Homeless people sleeping rough at JFK have no fear of coronavirus

NY Daily News

Social distancing isn’t part of the plan for dozens of homeless people who spend their nights in the terminals of Kennedy Airport amid the coronavirus outbreak.

“Right now, if I sleep on the outside what do you think is going to happen to me? I get the sickness,” said a former taxi driver who has been sleeping in the arrivals area of Terminal 4 for the past few weeks. “There’s a virus going around. But right here, they spray things to protect the passengers.”

The travel hub — the country’s busiest airport for international travel — is still a popular sleeping spot for many New Yorkers who have no other place to go.

Unlike the homeless people who find refuge in the city’s subways or parks, these vagabonds are largely invisible. Many of them blend in with travelers on long layovers on the public side of security gates, mostly undisturbed by police.

“The main appeal of JFK is you can be pretty passed out at your worst state — you can look gross — and it’s normal because there are so many people who are just stuck on long layovers,” said a well-kept man in his 40s who spends half his nights at JFK.

But as the coronavirus crisis turns into a global pandemic, the airport’s unofficial residents are left exposed at a port of entry that until recently served more than 170,000 passengers a day.

A traveler who flew out of JFK on Wednesday night tested positive for the disease, prompting the Port Authority to launch a deep clean of the airport. Earlier this week, Rick Cotton, the executive director of the Port Authority, which runs JFK, tested positive for the coronavirus.

On Tuesday night, a day before Trump announced a temporary ban on travelers from Europe, Pasaud was camped out towards the back of a row of benches near the arrivals area of Terminal 4, which serves more than 30 international airlines.

 “Shelters are dangerous, but now what?" asked the well-kept man in his 40s. "People will care about me because of the coronavirus? You didn’t care about my poverty or loneliness because those traits aren’t contagious. You only care about this because you can catch it.”

JFK reno will happen without a new runway

From the Wall Street Journal:

In the coming weeks, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is expected to announce details of a $10 billion face-lift for one of America’s busiest airports.

The plan is expected to provide upgrades to John F. Kennedy International Airport, in Queens, including new roads for motorists, improved taxiways for aircraft and a modern, more consolidated terminal layout.

But it won’t include one element that planners say is essential to handling rising demand in the coming decades: a new runway.

TWA is taking off

From PIX11:

An icon of the Jet Age is poised to soar anew: The landmark TWA Flight Center at Kennedy Airport will reopen next year as the gateway to a swank new hotel that will give new wings to the TWA name.

The TWA Hotel, which is now under construction, is rising next to the original Flight Center, which is being restored to its "Mad Men" splendor.

Commissioned by aviation tycoon Howard Hughes and designed by famed architect Eero Saarinen, the Flight Center opened in 1962.

Hopefully, Pepper the missing cat takes up residence there.

Queensway compromise?

From the Queens Chronicle:

The Regional Plan Association isn’t choosing the QueensWay over the Queens Rail, or vice versa.

Instead, the transportation think tank has partially endorsed both ideas for the abandoned 3.5-mile Rockaway Beach Rail Line.

In its Fourth Regional Plan, issued late last month, the RPA called for the creation of the QueensWay — a proposed park along the elevated right-of-way — between Rego Park and Woodhaven.

From Atlantic Avenue south into Ozone Park, the RPA has endorsed the reactivation of train service along the defunct line.

Under the Fourth Regional Plan, the Queens Rail would run between Atlantic Avenue and Kennedy Airport with a stop near Aqueduct Race Track in between.

At Atlantic Avenue, the service would connect to the Long Island Rail Road’s Atlantic Branch — which itself would be extended west from Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn into Manhattan.

That would give train proponents that 30-minute one-seat ride from Manhattan to JFK many have advocated for.

Kennedy Kaos

From the NY Times:

Kennedy Airport remained in disarray on Sunday, three days after New York City’s first major snowstorm of 2018 disrupted operations. Since the storm, a lingering, bone-chilling cold and a series of missteps have contributed to a logjam that has left thousands of travelers stranded and caused hundreds of flights to be canceled or diverted.

