As successful small business owners here in Queens, we join all New Yorkers in looking forward to the transformation of JFK International Airport into the world-class airport our city deserves. But a new JFK will serve as more than a global gateway for travelers—for local and minority-owned businesses like ours, it will be a doorway to life-changing opportunities.
Before a shovel went into the ground at JFK’s $19 billion redevelopment project, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the JFK Redevelopment Community Advisory Council, led by Congressman Greg Meeks and Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, prioritized participation by locally owned and diverse businesses in the airport’s concessions programs.
It’s one thing to set a goal of at least 30 percent participation by minority-owned, local, or disadvantaged businesses in the airport’s concessions, and it’s another to provide the outreach, training, and mentorship for these businesses to even consider these opportunities, no less successfully compete for and operate at an airport. But that’s what the Port Authority did.
Working in partnership with the Community Advisory Council and with the private partners that are developing the new or expanded terminals, the Port Authority launched a series of outreach programs in the communities around JFK to entice business owners who once believed that a role at the airport was forever out of their reach. And the Port Authority went even further by creating the Institute of Concessions, a training and mentorship program for diverse and local businesses unlike any other in the nation.
Thanks to these ongoing efforts, we are both about to take our business skills to the next level at JFK. We recently earned the opportunity to become joint venture partners alongside highly experienced concession operators at Terminal 6 and Terminal 8. For the two of us—owners of a historic landmark tavern in Woodside and the city’s oldest Salvadoran restaurant in Jamaica—this is an opportunity of a lifetime.
We will be working with companies with decades of experience in the unique and complex airport concessions industry. In essence, we will be apprentices, learning the business from the inside out. As investors, we will also be able to build capital that we can invest in our businesses in the community or use to finance, build and operate our own airport concessions in the future.
For the Port Authority and its private partners at JFK, this is a laudable effort to ensure that some of the benefits of its $19 billion investment at JFK accrue to the communities that have for decades hosted the airport. Not only does it create opportunity, but local participation in the dining and shopping experience at JFK will also help create a unique New York sense of place.
We’ve all heard the expression, pulling yourself up by the bootstraps. Thanks to the Port Authority and the JFK Redevelopment Community Advisory Council, we finally have those bootstraps to pull ourselves up by.
*Elena Barcenas is the owner of Rincon Salvadoreno of Jamaica, the first Salvadoran restaurant to open in New York. Loycent Gordon is the owner of Neir’s Tavern in Woodhaven, the oldest tavern in New York.
