O’Hare is going up. The AECOM Hunt / Clayco / Bowa joint venture, working with the Chicago Department of Aviation, started vertical construction on a new $1.45 billion Concourse D at O’Hare International Airport, the first major building of the airport’s ORDNext program to clear the ground.
The SOM-designed concourse adds 19 gates across 580,000 square feet, sized for narrow-body jets but built with the flexibility to convert 18 of those gates into nine wide-body positions. Plans fold in more than 20,000 square feet of lounge space, 30,000 square feet of retail and dining, and, in a nice touch for a hub that runs on connections, a children’s play area.
What’s done and what’s next
The team broke ground in August 2025 and has finished roughly 35% of the foundational work, including more than 90% of the caissons, the deep reinforced-concrete shafts that carry the structure. A 195-foot tower crane is going up at the center of the airfield to mark the switch to vertical work on the 73-foot building. A central cooling plant sized for all future ORDNext phases comes next.
The bigger ORDNext bet
Concourse D is one slice of the largest terminal expansion in O’Hare’s history. ORDNext also includes a future Concourse E and a new global terminal to replace the aging Terminal 2, part of an $8.5 billion overhaul the Chicago City Council approved back in 2018. The city expects the work to support more than 3,800 construction jobs.
It’s not the only thing breaking ground in Chicago. The CTA and a Walsh-Vinci JV recently kicked off the $5.7 billion Red Line Extension, a 5.5-mile push of rapid transit to the Far South Side. Airports this size rarely build clean, and ORDNext has to expand while O’Hare keeps running at capacity. Getting Concourse D vertical is the proof the program has finally found its rhythm. Construction Dive has the milestone, and you can track global crossings and corridors like the Grand Paris Express on Exchange.