If travelers arriving in Portland, Oregon, by air don’t already know the area is known for its surrounding forestry, they’ll soon learn that fact upon entering the airport terminal.
At Portland International Airport, the ceiling, exterior roof, support columns and structural beams are all made from Douglas fir, the Oregon state tree. The entire ceiling is covered with a lattice of 3.3 million board feet of sustainably sourced Douglas fir, procured within a 300-mile radius of the airport.
The wood is illuminated by large windows facing north and south, as well as by hundreds of skylights peppered throughout the ceiling. Live plants can be found throughout the terminal, and the greenery glows in the sunlight.
The new Portland airport terminal was redesigned and expanded to handle a projected increase in passenger volume and to make the building more energy efficient, according to ZGF Architects, the airport’s designer.
Portland is one of several major airports in the United States and Canada that are spending billions of dollars to accommodate passenger growth, replace outdated buildings, boost security, serve up more food and beverage purveyors, and improve spaces to enhance visitor flow and reduce wait times.
Growth in international travel has also prompted airports to add gates capable of handling larger airplanes for long overseas flights.
“The arms race for airports and cities that are trying to attract international flights is at a peak right now,” Wilson Rayfield, an architect at Gresham Smith who has led the design at airports nationwide, told CoStar News.
In some instances, like Portland, the renovation can turn the space into a visual landmark for the city and region. Others are more restrained in design but still use architecture to localize the facility, such as the extensive use of various shades of blue at the airport in Charlotte, North Carolina, to reflect the colors of local sports teams.
Obsolete facilities, new revenue sources
Aside from aesthetics, some airport construction projects aim to replace obsolete facilities, said Guy Wilkinson, principal in the infrastructure advisory practice at KPMG US.
“Many airports are dealing with infrastructure that was built decades ago and simply wasn’t designed for today’s passenger volumes, security requirements or airline operations,” Wilkinson said.
U.S. airports need to spend at least $174 billion between 2025 and 2029 to upgrade infrastructure to handle projected growth in air travel, according to the trade association Airports Council International. That spending should be directed at expanding terminals, lengthening or adding runways and addressing deferred maintenance projects, among other issues, ACI said.
The total number of passengers boarding flights in the U.S. is expected to grow from 819.5 million in 2023 to 1.28 billion by 2040, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers.
“Air travel demand is growing faster than airport capacity, putting strain on aging infrastructure, passenger flow and operations,” according to Jacobs, a Dallas-based construction company that works on airport projects.
New York, San Diego, Montreal, Houston
The spending is already underway at major airports in the U.S. and Canada, with projects underway at two terminals at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and at airports in San Diego, Montreal and Houston, among others. Airports in Portland, Los Angeles and Pittsburgh have completed upgrades, while Charlotte wrapped up the first portion of a multiphase project late last year.
Airport work is booming at architecture and construction firms. For architects, the aviation sector has been cited as a welcome source of revenue during the ongoing slowdown in billings for other property types. In 2024, Jacobs recorded $184.3 million in revenue from airport engineering work, a 36% increase from 2023, according to Building Design and Construction. That ranked Jacobs at the top of the trade publication’s list for airport revenue work.
Most airports issue tax-exempt revenue bonds to finance construction projects, Wilkinson said. But airports are also increasingly embracing innovative financing techniques such as “combining traditional debt with federal grants, passenger facility charges, commercial revenues and, in some cases, private capital,” he said.
The increased spending on airport expansions is reflected in a commonly used measurement of airport finances. The average cost per enplanement, or CPE, at some of the largest U.S. airports rose year over year between 2024 and 2025, according to San Jose, California-based airport finance consultant Dafang Wu, citing federal data. CPE is the average cost per passenger for an airline to operate at a given airport.
At Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, CPE rose from $3.94 to $4.48, according to Wu. Los Angeles International Airport recorded a rise in CPE from $30.16 to $33.85. At John F. Kennedy International Airport, CPE climbed from $33.85 to $36.01. All three airports have major expansion and renovation projects in progress.
Parking is also a major source of revenue for many airports. Some have built new parking facilities to recapture revenue lost to the rise of ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft, as well as from off-airport parking lot providers like the Parking Spot and WallyPark.
In June, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport completed a $440 million, seven-level parking deck located next to a terminal. The deck and new adjacent surface lot have a total of about 7,000 spaces for vehicles.
Queen Charlotte
In a sense, airports are a continuous source of revenue for architects and construction companies, said Brian Carroll, a senior vice president for industrial properties at JLL.
“Airports are always constrained,” Carroll said. “They don’t have enough gates for aircraft, or the runway is not large enough. They’re always trying to solve these problems.”
