LAGUARDIA GETS NEW LOOK
Delta unveils $3.9B concourse
LaGuardia Airport unveiled its newest, gleaming addition Tuesday with the opening of a modernistic concourse that will cost $3.9 billion.
The seven-gate concourse — Delta Air Lines’ Terminal C — is part of a larger $8 billion LaGuardia face-lift that’s projected to end with an entirely new structure in 2021.
“I am the steward of the New York City legacy,” Gov. Cuomo said at the new terminal. “At a time in this nation when we are in many ways adrift, what this project says and what New York says is that, yes, we can do these things. We are building more than any city across the country.”
The new terminal offers panoramic views of Flushing Bay and Citi Field and will include shops such as H&H Bagels and Birch Coffee, as well as restaurant offerings from celebrity pizza chef Mark Iacono and James Beard-winner Clare de Boer.
Delta’s partner at the terminal, the hospitality group OTG, has hired 120 concession workers for the new concourse.
It is located on the eastern edge of the airport and is the second new concourse to open since the LaGuardia construction project began three years ago. The first, an 18-gate concourse in Terminal B, opened last December.
The overall project will involve tearing down all of the airport’s previously existing buildings and roadways, making it “most extensive airport construction project anywhere,” according to Port Authority Executive Director Rick Cotton.
“It’s the first totally new airport in the U.S. in the last 25 years,” he said.
It has not been without severe growing pains, though. Getting to and from the airport — and anywhere near it — has often proven excruciating for air travelers and commuters alike over the past three years.
Cuomo rolled out plans for the ambitious overhaul in 2015, about a year after then-Vice President Joe Biden ridiculed the airport as worthy of “some Third World country.”
On Tuesday, Cuomo, who has not endorsed a presidential candidate yet, conceded there was truth to that criticism.
“We are better than what LaGuardia is, and denial is not a life option,” he said.
Flights to Boston, Chicago and Washington — about 60 a day — will start at the new concourse Monday.
ALBANY — New York lawmakers huddled Tuesday with doctors and medical experts as they consider a statewide ban on tackle football for kids 12 and younger.
The proposal, first introduced several years ago by Assemblyman Michael Benedetto (D-Bronx), has gained some yardage recently as evidence exposing the link between the sport and severe brain injuries continues to mount.
“There is at least a growing concern that these kinds of injuries, and specifically repetitive head impacts, have a downstream effect, meaning they do wind up being associated with degenerative brain diseases,” said Dr. Erich Anderer, chief of neurosurgery at NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn. “We don’t really see it to the same degree in other sports.”
Advocates for athletic groups argued the science is inconclusive and noted new protocols and rules have made the sport safer. A state law enacted this year requires all tackle football programs to provide parents with info about concussions and football-related injuries.
Advocates also said football is being unfairly targeted and contend there are plenty of similar risks for kids competing in gymnastics or soccer. “While a lot of attention has been focused on concussions in football, there’s not been a corresponding level of concerns for head injuries in other sports,” said Robert Zayas, executive director of the state’s High School Athletic Association.
The renewed drive to tackle the issue comes just weeks after a study released by the Boston University School of Medicine found the longer a person plays full-contact football, the more likely they are to feel the effects of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a neurodegenerative disease.
“The research has discovered that the single best factor that best drove whether or not they developed CTE is how many years they played tackle football,” said Christopher Nowinski of the Concussion Legacy Foundation, which promotes awareness of the dangers of head injuries.