Just a year after Vice President Biden said blindfolded passengers might think they were in “some Third World country” at LaGuardia Airport, he was on hand to help announce an aggressive $4 billion plan to overhaul the facility.
The plan is expected to link its four terminals, double the space for aircraft and ease delays. The first phase of the plan — which includes moving the Central Terminal Building 600 feet closer to Grand Central Parkway to open up 2 miles of extra space for planes — will be funded by the Port Authority and the private sector.
Most of the first phase will be complete by 2019; the complete overhaul by 2021.
“LaGuardia is un-New York,” Gov. Cuomo said Monday at the Sheraton hotel in Midtown. “LaGuardia is slow, it’s dated, it is a terrible front-door entranceway to New York. It is a lost opportunity.”
Biden didn’t back down from his “Third World” comments. Instead, he joked that he wished his other blunt remarks got similar results.
LaGuardia — notorious for crowding and flight delays — also has “hallways that don’t make sense, connections that don’t connect, the wait times, the flight delays and crowded concessions and bathrooms,” Biden said.
“This city . . . deserves much better and its future demands it,” the veep added.
Under the plan, the main Central Terminal Building will be torn down, with a new facility built in its place. This new facility will also have a central hall for arrivals and departures that connect the terminal to Delta Air Lines’ terminals on the eastern end of the airport. Delta is expected to redevelop its two terminals.
The goal is to unite the disparate terminals that are a pain for travelers to navigate into one facility with new amenities and concessions.
Transit links are also planned for the airport redesign, with an AirTrain carrying travelers to and from Willets Point, Queens, and a ferry dock at the Marine Air Terminal.
Cuomo launched a design competition to reinvent LaGuardia. The final plan relies on ideas taken from three of the finalists in the competition.
“Basically, what they said was, there is no way to fix this,” Cuomo said. “We need to literally tear it down and rebuild it.”
Air travel advocates praised the redesign plan for an airport that has needed a facelift for years.
“Vice President Biden’s fortuitously infamous and plain-spoken assessment of LaGuardia has helped bring about a very favorable result: an investment in the long-term health of the airport that will pay massive benefits for the New York region and even cascade throughout the country,” said U.S. Travel Association President Roger Dow.
A construction consortium will handle design, building and operations of the new terminal facility.
Joseph Sitt, a real estate developer and founder of Global Gateway Alliance, an air travel advocacy group, cautioned about overblown budgets and time lines.
“For too long, our airports have been caught in big modernization plans and small actions,” he said. “Today’s announcement should signal the beginning of a new era of fast and efficient overhauls to the region’s vital gateways.”
One union leader blasted Cuomo for moving on a redesign project at LaGuardia without addressing pay and work conditions for airport workers.
“Fixing our airport is long overdue, but we are deeply disappointed that his vision does not go far enough to address the sweatshop conditions under which thousands of contracted airport workers do their jobs,” Hector Figueroa, president of SEIU 32BJ, said. “We call on the governor to seize the moment and include good jobs for all airport workers in his vision for modernization.”
Officials said the airport redesign will add as many as 8,000 construction jobs and up to 10,000 related positions.
LaGuardia is the closest airport to Manhattan and handled about 27 million passengers last year.
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