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A Move to Make a Silent Air Terminal Hum Again
By DAVID W. DUNLAP
THE Port Authority is seeking an earthbound second life for what may be the nation’s most romantic evocation of flight: Eero Saarinen’s landmark Trans World Airlines terminal at Kennedy International Airport.
Although its swooping forms amount to a three-dimensional transcription of “Come Fly With Me,” the building’s days as a functioning terminal were numbered in 2001 with the collapse of T.W.A. Designed in the day of the Lockheed Constellation and strained almost to bursting by the Boeing 747 and its jumbo successors, the 44-year-old building now stands empty, idle and obsolete.
Restaurant? Lounge? Spa? Shopping mall? Conference center? Museum? Theater? Botanical garden? Sculpture court? Office space? A mixture? The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is open to these ideas and “anything else that can be imagined by a redeveloper,” said its aviation director, William R. DeCota.
By Nov. 30, the authority will formally request proposals from developers interested in renting the building for 25 years or more, renovating it and adapting it to new uses.
Directly behind the landmark, JetBlue Airways is constructing a new Terminal 5, which is to open in 2008. The buildings will be connected through the dreamlike tubular corridors — featured evocatively in the 2002 film “Catch Me If You Can” — that once led to T.W.A.’s gates. Two electronic ticketing and check-in kiosks will be installed in the Saarinen building, so that passengers who choose to do so will still be able to go through its soaring spaces on the way to their planes.
But something besides two kiosks must fill the 60,000-square-foot main hall, which sits under the vaulted juncture of the four curving concrete lobes that give the building its birdlike silhouette. Something must fill the galleries that once housed the Ambassador Club, the Paris Cafe and the Lisbon Lounge.
“It isn’t just important to save the old Saarinen terminal and its phenomenal architecture,” Mr. DeCota said. “It’s important to find a thriving use. How can you continue to make this a centerpiece?”
Mr. DeCota said he believed the audience was there, beginning with the 50 million travelers who are projected to pass through Kennedy in 2015 and the 40,000 employees who work there. JetBlue’s terminal will have a capacity of 20 million passengers a year.
Development proposals will be due in four months. Mr. DeCota said he expected to be able to recommend a proposal to the Port Authority board by July.
He said the developer would be responsible for renovating the terminal (this includes asbestos removal), restoring historical elements to “strict maintenance and preservation guidelines,” undoing recent alterations, adapting the building in a “minimally intrusive manner,” finding tenants and operating the new center — whatever it turns out to be. Perhaps the principal model is the commercial redevelopment of Union Station in Washington.
The Municipal Art Society, a civic group that has been working with the Port Authority on ways to revive the Saarinen building, believes that issuing a request for proposals is an “extremely flawed” approach, said Frank E. Sanchis III, the senior vice president, not least because it means the JetBlue terminal will open before the renovation project is complete.
Mr. Sanchis said the society favored keeping the Saarinen building in aviation use. He said the authority should have negotiated with JetBlue to undertake both the renovation and the new construction.
Failing that, Mr. Sanchis said, the authority should have committed itself to renovating the Saarinen building and delivering it to a developer already structurally refurbished and cleared of asbestos. As it is now, he said, prospective developers may find the project too daunting.
In response, Pasquale DiFulco, a spokesman for the authority, said: “Neither the Port Authority nor JetBlue is experienced in redeveloping and retenanting a building on this scale. We’re looking to bring in the experts who are best suited to do this.”
JetBlue’s vice president for redevelopment, Richard J. Smyth, said being the sole tenant of the Saarinen building would not have worked operationally or financially for the airline. “More and more of our customers are checking in at home,” he said. “The whole ticketing hall experience is not what it used to be.”
Nonetheless, he said he was not immune to the romance of the old terminal and would welcome the trend if JetBlue passengers chose to make the 150-yard detour to experience Saarinen’s architecture. So the two ticket kiosks may be just a start.
“If there’s enough demand,” Mr. Smyth said, “I’ll put 20 in.”
