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Photograph: Expanded terminal at Dulles International, consisting of two wings, completes the original architect's initial concept 35 years after the airport first opened.
mwaa/r. latoff
In 1959, James A. Wilding, a young civil engineer fresh out of Catholic University, reported to work at a construction site in a northern Virginia field, 26 miles from Washington, D.C. Wilding was there to build a runway for a new regional airport. In 1948, a study group had determined that the existing Washington National Airport, wedged into a small site, couldn't be expanded to handle projected air traffic.
Those planners were right. Today the Virginia airfield--Dulles International Airport--sees 12.4 million annual travelers, and is often jammed. So is the 55-year-old National, also in Virginia.
To fix the situation, Wilding, now general manager of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, is leading a $2.1-billion drive to expand Dulles and upgrade National.
Linkage. "We believe that the well-being of the Washington metropolitan area depends a good bit on its linkage to the world's aviation system," Wilding says. That means "creating airport facilities that make it attractive to the world's airlines [and] convenient for the area's citizens," he adds.
The program is one of the largest public construction efforts in the U.S., but it's just part of a wave of airport expansion and rebuilding in such cities as San Francisco and Las Vegas.
The combined effort at National and Dulles involves 159 projects, including multimillion-dollar taxiways, parking garages and road improvements. The focal points are a new 1-million-sq-ft terminal at National and two new matching wings grossing 600,000 sq ft at the original Dulles terminal, designed by the late Eero Saarinen. In a bit of historical symmetry, the National terminal's design architect is Cesar Pelli, who, as a young man, had worked at the Saarinen firm. However, the two terminals look nothing alike.
The massive program is a big logistical undertaking. "It's been a mix between fun and terrifying," says Wilding.
Officials have had to reroute auto and pedestrian traffic to stage and carry out construction, all the while keeping both bustling National, with 15.5 million passengers last year, and Dulles open for business. "That is the major challenge...to keep things going while we're doing all these improvements," says Roy M. Goodwin,...