It won’t exactly be the eighth wonder of the world, but it will be big — like, Guinness World Records big.
That’s what President Donald Trump promised last week when he unveiled plans to build a parking garage with space for 32,000 cars as part of his sweeping $22.5 billion renovation of Dulles International Airport.
“We’re building a massive … parking garage that will be right next to the terminal,” he said as he sat in front of a model of the new airport splayed across the top of the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. “It’ll be the largest garage in the world. Thirty-two thousand is big. It will be beautiful.”
The new parking deck got less attention than Trump’s announcement that the long-maligned mobile lounges that have shuttled passengers around Dulles since it opened in 1962 will be retired. But the detail does speak to many travelers’ annoyances with parking at Dulles, most of which is in satellite lots that require a shuttle to get to and from the main terminal.
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Still, the big, beautiful deck-to-be stands as one of the Dulles renovation’s most surprising elements, since it would increase the airport’s parking capacity beyond what existing plans say is necessary, would add significant construction and airport operation challenges and would likely tower over the iconic terminal designed by Finnish architect Eero Saarinen.
Dulles currently has just over 22,000 parking spots for travelers, half of them in the distant economy lots. (This reporter almost lost track of their car in one of those lots.) While parking capacity fluctuates during the year (and can be viewed on a daily basis here), the Dulles Master Plan finalized by the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority in July 2025 predicted that the existing number of parking spots available at the airport would suffice until at least 2045.
The plan noted that parking demand can fluctuate based on a number of factors, including “rises in gasoline prices could result in the reduced use of private vehicles.” (Gas prices have risen in the U.S. due in part to the ongoing conflict in Iran.) Still, the authority has already started planning to increase capacity to more than 28,600 spots, most of which would come through the construction of a new parking deck in front of the main terminal building where a surface lot now exists. That three-story deck — to be built between 2031 and 2034 — would fit 6,400 cars.
During his presentation, Trump seemed to be unaware of those plans. “We have an empty site right directly across the street that nobody wanted to tinker with, which is crazy,” he said.
His proposed parking deck — which would go in that same location — would accommodate five times as many cars. But few details exist: The deck wasn’t included in any of the renderings of the new airport that were put out by MWAA and the U.S. Department of Transportation (in fact, the main rendering kept the existing surface lot), and neither agency responded to specific questions about it from NOTUS.
The proposal has drawn skeptical reactions from some parking experts, including Bill Boyle, who owns a parking company in D.C. and runs the Washington Parking Association, a trade group.
“I looked up the biggest terminal garages in the U.S.,” he told NOTUS. “One is in Seattle and has 13,000 spots, and the other is in Detroit and has 11,500. This would be two-and-half times bigger than those two. That creates all kinds of issues with throughput of vehicles, wayfinding, ventilation and fire safety. There’s no precedent for building a parking deck this big.”
The world’s biggest parking lot is outside the West Edmonston Mall in Canada; it fits 20,000 cars in surface lots.
Without specifics, it’s impossible to know the actual physical scale of the proposed parking deck. But if MWAA kept to Trump’s pledge that most of it would be above-ground — “People don’t like down underneath,” he said — it could reach up to 15 stories. That would make the parking deck taller than the main terminal, which tops out at 65 feet.
It would also likely block most views of the historic terminal itself for passengers arriving by Metro or car, a concern that MWAA was already aware of with its plan for a three-story parking deck in front of the terminal. The master plan says it would address viewshed concerns by raising Saarinen Circle — a traffic circle in front of the terminal — “approximately 11 to 15 feet” above where it is now.
Boyle also said that building a record-breaking parking deck while the airport remains in operation would be challenging. “When you build it you’ll have to have cranes, materials and hauling routes,” he said. “You’re building an enormous garage in a constrained space and doing it while everything is functioning around it, and I don’t see anyone addressing that problem.”
It’s also unclear what such a parking deck would cost. A February 2026 report from the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies estimated that each above-ground spot in a parking deck in and around Washington, D.C. can cost $29,000 to build. While that’s below the national average of $52,000, it would also mean that Trump’s proposed 32,000 parking spots could cost more than $900 million. (And that price tag would go up if any levels were underground; the UCLA report says that underground spots can cost $40,000 a piece to construct.)
Since November 2022, there has been an alternative for getting to and from Dulles: Metro. The Silver Line station Dulles sees anywhere from 1,300 to 4,300 entries per day, depending on the time of year.
“Why should we build the world’s largest parking garage in the world on an airport we just invested $6B to connect to Metro?” tweeted Virginia Democratic Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell.
But Trump has touted the proximity and convenience of his new parking deck. “People will literally be able to park their car and walk 15 yards and be in the terminal,” he said.
“It will be a parking garage the likes of which no one has even seen before!” offered one commenter on Reddit, in what could be seen as either a high compliment or a sarcastic criticism.
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