SFO's New Terminal Makeover Gets a Sneak Preview Amid Coronavirus Fears

San Francisco International Airport planned to spend the next two weeks unveiling its newest terminal redo with a nightly stream of events for everyone from construction workers to travel industry bigwigs.

Then came the coronavirus — which is why Tuesday’s press tour of the next phase of Harvey Milk Terminal 1 will be the only scheduled preview. A tour, by the way, where guests were required to wear not just a bright vest and hard had, but skin-tight industrial gloves.

“For us it’s a reminder of how dynamic our business is, how quickly the world can change,” said Doug Yakel, the SFO public information officer who led 15 or so designers, photographers and writers into walled-off areas where construction workers rushed to prepare for the March 24 debut.

The purpose of the tour was to show off the latest batch of functional efficiencies being added to a terminal that has gone through several upgrades since 1963. There’s a high-tech check-in lobby, an improved baggage area and nine gates in a football field-size boarding area that includes a naturalistic children’s play zone.

Inevitably, though, the fine points of calibrated design were clouded by the reality that daily life at SFO is anything but normal.

The number of scheduled flights into and out of the huge airport have fallen by roughly 4% since COVID-19 began its worldwide spread this winter, Yakel said. More dramatic, the daily number of international passengers arriving at SFO is down 30% from a year ago.

The precise decline in the number of domestic passengers isn’t yet known, he added, because airlines report their passenger count to SFO only on a monthly basis.

But the nervous new state of affairs could be seen Tuesday in the scant lines at security gates in all four terminals. Few customers lingered at tables in the dining areas outside the gate. Instead of the frazzled nerves that one associates with large airports, there was a languid but eerie midday calm.

That calm ended in the construction zones of the former Terminal 1.

What opens on March 24 is the second phase of a four-stage, $2.4 billion transformation of the terminal. This phase is the most dramatic, since it includes a new smoky glass facade that bears in 4-foot-high letters the name of the former city supervisor and California’s first openly gay elected official.

The new facade was revealed just days ago. The interior spaces that open in two weeks accelerate the effort to soften the overpowering scale associated with large airports — whether it’s the ceiling formations that resemble clouds above the concourse passageways, or the forest-like textures of everything from the insulation panels wrapped around columns to the fritted glass of the terminal facade.

“We wanted to emphasize a sense of place that relates to San Francisco, rather than an interchangeable Joe Schmoe airport,” said Ryan Fetters of Gensler, one of the architecture firms leading the design effort.

But design can’t get in the way of a passenger trying to travel from point A to point B with maximum ease and minimum frustration.

The new gates, for instance, have cozy lines of chairs separated by side tables with lamps as well as raised tables where upward of 10 waiting passengers can plug in their laptops while waiting to board. The idea is not to pack the seating into institutional lines. But they also can be spread out randomly.

“It’s important to find the right size and efficiency so that people don’t bump into each other,” Fetters said.

Along with such creature comforts, there are six pieces of concourse-scaled public art to catch the eye. One large nook near the check-in lobby will include a den-like exhibition on Milk’s life that was curated by the SFO Museum.

No wonder the airport wanted to blow its own horn and stir up some excitement with private parties and festive tours before the March 24 opening. But such events didn’t jibe with last Friday’s edict from the Department of Public Health’s call for “canceling or postponing large gatherings.”

“At the end of the day, we’re still a department of the city and county of San Francisco,” Yakel pointed out. “We have to follow our own recommendations.”

The final seven gates in Harvey Milk Terminal 1 are scheduled to open in May 2021. Work then will begin on the northernmost piece of the terminal, which received its last makeover in the late 1980s. That work should be completed in spring 2023.

“We’ll have other opportunities to celebrate,” Yakel said.

John King is The San Francisco Chronicle’s urban design critic. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @johnkingsfchron

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