Queens Borough President Donovan Richards Jr. speaks on the candlelight vigil for Haitian earthquake victims.
Picture by Gabriele Holtermann, file
As lifelong residents of Queens, we’re proud that our borough — residence to JFK Worldwide Airport — has for greater than 75 years served because the nation’s front-door to the world. However for too lots of these years, we have now typically felt extra just like the doormat than the doorway.
For these many a long time, JFK’s neighbors have endured plane noise above our properties and ever-growing congestion on our streets, with out having fun with an equitable share of the advantages generated by a global gateway – specifically jobs and group funding.
Now, with the $19 billion redevelopment of JFK absolutely underway, we’re happy to say that the advantages of this historic undertaking will lastly land on the doorsteps of those that have borne the burden of internet hosting an airport. Because of the JFK Redevelopment Neighborhood Advisory Council, which we co-chair, the group surrounding the airport is not a bystander, however a stakeholder within the undertaking.
Since October 2018, when the Neighborhood Advisory Council was organized by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, we have now labored hand in glove with the Port Authority and the non-public terminal builders to make sure that our as soon as under-served communities obtain their fair proportion of financial alternatives.
Comprised of native elected officers, group boards, clergy, civic and enterprise leaders, the Neighborhood Advisory Council recognized areas of alternative to leverage the historic funding being made on the airport to learn companies and residents from neighborhoods closest to JFK and to reduce the influence of building on our communities.
These are not simply targets. As we work with our companions on the airport, we are able to report tangible achievements:
- So far, greater than 400 MWBE companies have been awarded almost $2 billion in contracts at JFK, and almost $800 million in awards to Queens-based companies. With work on the airport persevering with by means of 2028, we anticipate these numbers to extend.
- In collaboration with York Faculty, the Port Authority and the terminal builders launched the Aviation and Aeronautics Academy that may present STEM programming to greater than 2,500 college students from grades 1 by means of 12 over 4 years. The primary 300 college students attended final fall.
- Our effort to match job seekers in the area people with jobs resulted within the placement of greater than 1,000 folks in building jobs on the airport and greater than 1,100 folks in operations jobs on the airport, together with almost 600 Queens residents.
- A second likelihood employment program discovered jobs for individuals who have been by means of the prison justice system. In 2023, greater than 60 folks had been employed, which is crucial to lowering the recidivism price.
- A number of months in the past, we graduated the primary class of native enterprise homeowners from the Institute of Concessions, which is getting ready them to compete for alternatives to open eating places and retail retailers within the new terminals.
- We referred to as for methods to restrict the influence of building on our communities, ensuing within the Port Authority’s building help facility that may get rid of greater than 300,000 truck journeys on native streets.
As co-chairs of the JFK Redevelopment Neighborhood Advisory Council, we’ve been insistent that our communities can’t be ignored of a virtually $20 billion undertaking. That is about guaranteeing that the communities which have traditionally been ignored of the dialog now are on the desk.
We’ve talked a couple of community-led imaginative and prescient all through this undertaking, and we’re seeing these conversations bear fruit to create a brand new world-class airport that can be good for each our area and for our communities. We encourage all our constituents and neighbors to get extra engaged and proceed collaborating on this community-based growth. Transferring ahead, we imagine that the Neighborhood Advisory Council will function a mannequin for a way a community-involved undertaking that prioritizes native and regional financial development will be replicated throughout the nation.
