In this episode of The Capital Runway, we welcome Jaimini Erskine and Diego Cuadros. We delve into the exciting new "DCA Reimagined" project in Terminal 2, featuring new concessions, redevelopments, upgraded restrooms, and enhanced amenities coming soon to DCA.
In This Episode:
In this episode of The Capital Runway, Jaimini Erskine (Vice President for Marketing and Concessions) and Diego Cuadros (Professional Development Associate, Architect/Engineer) discuss all the work behind the scenes that is underway for the DCA Reimagined project in Terminal 2. They manage all phases of the multi-year project and the behind-the-scenes work, including new concessions, redevelopments, upgraded restrooms, and new amenities coming to DCA - with the goal of making our passengers' journey enjoyable, enhancing customer experience, and keeping DCA competitive in the market. You don't want to miss this episode!
Have questions for us? We'd love to hear from you! Send us an email at info@thecapitalrunway.com
For more information, please visit our website at https://thecapitalrunway.com.
Staff:
Tanisha Lewis, VP of DISI
Jaimini Erskine, VP of Marketing & Concessions
Charles Wilson, Co-host/Co-producer
Amanda Ohbayashi, Co-host/Co-producer/Social media producer
Ryan Burdick, Editor/Co-producer
Bong Lee, Graphics
Brian McCoy, Digital Strategy/Co-producer
Sagia Depty, Marketing Lead/Co-producer
Adam Lawrence, Web producer
[music]
[00:00:00] Amanda: Hi, I'm Amanda.
[00:00:01] Charles: I'm Charles. Welcome to The Capital Runway podcast.
[00:00:05] Amanda: We're here to share experiences of our people, functions, and operations of both Washington, Dallas and Reagan National Airports. Welcome back to another episode of The Capital Runway. I am Amanda.
[00:00:20] Charles: Hey, Amanda, I'm Charles, everybody. It's good to see you again.
[00:00:23] Amanda: Good to see you. How's your summer been?
[00:00:25] Charles: Life is good, as I always say. We just got back from a couple of vacations. Went to the Grand Cayman Islands. Spent a couple of days there and then we went to the Virgin Islands.
[00:00:36] Amanda: Oh, okay.
[00:00:37] Charles: Later on this month we're going to Martha's Vineyard.
[00:00:41] Amanda: Wow.
[00:00:41] Charles: I'm definitely looking forward to that. I'm taking advantage of the vacation time.
[00:00:45] Amanda: Yes. That's awesome.
[00:00:46] Charles: Just some plugging. What about you? What have you been up to?
[00:00:49] Amanda: What have I been up to? Not a whole lot. My summer has been very quiet so far, but intentionally, I had a very busy summer last year. This summer I'm just taking it easy and hanging out, not really doing much, just enjoying the city, enjoying the district.
[00:01:06] Charles: There's nothing wrong with hanging out. Enjoying summer barbecues or--
[00:01:10] Amanda: Absolutely. Can you believe we are halfway through the year? Over halfway through.
[00:01:14] Charles: I know. The time is going way too fast.
[00:01:17] Amanda: We are closer to 2024.
[00:01:19] Charles: I know. Wow.
[00:01:20] Amanda: [laughs] Isn't that crazy?
[00:01:22] Charles: A year older.
[00:01:23] Amanda: I know.
[00:01:24] Charles: When's your birthday by the way?
[00:01:25] Amanda: My birthday's in April.
[00:01:26] Charles: Okay. You're a Aries?
[00:01:27] Amanda: Yes.
[00:01:27] Charles: Yes. I'm a Pisces. It's almost-- to turn the clock again-
[00:01:33] Amanda: Ready for--
[00:01:33] Charles: -going to next year.
[00:01:34] Amanda: Get those shopping lists ready for the holidays. I feel like after Labor Day, things just move very quickly because you have all these holidays. You have Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and then it's just, "All right. What happened?"
[00:01:49] Charles: School for kids. The time is-- after September, it's going to start to pick up.
[00:01:55] Amanda: Yes. Absolutely. Who are we talking to today?
[00:01:58] Charles: We're going to be talking to Jaimini Erskine and Diego Cuadros about the DC Reimagine program. I'm excited to learn more about that program. I know our isteners are, and let's see what they got to say.
[00:02:11] Amanda: Yes. Let's dive in. Welcome, both of you. We're so glad to have you guys here.
[00:02:17] Jaimini Erskine: Thank you. We are excited to be here.
[00:02:18] Charles: Welcome.
[00:02:20] Amanda: Why don't we start with just a quick intro, who you guys are, what you do for the authority? Tell us about yourselves.