But the surge in air traffic has unquestionably led to more airport projects, Carroll said.
Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina completed a $608 million renovation last year of the main terminal’s lobby, which the airport described as the largest passenger-facing construction project in its history. The project replaced a terminal built in 1982 to handle 2.8 million passengers yearly. Charlotte’s airport handled 58.8 million passengers in 2024.
A statue may garner the most attention of anything in the new terminal lobby, said Rayfield of Gresham Smith, lead design architect for the project.
In 1990, a private group donated the 15-foot-high bronze statue of Queen Charlotte, the city’s namesake and the inspiration behind Charlotte’s nickname, the Queen City. Queen Charlotte’s crown is also the city's official symbol and the central image on its seal.
But 23 years later, the Queen Charlotte statue was relocated from a prominent location at the airport to a space between two parking decks. Gresham Smith’s architects stumbled upon the statue and decided to design a central space where it could be restored as the airport’s signature visual.
“Queen Charlotte greets all passengers,” Rayfield said. “Every single person arriving at the Charlotte airport will experience the statue.”
Cityscape view
Gresham Smith also incorporated other design features to highlight the airport’s location in Charlotte, the largest city in North Carolina. A canopy that covers the main passenger drop-off area is framed to highlight the nearby Charlotte skyline. Mosaics of metal plates colored in various shades of blue are installed throughout the airport. And because Charlotte was an early gold rush city, the color gold is integrated into various parts of the design.
You try to build consensus with the design and “use things that are universal enough to appeal to everyone,” Rayfield said. “But you try not to be too kitschy or be too specific.”
The mass-timber ceiling may be the main visual highlight of the new Portland terminal, but the food, beverage and shopping options have also been enhanced considerably.
The new terminal is outfitted with a smorgasbord of those concessionaires, most of which are homegrown companies. Stumptown and Portland Coffee Roasters both have shops, as does Steven Smith Teamaker, Blue Star Donuts, taqueria Cha Cha Cha and Mo’s Seafood & Chowder. Deschutes Brewery offers a taste of Oregon’s long-running craft brewing scene.
Other Oregon-based companies have shops in the terminal, too, such as Powell’s City of Books, Columbia Sportswear, apparel company Pendleton, record label Tender Loving Empire and ccMcKenzie Shoes & Apparel.
Users enjoy the offerings, but the concessionaires also provide a key source of revenue for airports, KPMG’s Wilkinson said.
“Retail, dining, duty-free shops and premium lounges remain important because they encourage travelers to spend more time and money in the terminal,” Wilkinson said.
Community feedback
Initial plans at the Portland airport called for most concessions to be located past TSA security gates. Community feedback prompted the architects to change course, said Sharron van der Meulen, managing partner at ZGF.
“The old PDX airport was heavy on pre-security concessions, and we knew that people enjoy shopping and eating after going through the security gates,” van der Meulen said. “But then a lot of people said they wanted to keep a lot of those concessions before security.”
As for the wooden ceiling, designers said it made sense to use Douglas fir as the primary source of mass timber because Oregon and Washington state “have a huge supply of people with the skillset that can do this kind of work," van der Meulen said.
“We wanted this to feel like it was of the Pacific Northwest,” she said.
Mass timber is taking off across the U.S., not just in the Pacific Northwest. The number of U.S. construction projects using mass timber rose from less than 100 nationwide in 2006 to 1,500 through June 2026, according to the WoodWorks/Wood Products Council.
Even the federal government is trying to get involved. A bipartisan measure introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives this year would provide financial incentives for developers who use mass timber for public housing, military projects or federal buildings. The bill was referred to a legislative committee in May.
ZGF's van der Meulen and JLL’s Carroll both said that it’s never the case that an airport pursues a renovation only to make the facility look nicer. If a once-unsightly airport becomes beautiful after renovation, that’s only a side effect, Carroll said.
“In all the discussions I have ever had with an airport about renovating, it’s never about people expecting a beautiful design,” Carroll said. “It’s about transportation at the front door passenger drop-off area. It’s about TSA security checkpoints. It’s always about functionality and fixing constraints.”
For the record
For the Portland International Airport project, Port of Portland is the retail leasing agent; Hoffman Construction and Skanska formed a joint venture to serve as construction manager and general contractor; the Timberlab subsidiary of construction company Swinerton provided services related to mass timber construction; Freres Engineered Wood, Zip-O-Log Mills, Yakama Nation, the Skokomish Tribe, Kasters Kustom Cutting and others supplied mass timber; KPFF and Arup provided structural engineering services; and PAE was the engineer of record for mechanical, electric and plumbing systems.