As Delta Air Lines prepares to open a new Sky Club on Concourse B on Friday, it hosted more than 600 people at a party Tuesday evening in the space.
The nearly 25,000-square-foot upper-level club will replace two smaller Sky Clubs on Concourse B. It will be Delta's second-largest, behind a club at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, Delta CEO Ed Bastian and president Glen Hauenstein, chef Linton Hopkins, former Braves player Brian Jordan, business customers and local officials at the Tuesday event got an early look at the club, which features high ceilings, a large bar area, tall windows with views of planes taking off and landing, and plenty of seats with outlets.
Those two older clubs on Concourse B that are being replaced had been "really crowded, " said Sky Club managing director Claude Roussel. Delta is spending tens of millions of dollars on the new club, according to Roussel.
But Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport is also contributing to paying for the club, spending up to $24 million to reimburse Delta for the expansion of the Concourse B building with a fourth-level addition at the midpoint for the private club.
Reed said the airport is making the investment because "the look and feel of airports is changing rapidly. Increasingly Hartsfield-Jackson is going to have to meet a different standard, an international standard that has a different feel than a lot of our customers are used to."
He said the new Sky Club "has more of a feel of airports that you'd see... in Singapore or in Hong Kong or in Paris or in London."
Bastian said the new club is "really designed for the connecting traveler," calling the Concourse B centerpoint where the new club sits "one of the most trafficked intersections in aviation."
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