Yeah I would just use a drop down terminal. This way the terminal never actually closed, you just toggle its visibility (an focus).
So lets say you're using yakuake
(a drop down terminal) and the keybind is set to F12.
Press F12 and terminal appears -> Run a command that is going to take ages to complete -> Press F12 again to make it disappear again.
Example with yakuake
If you prefer to use terminator
it too can be configured to act like a drop down terminal.