Passengers emerging from Midway Airport’s security checkpoint immediately enter a bright, open space where a mix of food, drinks and retail form the new Central Market.
The food and retail space’s opening Wednesday was one of the closing steps in the eight-year, $400 million Midway Modernization Program. It was part of a $75 million concessions renovation.
“This program was the most comprehensive investment in Midway Airport in more than 20 years, and I’m proud to have led for the last six months to push us over the top,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said at a ribbon-cutting event Wednesday.
The Central Market is situated where Concourses A and B meet, centered with the Oak Lawn-based Reilly’s Daughter bar. It’s surrounded by Dunkin’, M Burger, Connie’s Pizza, America’s Dog and Burger and Beecher’s Handmade Cheese. White Sox Bar and Grill is around the corner.
On another side, retailers Evolve, Tumi, MAC and Jo Malone sit.
“Our airports, they’re the gateway to our amazing city,” Johnson said. “It’s the first impression that our visitors and tourists will have on Chicago, and the Midway Modernization Program has made it so that our gateway is beautiful, it’s modern, it’s thriving, it’s 21st century. It represents the global city that we truly are.”
Jedidiah and Courtney Engel, of Princeton, Illinois, admired the new space Wednesday.
“It was like seven years ago that we flew out of here, and I don’t remember any of this,” Courtney Engel said. “It’s also very smooth to get in and get to our gate; we’re like two hours early for our flight.”
Jedidiah Engel said they would check out White Sox Bar and Grill.
Chicago Department of Aviation Commissioner Jamie Rhee said the department delayed the concessions renovations “given the impact of COVID-19 on passenger traffic.”
The delay allowed officials time to expand the security checkpoint area, which now allows about 5,000 people through in an hour compared with 2,500 in 2015, and upgrade the airport’s parking garages, including installing electric vehicle charging stations, Rhee said.
“With all that work completed and passenger traffic trending back towards pre-pandemic levels, it was finally time to tackle the third component of the Midway Modernization Program,” Rhee said.
Midway’s main concessions area was expanded from 44,000 square feet to 70,000 square feet, and it brought the airport’s number of concessions to more than 70. It also doubled the number of concessions jobs from 700 to 1,400.
The mayor boasted that more than 55% of Midway’s concessions are operated by firms with minority ownership, which he said is the highest reported rate of any U.S. airport.
The city recently extended its contract with Midway Partnership, the airport’s concessions developer, as part of an ordinance that offered some relief for concessionaires whose plans were interrupted by the pandemic.
“With that ordinance, we are supporting our airport concessions’ post-pandemic rebound and ensuring that there are ownership and employment opportunities for our city’s South and West sides,” Johnson said.
The final pieces of the Midway Modernization Program are expected to be completed next year: the airport’s first lounge, the Club MDW, as well as a few retail and food spaces.
Johnson said the project’s completion “couldn’t have come at a better time,” with the city set to host the 2024 Democratic National Convention and “so many other large-scale events.”
