Open house scheduled for Saturday at McCarran’s $2.4 billion Terminal 3

Visitors to McCarran International Airport can get a glimpse of the future on Saturday, when a community open house will be staged for the new Terminal 3.

Self-guided tours and food samples from Terminal 3’s concessionaires are scheduled for the event, which runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Also included will be drawings for airline tickets, iPads and flat-screen televisions.

The event is free — including parking at the eight-level, 5,954-space parking garage attached to the 14-gate terminal’s north side.

T3 will open for airline traffic on June 27, five years to the month after groundbreaking at the site, with the entire contingent of 16 international carriers serving McCarran beginning operations. Two of those carriers — Dutch airline ArkeFly and Panama-based Copa — don’t have flights to McCarran yet. ArkeFly begins seasonal nonstop service between Amsterdam and Las Vegas on Thursday, while Copa will be T3’s first new arrival with nonstop routes to and from Panama City beginning the day the terminal opens.

Copa — an acronym for Compañía Panameña de Aviación — will fly the route four times a week, with arrivals Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays and departures Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Mondays.

International carriers currently are housed at Terminal 2, just north of the existing main terminal. Airport officials have said Terminal 2 would be demolished and the land used for future airport development.

The open house will be the second public event for the $2.4 billion facility, located off Russell Road just east of McCarran’s main terminal.

The public got a look at the terminal’s 8-mile roadway system on Saturday with a charitable fun run that included 5- and 10-kilometer races and a 1-mile walk. About 900 people participated in that event.

McCarran officials have scheduled three other celebrations leading up to opening day, two of them by invitation only.

The Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce is hosting a T3 mixer on June 13, bringing together members of the Asian, Urban, Latin, Henderson, Boulder City, Mesquite and North Las Vegas chambers. The event also serves as a reception for eight artists responsible for 12 public art pieces that will adorn the concourse.

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority will host a June 27 event for local and visiting business and community leaders. The chamber and LVCVA events are on an invitation basis.

Other public gatherings are planned June 27 and 28 to mark the first arrivals of each of the international carriers, which will have check-in counters and will arrive and depart from the gates on the east end of the half-mile-long building.

The seven gates east of the midpoint of the building are for international arrivals and departures and have halls and corridors that will lead arriving passengers to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility on the ground floor. McCarran officials say there’s enough room in the corridors and arrivals hall to accommodate six fully loaded Boeing 747s.

An eighth gate just to the west of the midpoint has the flexibility to accommodate domestic or international passengers on days when there are multiple international arrivals at one time. The gates in T3 are numbered E1 through E15 — with no gate E13, as the superstitious will be relieved to know.

While the 16 international carriers will take up residency in T3 at the end of the month, seven domestic airlines will make the concourse their home by the end of the summer. McCarran is staggering move-in dates in three phases.

After the international carriers are in place, five airlines — Alaska, Frontier, JetBlue, Sun Country and Virgin America — will move in beginning July 31. Those airlines, all located in the main terminal, will use gates E8-E15.

Two other domestic carriers — United and Hawaiian — will use T3 for ticketing and baggage claim but will operate from the D gates. United now uses the main terminal and Hawaiian is at Terminal 2. United and Hawaiian passengers will check in and pass through security checkpoints at T3, then board an underground tram running between T3 and the D gates.

The new terminal will have a variety of dining and fast-food options as well as a collection of shopping venues.

Four restaurants will include Dewar’s Clubhouse Bar & Grill, with American bar and grill fare and a full bar highlighting Dewar’s scotch; La Tapenade Mediterranean Café, featuring international dishes with chutneys, Tzatziki sauces and hummus on daily-made flatbreads; The Village Pub, a family-owned restaurant featuring a variety of appetizers, sandwiches, soups, salads and handcrafted beers brewed in Las Vegas; and Vegas ChopHouse, a traditional steakhouse with meats, seafood, salads and side dishes.

Fast-food options at T3 will include Burger King, Carl’s Jr. and Pei Wei Asian Diner, a subsidiary of P.F. Chang’s. Two familiar coffee vendors — Starbucks and the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf — will have T3 outlets.

Retail outlets will include such familiar names as Hudson News and Gifts, Nuance Duty Free, Vegas Special Tees, Welcome to Las Vegas, World of Sports and XpresSpa. California-based Apricot Lane Boutique will open its first Nevada store at T3.

McCarran officials are expecting the public art at T3 will dazzle visitors. Pieces by artists Ed Carpenter, Barbara and Larry Domsky, Talley Fisher, Peter Lik, Terry Ritter, Stu Schechter and Robert Silvers are displayed throughout the terminal. Silvers’ work continues a McCarran tradition of using local children’s art in the building. Nearly 33,000 submissions of art depicting planes, trains and automobiles from elementary, middle and high school students from across Clark County were used to graphically depict photomosaics of 10 images. Those 10 images are presented on glass panels mounted in the T3 tram station.

Although T3 is the state’s largest public works project, it isn’t getting much publicity outside the state yet. But that’s all right, said aviation expert Mike Boyd of Evergreen, Colo.-based Boyd Group International.

“I think it shows that the airport is staying way ahead of the curve,” Boyd said of new terminal. “Those additional gates are going to be used and they are going to accommodate growth when it comes.”

Boyd said it was insightful for planners to prepare for international lift and larger aircraft that can be handled by the new gates.

“In seven or eight years, people probably will be asking why they didn’t plan for more gates,” he said. “I’d rather be stuck with eight extra gates than deal with the problem of being short by eight.”

Boyd said the average passenger wouldn’t pay much attention to whether there was a new terminal.

“All people around the country care about is whether they can get in and out of Las Vegas,” he said. “Most of them won’t care what the airport looks like.”