Crews at San Francisco International Airport raised the final beam on Cargo Building 626.1 on September 22, 2026, marking the structural-steel topping out of what is described as the West Coast's first multi-story air cargo facility. The milestone involved SFO's own team working alongside Clark Construction, with roughly 4,200 tons of structural steel now erected on the site.
According to San Francisco International Airport
, the achievement was shared via a retweet of Clark Construction's own announcement, which joked that while the final beam would not reach a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet, the moment still marked a major step for the project. Clark's crews also maneuvered massive box columns designed to support future elevated air cargo loads. The companies credited precise planning and collaboration with allowing the team to safely erect the steel, and said Clark workers coordinated with local businesses and residents throughout construction.
A Two-Story Warehouse With Attached Office Space
Project materials from Clark Construction describe Cargo Building 626.1 as a two-story, 230,000-square-foot cargo warehouse paired with an attached five-story leasable office building meant to serve both logistics operations and the people who work there. The scope of work includes sitework, demolition of existing structures, utility relocation, and installation of core material-handling technology, per the same project page. A separate design overview from SCB, which is partnering with Clark on the design-build effort at SFO's West Field Campus, describes the building as a next-generation, two-story cargo hub of approximately 270,000 square feet — a figure that does not match Clark's own 230,000-square-foot warehouse number or the roughly 305,000-square-foot figure that has also surfaced in Clark's project listings. The airport has not reconciled those differing size estimates.
The design, as outlined by SCB, creates separate zones for pedestrian and truck traffic specifically to improve visibility and cut down on potential conflict points on a busy airfield. SCB also notes that the building stacks two floors of cargo operations directly on top of each other, a choice driven by how little usable land remains at SFO for new development. That stacking strategy is also central to why the project is being called the West Coast's first facility of its kind, since multi-story cargo terminals have historically been rare among U.S. airports.
Part Of A Larger, Pricier Cargo Build-Out
Cargo Building 626.1 is one piece of a broader cargo expansion at SFO. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the airport is constructing three new cargo facilities altogether, at a combined cost of $539 million, with the trio described as totaling 310,000 square feet and 27 loading docks — another figure that does not line up cleanly with the individual building sizes cited elsewhere. The newspaper also reports that the project team includes Clark Construction, Solomon Cordwell Buenz, HPA Architecture, and Cervantes Design Associates, and that the new terminal will be SFO's first cargo bay to use automated lift technology.
The Chronicle's reporting ties the cargo push to SFO's broader ambitions, noting the buildout is meant to help the airport attract business from logistics giants such as Amazon and UPS. The Chronicle reports a Spring 2028 opening for the cargo terminal facilities, though its timeline applies to the broader group of projects rather than a confirmed completion date specifically for Building 626.1.
Following A National Shift Toward Vertical Warehouses
SFO's approach mirrors a pattern playing out at land-constrained airports and logistics hubs nationwide. The San Francisco Business Times has reported that air cargo facilities are increasingly being built vertically rather than horizontally, with high-bay terminals supporting automated racking systems more than 90 feet tall, and that modern cargo buildings are now designed around automation, data visibility and sustainability rather than sheer size. The outlet also notes that Skanska is separately building a new air cargo facility and Ground Service Equipment maintenance building at SFO, a 120,000-square-foot project also expected to wrap up in 2028.
At SFO, SCB describes Cargo Building 626.1 as a multi-story facility on a land-constrained site.
For now, the topping-out of Cargo Building 626.1 marks a visible step in a project that is still years from opening. SFO and Clark Construction have not detailed what comes next in the construction timeline beyond the steel framework now standing at the site.
