Vice President Joseph Biden is ready to take New York's LaGuardia Airport out of the third world.
Biden, who 18 months ago likened LaGuardia to a "third-world country," joined Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Monday to announce a $4 billion rebuilding of the 76-year-old airport in northern Queens.
"Guv, I wish everything I said that was truthful and controversial would come out this way," he said at an Association for a Better New York luncheon at the Times Square Sheraton.
Plans call for a unified terminal, more parking spaces, two additional miles of flight space with a footprint 600 feet closer to Grand Central Parkway and options for an air train to the nearby Willets Point subway station and high-speed ferry service to the Marine Air Terminal site.
The new LaGuardia will also feature post-9/11 security protocols.
More than half the cost of first phase will be privately funded under a public-private partnership. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey chose LaGuardia Gateway Partners in May 2015 after a request-for-proposals process. The Port Authority operates LaGuardia and the region's other two airports, John F. Kennedy International, also in Queens, and Newark-Liberty in New Jersey.
LGP is a consortium of firms and joint ventures including Vantage Airport; Skanska and Walsh Construction; HOK and Parsons Brinckerhoff; and Vantage, Skanska, and Meridiam.
Construction on the first half will begin upon final approval from the Port Authority board of directors, expected in early 2016. The majority of this first half of the project is expected to open to passengers in 2019, with full completion scheduled for roughly 18 months later. The airport will remain open during construction, according to Cuomo.
Delta Air Lines, a major corporate partner for the project, expects to redevelop the second half of the unified terminal on a parallel track with LaGuardia Gateway Partners.
Cuomo said LaGuardia today is "un-New York," calling it slow, dated "and a terrible front-door entrance."
In May, Moody's Investors Service said the Port Authority's credit risks are shifting because the agency is relying more on toll collections that aviation revenue to pay off debt. Moody's rates the Port Authority Aa3 with a stable outlook.
Monday's LaGuardia announcement was the lynchpin of an overall infrastructure initiative by Cuomo, who also confirmed that the state will fund $8.3 billion toward the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's capital program, an amount MTA Chairman Thomas Prendergast had requested last week.
Still pending is the MTA's request for New York City to fund the remainder, possibly up to $3 billion.
Assemblyman Philip Goldfeder, D-Queens, called transportation access to match the airport plans essential and repeated his call for a reactivating the Rockaway Beach rail line in his home borough.
"Reactivating this line could link [LaGuardia and JFK] and create a true north-south corridor in the borough," Goldfeder said immediately after Cuomo's speech.
The governor also updated modernization plans for JFK airport as well as Stewart Airport in Newburgh and Republic Airport in Farmingdale, Long Island.
A new hotel at JFK, he said, would proceed under a public-private partnership among MCR Development, JetBlue and the Port Authority. Cuomo expects the $265 million construction project to break ground next year. Empire State Development Corp., meanwhile, has issued requests for information with a primary focus on furthering regional economic activity at Republic and Stewart.
Earlier Monday, Biden and Cuomo announced in Rochester that the U.S. Department of Defense is awarding the new $610 million Manufacturing Innovation Institute for Integrated Photonics to a consortium of 124 companies, nonprofits and universities led by the Research Foundation for the State University of New York.
According to a White House spokesman, the announcement marks the largest public-private commitment to date for a manufacturing institute launched in the United States.