[00:02:27] Jaimini: I'm Jaimini Erskine. I am the Vice President of Marketing and Concessions for MWAA. I've been, oh, my goodness, in the industry for over 25 years in the concessions world, but always in airports and hospitality. Love it. I always worked on that side. The client was always the airport. I remember just going out of my way to do whatever I had to for my client, to making sure that they were happy and whatever we were servicing them was something they were pleased with. Once I came to the airport side, which now it's like six years ago when I first came over to the airport side, it was a whole other planet, basically. A lot of my concessions folks used to say, "Oh, you're going to the dark side." [laughter] When I really thought about it, I'm like, "This is so much more interesting." For the five years that I was in my prior airport, every single day was different. Always something new came up, and I was in charge of all of revenue within the airport. It really gave a holistic picture for me that I probably wouldn't have gotten anywhere else.
That is one big takeaway that I took from the industry standpoint, that I really like the airport side. When this opportunity came up, I was like, "Oh, I'm all over," because it's two premier airports, and you're not going to get anything better than this. Just because I would fly out of Reagan and fly out of Dallas, just to be part of that experience is huge for me. That was one of the big takeaways that I took. [chuckles]
[00:04:04] Amanda: Awesome. What about you, Diego? What brought you to MWAA?
[00:04:08] Diego Cuadros: Yes, sure. I was hired on as a professional development associate. I was one of the cohort of about nine. My discipline is architecture, although I do have degrees in both civil engineering and architecture. Before I came to MWAA, I was actually working with the federal government. I worked as a civilian with the Navy. Shout out to NAVFAC. They brought me up. I worked over there in production, so I did a lot of architecture drawings, engineering drawings, stuff like that.
When I came over to MWAA, well, the reason I suppose is I had been primed while I was over there because some of the work I was doing around the end of my time there was over at Andrews Air Force Base. Some of the work we did out there was, of course, with hangars, the new presidential hangar, and things like that. I was primed to enter an aviation field. When I was approached by one of our VPs here to come to MWAA, I did my homework, and I was like, "Wow, this is a quality offer." Of course, I did like the idea of being able to get a different perspective of it because the first time I think when I walked Dulles and walked National as an actual employee, no bags, no flight, no anything to stress out about, I was like, "Man, this is really--" It's quite incredible just how much goes on within an airport. It's simultaneously parking. It's a mall. It's an airport, of course. It's public transport with buses and everything like that.
I think a lot of that stuff and the combination, the way all of these different things join into this one focus out here, to me, that's really interesting. The balancing act of what goes on, balancing all of these different functions within this area is really something that I thought was awesome, and I wanted to be a part of it. Having the experience with some aviation-related applications before it came out here was definitely a plus, and it helped me to hit the ground running. I stumbled a couple of times when I started, but I did definitely find my feet soon enough and it's been a year.
[00:06:15] Charles: Great.
[00:06:15] Amanda: That's awesome.
[00:06:17] Charles: All right, what's going on at DCA? A few months ago we talked about some of the new concessions coming to the airports, but what are some of the other changes going on?
[00:06:26] Jaimini: The concessions thing was big. Now on top of that, we still have this redevelopment going on. That was our first phase, and now we're going into our second phase of concessions, but at the same time, we have this massive restroom project that's happening in DCA and we have a hold room project happening at DCA, which Diego has masterfully put together this layering of all of these projects, so I'm going to have him talk a little bit about some of those.
[00:06:54] Diego: The whole program kind of is a package deal, and it includes the restroom redevelopment, which if you've seen some of the renderings that come with that whole design effort, they're really something to see. I recommend everyone take a look at what's coming. There's that, and there's also the hold room work. The work that we're looking at for concourse is B, C, and D actually will be a very similar effort, but a little bit smaller scale.
It's a replacement of all the carpet that's currently there. It's starting to show its age if you've seen it. [chuckles] There's that, there's the new furniture types. Right now we have pretty much exclusively tandem seats in concourses B, C, and D. What's coming with that is new seat types. There's going to be tables and cluster seats, and also of course the new and improved tandem seats because I think one of the biggest things that we've observed with the existing hold rooms is that there's very little power there.
They're provided by charge ports and stuff like that, but the new kind of seats that we're going to be putting in are powered on their own. Everybody will have the opportunity to charge their devices. Also, on top of that, the new table seat will provide an opportunity for folks to sit down and eat if they're having some food or sit down and use their computer instead of hunching over themselves to make that work.
Various comfort improvements like that is a big part of the hold room package. Then, of course, the restrooms speak for themselves. It's an enlargement of the existing stalls and improvement of the fixture count. Then also the aesthetics of the actual restrooms themselves are a big improvement to what's existing. Long answer, but--
[00:08:22] Charles: No, this is good. For someone who's listening and they hear the term tandem seats, what does that mean?
[00:08:28] Diego: Pretty much all over the place when you look in an airport hold room, those sort of seats that are individual chairs, but strung together with armrests between them-
[00:08:39] Charles: Oh, okay.