The disorder at J.F.K., one of the world’s busiest airports, rippled across the world, affecting passengers as far away as Beijing. Flights headed to New York were forced to turn back, and connecting flights that were only supposed to bring passengers to New York for a brief stay were grounded indefinitely.

On Sunday, just as there were signs that things were finally improving, a water main break in a terminal plunged the airport back into chaos. The flooding — three inches in parts of Terminal 4 — compounded the confusion that had gripped parts of Kennedy all weekend, as airlines tried to rebound from the cancellation of thousands of flights because of the storm. Officials of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates Kennedy Airport, were still trying to sort out what had gone wrong on Saturday when they had to scramble on Sunday to cope with the burst pipe.

Big hotel coming to downtown Jamaica

From AM-NY:

Downtown Jamaica has worked hard to reclaim its status as a destination for shoppers.

Now officials are hoping to make it a lively tourist hub, with plans for a dozen new hotels as well as residential towers and retail stores.

After decades of plans and proposals to revive the area, progress can be seen in two towers rising near Jamaica Station on Sutphin Boulevard.

One of those sites will hold a Fairfield Inn and Courtyard by Marriott with more than 300 rooms; and the other, a mixed income housing development.

Hope Knight, president of the Greater Jamaica Development Corporation, said the group hopes to attract travelers who would otherwise stay in hotels outside John F. Kennedy Airport, where there is little for them to do.

“Being able to stay in downtown Jamaica is a competitive advantage,” said Knight, who pointed out the AirTrain, subway and Long Island Rail Road all stop at Jamaica Station. “And they can get to Downtown Brooklyn or Penn Station in 20 minutes.”

Inside crash pads

From Brick Underground:

People outside of the airline industry aren’t very familiar with crash pads, so the easiest way to explain it is it's like a crowded college dorm. Usually someone who owns an apartment in Kew Gardens—a popular spot for flight attendants since it’s equidistant from JFK and La Guardia—will run a crash pad and rent out beds. Probably nine out of 10 flight attendants and pilots that I know live in a crash pad. More often than not, it’s a few bunk beds per room in a fully furnished apartment, with everyone paying between $200 and $400 per month.

Many flight attendants and pilots commute to New York from other cities and spend this extra money monthly so they don’t have to rent a hotel when they have back-to-back trips. Hotels are only paid for by the airline when you’re on a layover. If you choose to live in another city and commute to a major-city airport—like NYC, Chicago, or Atlanta, for instance—then any overnight accommodations are on you. Most flight attendants get paid by the hour and only get a small per diem (about $2 per hour) when you’re working. For me, that just barely covers food.

Crash pads are technically illegal, kind of like an Airbnb, but I’ve only heard of one crash pad being shut down. Most people pay their landlord month-to-month and are not on a lease, but there is a little more trust since we all were vetted by our companies to work for airlines and crash pads aren’t posted on Craigslist. They're discovered by word of mouth, and there is a screening and interview process to get a place in one. That said, we didn’t all trust each other. Sometimes there are locked bins provided at the crash pad, but most people just take their stuff with them just to be sure no one would steal them while they were gone.

Grease in pipes in an ongoing problem

From Crains:

Some section of the city's 7,500 miles of sewer lines gets blocked virtually every day, and discarded cooking oil is the reason 60% of the time. But in parts of Queens, that grease is the culprit in nearly 80% of all sewer backups, a problem that is especially acute near Kennedy Airport.

Experts say one reason Queens' sewers get blocked so often is that a lot of food is prepared in the city's most diverse borough, where residents, who hail from 120 different countries, might not be familiar with the best grease-handling practices.

In an effort to educate the public on the ills of grease dumping, last year the city enlisted interns from the Summer Youth Employment Program to knock on neighborhood doors as part of its Cease the Grease campaign. The teenagers visited more than 50,000 Queens households and 1,000 restaurants to remind people that used cooking oil and fat should be sealed in nonrecyclable containers and thrown out with the rest of the trash, not poured down the sink.

But grease has been blocking big city sewers practically since the pipes were laid. In 1859, a Brooklyn sewer commissioner observed that "melted grease is very objectionable." Two years ago in London, an 11-ton mound of congealed fat was extracted from a sewer, requiring more than $600,000 in repairs.

