What follows Pierre L’Enfant’s iconic city grid for Washington, D.C., features a Washington Metro-inspired entryway and has cherry blossom-themed art?
The new United Club at nearby Dulles International Airport (IAD).
“We’ve taken a lot of inspiration from the Washington area,” Travis Christ, the director of club and lounge programs at United Airlines, said while standing in the future central atrium of the space on a sultry June morning.
The 40,000-square-foot lounge will be among the largest lounges in North America when it opens this fall. The space is one of three megalounges that United plans to open this year, including a 54,000-square-foot Texas-size facility at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) and a smaller 25,000-square-foot lounge at San Francisco International Airport (SFO).
That square footage means the new United Club will seat up to 650 people at a time and give travelers the extra space Christ said is their top request.
Dulles makeover paves way for new United Club
The new United Club is part of a long-overdue makeover of IAD. The space is located on the second floor of the new 14-gate Concourse E that opens this fall. The new concourse is located directly above the Concourse C AeroTrain station; you’ll find the lounge directly above the escalators and elevators from the train to the concourse.
Concourse E will replace the ground-level Concourse A gates that currently serve United Express regional flights. The “temporary” Concourse C/D facility that dates to the mid-1980s and currently serves almost all mainline United flights to and from the airport will be replaced by future phases of Concourse E.
The new concourse is a bright, airy space with white walls and wood-hued trim. Concessions, including national chains like Dunkin’ and Wendy’s and local favorites like Rusty Taco and Korean fried chicken chain Bonchon, are scattered throughout the space.
As for the mobile lounges? They will remain for the foreseeable future until they can be replaced by the AeroTrain, Richard Golinowski, the manager of IAD and the vice president of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, said during a tour on Wednesday.
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United Club pays homage to the District
Christ, showing the under-construction United Club space to reporters on Wednesday, said that the layout draws from L’Enfant’s 1791 street plan for D.C.
“We started with: ‘What would L’Enfant do with this?'” he said, describing the District’s unique layout of a street grid interspersed with diagonal streets named after all 50 U.S. states.
“The layout itself is kind of like the avenues you have in Washington,” he added. “There’s no cul-de-sacs, there’s no dead ends anywhere. You’ve got these circular areas where the state-named avenues lean into. The whole layout is inspired by Washington itself. It was very natural to do it.”
The art in the lounge features the aforementioned Metro station-inspired entryway and a cherry blossom-themed mobile that will hang from the ceiling in the center of the space. It will include a buffet-style food service area and a bar but not showers.
And when asked about the future of United’s three existing clubs in Concourse C/D, Christ said all will remain open, but renovations are planned. The future of those lounges will “evolve” as the redevelopment of Dulles proceeds.
“The art and design just has so much Washington in it,” he said.
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