FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM JANUARY 17, 2019 • THE QUEENS COURIER 21
Lead photo by Jenna Bagcal/QNS with other photos provided by the Port Authority and the offi ce of Rep. Gregory Meeks
Rick Cotton, Port Authority Executive Director
Making Queens’ airports soar to new heights
BY JENNA BAGCAL
jbagcal@qns.com/ @jenna_bagcal
Rick Cotton has worn several leadership
hats throughout his career before
becoming the executive director of Th e
Port Authority of New York & New
Jersey in 2017.
In the past, he has been general counsel
for NBC Universal as well as Governor
Andrew Cuomo’s Special Counsellor for
Interagency Initiatives, which prompted
the governor to dub Cotton the “czar of
infrastructure.”
Now, Th e Queens Courier’s Person
of the Year has taken on the mammoth
challenge of transforming two of New
York City’s outdated airports, LaGuardia
and JFK, into state-of-the-art facilities
refl ective of 21st-century modern standards.
Th e airports have long been a subject
of heavy criticism, eliciting news stories
with titles like “New York’s Th ree
Airports: Bottom of the Heap.” Back in
2014, former Vice President Joe Biden
was quoted at a speech in Philadelphia
comparing LaGuardia Airport to “some
third-world country.”
When he assumed his current role in
2017, Cotton told Th e New York Times
that “this region deserves to have worldclass
infrastructure” — comments that
he’s now backing up with action.
When Th e Courier visited Cotton’s
main offi ces at 4 World Trade Center in
Manhattan, he spoke of the progress that
has been made with the airports, particularly
the $8 billion redevelopment of
LaGuardia that he called a “mammoth
eff ort.”
“It is building the fi rst new airport in
the United States in 25 years and it entails
demolishing every single passenger facility
with the exception of the landmarked
Marine Air Terminal,” said Cotton. “And
then it involves rebuilding 2.7 million
square feet of new terminal passenger
facilities running all the way from the
western end of the airport through the
eastern end.”
Cotton shared that the airport will feature
two major new arrival and departure
halls, a central connecting arrival
and departure hall and six new concourses.
In addition to the new “integrated
design” Cotton said that the entire airport
will move “hundreds of feet closer”
to the Grand Central Parkway to expand
the aircraft taxi area.
“We’re adding enormously to the aircraft
taxi area so that airplanes will always
have much easier ways to get out from
the gate. Th e goal in creating the expanded
aircraft taxi area is to reduce the
gate delays which are so common at
LaGuardia today,” said Cotton.
He added that this change would allow
for all planes to have two options to exit
their gate instead of waiting for other airplanes
to move out of the way.
On Jan. 2, Th e Courier and QNS.com
had the opportunity to tour the state-ofthe
art corridor in LaGuardia Airport’s
Terminal B, which opened to the public
on Dec. 1. At the grand opening,
Governor Andrew Cuomo joined representatives
from the Port Authority and
Rick Cotton next to a rendering of LaGuardia Airport.
Continued on page 22
p f th y EAKING COM JA person of the year
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