Back to the future as NY’s Port Authority takes over at Stewart
- Friday, 09 February 2007
The move comes at a time when the Port Authority is looking to rejuvenate itself under its new (appointed early this year) executive director Anthony Shorris.
Speaking at a New York Building Congress breakfast on June 19, Shorris said that it was “time to return the agency, which has acted for so many years mainly as a facility operator, to its role as one of New York’s great builders”.
Shorris acknowledged that he wasn’t the first person to come to this realisation. “The agency’s chairman started us on the road a few years ago, pushing for a strategic plan that emphasised growth and expansion.
“That plan, completed last year, called for US$26 billion in capital investments over 10 years and you can already see its influence in a new, more aggressive posture at the Port Authority.”
Shorris is an appropriate leader for the Port Authority’s new era. While only a recent appointee, he came back on board with extensive experience, having served as first deputy executive director from 1991 to 1995.
In his recent speech, he mused that people tended to think of PANYNJ as the owner-operator of the region’s airports, the bus terminal, bridges, tunnels, many buildings and light rail. “They don’t realise we have always been first and foremost a building agency,” he pointed out.
Over the next few years, he said, the rejuvenation would see the development or redevelopment of a wealth of facilities across the region, including at the airports where a strong injection of visionary design was required along with investment dollars.
All this would contribute to an infrastructure that would serve the people and economy of New York and New Jersey — and by extension, the US and the world — significantly for generations to come.
The plan was, he said, for “a rejuvenated Port Authority, a Port Authority with some measure of the audacity though, hopefully, less of the arrogance, for which it was once known”.
He hoped PANYNJ would capture some of the grandeur of its past infrastructural developments “and build great projects again”.
One venture on the immediate agenda is taking control of Stewart International Airport. Shorris agreed that Stewart would “never be another Newark or JFK” but it would divert traffic away from the region’s other overcrowded airports and airspace.
The authority’s first major new facility for more than a quarter century, Stewart is tagged for US$75 million in improvements.
The airport is owned by the State of New York and was until recently leased to the National Express Group, the UK-based transport giant. The lease is now being reassigned to PANYNJ.
The airport is strategically located at the intersection of the New York State Thruway (1-87) and Interstate 84. It is about 55 miles north of New York City and, thanks to the highway system, easily accessible from most parts of the metropolis.
Stewart handles a variety of cargo from oversize freight through express packages to livestock. A new cargo building is currently in development, with completion due in the northern spring of 2008.
The airport is also home to the New York Animal Import Center, a facility of the US Department of Agriculture’s Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service.
Cargo traffic through Stewart this year has been running at about 19 per cent down on 2006, and of cargo loaded has recorded a particularly sharp decline of more than 38 per cent. Deplaned cargo has decreased by only about five per cent.
Total aircraft movements have also dropped slightly but there has been a significant increase in scheduled flights.
On the web: www.panynj.gov and www.swfny.com — KK
