City issues $5.7 million caisson permit for O’Hare’s Concourse E

The city issued a building permit on October 1, 2026, for the foundation caissons of Concourse E, the second new concourse planned at O’Hare International Airport. Urbanize Chicago reported the permit on October 5, and the city’s permit record puts the reported cost of the work at $5.7 million.

Caissons are drilled concrete shafts that carry a building’s weight down into the ground, and they are usually among the first pieces of a new structure. This permit is limited to that work, and Urbanize Chicago described it as covering the concourse’s first phase. The Chicago Department of Aviation says on its Concourse E project page that the first phase of the concourse will open 14 gates in 2030, with all 24 gates finished in 2034.

What the permit covers

The city’s building permit record spells out the scope, the dates and the parties on the job.

• The permit number is 101079761, a new-construction permit handled through the city’s Direct Developer Services review track.
• The application was filed April 3, 2026, and the permit was issued October 1, 2026, 181 days later.
• The scope is caissons only, which the record describes as vertical penetration only, for the proposed Satellite 2 Concourse (Concourse E) terminal building.
• The reported cost is $5.7 million, and city fees total $7,375, with $6,700 of that still listed as unpaid.
• The owner is the Chicago Department of Aviation, and the general contractor is Hunt Construction Group Inc. of Phoenix.
• The record lists the site as 10000 W. O’Hare St., in the 41st Ward.

The record also names a Glencoe architect of record, Adam E. Semel, along with an expeditor, two suburban masonry contractors and four aviation department project numbers. Hunt Construction Group and Semel appear in the same roles on the permits for Concourse D, the first new concourse, which is already under construction. O’Hare sits inside Chicago city limits, which is why its construction permits show up in the city’s public permit data.

The $5.7 million figure is the value declared for the caisson work, not a budget for the concourse. The aviation department’s Concourse E page gives no cost, and coverage of the city’s August announcement cited only the $8.8 billion total for ORDNext, the current stage of the airport’s O’Hare 21 expansion.

How Concourse D’s permits came in

Concourse D, called Satellite 1 in the city’s permit filings, shows the order in which the permits for a new concourse have come in. The city broke ground on that concourse on August 18, 2025. Its caisson permit followed on September 22, 2025, with a reported cost of $10 million. A $100 million permit for shallow foundations and the basement level came on October 29, 2025, and the full building permit for the superstructure, enclosure and interior, reported at $730 million, was issued February 25, 2026.

A separate $220 million permit issued March 16, 2026, covers confined-space portions of the consolidated tunnel between the future Global Terminal and the future Satellite 2 concourse. The city’s permit data shows no earlier permit for the Concourse E building itself.

Concourse E by the numbers

The basic facts come from the aviation department and from reporting on the city’s August 20 announcement by the Daily Herald and Urbanize Chicago.

• The concourse will have 24 gates: 14 in a first phase opening in 2030 and 10 more by 2034.
• The finished building will be multilevel and about 460,000 square feet.
• The gates are planned for regional and narrowbody planes on domestic flights and on international flights from preclearance airports.
• Skidmore, Owings & Merrill is the concourse’s design firm, according to the aviation department’s ORDNext page.
• The site is west of the new Concourse D, which is being built west of Terminal 1’s Concourse C.
• An underground passenger tunnel will connect Concourse E to Concourse D and the Global Terminal.

Plans call for airline lounges, restaurants and shops. The aviation department’s tunnel project page says the tunnel will carry travelers on moving walkways and will also hold baggage conveyors and secure corridors for airport staff. Chicago YIMBY reported in September that the first phase is the northern half of the building.

One naming note for travelers: Terminal 2 already has gates in a Concourse E, as city permit records for that terminal show. The new Concourse E is a separate building out on the airfield.

Why Concourse E jumped ahead of the Global Terminal

Mayor Brandon Johnson and Aviation Commissioner Mike McMurray announced the new order of work on August 20, 2026. Under the old plan, a 2024 compromise with United and American, Concourse D went first, the Global Terminal followed in phases and Concourse E came last. Now the first 14 Concourse E gates are set to open in 2030, the Global Terminal is to be built in a single phase from 2029 to 2033, and the last 10 Concourse E gates are to follow in 2034. The city said the phasing was worked out with both hub airlines.

The point is to keep enough gates in service while Terminal 2 comes down. The Global Terminal will replace Terminal 2 and nearly double its size, according to the aviation department, which credits the design to Studio ORD. The city picked architect Jeanne Gang’s team for the terminal in 2019, CBS Chicago reported. McMurray said the 14 new gates will “give us the flexibility to maintain safe, efficient airline operations,” Aviation Week reported. An aviation department spokesperson said in the Daily Herald’s report that the sequence lets crews build the tunnel between Concourses D and E more efficiently, which the city says cuts costs.

DePaul University professor Joseph Schwieterman called the change good news in the Daily Herald’s report, saying it avoids “what would have been a very messy situation” during terminal construction. Aviation Week gave 2029 as the finish date for the first phase, but the aviation department’s own page, the Daily Herald and Urbanize Chicago all say 2030.

Flight caps and the push for more gates

Demand is the backdrop. The aviation department said O’Hare handled 100 more daily departures in July 2026 than in July 2025, according to Aviation Week. The Federal Aviation Administration has capped the airport at 2,708 daily flights, down from the 3,080 the airlines had planned for summer 2026, and in July extended that cap through October 30, 2027, citing construction and airfield work, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. In a July 31 letter challenging the extension, U.S. Sens. Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin wrote that the aviation department expects all taxiways and runways to be open by November 1, 2026.

United wants far more. Chief executive Scott Kirby said on a podcast that the airline will be at “a thousand flights a day” in Chicago, Axios reported on September 30. United runs roughly 650 daily departures from O’Hare now, according to Axios. The next new gates on the schedule are Concourse D’s 19, due in late 2028.

The O’Hare 21 timeline and the money

The expansion has been reshuffled several times since the City Council signed off, and the dates below trace those changes.

• On March 28, 2018, the City Council voted 40 to 1 to approve airline lease agreements and $4 billion in borrowing for the $8.5 billion plan, the Sun-Times reported.
• On May 3, 2024, after objections from United and American, the city announced a deal putting the Global Terminal and the first satellite concourse ahead of the second, the Daily Herald reported.
• On August 18, 2025, the city broke ground on the $1.3 billion, 19-gate Concourse D, with completion set for late 2028.
• In December 2025, Axios reported that the city was weighing a new construction order because of record traffic.
• On July 15, 2026, the City Council voted 49 to 0 for an ordinance authorizing up to $4.56 billion in O’Hare senior lien revenue bonds for airport capital projects, including Terminal Area Plan work, and refinancing.
• On October 1, 2026, the city issued the Concourse E caisson permit.

The price tags have moved with the schedule. The city’s 2025 groundbreaking release called the overall effort an $8.2 billion Terminal Area Plan launched in 2018, and the city now uses $8.8 billion for ORDNext. A February 2026 bond rating release from KBRA put the ORDNext terminal program at $11.9 billion in escalated dollars, meaning projected costs through completion with inflation built in. McMurray told WTTW in July that the airlines are paying for the work.

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