A $155 million plan to construct two air cargo facilities on Kennedy airport will be automatically approved by the Queens Borough Board March 22 because there were not enough city council members present at the last borough board…
–By Betsy Scheinbart
A $155 million plan to construct two air cargo facilities on Kennedy airport will be automatically approved by the Queens Borough Board March 22 because there were not enough city council members present at the last borough board meeting to vote on the measure.
The plan was already approved by the four community boards that border John F. Kennedy International Airport.
Douglas Rice, from the Department of Business Services and the Economic Development Corporation submitted the plan to the borough board March 8.
Rice explained that the Airis Corporation, which plans to build the cargo facilities, needs to lease 40 acres of airport land from the city beginning in 2016, when Airis’s contract with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey ends and the Port Authority’s contract will the city is up.
Airis representative Ray Hagen said Airis needs to extend the lease in order to finance the project over more than 20 years.
Hagen said construction should start in the second half of April, and should be completed by the end of next year.
The facilities will house Lufthansa, KLM, Alliance, and other airlines that currently have out-dated storage facilities at JFK, Rice said.
City Council members Karen Koslowitz (D-Forest Hills) and Sheldon Leffler (D-Hollis) asked if the project would have any other impact on the community such as additional traffic. Rice said there would be the same amount of traffic into JFK and he did not foresee that the community would otherwise be affected.
Less than half of the Queens city council members attended the meeting, so a vote was not possible. On March 22, the borough board’s time to decide on the measure is up. When issues are not voted on in the time allowed, the issue is automatically approved. The next borough board meeting is on April 16.
