Drive south on Roosevelt Boulevard past the airport this month and you'll see two different stories happening on the same 48,000 square feet of concrete. On the east side, a new baggage carousel is running smoothly, curbside pickup is fast, and a handful of restaurants that didn't exist eighteen months ago are doing steady business. On the west side, the same building is still wrapped in fencing, with a second carousel under construction and a completion date that keeps sliding a season at a time. Both halves belong to the same $130 million project. Only one of them is done.
That split matters if you live in New Town, because South Roosevelt Boulevard is the road you take to get anywhere off this stretch of the island, and the airport sitting at 3491 South Roosevelt has been a construction zone for most of the past four years. The project is not yet complete, so it's useful to track which parts are finished and which remain under construction.
Two milestones, one year apart
Concourse A, the airport's new terminal with eight glass jet bridges, opened to travelers on April 14, 2025. The inaugural flight out was Delta 1072 to Atlanta, and for the first time in the airport's history, passengers boarded without walking across open tarmac.
A year later, almost to the day, the airport reopened its east-end baggage claim, calling it Carousel A. The date was April 14, 2026. Airport Executive Director Richard Strickland made the timing explicit in the airport's own release, noting that the opening of Carousel A landed on the one-year anniversary of Concourse A, with both improvements now reshaping how passengers move from plane to curb.
For residents following the project, the useful next step is to track each remaining phase rather than rely on a single completion announcement.
What's actually usable right now
If you haven't been through the terminal recently, here's what's changed since Concourse A first opened:
- Eight air-conditioned glass jet bridges have replaced the old outdoor tarmac walk to the plane, each one manufactured by ThyssenKrupp at roughly $1 million apiece.
- The east-end baggage claim, Carousel A, opened this past April in the space where the old ground-level departures area used to sit.
- A handful of new concessions have opened inside the terminal, including a Chili's, a spot called Southern Point Bar, and Farm 2 Air Market.
- The First Call Beach Bar sits at baggage claim, which means it's on the landside of security. You don't need a boarding pass to grab a drink there while you wait for a flight to land or a bag to come around the carousel.
That last detail is the one worth knowing if you live nearby. Most of the new dining sits past the checkpoint, built for travelers with tickets. The First Call Beach Bar is the one place in this round of construction that's actually open to a New Town resident who just wants to pick up a visiting relative and grab a drink without printing a boarding pass first.
What's still torn up
The west-end baggage claim, which the airport is calling Carousel B, is under construction through the fall. That's the other half of the terminal, the side still behind fencing when you drive past. The broader Phase 2 scope, including a four-lane TSA checkpoint and an expanded arrivals hall, was originally pegged for completion by summer 2026. Summer has come and gone. As of this month, the west side of the building is still a job site.
None of that is a criticism of how the work is being managed. Airport construction on an island with one runway and no room to expand outward is slower by nature, and the project has stayed within budget despite delays along the way. But if you've been telling neighbors "it's supposed to be done by now," the honest update is that half of it is, and the other half is booked through fall at the earliest, with a full close-out date that hasn't been reconfirmed since the summer target passed.
The traffic claim worth watching, not assuming
Strickland has said publicly that pulling more visitors onto flights into EYW, rather than cars down the Overseas Highway, should mean fewer people on the roadway overall. It's a reasonable theory. More people flying in and out of a two-mile stretch instead of driving the length of the Keys could ease the pinch points that residents feel every time Roosevelt Boulevard backs up during a holiday weekend.
But passenger volume is rising at the same time, not staying flat while more people switch from car to plane. More than 1.5 million passengers moved through the airport in 2024, and that number keeps climbing. So the honest way to think about the congestion claim is that it's a bet on relative traffic, not a promise that Roosevelt Boulevard gets quieter in absolute terms. If the airport keeps growing passenger counts while road volume grows too, the net effect on your commute could be a wash. Worth watching over the next year or two before treating it as settled.
The small stuff that says a lot
One detail buried in the construction news is worth mentioning because it says something about how this project has been handled. The airport's "New Friends" sculpture, a piece that had been a fixture in the old terminal, is being reinstalled in a climate-controlled space as part of the rebuild rather than quietly retired. It's a small thing, but it's the kind of small thing that tells you the people running this project have been thinking about continuity, not just square footage. For a neighborhood that's watched two years of fencing, dust, and rerouted parking, that continuity is part of what makes the disruption feel temporary instead of permanent.
Living next to a project unfolding in phases
If there's one thing this year has clarified, it's that this airport rebuild is not going to arrive all at once. The work is happening in stages, with some parts open and others still under construction. For local residents, that means the practical move is to track the specific carousel, checkpoint, or concourse phase you actually care about, rather than waiting for a single day when someone declares the whole thing finished. Carousel B and the four-lane TSA checkpoint are the two pieces still worth watching this fall. Everything on the east side of the building, jet bridges included, is already part of daily life here.
New Town has always been the part of the island built around convenience: the airport, Smathers Beach, the shopping along North Roosevelt. Watching this stretch of road change is, in its own way, a very Key West kind of story: a familiar part of daily life adapting around a major project.
If you're thinking about what a home near this corridor looks like once the whole project wraps, or want a neighbor's read on how Key West has weathered the last two years of construction, The Spottswood Team knows this stretch of the island as well as anyone. Get in touch when you're ready to talk.