[00:08:39] Diego: -that's what we mean when we say tandem seats. Cluster seating is a little bit different. We can get a little more creative with what that looks like, and then table seating is, of course, tables.
[00:08:48] Amanda: What exactly goes into planning for a project like this? I'm sure it takes a lot of conversations and timelines and things like that. What does that planning look like?
[00:09:00] Diego: I'll go first if you want. A lot of the planning effort as far as engineering planning, just to be a little more technical, was done before I came along. As far as when we actually get into the design of these things and what do we want to do in these new areas as far as aesthetics and as far as improvements, these various improvements, a big part of that is actually really going to the various stakeholders and asking, "What do you want to see? What do you have you seen around? What have you seen in the new stuff in Concourse E that you really like? How can we take this existing space and make it, if not like that other place, perhaps better than what's out there?"
That was a lot of on the engineering side, what was done was going to the airport team and everybody else on up the totem pole and say, "In these new restrooms, what--" This is a foregone answer, right? Do we want the stalls larger? Yes. Each individual stall is now, I think it's maybe 40% larger than what's being currently provided. It's very, very personalized. A lot of these improvements that we made with "full height partitions", I'm using air quotes, were made based on preferences, based on modernizing times, changing times, what the new preference is, especially in light of the pandemic, and how can all of these improvements be implemented for safety, for comfort, for all these different things.
That's a lot of it from-- even when we get into the actual design of it, it becomes-- we pose an idea and then we get some feedback and then we then amend the idea to better fit what's wanted. That's a lot of it from engineering.
[00:10:40] Jaimini: Yes. It was a lot of layering that we had to understand because even with the restroom project, we're losing concessions with that as well, right? Because to make these stalls larger, then you got to make the actual restroom itself wider. It's taking some of those adjacencies, right? We are losing some concessions in that perspective. This whole project, when I understood that they were all happening simultaneously, I'm like, "All right, this is one big giant puzzle."
Usually, when I start a puzzle, I work with the end and come in the center and they all come in place. This is like one puzzle without no ends, [chuckles] no corners. Then there's probably some missing pieces that fell under the sofa. That's what perspective I'm looking at it. I think at the end of the day, once everything is done, it's going to be amazing. We're also doing some work within National Hall with that seating there. We're looking at new kiosks or retail merchandising units that are going to be a little bit more upscale than what you see today.
All of those things, it's timing, it's phasing, and we have to make sure that things are happening in a sequence. There's so many critical pieces to it that just managing, I think Diego and I probably have headaches at the end of the day of everything that's going on. I know at the end, it's just going to be spectacular. We know it's for the passenger and they're going to be excited.
[00:12:06] Charles: What does the timeline look like and when do we expect to see some of these changes?
[00:12:14] Diego: From the engineering side, a lot of the stuff that we're looking at as far as-- I think the first one to really come into play here is actually going to be the restroom work. That's probably very exciting. From a lot of the stakeholders, and of course, from some of the feedback we've gotten from passengers, it seems like the restrooms are the ones that are the most in need of TLC. That project is pretty high on the priority list, really.
As far as the timeline of that, next year, January really is when the construction for that one, if all goes to plan, should be underway, really. I think the first set of restrooms that we're looking at with all the improvements and all the fixings is supposed to be open in September or so of next year. Q3-ish of next year is when we should be seeing a lot of those improvements. I think the proof will be in the pudding when those open, just how much-- You can take one of those new restrooms and you can walk into one of those and then walk into one of the old ones.
Really, you'll see just how much of an improvement it is. I think that transitory period when the transition is underway, that might get lost to history at some point. I think it will definitely be worth noting just how much of an improvement it is once we have some that are complete and some that are not complete yet. That will be a valuable comparison, I think.
[00:13:33] Amanda: Are you guys going to do all of the restrooms at one time or is it-
[00:13:36] Diego: No. No. No.
[00:13:36] Amanda: -starting with D and then working your way down, or it could be B, working your way down?
[00:13:43] Diego: Because a lot of the way we thought about fixture counts and all of those things is on a concourse basis, so Concourse B, Concourse C, Concourse D, the basis of which we thought about is that they're all on parallel tracks, which is to say that some work can be done in all three at any given time. As far as which those particular locations are, I think that's still a subject of discussion and we're working on that.
For example, I think the first set of restrooms has some work in Concourse C, only I think one or two sets of restrooms. Concourse B and D, actually, in January, we'll be building out of new locations for restrooms. The new buildouts will actually be going on while the existing restrooms is still underway. There's going to be a certain amount of work in those areas. Fortunately, the new restrooms, once they're complete, will knock you off your feet, I should say. [laughter]
[00:14:38] Jaimini: It's a balancing act that we're trying to figure out this whole phasing plan. we're trying to see sequentially how best to do it. Just airport 101, when you think about aeronautical revenue versus non-aeronautical revenue, our goal is to maintain non-aeronautical revenue because then what that does is offset the costs that are happening for the airline. Whenever we have concessions that go down, that's a revenue loss. We want to make sure that we're maintaining as much revenue as possible throughout this entire project. Now we know that there's going to be some impacts, but if we plan it accordingly and we work together which we have been doing as we have a whole redevelopment team that's been focused on this, if we do it according to a sequential way and we're making sure that we're keeping all of these things on the forefront and in consideration, I think we'll get there.
