(Bloomberg) -- More than three years in the making, American Express Co.’s brand-new Centurion Lounge at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) will open to the public on July 17. Bloomberg previewed the almost 12,000-square-foot lounge space in an invitation-only media event on Tuesday.
Located in Terminal 2, just past the south security checkpoint, it’s the first Amex Centurion Lounge to open in the DC metro area and the first credit card lounge at the airport. DCA, a fast-growing hub that serves domestic as well as a small number of international destinations such as Canada, the Caribbean and Bermuda, is frequented mostly by business travelers.
And that’s exactly whom this new location aims to serve—a largely corporate clientele on the go, who will recognize many of the lounge’s tried-and-true design features and amenities. Access will be limited to Amex Platinum, Business Platinum, Amex Centurion, Delta SkyMiles Reserve American Express and Delta SkyMiles Reserve Business American Express cardholders. Opening hours will run from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Sunday through Friday and 5 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturday.
“As our premium card member base continues to grow exponentially, so too has our investment in lounges,” says Audrey Hendley, president at American Express Travel. “We’ve had our eye on DCA for a long time.”
Amex Centurion’s newest location joins an increasingly competitive lounge ecosystem. At DCA, on-site competitors include the redesigned American Airlines Admirals Club in Terminal 2, near Gates C, D and E, which reopened after its striking renovation in late 2022; the Delta Sky Club, which is visible across from the Centurion Lounge as you enter the seating area; and the United Club, also inside Terminal 2.
Capital One’s future “Capital One Landing” dining concept, developed in partnership with the José Andres Group, is currently in the works; Capital One Financial Corp. declined to share a target opening date.
For Jack Potter, chief executive officer of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, the lounge is a welcome addition for travelers amid a big push for amenities at DCA, as the metro area’s most accessible airport continues to redesign its spaces. An initial, multiyear $1 billion renovation that began in 2017 was completed in 2021, and a next phase is underway to enhance Terminal 2 and other areas of the airport, representing a total of $2.39 billion in capital construction investments. The lounge also points to the growing importance of this East Coast hub—a onetime “sleepy airport” that was originally designed for 17 million passengers a year, Potter says, but received 25.5 million in 2023.
“Our job is to bring as many amenities as possible to all of our passengers, not just the American Express folks,” adds Potter. “We are reimagining all of our spaces—new restrooms, new amenities, new seating, more concessions throughout the airport—and the [lounge] is a very important part of that effort.”
A Tried-and-True Design
Amex’s Centurion Lounge design and amenities follow a formula that’s been successful for the company elsewhere. The space is airy with high ceilings—it used to be an outdoor terrace but got glassed in during its redevelopment—along with views of the runway. (Squint and you’ll see the Potomac River in the distance.)
The artwork celebrates local talent including clay and mixed-media artist Lori Katz, as well as pop impressionist painter Maggie O’Neill, with scattered nods to local history—a colorful rendering of the Capitol, a pair of blue and brown ceramic tiles. Some of that’s easier to miss than the requisite built-in bookshelves crammed with vintage luggage and miniature propellors that Amex has copy-and-pasted through so many of these lounge spaces. Similarly, the ample seating areas seem to pull the same furniture design from previous Centurion lounges; they include reading nooks, a private conference room, a soundproof phone room and dedicated workspaces such as a shared coworking table and semiprivate group seating areas.
The space is eye-catching upon arrival, and perhaps unique to this location: Visitors enter via a staircase that floats in front of a living green wall. On the second floor, past a front desk, the vibe shifts to earthy browns and deep purple tones. The main design element is a giant ceiling sculpture over the central dining space; its 260 lanterns are meant to reference the markers that delineated DC’s boundaries when the city was founded in 1791.
Tables are limited, but that’s the point—there are plenty of opportunities to disperse from the buffet once you’ve served yourself. Two-seater nooks line the hallway on one side of the lounge, leading you toward the back of the space.
Small Doses of Innovation
One thing that’s relatively novel about the DCA location is a lounge-within-the-lounge just for Centurion members, who get access to their own coffee and snack station. It’s quite possibly the most relaxing, albeit smaller, part of the space. The area is cordoned off and fully within view of other guests—but its tall, dark blue chairs offer an added sense of privacy.
Although the lounge has little in the way of wellness offerings, these are also restricted to select guests. A single shower suite can be reserved in 15- by all visitors, or 30-minute increments if you hold a Centurion card. That makes the DCA location one of the first—and likely not last—Amex lounges to create a sort of “club level” that enforces a class hierarchy. (While these areas are little discussed, they do exist at a few other Amex lounges.)
But the thing we found most exciting about this lounge was the only feature that makes DCA’s Centurion the first of its kind: A food program designed by not one but three James Beard award-winning chefs of diverse backgrounds. On the lineup are Latina Michelle Bernstein (of Café La Trova and La Cañita in Miami), Israeli Michael Solomonov (of Philadelphia’s iconic restaurants Zahav and Dizengoff), and Hawaiian Ravi Kapur (of multi-award-winning Liholiho Yacht Club in San Francisco).
At the media preview, choices included creamy polenta, a spiced salmon with pomegranate barbecue sauce and tamari honey-glazed tofu and pineapple. The execution so far, reduced to warming trays on a buffet, may not be what you’d expect from the chefs’ restaurants. With Centurion looking to stay ahead of its rivals, that may not be good enough. Capital One’s José Andres-helmed offerings are, after all, soon to come at DCA, and Capital One’s culinary concepts are already proving popular at the bank’s recently opened Dulles International Airport location.
It’s all a reminder that this is the 29th Centurion opening since Amex kicked off its lounge network 10 years ago—at a time when the competitors were slim to none. Copy and pasting may cut it at small-for-now DCA, though it may not be enough when the company branches out to Newark Liberty International Airport in 2025 and at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport in 2026.
(Updates with airport investment figures in seventh graf, adds additional quote from Potter. Corrects detail about shower access.)
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