Grease causes sewer backups all over the city, but they most commonly occur in certain Queens neighborhoods including South Jamaica and St. Albans, where more than 4,800 complaints were made in the past five years, an average of nearly three per day. The city received almost 15,000 reports of greasy sewer clogs during that time, according to 311 call logs—numbers that suggest one-third of the most mucked-up city sewers are located in neighborhoods that house less than 5% of New York's 8.5 million residents.

Although some of those sewer problems can be linked to the vast amounts of cooking oil used in preparing dishes such as deviled fish, a deep-fried delicacy on the menu at many Sri Lankan restaurants in southeastern Queens, experts say the chronic backups mostly reflect the area's history and geography.

Sewer pipes in southeastern Queens tend to be 10 inches in diameter, Adamski said—less than half the typical size in other boroughs—because they were installed decades ago, when the area was relatively undeveloped. Southeastern Queens is also a flood basin, so its streets and basements are vulnerable to sewer backups after even modest rainfalls. The problem's origins go back to the 1940s, when a natural drainage area was paved over to build runways for JFK. Moreover, the area's groundwater table has steadily risen during the past decade or so. Climate change is a factor, and so is the fact that the city no longer pumps the ground wells that once provided the area's drinking water.

Cuomo unveils plan for JFK overhaul

From AM-NY:

Governor Andrew Cuomo Wednesday unveiled a multi-billion dollar plan to rehabilitate Kennedy Airport as well as travel connections to the facility.

The three-pronged plan, completely reimagines the airport while also attempting to address access on roads and through mass transit.

The overhaul would come at the tune of about $10 billion, with around $7 billion coming from private investment.

It was put forth by Cuomo’s Airport Master Plan Advisory Panel, which is also overseeing the redevelopment of LaGuardia Airport, as a way to accommodate projected passenger increases.

The proposal would expand the newer terminals to meet growing passenger demands. Older terminals would be redeveloped and relocated to increase connectivity. The roads in the airport facility itself would be reworked create a less-complex circular route.

By car, Cuomo’s administration wants to widen connector ramps of the Van Wyck Expressway and Grand Central Parkway at the Kew Gardens Interchange to reduce bottlenecking. It would also add an additional lane in each direction to the Van Wyck. This would cost anywhere between $1.5 billion to $2 billion.

Cuomo said his administration was still deciding between two options to address mass transit access to the airport. One would focus solely on improving JFK AirTrain service and its links to the rest of the area’s transit network. This option would increase service frequency while also doubling the number of cars per train, from two to four. It would also bring a complete overhaul to the Jamaica transit hub to improve transferring to the AirTrain from the subway and LIRR.

Future hotel-shelters worry Jamaica residents

From the Queens Chronicle:

When you live near one of the busiest airports in the world and a train ride from downtown Manhattan, you are going to live near hotels.

But residents of Southeast Queens are becoming increasingly worried that the proliferation of smaller hotels either opened up or under construction dovetails all too well with the city’s recent penchant for locating homeless shelters and other supportive housing within Community Board 12.

Glenn Greenridge, the Land Use Committee chairman at CB 12, went down a partial list last week:
• one in the early stages of construction at the corner of 115th Avenue and Guy R. Brewer Boulevard;
• a 56-room facility beginning construction at 97-01 Waltham Street;
• another two blocks away with a proposed 42 rooms near the intersection of Waltham and 97th Avenue;
• an 85-room site under construction next to the Howard Johnson Hotel on Archer Avenue; and
• excavation underway for a hotel at 140-35 Queens Blvd., less than a block away from a building at 140-17 that looks close to completion.

“When the folks made their presentation to put a hotel in the old TWA building at Kennedy Airport, they said they’re spending $62 million of their own money. They said their research showed hotels in Queens were at capacity,” Greenridge told the Chronicle in an interview last week.

“But what happens in two or three years if the economy changes and the demand doesn’t keep up with the supply?” he asked. “We have over 10 proposed hotels in CB 12 alone. A property owner [of a smaller hotel] might decide $80 to $100 per night per room from the city sounds pretty good.”

