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Authorities broke ground Tuesday on a $4 billion remake of LaGuardia Airport in New York.
“This is an exciting day,” New York Gov. Andew Cuomo said during an afternoon press conference, flanked by vice president Joe Biden. “What we are doing is exciting. How we are doing it is exciting.”
The project, which is being undertaken as a public/private partnership between the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and a consortium of contractors called LaGuardia Gateway Partners, is expected to take slightly more than five years. Two-thirds of the cost will be shouldered by the private sector and by existing airport fees, officials say.
The work will involve the demolition and complete rebuild of LaGuardia terminals A and B. Air trains will be built to connect commuters to the Long Island Railroad and to ferry passengers around the airport. New infrastructure will be constructed to accommodate high-speed water taxis into Manhattan. And the entire terminal area will be moved 600 feet closer to the Grand Central Parkway, providing more space for flight operations.
In conjunction with the redo of terminals A and B, Delta Air Lines plans to renovate LaGuardia terminals C and D, which it controls. The airline and the port authority have yet to strike a deal on the work, but at the news conference Tuesday, Henry Kuykendall, a Delta vice president, asserted his employer’s commitment to redeveloping those terminals on a parallel track with the remainder of the project.
Cuomo said Tuesday that the full LaGuardia upgrade is expected to cost $7 billion.
Speaking at the press conference, Biden stressed the importance of infrastructure projects, not just in helping the U.S. compete, but in sustaining the middle class.
“It’s consequential. Our lifeblood depends upon it,” he said.
In 2014, Biden said that if he blindfolded someone and took him to LaGuardia, that person would think he was in “some third world country.”
The LaGuardia project is expected to create 8,000 jobs. The airport will remain open throughout the work.
Source: travelweekly.com
