The Fort Wayne-Allen County Airport Authority marked the completion of Project Gateway on August 13, 2026, closing out a roughly $140 million, seven-year terminal expansion and renovation at Fort Wayne International Airport (FWA). The project added about 75,000 square feet to the terminal, brought total gate count from eight to nine, and comes as the airport closes its tenth consecutive year of passenger growth.
From a Turboprop-Era Terminal to Nine Modern Gates
“It’s been six years of construction and probably 7½ years overall with the design work,” said Scott Hinderman, chief executive officer of the Fort Wayne-Allen County Airport Authority, at the ribbon cutting. The renovation left the terminal at roughly 200,000 square feet, with Hinderman noting that “essentially, this facility is all brand new,” down to the walls and terrazzo flooring.
The core problem Project Gateway solved was physical incompatibility with modern regional jets. FWA’s eight original gates were configured for turboprop aircraft, and larger jets caused wing tip conflicts when parked side by side. The finished terminal now has nine gates with ten aircraft parking positions and wider concourse spacing, and airlines including Delta and American began assigning larger aircraft to Fort Wayne as soon as the new gates opened.
The completed scope includes relocated gates and passenger boarding bridges, an expanded TSA checkpoint, additional restrooms and mother’s rooms, a new service animal relief area, expanded meeter and greeter space, and taxiway separation improvements intended to improve safety and operational efficiency. Accessibility features include a cane trail for visually impaired travelers and a hearing loop that sends gate and flight announcements directly to compatible hearing aids and cochlear implants.
Two Contracts, Two Phases, One $140 Million Program
Project Gateway proceeded in two structurally separate phases rather than a single contract. Michael Kinder & Sons built the $47 million West Terminal Expansion and Rehabilitation Project, which broke ground in June 2021 and finished in May 2023 ahead of schedule and under budget despite pandemic era supply chain disruptions, delivering expanded ticketing areas, a new baggage handling system, two new gates, a children’s play area and a multi sensory room.
The East Terminal Expansion picked up where the west phase left off. We reported in December 2022 that Chicago based Clayco had been selected for the $60 million east side contract, with Mead & Hunt as architect, ahead of a planned March 2023 start. That phase ultimately began in June 2023 and is the work that closed out this month, relocating all gates and boarding bridges to the second floor and adding the airport’s first Gateway Lounge, sponsored by STAR Bank, which opened in March 2026. Two local operators, Hop River Brewing Company and Bon Bon’s Coffee Company, opened concessions in the terminal in late 2024, and a new glass walled patio lets ticketed passengers step outside for fresh air, a feature Hinderman said many airports removed after the September 11, 2001 attacks and FWA worked to reintroduce under a revised security process.
The named west and east contracts total $107 million; the airport authority’s reported $140 million program figure for Project Gateway folds in the earlier parking lot rehabilitation, rental car canopy and solar project, and terminal apron work that preceded the terminal phases, which is why the headline total runs higher than the sum of the two terminal contracts alone.
Federal Grants and a Regional Economic Case
FWA received $13.8 million in July 2022 through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s Airport Terminals Program, making it one of only two Indiana airports to win that competitive federal funding, according to the FAA’s grant announcement at the time. U.S. Rep. Marlin Stutzman’s office also said it helped secure a separate $2 million in federal funding toward the airport’s apron improvement work.
Local officials framed the completed terminal as more than an aviation upgrade. Allen County Commissioner Ron Turpin cited a U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimate that every $1 spent on community airport improvements generates $2.53 in additional local economic activity, and pointed to Bombardier’s decision last year to locate a maintenance facility in the region as evidence of the airport’s pull on aviation-linked investment. Fort Wayne Deputy Mayor Karl Bandemer and Rebecca MacPherson, the FAA’s regional administrator for the Great Lakes Region, both tied the completed terminal to the region’s broader competitiveness for business travel and economic development.
The completion arrives alongside a record year for the airport: FWA logged 494,014 outbound passengers in 2025, a 14.75 percent increase over 2024, extending a growth streak now in its tenth consecutive year. The airport has also passed its annual FAA Part 139 safety inspection with zero discrepancies for 11 straight years, a streak airport authority officials describe as uncommon at airports of any size.
A Regional Airport’s Bet Compares to a Hub’s Parking Fix Alone
Project Gateway’s full terminal rebuild puts FWA’s roughly $140 million program in useful perspective against Indianapolis International Airport’s $76.6 million parking garage expansion, a five-story, 1,500-space addition approved in 2022 for a much larger hub airport. Indianapolis committed over three quarters of that sum to parking capacity alone, while Fort Wayne, a fraction of Indianapolis’s traffic, spent a comparable order of magnitude to rebuild both terminal halves from the ground up, plus parking, apron, and rental car infrastructure along the way. The contrast underscores how much of a regional airport’s capital program has to go toward baseline terminal capacity before it can address the ancillary infrastructure a larger hub is already able to expand in isolation.
What Comes Next
Airport authority officials have not announced a successor capital program to Project Gateway. The one remaining piece of unfinished scope is aesthetic rather than structural: an art installation planned for the baggage claim area, which Hinderman said will be commissioned this winter to complement a statue already installed near the terminal’s front entrance. Airport authority COO Joe Marana served as Project Gateway’s project manager throughout the multi year build.
Project Fact Sheet
- Project Name: Project Gateway Terminal Expansion and Renovation
- Location: Fort Wayne International Airport (FWA), 3801 W. Ferguson Road, Fort Wayne, Indiana, USA
- Project Value: Approximately $140 million total program; $47 million West Terminal contract plus $60 million East Terminal contract
- Client/Owner: Fort Wayne-Allen County Airport Authority
- Main Contractors: Michael Kinder & Sons (West Terminal Expansion and Rehabilitation); Clayco (East Terminal Expansion)
- Architect: Mead & Hunt (East Terminal Expansion)
- Key Components: 75,000 to 77,000 square feet of new terminal space; gate count increased from eight to nine gates with ten aircraft parking positions; new baggage handling system; expanded TSA checkpoint; Gateway Lounge; new food and beverage concessions; outdoor patio; accessibility features including a cane trail and hearing loop
- Funding Source: $13.8 million federal grant via the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s Airport Terminals Program; additional $2 million in federal apron funding; airport authority capital funds
- Construction Start: June 2021 (West Terminal); June 2023 (East Terminal)
- Completion: West Terminal, May 2023; East Terminal and full program, August 2026
Project Team
- Client/Owner: Fort Wayne-Allen County Airport Authority
- West Terminal Contractor: Michael Kinder & Sons
- East Terminal Contractor: Clayco
- Architect (East Terminal): Mead & Hunt
- Project Manager: Joe Marana, COO, Fort Wayne-Allen County Airport Authority
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