The New PDX Terminal Is a Love Letter to All Things Local
Ema Peter/Port of Portland
Before the Portland International Airport (PDX) officially opened its newly expanded main terminal on August 14, the city’s indisputable queen obviously needed the grand tour. So Portland, Oregon’s drag icon Poison Waters swung by last week and snapped a few stiletto selfies on the airport’s cult carpet, which has finally made a comeback nearly a decade after it was ripped out.
Waters had joined several dozen Oregonians who PDX invited to appear in a photo shoot to commemorate the terminal’s opening on August 14. And a drag queen celebrating the return of a green ’80s-era carpet pattern—which had infamously been replaced with a modern design in 2015—is the very Portland conclusion to a $2.15 billion redevelopment project with a rather peculiar goal: to create the most local airport on the planet.
By several niche metrics, PDX appears to have succeeded: All two-dozen shops and restautrants coming to the new main terminal are locally grown brands including independent bookseller Powell’s City of Books, farm-to-still distillery Freeland Spirits, and, at last, fried-in-the-airport Blue Star Donuts. (Some stores are open now, with more coming in phases through 2026.) The marquee beer hall open now on the mezzanine, Loyal Legion, has one of the most comprehensive tap lists of Oregon-brewed beers, with 96 on draft. And the terminal’s most defining architectural feature—the mass-timber roof, a first for a major US airport—was built with 100% Pacific Northwest wood, all sourced within 300 miles of the airport.
This dedication to all things local stems from the unusual relationship Portlanders have with PDX. “People here are weirdly proud of the airport,” says photographer and Portland In Color founder Celeste Noche. “And I don’t blame them—I am, too. As someone who travels a lot, airports can feel depressing—a place you want to get in and out of. But the new spaces at PDX, it’s actually fun to hang out there.” Earlier in the month, PDX even hosted a “dress rehearsal,” where Portlanders from all walks of life volunteered a Saturday to “act out” several traveler scripts to help the airport work through any kinks. Thousands showed up. “That’s how invested people are in seeing the space,” says Noche, who also attended.
Often ranked among America’s favorite airports, PDX has a positive reputation among passengers from all over the country. But nothing embodies the tongue-in-cheek nostalgia many Portlanders hold for their local airport quite like the old carpet, which became famous in the early 2010s on Instagram, where locals would post photos of their feet on the carpet whenever they traveled. When the Port of Portland announced in 2013 that a more subdued mossy green would replace the whimsical teal, the carpet was posthumously propelled to a cult symbol—soon adorning products ranging from craft beer to Adidas sneakers. In March, PDX revealed the original pattern’s return in an Instagram post, in which the many local comments included “FRICKING FINALLY!” Previously, Sharron van der Meulen, managing partner at ZGF Architects, had joked that her team would “be run out of the city” if they didn’t bring the original carpet pattern back.
Over the years, I’ve observed how the positive feelings for PDX go much deeper than the flooring materials. There’s a lot of love for the long-term focus on supporting local shops and restaurants; its “street pricing” policy, which prevents inflated airport prices; and an arts program that even includes an independent micro-cinema. (Count me among the fans, too. I was based in Portland for nearly a decade and often cited PDX among the things I loved most about the City of Roses. Full disclosure: Throughout the construction of the terminal, my admiration for PDX led me to consult on a few creative projects including writing a crowd-sourced poem about the demolition of Concourse A, which the airport’s executive director read at a farewell event, and most recently a zine about how 30,000 local workers built PDX by hand, the largest public works project in state history.)
Executives at the Port of Portland, the governing authority which owns and operates the airport, were sensitive to the airport’s popularity among the local community before the expansion project began six years ago. “We knew we had to make PDX bigger, but we didn’t want to lose the heart and character of our airport,” says Vince Granato, the chief project officer on the redevelopment. “So, from the beginning of this project, we committed to making the space even more of a reflection of our region.”
Portland-based design firm ZGF Architects took that brief and set out to double the terminal’s capacity to accommodate the projected passenger growth in the next few decades, all while keeping it from feeling like a generic shopping mall. “We really thought about this project as what airports could be,” says van der Meulen. “We felt strongly that it had to connect to the region and reflect the people, the place, and the businesses within this city.”
The lattice wooden ceiling is the first thing most frequent PDX travelers stepping into the new terminal will notice, and the story of its origin speaks to the intentionality that went into building it. Sustainability in the context of an airport can be a tricky conversation—aviation is a growing driver of global carbon emissions. But the team working on the airport sought ways to reduce the overall embodied carbon in the structure.
“Wood itself is a more sustainable, lower carbon material than steel and concrete, which is one of the many reasons we selected wood,” says van der Meulen. “But then we went even further to source the wood in a way that’s better for both the forest and the people who manage them.” Working closely with sustainable forestry professionals, ZGF and the Port of Portland were able to achieve a unique feat: all the wood in the ceiling lattice layer—600,000 board feet in total—can be traced back to its forest of origin including partnerships with four Northwest tribes: Yakama Nation, Coquille Indian Tribe, Skokomish Indian Tribe, and Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians (the project was selected by Condé Nast Traveler for Bright Ideas in Travel 2023).
“Transparent sourcing had never been achieved at this scale before,” says PDX’s Granato, “and many initially said it couldn’t be done because of how the supply chain works—in most projects, wood is anonymous.” Using wood instead of a traditional steel roof structure achieved a 125% reduction in the carbon impacts of the roof’s construction, ZGF estimates; the materials were also sourced from Oregon landowners who practice more responsible forestry practices.
Locals will be excited to find the old-school carpet, which is back in select zones throughout the new terminal (PDX even published this old carpet map for the new terminal). But the team working on the flooring materials also considered accessibility as a top priority, so high-traffic areas will instead feature Oregon-sourced white oak and terrazzo, which is easier for wheelchairs, assistive devices, and roller bags to navigate. Other accessibility features include all-user restrooms and redesigned wayfinding signage. The old carpet pattern is confined to waiting areas where folks might, say, hang out and listen to one of the local musicians who volunteer to play at PDX.
The new terminal feels both uniquely Portland and a roadmap for what airports around the world could look like if they aimed to more directly reflect their region. “We wanted travelers to know exactly where they had landed, before even leaving the airport,” PDX’s Granato says. And from the aesthetic touches (more than 5,000 live plants filling the new spaces; 49 skylights letting in the partly sunny daylight) to the forestry story (signage throughout the airport will inform travelers of the forests of origin for the roof above them), it’s an airport that couldn’t be anywhere but Portland.
Originally Appeared on Condé Nast Traveler
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