Unpacked: Is This America’s Niftiest Airport?

Cordial staff and cool ice cream are among the draws at Portland International.

Anthony Grant/The New York Sun
A British Airways Boeing 777 is seen from the United Lounge at PDX Airport. Anthony Grant/The New York Sun

In case you hadn’t noticed, New York’s oft-maligned LaGuardia Airport has been getting some serious facelift action of late. An $8 billion expansion and redesign of Terminal B has earned it the distinction of being named the world’s best new airport terminal. Delta’s Terminal C at LGA is looking pretty fly these days, too. 

Like many airports nowadays, there is also a conscious effort to include new works of art in the ground experience. Despite the welcome makeovers, no one could accuse a New York-area airport of being particularly friendly. Other hubs do warm and fuzzy far better.

The ones that do tend to be in cooler climes, with a case in point being Portland International Airport. True, it is not nearly as international as Seattle to the north or San Francisco to the south, but it serves Tokyo and Seoul, and I recently found it to be a convenient West Coast point of departure to Britain thanks to a relatively new British Airways flight linking Portland with London’s Heathrow Airport. 

Overall, though, the relative lack of hurry and fray imparts to PDX a certain small-town charm that cannot be denied. 

Ahead of that northerly route I was able to sample not one but two ice creams that are unique to the state of Oregon, which is significant because not only do I like to support local business but I also am an aficionado of fine American ice cream, which I will argue anytime, anywhere is the best in the world — even better than Italy’s vaunted but overrated gelato (too creamy, not enough flavor). 

Tillamook Market at Concourse E of PDX Airport. Anthony Grant/The New York Sun

The first is from Tillamook Market, in the recently expanded Concourse E. Yes, they have food items that incorporate some of the renowned dairy’s cheddar cheese, but it is the homemade ice cream in flavors such as Udderly Chocolate and Mint Chocolate Chip that refresh and inspire the way no cheeseburger ever could. 

The good thing about ice cream, unlike wine, is that you can just keep consuming it with no risk of courting the kind of intoxication that could get you thrown off a plane.

So I was even more intrigued by what I found at Concourse D, inside a fragrant, nifty shop called Tender Loving Empire. I loved this store, because it is everything that a Hudson News (which by the way is no longer American-owned) is not: in a word, original. Neatly arranged in a small glass-paned cooler against one wall were little stacks of Nico’s Ice Cream, which I had never heard of and which is kind of irresistible

Nico Vergara sources fresh marionberries, raspberries, strawberries, and blueberries from Oregon’s Willamette Valley to make his “real fruit ice cream,” and every flavor is a winner. Oregon produces some of the best berries in America, and how Mr. Vergara converts them into something as deliciously frosty as this is enough to make you forget that you are in an airport. 

So does perusing the interesting wares of the boutique, where I also spotted a range of coasters with graphic designs that recalled bright Pacific Coast sunsets, blended catnip perfect for the most jaded feline, and some groovy new American music.

Much as I wanted to explore other retail options, other muses stepped in to offer their distractions. For example, some guy was playing piano in the middle of Concourse D. One of my pet peeves is piped-in sound, which is almost never the proper music for airports. The volunteer musicians of PDX bring their own brand of calm to the airport. Instead of rushing to my gate, I paused — if being in a hurry is the sine qua non of passage through a New York airport, at Portland it is more in keeping with the spirit of the place to take one’s time. 

Deb Stoner, photographic still life from ‘A Year in the Willamette Valley.’ Via PDXArt/Port of Portland

As I meandered around the corridor connecting concourses D and E, pausing every so often to observe the planes coming in, I stopped in front of what looked like a series of floral paintings by Dutch artist Jan van Huysum. As it turns out, they were a series of vivid still-life photographs by artist Deb Stoner, taken in the Willamette Valley. These beautiful creations provided a colorful counterpoint to Portland’s famous gray skies. Another worthy installation was “Open Entanglement,” six large-scale hand-crocheted portraits by the Portland-based artist Jo Hamilton. 

As arresting as much of this in-airport art is, too much dithering in any airport can bring on jet lag even before you take off. That said, I am usually averse to waiting in airline lounges — at the end of the day, the point of an airport is to get in and get out as quickly as possible. However, I realized that because of Star Alliance I could access the United Airlines lounge. 

I had heard that Delta’s lounge at PDX is the one to beat, but United’s made for a nice place to sit down for a little while. No ice cream, but there was some passable food and more importantly a limitless supply of Illy Italian coffee. The chocolate chip cookies were a little sad — come on, United, you can do better — but the wide views of the tarmac had a certain calming effect. 

The lounge’s welcome agent seemed genuinely excited when the British Airways Boeing 777 landed and taxied down the runway, which all could see from the floor-to-ceiling windows. The world’s largest twin-jet aircraft is still a pretty proud bird, and personally I take a certain amount of pride in the Pacific Northwest’s contribution to America’s aviation industry. Worth mentioning that PDX is a joint civil-military airport.

Portland has been going through a rough patch recently, but judging by the niftiness and efficiency of the flagship airport, I have a hunch that Portlanders will get their city cleaned up before too long.

Unpacked is a periodic travel column from Mr. Grant in which he highlights or otherwise deconstructs a destination or experience of potential interest to today’s curious traveler.


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