Last month I wrote about American’s renovation plans for their Miami Admirals Club by gate D15. This is the club across from the airport’s new American Express Centurion lounge.

They are taking over some space next door to the lounge that had been offices in order to expand the lounge. They eventually plan to get rid of the ‘terrace overflow’ space and move reception forward closer to the escalators. They have a more efficient seating plan in mind to accommodate more customers in this admittedly over-capacity lounge.

Renovations are being done in stages in order to continue to use the lounge in the interim. They can’t give up all of that capacity, the lounge is overcrowded as it is (and so is their lounge at gate D30, which offers barely-usable internet but better food choices, though the showers at both are great).

Scott Carmichael reported this morning that the renovation project has begun.

[W]e are the first guests in the temporary club and got to watch them close the main club for construction

At the D15 club you take an escalator up. The escalator is on the wrong side, or check-in for the lounge is — you to the left across the path of the down escalator and check in using the outside terrace space. And then you cross back to the other side to walk behind you for the inside of the club, or forward to remain outside the club in makeshift roped-off seating that’s been arranged because they don’t have nearly enough capacity. (I’m told it would be prohibitively complex and costly to reverse the two escalators.)

This morning they were only going to use terrace space for the lounge. The situation will be fluid during the process of renovation, since they’re doing it in pieces and keeping the club open throughout. The agents who can help you with reservations were still there this morning, at the same desks right inside the doors to the main club — it’s the club space past them that was being closed this morning.

After ushering everyone out of the club so they could close it down… they re-opened it.

Right now it is open again. When I got here, they were ushering people out of the main lounge and into the temporary one. Bartender says they have been promising to start work for ages.

Last month American told me work would being ‘within a few months’. Apparently they thought they were going to get things going this morning, and then they didn’t, because Miami.

Here’s Scott’s photo of the terrace-as-temporary-lounge.