Greenridge’s comments came two days after a meeting of CB 12 where many expressed their belief that the exploding number of hotel applications in the district coming at a time when the city is experiencing a homeless crisis is not a coincidence.

Greenridge said residents’ fears are not groundless, with the city having converted at least one hotel into a shelter in his memory, and that they have every right to be concerned.

Residents in the district already have little if any trust in Mayor de Blasio or the Department of Homeless Services when it comes to shelters.

With security like this...

From the Daily News:

Airline and security officials at Kennedy Airport let 150 passengers arriving from an international flight leave the airport without going through customs, the Daily News has learned.

American Airlines Flight 1671 arrived at JFK from Cancun, Mexico, at 8:50 p.m. Friday.

When the plane landed, passengers walked out of the airport without having their passports or bags checked by Customs and Border Protection, sources told The News.

A source familiar with the matter said passengers disembarking the plane “just followed” a gate agent. The security snafu came just two days after ISIS released a video threatening New York City with a terrorist attack.

Pols want airport employees to park at the airport

From the Times Ledger:

Two Queens legislators have appealed to John F. Kennedy International Airport officials and airlines to help local residents regain the ability to park in front of their own homes, which has been limited due to employees from JFK who have overrun residential parking spaces.

State Assemblyman Phil Goldfeder (D-Howard Beach) and City Councilman Eric Ulrich, (R-Ozone Park) sent letters of concern to 10 freight and passenger airlines expressing concern and announced a forthcoming meeting with officials of the federal Transportation Security Administration to consider possible solutions to the problem.

“Our middle-class families work hard and deserve to enjoy the community they invested in without having to spend their days and nights circling the block looking for parking space,” said Goldfeder. “I urge the major airlines and other employees at JFK to be good neighbors and put the brakes on this practice.”

In letters to major airlines at JFK, Ulrich and Goldfeder called on the carriers to respond to reports of employees parking in Howard Beach, Ozone Park and adjacent neighborhoods to commute to the airport via nearby AirTrain stations.

“TSA and other airport employees should be parking their vehicles on Port Authoritry property, not in front of homes in Ozone Park and Howard Beach,” Ulrich said.“Hopefully, they will take action to alleviate this problem to free up much-needed parking for homeowners”.

Attack of the drones!

From WPIX:

More concerns at JFK Airport after a series of midair drone sightings, making three over the weekend.

Two separate flight over JFK spotted drones flying too close for comfort on Friday, prompting warning’s from the Department of Homeland Security that would be terrorists could use drones to attack the public. Another was spotted Sunday near the Queens hub.

The concern among security officials is the possibility that recreational drones could dangerous side of the coin is the threat to commercial jetliners.

Senator Charles Schumer over the weekend called for tough FAA rules on drones, as well as geofencing software that could prohibit a done to fly higher than 500 feet, and keep it two miles away from any airport or sensitive area.

Both of those flights landed safely without having to take evasive action on Friday, and the drone sightings are being investigated by both the Port Authority and the FAA.

Giving new meaning to "airport hotel"

From the NY Times:

With the addition of two new wings, Eero Saarinen’s T.W.A. Flight Center at Kennedy Airport — a lyrical landmark in search of an everyday purpose — might finally reopen to the traveling public for the first time since Trans World Airlines went out of business in 2001.

The six-story wings, shoehorned into a crescent-shaped area between the T.W.A. Flight Center and JetBlue’s Terminal 5, would be part of a 505-room hotel built by MCR Development. Its holdings include the High Line Hotel in Chelsea, which occupies part of the General Theological Seminary campus.

Pending approvals, construction of the T.W.A. Flight Center Hotel, as it would be called, is to begin next year. It would open in 2018. The budget is roughly $250 million, including a $65 million renovation of the Saarinen building.

A new LaGuardia on the horizon

From the NY Times:

La Guardia Airport, whose dilapidated terminals and long, unenviable record of traveler delays have made it a target of jokes and complaints for decades, will be completely rebuilt by 2021, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York announced on Monday.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airport in northern Queens, estimates the overhaul will cost about $4 billion, most of which will go toward tearing down the Central Terminal Building, rebuilding it in place and augmenting it with a grand entry way.

