Newark’s Terminal A gets $2.7bn upgrade
Terminal A at Newark Liberty International Airport has long been one of the most reviled public spaces in New Jersey. Travellers have carped about its long lines, its shortage of seating and its cramped corridors, narrowed to make room for portable toilets.
On Tuesday, state officials gathered to announce that the end of all of those inconveniences was in sight. A huge new Terminal A, filled with art, natural light and plenty of seats, is scheduled to open on December 8.
“We are here to bury the old Terminal A, not to praise it,” said Governor Philip D. Murphy, a Democrat.
He said the old Terminal A had “stood as an oftentimes trying, occasionally painful and always exhausting place.”
But replacing the 49-year-old terminal was not easy nor inexpensive. The new terminal, which will be home to several airlines, including American Airlines and JetBlue Airways, took several months longer than expected to complete and cost more than $2.7 billion.
That sum made it the most expensive infrastructure ever built in the state by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said Kevin O’Toole, the Port Authority’s chair.
O’Toole, a former state lawmaker, said it was important to him that travellers would know they were in New Jersey when they stepped off a plane.
So the terminal is filled with local references: a big “NJ” sculpture, perfect as an Instagram backdrop, and toilet stalls decorated with images from the Jersey Shore or the Pinelands.
“We worked hard to create a truly New Jersey sense of place,” said Rick Cotton, executive director of the Port Authority.
Some of the stores and restaurants are locally owned or native to the state. Newark’s mayor, Ras Baraka, said he was pleased that some local businesses had spaces in the terminal’s main hall.
“The people in the city have to benefit from its growth and development, and this is an example of that today,” Baraka said.
The terminal, twice as big as its predecessor, was originally designed as a standalone structure. But the Port Authority has begun to develop a “vision plan” for the entire airport.
Last month, it chose two firms to create a master plan to accommodate the growth in passenger traffic and air cargo that the Port Authority expects over the next 40 years.
Rebuilding the region’s airports has been a centrepiece of the agency’s plans for the past several years. Two new terminals were built at La Guardia Airport in the New York City borough of Queens, costing about $8 billion.
At Kennedy International Airport, also in Queens, work is getting started on a giant terminal and an extensive redesign of the airport’s roads.
The pandemic dealt a significant blow to the Port Authority’s finances, costing it about $3 billion in revenue from tolls and rents it collects.
Passenger traffic at the agency’s three main airports — Newark Liberty, La Guardia and Kennedy — has recovered to about 90% of pre-pandemic levels.
The pandemic also slowed work on Terminal A and disrupted the global supply chain for some of the components needed to build it.
Much of the glass that forms the terminal’s exterior walls was made by Ukrainian workers who were called away to fight in their country’s war with Russia, a Port Authority official said.
Eventually, the Port Authority intends to replace the AirTrain that moves travellers and employees around the Newark Liberty grounds.
The new AirTrain, expected to cost more than $2 billion, would connect to the new terminal.
Until then, passengers arriving at the airport by train would have to walk from the nearest AirTrain station through a parking garage to the new terminal or take a shuttle bus.