Good news: There are plans to get the makeover at JFK Airport back on track and completed in a timely manner.
Bad news: It will make getting to the airport a bit of a nightmare for at least the next three years, as much of it will be a construction site.
Port Authority officials are warning travelers to be prepared for gridlock near the airport, as the $19 billion renovation project picks up steam — promising a transformation decades in the making at the tri-state's busiest international airport.
"This is a massive undertaking," said Rick Cotton, the executive director at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
The new details were outlined Monday. They include:
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- $9.5 billion for Terminal 1, which will be the most extensive part of the project, as it becomes a the new international terminal.
- $1.5 billion Terminal 4 for Delta, which is already done.
- $4.2 billion for Terminal 6, with investors like JetBlue.
- $425 million Terminal 8 for American Airlines, which is now finished.
Phase one is expected to be completed in 2026. Construction is already underway, but will get started in earnest on May 1.
When they begin, executives are hoping to avoid a repeat of what happened at LaGuardia Airport not long ago. It was just five years ago that passengers could sometimes be seen walking next to the car traffic on the Grand Central Parkway to beat the LaGuardia gridlock.
"We don’t expect things to get that bad. We expect we have learned our lesson," said Cotton.
In an effort to ensure the same conditions don't spring up at, Port Authority has opened an airport operations center at JFK Airport, where traffic engineers can monitor conditions around the clock.
"We might proactively mitigate and push all the traffic down from the departures to the arrivals level," said JFK Redevelopment Manager Jessica Forse.
There may be other challenges as well. The Air Train won’t stop at Terminal 1 for the next seven months, so workers can build a steel frame over it. A taxi stand at Terminal 5 will also be moved, creating a 10-minute walk for a cab.
Forse doesn't believe the changes will create too many headaches for travelers.
"I don’t think so. Passengers will walk up that bridge and they’re in and out of the airport," she said.
The goal of course is eventually that passengers deliver rave reviews — something that was once unimaginable but now happens at the other Queens airport, after the $8 billion renovation did the trick.
Airport executives seem confident a modernization twice that size will work similar wonders at JFK Airport. But New Yorkers might need double the patience to endure it until then.
