Monterey Regional Airport’s ‘metamorphosis’ project is underway.

Although it is currently just planes of leveled dirt – marked off by concrete retaining walls and divided by shallow channels and square depressions with jutting rebar – the future site of Monterey Regional Airport’s new terminal is beginning to take shape.

The replacement terminal, which broke ground in June 2025, is part of the phased project known as the Monterey Regional Airport (MRY) Metamorphosis, or Safety Enhancement Program. The $200 million project includes numerous upgrades, such as a new fire station (already completed) and a relocated taxiway (the final phase), with the new terminal expected to emerge from its chrysalis in the summer of 2027.

“I’m excited for the community because I think all of this will make for a better travel experience,” MRY Executive Director Chris Morello says.

MRY Project Manager Dan Johanson explains that the new terminal will have five gates and be roughly the same size as the current terminal, which will remain open (including administrative offices and Woody’s Restaurant & Bar) after its successor is complete.

“From Gate 1 to Gate 5 is approximately 330 feet,” Johanson says on a site tour. “It’s the same scale as the existing building. It seems big, but it is still very compact.”

Morello adds that although the amount of square footage is similar, the use of space in the terminal has been completely reimagined to maximize efficiency and benefit passengers: “[In the replacement terminal], the bulk of the square footage is on the secure side, where in the current terminal, the bulk of the square footage is on the non-secure side.”

Two contractor teams are working on the site: Hensel Phelps, with about 75 workers constructing the terminal, and approximately 25 from Otto Construction, working on parking lots and circulation.

The latter includes transforming the intersection of Garden and Olmsted roads into a roundabout. That project started on Monday, March 2. Construction is slated to take 18 weeks and end before Car Week in August.

For the replacement terminal, the next big step is steel. Johanson says the construction team will start “going vertical” with steel structural supports at the end of April, and if everything goes according to plan, passersby and passengers will begin to see “the skeleton of the building” by Memorial Day.