By the end of, I think it's 2026, we should have everything built out definitely within the concourses and for National Hall. There's still a lot of work. There's restrooms in National Hall that are going to be upgraded as well.
Overall the project I think is, if we do it and time it right and take the passenger into consideration knowing that there's all these hurdles that they're going to have to face when they're coming to the airport, getting to them ahead of time, letting them know ahead of time, I think we can really manage expectations and then making sure that we are balancing all of those things between revenue and between the number of concessions and making sure we have the right amenities from restrooms as well.
[00:16:14] Amanda: Yes. Are there any plans to update Terminal A? We get that a lot.
[00:16:19] Jaimini: [laughs] I think there are some conversations going around in terms of Terminal A. I think, obviously it's a very historic terminal. It's been there for a long time, doesn't nearly have the amenities that it should. There are some discussions going on internally about, "Hey, what do we do for the future?" We can't really build onto what's existing there, but maybe we can look at replacing or trying to find a strategic location for a new one, but that still is, I think, a little far off. We already have our hands full with this project, but that's definitely in the horizon, I think, to upgrade Terminal 1 at some point.
[00:17:03] Diego: Yes. Keep your eyes open for DCA Reimagine 2.0 where [laughter] we'll revisit Terminal 1. I think, like Jaimini said, a lot of it right now what we're doing is focusing on the work in Terminal 2, a lot of the César Pelli area, but I think once that's complete, and this may be sensitive information, it probably isn't, I think the plan after that is to visit Terminal 1 redevelopment, which like you said is a revisitation of that area. That's, I think, the idea. Right now, like Jaimini said, we have a lot of stuff going on in Terminal 2, and I think we're wary of overwhelming, but it's--
[00:17:37] Amanda: Fair. [chuckles] Only asking because we get asked all the time on social.
[00:17:43] Jaimini: Maybe we'll have another segment that we can do later on regarding Terminal 1.
[00:17:46] Amanda: An update. Yes, definitely an airport is like a small city. Everything has to work at the right time for it all to go well.
[00:17:54] Diego: Oh, yes.
[00:17:55] Amanda: A lot of moving parts.
[00:17:56] Jaimini: We are trying to find a spot for the Lincoln chair. The famous Lincoln chair that we used to have, we're trying to bring that back so that might be the world that selfie station goes. The Lincoln chair.
[00:18:07] Amanda: That'll be awesome. Cool. Well, that's all we have for today. Thank you guys so much. Thank you both for joining us. This was really fun.
[00:18:13] Jaimini: Thank you. This was fun.
[00:18:13] Diego: Sure. Thanks for having us.
[music]
[00:18:16] Male Speaker: We don't travel to escape life. We travel so life doesn't escape us. We dream of a place anywhere in the world and in the blink of an eye, we're there. That's the wonder of flight. All you have to decide is where to. Dulles International Airport, let your imagination soar. Book your adventure today at flydulles.com/nonstop.
[00:18:44] Charles: All right, well, that was a fun conversation.
[00:18:46] Amanda: That was really fun.
[00:18:47] Charles: Yes, all the cool things coming to the airport. I like how Jaimini talked about, it's like putting a puzzle together.
[00:18:52] Amanda: Yes, that was really interesting. I had never thought of it like that before, and it's just so spot on.
[00:18:58] Charles: Yes. As a passenger, I can't wait to see the new bathrooms.
[00:19:00] Amanda: [laughs] Me too. We talked a lot about bathrooms in this episode but in a good way. Good things coming.
[00:19:08] Charles: Yes. I learned a lot about seating today and the different types of seating at the airport. I wanted to ask her about the tandem seats. Why do they not have those row of seats without the handles in the middle?
[00:19:19] Amanda: Oh, I mean, every now and then you come across a couple that don't, but yes, that's a good question.
[00:19:24] Charles: If you have a long layover and you just have to stay in the airport, you want to lay down somewhere.
[00:19:28] Amanda: Maybe it's to prevent people from doing that.
[00:19:29] Charles: Yes, maybe that's why, yes. [laughs]
[00:19:32] Amanda: We don't want people lying down.
[00:19:32] Charles: Yes. [laughs]
[00:19:35] Amanda: That was a really great question, Charles. Speaking of questions, if listeners have any questions for us, you can email us at info@thecapitalrunway.com. We look forward to hearing from you.