Reno-Tahoe International Airport New Gen A and B Concourses

Reno isn’t adding gates. It’s replacing every one of them. The Reno-Tahoe Airport Authority broke ground in March 2026 on the New Gen A and B concourses, a $650 million program that tears out and rebuilds both concourses while the airport keeps running a full schedule. McCarthy Building Companies holds the construction contract at $428 million. Gensler is the designer, and it came in early enough that the contract value was set during design rather than after.

Project Scope

The two concourses roughly double in size. Every replacement gate is common-use and sized to take a wide range of aircraft, which means the airport can reassign a gate between carriers without touching the building. That’s a quiet but real change for an airport whose traffic mix keeps shifting. Airside, the project adds dual taxilanes between the two concourses, so this is an airfield geometry change and not only a terminal build. Landside scope covers a wayfinding and signage overhaul, larger hold rooms, expanded concessions and full restroom replacement. Delivery is phased: Concourse A opens in 2028, Concourse B follows, and both are complete in late 2029. The program is the centerpiece of the authority’s broader MoreRNO capital plan.

Why It Matters

Phased concourse replacement on a live airfield is one of the harder sequencing problems in aviation construction, because the swing space has to come from somewhere and every temporary gate you stand up is a gate you have to take back down. Doing it across two concourses at once, with new taxilanes going in between them, compresses that problem rather than spreading it out. The demand case is Northern Nevada industrial growth. The Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center pulled in data centers, battery plants and distribution at a pace that outran the airport’s gate count, and terminal capacity became a regional economic constraint rather than a passenger-comfort one. Common-use gates are the hedge: they let the authority absorb an airline’s growth or exit without a capital project attached to it. Reno is a mid-size airport making a large-airport bet, and the 2028 partial opening is the date to watch.

Project Team & Details