Seattle Delays Approval Chase Sapphire Lounge, Commissioner Complains It Was Leaked To Reddit

The Port of Seattle has delayed approval for a 16,000-square-foot Chase Sapphire Lounge until October 27 after commissioners questioned whether premium cardmembers should receive dedicated airport space, how that fits the Port’s “mission of equitable development,” and whether travelers eating inside the lounge would spend less at other airport businesses. Then, after voting 3-0 to postpone the lease, the presiding commissioner demanded an investigation into how details from the Port’s public agenda, memo and presentation had gotten out. The project was “on Reddit.” Chase, he says, might owe them an apology. https://viewfromthewing.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/port-of-seattle-chase-lounge-discussion.mp4 I broke the news of the Seattle lounge on Sunday, two days before the vote. My report linked directly to the public Port materials and said commissioners “are being asked to authorize” the lease on September 22. I did treat approval as a fait accompli. Staff had run a competitive process, selected AD Partnership/Airport Dimensions to operate the Chase lounge, negotiated the economics and placed an authorization recommendation before the commission. Votes like this are normally formalities. But I also clearly wrote that approval was still pending. I didn’t expect a commissioner to arrive at the meeting asking what Chase Sapphire was. The $135 Million Lounge Deal The project is a complicated game of airport lounge musical chairs. United is moving its club from Concourse A to Concourse B, near its new gates. Its new two-story lounge expanding the original American Express Centurion Lounge space. Once United leaves its current 6,096-square-foot club near gate A9, the Priority Pass-accessible Club at SEA on A is supposed to move into that space. Chase, working with The Club’s sister company Airport Dimensions, would take The Club’s current location and the adjacent expansion space beside the Delta One lounge at the end of Concourse A. The lease would run 15 years. Rent starts at $500 per square foot, or about $7.9 million per year, with 10% increases in years six and eleven. The Port projects $135.6 million in rent over the lease term. Chase would invest $70 million between the initial build-out and a midterm refurbishment. The Port would make no additional investment and projects a four-year payback on costs already sunk into the space. The commission had previously approved another $24.36 million to finish this as an expanded Port-controlled common-use lounge. Staff decided the bank lounge produced much more revenue without that additional capital spending. The Club at SEA would still exist in Concourse A, though the move into United’s old space could leave a temporary gap in common-use lounge service. This was all laid out in the commission agenda memorandum and staff presentation. A Commissioner Wants To Know What Chase Sapphire Is Commissioner Toshiko Hasegawa began with a basic question. What is Chase Sapphire? What services do they provide? Staff replied, “It’s a credit card company.” In fact, Chase is a bank, Sapphire is a family of Chase credit cards, and this lounge would principally serve Chase Sapphire Reserve personal and business cardmembers, along with J.P. Morgan Reserve and Ritz-Carlton cardmembers. Those customers generally receive admission with two guests. Hasegawa kept asking who carries the card, what “level of credit” someone needs to get it, how many people it would serve and why the airport would create space for them. What are we doing and why are we carving out a specific space for one subset of people? I want to know how it aligns with our goals, our mission of equitable development. Hasegawa hadn’t done basic due diligence needed for the discussion. He could have read the meeting materials in advance and Googled the term. Staff explained that the Chase concept would be “very similar” to the American Express Centurion Lounge already operating in Seattle’s Central Terminal, and that the Port had solicited competing lounge proposals rather than handing space to Chase. If reserving airport space for premium cardmembers conflicts with the Port’s equity goals, why is the existing American Express lounge fine? What about Delta’s Sky Clubs, the Alaska Lounges and the new United Club? A Chase lounge is less exclusive than the Delta One lounge, and not tied to flying a particular airline. They sell day pass access as well And the public benefit case in the staff memo lays out $7.9 million a year in rent, more lounge capacity and a replacement location for The Club at SEA. It makes more funds available for the Commission to pursue other projects, or lowers airport costs which can attract more air service. Surely the Commission members should read the background information provided before showing up to the hearing. The Vote Was Postponed Over Several Concerns Commissioner Hamdi Mohamed worried that customers inside the Chase lounge would be eating and drinking there rather than spending money in the terminal. When they’re congregating at a lounge, those other businesses may be impacted. So I would like to better understand the indirect impacts that could happen potentially from moving this forward today. Airports have historically worried that lounges reduce concession sales, of which the airport receives a share. It’s one reason banks now pay extraordinary rents for lounge space. These lounges also attract more passengers who choose to connect through the airport over others (and fly the airport’s home carriers as a result, filling planes and reinforcing flight options available non-stop for locals). Mohamed asked to delay the vote for answers and because two commissioners weren’t present. They had a quorum but felt the full commission should vote. After some parliamentary fumbling, the three commissioners in attendance voted unanimously to postpone the item until October 27. That all happened before anyone complained about my article. The story didn’t derail the vote. The equity, access and concession-impact questions did. “It’s On Reddit” After the postponement, Commission Vice President Sam Cho demanded to know how anyone had learned about the project before the commission approved it. How did the news of this lounge get out before we approved it? … This news went out, like, three days ago before any of us got a chance to vote on it. Go Google it. When staff tried to respond, Cho declared that the project had been leaked. I don’t know who leaked it. I want to believe it wasn’t our people, but I certainly don’t appreciate things like this getting out ahead of us. So please find out what happened. And if Chase Sapphire leaked it, they’re going to have to come and apologize because that’s not acceptable. The entire industry knows about this. It’s on Reddit. My report could be found r/Seattle, r/ChaseSapphire and r/CreditCards. Because the project appears in public government documents. Posted to their website. The Port published a public meeting agenda, a three-page memo spelling out the selected operator and lease economics, and a 14-page presentation naming Chase and showing six renderings. Staff gently pointed out that the agenda had been made public the previous week. Mohamed said that wasn’t the point. She objected to the assumption that an item on the agenda would be approved without commissioners performing due diligence. It’s one thing for the agenda to go out there, but to assume that commissioners are blindly going to vote for an item is pretty problematic to us. Except the meeting itself showed why people might think the vote was normally a formality. A commissioner arrived asking what Chase Sapphire even was. Staff couldn’t explain which cardmembers would get in. This wasn’t an obscure lease provision buried in an exhibit and it was nearly half an hour of their meeting. Mohamed underscores the point: [I]f people assumed that an item on our agenda would be approved—and that the commission wouldn’t do its due diligence—they should reconsider that assumption. The hearing itself, I think, underscores why people might think the commission doesn’t “do its due diligence.” I reported on what the Port has selected, negotiated and recommended. I said authorization was pending. I also expected approval because that is how these staff-negotiated lease votes generally go. I was ultimately wrong about the timing of approval, since they didn’t sign off on it this week and deferred it to next month. The commission now has until October 27 to learn what Chase Sapphire is, decide whether a premium credit card lounge satisfies its equity goals, the way they beleived that past approvals for a Centurion lounge, Centurion lounge expansion and new space for the Centurion lounge were, and estimate how many airport sandwiches it might displace and consider the 15-year lease again. Topics on this page