CLEvolution Terminal Modernization, Cleveland Hopkins International Airport

Cleveland Hopkins is replacing a terminal that opened in 1956 and has been patched rather than rebuilt ever since. CLEvolution is a $1.6 billion program built around a new 895,000-square-foot main terminal, and it’s the largest capital undertaking in the airport’s history. The design concept takes a wave-form roof from Lake Erie and roughly doubles the footprint of the existing headhouse.

The sequencing is the hard part. Hopkins is boxed in by its own runways, Interstate 71 and the Rocky River valley, so there’s no room to build a new terminal beside the old one and walk passengers across. The program goes landside first: parking and ground transportation get rebuilt before the terminal itself. Construction started in late October 2025 with the Gold Lot, roughly 1,600 spaces, due to open in late 2026 or early 2027.

Project Scope

New 895,000-square-foot main terminal, budgeted at about $1.1 billion within the $1.6 billion program, targeted to open in 2032. Phase 1 covers the Gold Lot parking development and a new parking and public transportation structure delivered by the CLE Connection Group design-build team. Corgan leads terminal design and Jacobs sits over the program as program and construction manager. The Gold Lot package went to Shook Construction with Passero Associates as architect and engineer and HEAPY on mechanical, electrical and plumbing.

The airport is a department of the City of Cleveland, so this is municipally owned work approved by City Council. A terminal general contractor hasn’t been named publicly.

Why It Matters

Hopkins is one of the few large U.S. hub terminals from the pre-jet era still carrying primary passenger service, and seventy years of patching has a ceiling. The seven-year build has to happen while the airport stays fully operational, which means every phase is a logistics problem before it’s a construction problem: temporary roadways, relocated curbfront, and passengers walking through an active site.

For contractors in northeast Ohio it’s a decade of work in one place, and the early packages show how the program is being split. Parking and ground transportation went to local design-build teams, terminal design to a national aviation specialist.

Project Team & Details