(CNN) — It’s been many years since President Donald Trump flew commercial. But on Wednesday, he unveiled major renovations to a key Washington-area airport — his latest effort to shape infrastructure around the nation’s capital.
Trump oversaw proposals for a massive, $22.5 billion project at Dulles International Airport, the Northern Virginia air travel hub with direct flights to more than 50 countries.
“This is very exciting to me as a builder — somebody that builds lots of big, nice projects before I got here, and we’re doing some of the best in the world right now,” Trump said in the Oval Office Wednesday, seated before a large model of the newly imagined airport that covered his desk. He gestured enthusiastically at renderings of the plans that sources say he personally reviewed and approved, using a laser pointer to highlight new parking areas closer to the main terminal.
Throughout his second term, the president has often used the Oval Office to debut proposals for building and repairing — not just at the White House, but across the city and surrounding region.
He’s tried to renovate the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, build a new triumphal arch and National Garden of American Heroes, restore fountains across town and slapped his name — with limited enduring success — on prominent institutions. And while some of those projects may be more popular than others among DC residents, a 58% majority of Americans say they feel dissatisfied or angry about his construction projects in DC, according to a new CNN poll released Wednesday.
“You know, it’s a great thrill,” Trump said Wednesday when asked why he’s so focused on transforming the Washington, DC, area.
Dulles has been on Trump’s mind for months.
“Whether you’re a Republican or Democrat, you don’t want to go and be subjected to this airport,” Trump said in the Oval Office, echoing his comments from a December Cabinet meeting that Dulles is a “terrible” airport.
Operational for 60 years, Dulles regularly appears on lists of the worst airports, largely due to one of its most unusual features: the so-called people movers, more formally known as “mobile lounges,” which are used to ferry passengers between gates and planes.
The phased renovation plan, which was first reported by CBS News, will be implemented over eight to 10 years and eliminate the people movers for good, according to multiple sources familiar with the project.
Funding is coming through the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority and airlines. “It’s going to be bonded for $22.5 billion. United is going to partake in part of the payment, but the airlines who participate in the project are going to pay for it,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in the Oval Office on Wednesday.
Trump, however, suggested there could still be a role for Congress to play.
“It’s largely financed, and yeah, we need some approvals from Congress probably. But generally speaking, it’s been very bipartisan,” he said.
The project is expected to bolster parking and check-in facilities, modernize concourses — including United’s C and D concourses, which were built as a temporary facility in 1985 — create a new tunnel that will eliminate the need for the people movers and add new concessions and lounges, according to United.
The airport’s Eero Saarinen-designed main terminal is expected to be preserved, according to a White House official.
Duffy on Wednesday called the airport renovations the “cherry on top” of Trump’s efforts to “make DC safe and beautiful.”
“We we had multiple architects come in and present to the president, and we are blessed that not only does he give his time to really important matters, but he gave his building skill to take the best of all the designs and come up with this concept,” he added.
For the president, a former real estate developer, construction across the Washington area isn’t just a side project — he believes it’s the foundation of his legacy.
“I’m a really good builder. The thing I do best in life is build,” Trump told reporters on a May tour of the 90,000-square-foot White House ballroom construction project.
His efforts started with gilding the Oval Office, a design choice that crept into the Roosevelt Room.
The Rose Garden has been paved with stone and reconfigured in the image of his Mar-a-Lago patio. The tongue-in-cheek “Presidential Walk of Fame,” with biographies of his predecessors written in Trump’s voice, has been installed along the West Colonnade, plus new granite pavers. Giant new flagpoles and a helipad have been added to the lawn. And the Palm Room flooring and the storied Lincoln Bedroom bathroom have been redone in marble.
Nearby, Trump’s building new sidewalks for Lafayette Square, overseeing a new visitors’ center complex, and pushing a coat of white “magic paint” for the neighboring Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
His ambitions haven’t been limited to the White House. Across town, the Kennedy Center, where Trump is chairman of the board, is expected to undergo a sweeping renovation, even after the board was forced to remove his name to comply with a federal judge’s order. The president is also overseeing plans to place a massive arch atop a traffic circle. Sculptures along the National Mall have been newly re-embellished with gold, and his Reflecting Pool renovation — to the tune of $14 million — has become a key, albeit deeply controversial, pet project.
Trump has also floated the idea of a pedestrian promenade connecting the Lincoln Memorial to the Potomac River and has resurrected a plan for a “Garden of American Heroes,” which was proposed during his first term and scrapped by the Biden administration. Nearby, he’s forging ahead with plans to turn the East Potomac Park public golf course into a championship course.
While Trump has spent more time reflecting on his legacy during his second term, and sources say he sees many projects as part of that, the new CNN poll suggests voters may be more skeptical of Trump’s local focus. A record-high 73% of US adults said he hasn’t paid enough attention to the country’s most important problems.
The-CNN-Wire
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