When Piedmont Triad International Airport is finished with all its coming renovations and upgrades, the airport may be so nice and impressive that the president may pass an executive order renaming it Donald J. Trump International Airport.

The airport is preparing to borrow as much as $275 million for a major renovation and modernization of its terminal and concourses – bringing a project airport officials have been planning for years much closer to the construction stage.

The Guilford County Board of Commissioners is scheduled to hold a public hearing on the proposed airport revenue bonds at its Thursday, Sept. 3 meeting, which begins at 5:30 p.m. in the Old Guilford County Court House in downtown Greensboro.

Following the hearing, commissioners will be asked to approve the issuance of up to $275 million in bonds by the Piedmont Triad Airport Authority.

Despite the size of the proposed borrowing, the bonds will not be a debt of Guilford County and won’t require county tax money. According to the resolution before the commissioners, the bonds will be repaid solely from revenues and receipts of the Airport Authority and won’t count against the county’s debt limit or debt ratios.  Which is a good thing because the county has been taking on loads and loads of debt in recent years.

The bond proceeds would be used for renovation and modernization of the existing terminal and concourses, including the ticket lobby, Transportation Security Administration screening area, baggage claim and concessions areas, as well as other supporting improvements.

The money could also be used to pay interest on the bonds during the expected construction period, establish a debt-service reserve, pay for bond insurance and cover costs associated with issuing the bonds.

That means the entire $275 million shouldn’t be viewed as the construction price of the terminal renovation itself.

The resolution also states that the bond money would be used along with other available funds – but doesn’t specify the total expected cost of the project or the amount or source of those additional funds.

The scope of the borrowing provides the clearest indication yet of just how substantial the long-discussed terminal modernization could be. The current terminal opened in 1982, and PTI Executive Director Kevin Baker has been telling the Rhino Times for several years that many of its systems and design features have been showing their age.

In May 2024, the Airport Authority approved a contract with Lindsey Architecture PC for architectural and engineering design work on what it called the Terminal Modernization Project. The maximum estimated fees and expenses for that phase were about $13.4 million.

At the time, Baker told the Rhino Times that the ultimate construction cost was still unknown.

He said the point of the project wasn’t simply to make the terminal bigger.

“It’s meant to bring it into the 2020s,” Baker said at that time.

Baker also said the project would likely involve a major redesign and could even result in the removal of some gates as the airport attempts to create a more streamlined facility. Anyone who’s been to the airport in recent years has noticed a great deal of activity going on at the airport and at the aviation megasite around it.

“It’s about making the building more efficient,” Baker said, describing the eventual terminal as being “right-sized.”

He also pointed to aging windows, heating systems and other infrastructure in explaining why major work was needed.

“A lot of systems are failing,” Baker said.

The proposed $275 million bond issue comes as passenger traffic at PTI has finally climbed close to the levels the airport enjoyed before COVID-19 devastated air travel in 2020.

The airport handled 2,145,929 passengers in 2019, which remains the benchmark airport officials have frequently used when measuring the recovery from the pandemic. Passenger traffic plunged to only 754,752 in 2020.

The recovery since then has been substantial.

Passenger traffic increased to about 1.26 million in 2021, 1.57 million in 2022, 1.76 million in 2023 and 1.96 million in 2024.

Last year, Baker told the Rhino Times he believed 2025 could finally be the year PTI returned to the passenger levels it had seen before the pandemic.

“We were just shy of 2 million last year and, with growth this year and the addition of Breeze, we should be back to 2019 this year,” Baker said in July 2025.

The final numbers came close but didn’t quite get there: PTI handled about 2.03 million passengers in 2025 – roughly 117,000 fewer than in 2019. The airport nevertheless continued a recovery that’s brought passenger traffic back to within about 5 percent of its pre-pandemic high.

Through the first seven months of 2026, the airport has continued to handle substantial passenger volumes, although the monthly numbers have been mixed compared with the same months last year. July 2026 passenger traffic was down 4 percent from July 2025, while May and April were each up 1 percent.

The terminal modernization is also taking place during a period in which PTI has been experiencing extraordinary growth on the industrial side of the airport.

Over the last several years, airport property has attracted a series of major aviation and aerospace projects, including Boom Supersonic and JetZero, while Honda Aircraft and other established aviation companies continue to operate large facilities around the airport.

That growth has helped transform PTI into a whole lot more than a commercial passenger airport. Airport leaders now frequently promote the property as the center of North Carolina’s aerospace industry.

At the same time, the passenger terminal remains the part of the airport most visible to the traveling public – and airport officials have acknowledged that the more than 40-year-old building needs extensive modernization.

The county agenda documents identify the ticket lobby, TSA screening areas, baggage claim, concessions and concourses as targets for renovation, but they don’t provide detailed architectural plans, a construction schedule or a final project cost.

The documents provided to the commissioners also don’t say how much of the $275 million bond authorization is expected to be spent directly on construction rather than interest, reserves, insurance and other financing expenses.

The commissioners’ role Thursday is limited primarily to approving the bond issuance for federal tax-law purposes. The Airport Authority, rather than Guilford County government, will issue and repay the bonds.

The commissioners are expected to take action immediately after the public hearing.

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