Inside Sea-Tac's new C concourse as Seattle readies for World Cup

After three years of construction, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport is set to open its renovated C concourse to passengers Thursday.

The new space features four floors, 11 restaurants and retail spots, lots of open seating, an outdoor patio with views of the airfield and, at the center of it all, a large art installation meant to evoke the feeling of a forest canopy.

The so-called Tree at C has attached auditorium-style seating, known as the grand stairs, for travelers to rest, power up their devices and have a front-row seat to live musicians who will play at the concourse for four hours each day.

The renovated concourse, which starts shortly after travelers file through security checkpoint 4 and encompasses the corner between the C gates and D gates, is meant to represent the Pacific Northwest and make travelers feel at home, said Wendy Reiter, the airport's managing director, during a recent tour. It's also designed to feel vast and open, compared to the usual "tight feeling" travelers can experience when moving through the crowded airport.

The $399 million project took the space from one floor to four and increased the total square footage from 81,000 to 229,500 square feet.

Sea-Tac just managed to squeeze opening day for the renovated concourse before the FIFA World Cup draws up to 750,000 visitors and locals to the region, according to an estimate from Visit Seattle. The Seattle matches start Monday and run through July 6.

It's one of several construction projects the Port of Seattle, which operates Sea-Tac, has embarked on to address overcrowding concerns amid years of record travel demand. Last month, Washington's Department of Transportation released a new report estimating the region's airports will be unable to adequately support roughly 40 million passengers in the next 25 years.

The report expects regional travel demand will reach 107 million passengers annually by 2050, with Sea-Tac and nearby Paine Field able to support only 67 million passengers, even with improvements already in the works.

"We have to help with that," Reiter said. "We're going to have to get creative and this is what we can do."

Sea-Tac can't easily build out, because of the airport's tight physical footprint, so, with this project, it focused on building up.

On the first floor, travelers will find Olympia Coffee, Seattle Macaron Co., Nanny's BBQ, Bell St. Landing by Hudson and a bar called Wanderlust. The second floor features Port of Subs, Great State Burger, Buffalo Wild Wings Go and Chili's.

The third floor houses an interfaith prayer and meditation room, as well as a "sensory room," a nearly soundproof room with walls covered in green felt, offering travelers a quiet escape. It also has an outdoor patio space, where travelers can watch planes taking off and landing. The patio is not one of the airport's designated smoking areas.

Parts of the third floor and fourth floor will house Alaska Airlines' new lounge, the largest for both the airline and the airport.

Competition among vendors for the dining and retail slots was steep, said Khalia Moore, the assistance director of airport dining and retail. The airport received more than 60 bids for the 11 spaces.

When choosing who to select, the airport had to balance travelers' needs, Moore continued, making sure they offered a little bit of everything: sit-down versus to-go; alcohol versus alcohol-free; local restaurants versus national chains known to out-of-town travelers.

"We are the first and last stop (for visitors), so we want to make sure we represent the best of the Northwest," Moore said.

Chili's, though not local, has garnered a lot of hype for opening day. The airport used to have Chili's in the D concourse, but that location closed in 2018.

Now, the restaurant has a "resurgence going on," Moore said, thanks to viral TikToks featuring its appetizers. But Sea-Tac selected it because the restaurant has made recent design changes, including a wider menu selection and a decision to move away from its previously "very red" branding, Moore joked.

The C concourse used to house a handful of restaurants and retail spots, including a Beecher's Handmade Cheese, a Subway and a bookstore, but the majority of the space was filled with TSA offices. The expanded concourse still includes space for leasable offices.

The Port approved the design plan for the expanded C concourse in 2020 and started construction in 2023.

The World Cup became an unofficial deadline for the airport to complete three major projects: the C concourse, a roadway expansion to ease traffic and an update to the north-end ticketing and security checkpoint, in partnership with Alaska Airlines. With the C concourse reopening, it is on track to meet that goal.

Those short-term projects are part of the Port's UpgradeSEA plan, a $5 billion series of construction projects meant to improve the passenger experience. The Port is separately working on a list of long-term projects to address anticipated future demand, part of its Sustainable Aviation Master Plan. That bucket of projects includes a proposed second terminal with 19 new gates.

Reiter, who has worked at the airport for 18 years and started as managing director in January, was visibly excited to show off the new C concourse during a tour on Friday.

The new concourse will "shift the entire circulation" of the airport, she said, as passengers have more room to spread out in spaces that were previously not available to the public.

"It's a wow moment, truly," Reiter said. "I'm in awe."

Copyright 2026 Tribune Content Agency. All Rights Reserved.

This story was originally published June 10, 2026 at 6:38 AM.