Michigan Central Station, which was closed in 1988 and threatened by demolition as recently as 2009, reopened on June 6 after a comprehensive renovation and restoration of the circa-1913 rail terminal and tower in Detroit.

The 18-story building, which once served more than 4,000 rail passengers a day and housed thousands of office workers, now serves as the anchor building in a new 30-acre research and technology campus under development by Ford Motor Co.

Architecture firm Quinn Evans was the designer for the renovation. The joint venture team of Christman-Brinker served as contractor and construction manager for the construction manager at-risk project. Michigan Central Station features approximately 640,000 sq ft of space, including a 13-story tower set atop the street-level main terminal and basement levels. The Beaux-Arts structure, once among the nation’s most prominent early 20th-century train stations, was designed by Wetmore and Reed & Stern, which also was the architectural team for New York City’s Grand Central Station.

Image courtesy of the Chicago Dept. of Transportation

Excavation and foundation work for Satellite Concourse 1, a component of the $8.5-billion O’Hare 21 Terminal Area expansion and modernization project, is expected to start this summer.

The construction manager at-risk team on the $1-billion concourse and related infrastructure is a joint venture of AECOM, Clayco and Bowa Construction.

The project’s design is being done by Chicago architects Skidmore, Owings and Merrill with Ross Barney Architects, Juan Gabriel Moreno Architects and engineers Rubinos & Mesia Engineering (RME) Inc. and Arup.

Major construction is expected to start in mid-2025, Kevin Bargnes, director of communications for the Chicago Dept. of Aviation, said at a May 30 news conference.

Plans for the concourse, which will serve both domestic and international passengers, call for adding 19 gates. The new gates will allow the airport to handle different sizes of aircraft as well as boost operational efficiency for carriers and cut down on layover transfers for passengers, according to the city.

Preliminary work on the satellite project began in March with the construction of several temporary taxiways and a new grade-separated roadway, the reconfiguration of Taxiway B and the construction of three new temporary gates off Concourse C, which opened this spring.

The overall expansion plan, which was introduced in 2018, calls for the creation of two new satellite concourses, a new O’Hare Global Terminal replacing Terminal 2 and an extension of Terminal 5, which was completed in early 2023.

The start of work to rebuild Terminal 2 was delayed amid reported cost concerns from the airport’s two main airlines, United and American.

“The O’Hare Global Terminal project remains in the design phase, and the CDA expects to release updated estimates on timeline for construction in the months ahead,” Bargnes said.

Jeanne Gang, founding principal and lead designer of Studio Gang based in the city’s Wicker Park neighborhood, Chicago-based architecture firms Solomon Cordwell Buenz, STL Architects and Chicago-based engineer Milhouse Engineering and Construction are on the team for Terminal 2

The design of the Satellite 1 Concourse features a barrel vault structure with curved windows, tree-like support columns and an oculus at the top of a walkway area that will connect the satellite with O’Hare. The concourse is expected to be completed in 2028.