It’s Monday. Today we’ll get a first look at the huge new terminal that is under construction at Kennedy International Airport. We’ll also look back at Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s first month in office.
If you’ve flown in or out of Kennedy International Airport recently, you’ve probably thought it was a construction zone as well as an airport. The agency that runs Kennedy, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, is trying to transform it into what its executive director once called “a world-class, knock-your-socks-off gateway.” The first phase of the new Terminal 1 won’t open until later in the year, but Patrick McGeehan, who covers airports and transportation hubs in the New York area, recently got a look inside. I asked him for an assessment. The Port Authority is counting on Terminal 1 to be one of the five best airport terminals in the world. Is that realistic? It is an audacious aspiration, given the elevated state of the competition, particularly in Asian capitals like Seoul, Tokyo and Singapore. But it may not be out of the question, considering that the new terminals at LaGuardia and Newark Liberty International Airports have won international awards. Terminal B at LaGuardia earned five stars in the annual Skytrax ratings in 2023 and 2025. The new Terminal A at Newark Liberty International, which cost about $2.7 billion, earned five stars in 2024. How big is Terminal 1? In a word, it’s enormous. The Port Authority says it will encompass 2.6 million square feet once it is completed. That’s as big as the two new terminals at LaGuardia combined, and for context that’s nearly as much total floor space as there is in the Empire State Building. The only airport terminal in the U.S. that would rival its size is the single terminal at Denver International. The entryway at Terminal 1 is a soaring space with white columns holding up the roof, which is shaped like a bow tie. The gates and planes will be visible from all over the terminal, even the security-screening area. The idea is to ease travelers’ anxiety about how far away their gates are, no small concern if you’re making a tight connection from a flight that landed in one of the other terminals. How difficult is building a huge new terminal without interrupting operations at Kennedy? The Port Authority hasn’t had to ask airlines to move flights to Newark Liberty International Airport, has it? No, they’ve had to choreograph an unprecedented amount of construction while contending with a record amount of plane and passenger traffic for a couple of years now. Doing so has not been as challenging as the $8 billion rebuilding of LaGuardia because Kennedy’s campus is more than five times as large. But there have been some unique challenges, like working around the AirTrain. It not only loops around the airport — it passes right through the middle of the new Terminal 1. That helps to explain why Terminal 1 is costing $9.5 billion. There’s also a $4 billion project to untangle the roads around the airport. Is that possible? We’re about to find out if they have straightened out the spaghetti. The Port Authority executive overseeing the redevelopment, Jessica Forse, said the road work was more than 80 percent complete. A new driveway in front of Terminal 5 opened this month. The $4 billion that the Port Authority is spending on all this is separate from the money for Terminal 1 and is also paying for new parking garages and improvements to Kennedy’s utilities and other infrastructure. Terminal 1 is not the only terminal at Kennedy that is nearing completion. There’s also Terminal 6. It’s smaller than Terminal 1 and is being built by a private partnership that includes JetBlue. How is that going? T6, which is about half the size of Terminal 1, is closer to completion. It will replace the old Terminals 6 and 7. The Port Authority expects the first phase to open within months. The cost of T6, estimated at $4.2 billion, is being borne by a consortium of private companies that will own and operate it. That has been the Port Authority’s approach to redeveloping the airports. The agency acts as the landlord for the airlines and the private companies that build the terminals and bring in shops and restaurants to fill them. WEATHER Today will be warmer than it has been lately, but don’t expect a heat wave; the high will be only 31. It will be a mostly clear night with a low around 14. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING Suspended for snow removal. QUOTE OF THE DAY “I never even dreamed of a mayor riding in my cab. This year, I’ve already driven the mayor two times. My taxi cab is like a historic cab now.” — Richard Chow, who was a regular presence in Zohran Mamdani’s campaign and drove the new mayor to his inauguration at City Hall on New Year’s Day. The latest Metro news
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Zohran Mamdani, in his election night victory speech in November, borrowed a line from former Gov. Mario Cuomo: “While you campaign in poetry, you govern in prose.” For much of his first month as mayor, he still seemed to be in campaign mode. He appeared on “The View” and “The Tonight Show.” He joined striking nurses on the picket lines, taking sides in a labor dispute — an unusual move for a mayor. He helped dig out plowed-in cars after the biggest snowfall in several years. He also released a video on social media nearly every day last month. “There is a small window that you have at the beginning of your administration, when New Yorkers are asking themselves, ‘Was I right to believe?’” Mamdani, a democratic socialist, told my colleague Jeffery C. Mays. “This is our window to show them that they were.” So he not only took on a landlord with thousands of housing violations — he used one of the landlord’s buildings as the backdrop to say that the city was intervening in a tenants’ lawsuit. A judge later dismissed the city’s effort, raising concerns about the mayor’s ability to deliver on his housing-related promises. Last week he warned of a city budget “crisis” and a projected $12 billion shortfall, potentially complicating his plans to use the budget to advance his affordability agenda. He did some finger-pointing during a news conference at City Hall, mainly at his predecessor, Eric Adams. But Mamdani was careful not to criticize Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat with whom he has a good relationship. METROPOLITAN DIARY Back in town
Dear Diary: I was back in New York after a couple of bad years. I walked along the Bowery in the pouring rain from my hotel on Ludlow Street into Chinatown to meet a painter friend for dinner at Deluxe Green Bo, where it’s cash-only and there are vegetarian options. What usually looked tired on Bayard Street gleamed under strings of light that cast their reflections in the water pooling on the concrete and rising to meet the steel cap of the curb. New York in the thick of a nor’easter. My friend and I met at the door. There was a line, but no wait. We are only two; we are easy. Hot tea. Soup to chase the remaining chill from the weather and the walk and the long-delayed flight that preceded it. Dumplings, mandatory. Over dinner, we gossip. What galleries are going out of business? Which of the ones left are worth doing business with? Who isn’t paying their artists? Who got divorced and why? The check is paid. Plans are made for the leftovers. Then it’s back out into the evening. The temperature has dropped, but the cold is pleasantly bracing after an hour in the restaurant’s humid warmth. We part at a convenient corner on Broadway. The way back to the hotel already feels familiar. It is the feeling of New York picking up where it last left off. — Bianca Bova Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. |
