SJC Gates 31-36 (Interim Gates Facility)
Last night on my flight into SJC I heard the purser announce, "We'll be landing at Gate 33." That's got to be a mistake, I thought to myself. SJC doesn't have that many gates. I was wrong! There's a new wing connected to Terminal B, with gates 31-36. A quick news search shows that it opened less than 2 months ago.
SJC calls this new wing the Interim Gates Facility. Inside it's very low-rent, with simple, cracker-box construction and a minimum of modern creature comforts inside. It reminds me of schools I attended that were built hastily in the population boom years of the 1950s-60s. Many of those were originally considered temporary; quickly thrown up basic, cinder block buildings intended just to meet the space crunch until nicer facilities could be designed and built. Well, decades later those schools were still there, the "temporary" having become permanent as political will to budget for anything nicer evaporated. We'll see if this "Interim" facility also remains years from now....