You may soon be swigging martinis and lattes in a $265 million space-age air terminal at JFK International Airport that’s being revitalized and reinvented with new hotel rooms and ballrooms, along with plenty of restaurants, bars and even a nightclub.
The former Trans World Flight Center, which opened in 1962 in the golden age of Mad Men and manned flight, will be filled with curated food courts, name-chef restaurants, retailers, the hotel, event space and museum as part of the upcoming TWA Hotel by MCR Development that is breaking ground on Thursday.
Two hundred former TWA flight attendants and pilots will be joining Gov. Cuomo for a Thursday morning ceremony. They will be in their old uniforms — if they still fit — as both the building and TWA closed up shop in 2001 when it was acquired by American Airlines.
The central eye-candy of the project includes the restoration of the two-and-a-half story, curved and now-landmarked Eero Saarinen-designed central building that was the inspiration for Santiago Calatrava’s design for the white marble Oculus at the World Trade Center.
The Saarinen building’s two curving red-carpeted tube walkways once connected to the boarding areas for the old Lockheed Constellations that held 55 passengers. As airliners grew to host 400 people, the Howard Hughes-developed Saarinen waiting areas and tubes were overwhelmed.
Now, about 80 feet away, “to give the Saarinen building room to breathe” MCR Chief Executive Tyler Morse says two six-story hotel buildings will be placed, one on either side, holding a total of 505 hotel rooms.
When it opens by early 2019, the tubes will connect the complex to the nearby Terminal 5 operated by JetBlue, which has a stake in the new hotel. Rooms are expected to run around $250 a night and up. “We will have presidential suites and a high suite count,” said Morse.
Whether the current President-elect Donald Trump will stay there is still a question for the future, but Morse is gleeful that among the contenders he beat for the 75-year lease with the Port Authority was the Trump Organization as well as Related Cos. and Steve Witkoff. In New York, MCR also owns The High Line Hotel in Chelsea.
The 65-foot-high ceiling of the Saarinen building will be filled with eight restaurants, six bars, retail and an observation deck overlooking the runway. For a bit of nostalgia, an old “Connie” aircraft will be parked outside.
“It will be a real destination,” said Morse, who expects many of the airport’s 10,000 daily travelers — who average a boring four hours of layovers — to spend some time in the building, which will also be connected to the JFK monorail system.
Between the tubes, 50,000 square feet of event space with ballrooms and conference areas will be created entirely underground. “It is an area about the size of a football field and it will be 30 feet deep, and we will pave it back over when we are done,” Morse explained. “It will be a great wedding venue and will have a kosher kitchen.”
Morse also expects to draw locals from the so-called “Five Towns” of Long Island on one side and Brooklyn on the other, as well as fly-in conferences for people from all over the world. With event space that can hold 1,600 people, it is the largest new ballroom in the metro area.
The museum, which will be inside the head house and some underground areas, will focus on the history of TWA, the mid-century modern design that oozes throughout the structure, and the Jet Age in New York City, which also inspired the name of the then-new New York Jets football team.
Architects Beyer Blinder Belle — which worked on the Grand Central Terminal renovation — and Lubrano Ciavarra Architects, will also be restoring the original TWA restaurants and lounges. The Paris Café, the Ambassadors Club and the Constellation Club, which Morse says “is a wonderful nightclub we are bringing back,” were initially designed by some of the most-renowned mid-century architects, including Warren Platner, who also designed Windows on the World, and Charles Eames.
There is also an Isamu Noguchi-designed fountain in the London Bar.
“It is a cacophony of midcentury modern design,” he said. “This is about the coming of the Jet Age in New York City.”