The project “replaces the airport in its entirety,” Mr. Cuomo said at a Midtown Manhattan luncheon for the Association for a Better New York. He said that airport officials and planners had concluded that there was no way to fix La Guardia, that it essentially had to be torn down and rebuilt. With no place to create a substitute anywhere near Manhattan, they decided it had to remain crammed between Flushing Bay and the Grand Central Parkway.

Travelers would also have better options to get to La Guardia; Mr. Cuomo said the plan called for a rail link between the airport and a subway station in the Willets Point section of Queens, as well as re-establishing ferry service to the airport.

Bringing tourists to Jamaica: good luck with that

From the NY Times:

A major stop on the AirTrain from Kennedy International Airport has long offered a troublesome first impression for travelers visiting New York.

Scarred by poverty, crime and blighted conditions, that transit hub in Jamaica, Queens, has generally been more of a place to contemplate from train platforms than to stroll through on the ground.

But sweeping plans are being made to rejuvenate the area with new hotels, stores and apartments, with hopes of persuading some of those travelers to step off the platform and stay a while.

“Our area has needed a face-lift for quite some time now,” said Adrienne Adams, the chairwoman of Queens Community Board 12 and a Jamaica resident for more than two decades. “And I think for the most part people will be quite pleased with the results.”

The effort to lure tourists is focused on a small slice of the area, around the intersection of Archer Avenue and Sutphin Boulevard.

Besides the AirTrain, the intersection is served by the Long Island Rail Road, three subway lines and more than a dozen bus routes. One result is the kind of bustling public transportation hub that has become catnip for developers who believe that people no longer want to be so dependent on their cars.

Redbird may fly in a better location

DNA Info suggests 5 better places for the redbird tourism center than borough hall:

Long Island City, JFK, LaGuardia, Times Square and the Flushing Library

JFK runway to be shut down for 6 months

From AM-NY:

The Port Authority has shut down one of four runways at Kennedy Airport for six months so workers can repave and expand it, officials said Monday night at a monthly meeting in Hempstead designed to address concerns about aircraft noise.

The $450 million project also includes lengthening the runway, known as 4L/22R, by 1,000 feet to meet federal safety standards and widening it from 150 to 200 feet to accommodate larger aircraft, said John Selden, the deputy general manager at Kennedy during a meeting of the Towns-Village Aircraft Safety and Noise Abatement Committee.

The Port Authority, which operates the airport, will also construct additional high-speed taxiways, which Selden told the committee would lead to fewer flight delays.

The TWA hotel?

From the Wall Street Journal:

JetBlue Airways Corp. is angling to get into the hotel business, joining the growing ranks of developers and investors looking for lodging opportunities inside major U.S. airports.

The low-cost airline and its partner, New York-based hotel developer MCR Development LLC, are in advanced negotiations with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey for the rights to turn the iconic Trans World Airlines terminal at Kennedy Airport into a modern hotel, according to people familiar with the matter.

Talks could still fall apart, these people said, but the MCR and JetBlue partnership has emerged as the preferred bidder and is in exclusive discussions with the Port Authority. MCR would be the majority investor.

Jamaica to get new park

From the Queens Courier:

After a long wait, new parks and increased access to the Jamaica train hub from the Van Wyck Expressway are set to arrive soon in Jamaica.

The Atlantic Avenue Extension project is set to break ground this summer and will create three new park areas (Gateway Park) totaling 0.86 acres, according to the city Economic Development Corporation (EDC), the agency in charge of the project. Work is estimated to cost about $21 million, all of which has already been fully funded.

The extension will connect Atlantic Avenue to 95th Avenue near the Van Wyck Expressway, changing the now-two-way street to a northeast-bound one-way street. It will also do the same for 94th Avenue, which will now solely be southwest-bound. The parks are being built because of the extra space that this construction will create.

The extension, which will cut through both avenues in a roundabout fashion, is designed to create an east-west street network that serves downtown Jamaica and to alleviate the traffic congestion that regularly occurs as drivers try to make their way to and from the Van Wyck and Jamaica LIRR station.