Port Authority Opens Community Outreach Offices to Support Redevelopment Projects

On Feb 28, 2019

The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey announced the opening of community outreach offices to support all of its ongoing and future major redevelopment projects at Newark Liberty International, John F. Kennedy International and LaGuardia airports as well as at the Port Authority Bus Terminal to provide regular engagement with and information to customers, residents and other stakeholders.

“The major capital investments we are making at the airports and at the midtown bus terminal can only be successful if we provide a forum for active dialogue with all stakeholders,” says Port Authority Chairman Kevin O’Toole.  “These centers will provide a venue where local residents and other interested parties can interact with agency staff, obtain project information and explore job and business opportunities that may be available.”

“We are taking an unprecedented step to actively engage with those who live or work in the neighborhoods adjacent to our legacy facilities that are being or will be rebuilt,” said Port Authority Executive Director Rick Cotton.  “We recognize these major construction projects impact the local communities that surround these facilities and we want economic activities from our projects to yield benefits to local communities.  These centers also will help facilitate an agency priority to enhance diversity and inclusion initiatives by helping to link MWBE contractors to available construction work on all of the projects.”

The community outreach offices will support the Port Authority’s current mission to replace its legacy infrastructure which dates back decades with 21st century facilities designed to handle record growth in air passengers and trans-Hudson commuting.  The Port Authority’s airports, for example, handled 138 million passengers in 2018, an increase of 3.8 percent over 2017’s previous record high.  And the Port Authority Bus Terminal also handled a record number of passengers in 2018, 260,000 daily, and bus movements, 2.4 million annually.

Previously, the Port Authority had opened community outreach offices for certain projects, such as the nearly complete Bayonne Bridge project.  But the current initiative is the first time in recent memory that such an extensive level of consistent outreach has been planned in support of the Port Authority’s capital plan.

A community redevelopment outreach office is open at the Port Authority Bus Terminal to support planning efforts to build a new bus facility to replace the legacy facility that dates back to the 1950s. The office is located at 550 9th Avenue – just inside the terminal’s 9th Avenue entrance.

Airport redevelopment outreach offices are open for EWR Terminal One Redevelopment in Newark and another for JFK’s redevelopment in Jamaica, Queens will open in March. A mobile outreach effort has been in place at LaGuardia during the past two years of redevelopment, and a permanent facility will be opened in close proximity to the airport later this year.

The permanent LaGuardia redevelopment community office in East Elmhurst will look to build on initiatives that to date have resulted in the issuance of nearly 850 contracts as part of the redevelopment valued at more than $1.14 billion to certified minority- and women-owned businesses.  It also will build on the nearly 400 new hires for jobs at the airport’s new Terminal B concourse, which opened in December, with 55 percent of those hires being Queens residents.  This new community office will be in addition to a new office for the Council for Airport Opportunity (CAO), which will be based in the current facility of Elmcor, a social service agency based in Corona.  Neighborhood Housing Services of Queens is also a partner in this office.  The new CAO office was made possible by $1.2 million in funding awarded by Governor Cuomo, which leveraged an additional $200,000 contribution from CAO.

In addition to the open EWR Terminal One outreach office, an additional outreach office for Terminal One will be opened in Elizabeth in the near future.  The open EWR outreach office is 89 Market St, 4th Fl, Newark, NJ. JFK’s outreach office will open in March at 144-33/35 Jamaica Ave, Jamaica, NY.

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