I'd meant to post this right after the FFG event, when cova and I heard this from United's IAD manager Omar. But I got distracted and assumed somebody else would write it up, then was out of town for a few days, blah blah blah... anyway, the new concept for a Polaris Lounge at Dulles is to build it outside of the envelope of the C concourse by gate C18, with a baggage-sorting facility on the ground level to ease bag transfers from connecting international arrivals. This way, UA would both fix an operational hangup (Omar said the current setup involves a lot of moving luggage by hand) and shoehorn in a PL without removing an existing lounge or intruding into concourse space that's already maxed out. And he said they aim to get that done by sometime next year.

As you can see in the screengrab from the United app, this space is between the Aerotrain connector and a gate that only seems to be used for regional jets, so it looks like you could build out something reasonably large there if you also evicted one of the retail tenants on either side of the restrooms. But large enough to accommodate the evening TATL bank? I'm going to have to wait to see these plans laid out in a presentation posted in an MWAA board-meeting agenda.

(What about replacing C/D entirely? I had some enlightening if not quite heartening conversations about that too, but I'll save them for which I wrote up in the appropriate thread.)