation of Portland International Airport still has a couple years of construction work ahead of it, but the Port of Portland is beginning to pull back the curtain on the future main terminal now that the star attraction is in place: the hand-crafted timber roof.
Airport officials took KGW cameras into the area currently under construction this week for a behind-the-scenes preview. The full reveal of the finished main terminal will come in May 2024. The overall 5-year remodel project, dubbed PDX Next, is scheduled to wrap up in late 2025.
"There's a beehive of activity," said Vince Granato, chief projects officer for Port of Portland.
More than 700 construction workers are busy finishing the interior of what will become both a pre-security and post-security area, according to the airport. Access between the two security gates has been shut off while the construction is in progress, but once the terminal is complete, the access will be restored and will feature new shops and restaurants in between.
"There will be a lot of new concessions that will be open and operating in the new building when we get it open," Granato said. "It's that piece that has been missing. It's part of the thing I think that we're famous for, we're very proud of. So lots of local operators, small business operators."
But the biggest and most visible change will be the one above traveler's heads. The nine-acre, 18-million-pound wooden roof was sourced almost entirely from forests in Oregon and Washington. The roof was built on a field to the west of the airport, then broken up into 20 sections that were moved over the to the terminal one at a time to be installed and reassembled.
"That's what we tried to do with the space here, was to create something that the region would be proud of," Granato said. "All of the material that's being used in here, all of the wood. It's being sourced from within 300 miles of us here, Oregon and Washington. It's all sustainably harvested. It's something we expect the community to really be proud of, because at the end of the day, we are."
In 2021, PDX was listed as the #1 airport in the United States amongst travelers in a Travel +Leisure survey. In the most recent ranking from July 2023, travelers ranked Portland as their fifth-favorite airport.
"We fully expect that we're going to be right back there at the top when this is all said and done." Granato said.
The Port has previously released concept art showing off the look of the completed terminal:
