Let’s hope JetBlue’s hotel rooms are at least a little bigger and better-appointed than its airplane seats.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey selected JetBlue and MCR Development to remake the former TWA terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport into the airport’s only hotel.
The terminal, built in the early 1960s and designed by Eero Sarinen, stands adjacent to JetBlue’s existing terminal building, Crain’s reported.
The partners won a bidding process that included the likes of Donald Trump, the Related Cos., and London-based Yotel.
Details, including the amount the partners will pay the Port Authority, aren’t yet known. According to plans the companies released in July, the hotel will have 505 rooms and 40,000 square feet of meeting space.
“First-class hotels are a mark of a 21st-century airport and JFK and LaGuardia are among the very few major airports without this amenity,” said Thor Equities founder Joe Sitt, who also serves as chairman of the airport advocacy group Global Gateway Alliance. “We applaud the Port Authority for moving ahead with plans to develop the iconic TWA Flight Center, because it’s past time for a smart use for the building and for an on-airport hotel available to millions of JFK passengers.”
The Real Deal
TSA agent at JFK caught red handed!
NEW YORK – A TSA screener is out of a job and facing criminal charges after police say she swiped a passenger’s diamond-encrusted watch.
Margo Grant-Louree, 41, of Montauk Avenue in Brooklyn, was ushering people through security on Aug. 26 when one man, identified by Queens District Attorney Richard Brown as Bindoo Ahluwalia, forgot to retrieve his Diamond Master watch from the plastic bin.
Instead of placing the timepiece aside and trying to locate Ahluwalia, surveillance cameras captured Grant-Louree walking off with it, according to police.
Grant-Louree said she took the watch into a bathroom near the Terminal 7 security checkpoint, but got nervous later when she saw her co-workers looking for it, according to the criminal complaint. She told police she then destroyed the watch, which was covered in small, white diamonds and worth $7,000.
Grant-Louree has resigned from her job with the TSA.
District Attorney Brown said, “The defendant was supposed to be screening passengers to ensure the safety of the flying public, but on this particular day this employee allegedly removed a very expensive watch from a plastic bin and kept it for herself. This kind of thievery will not be tolerated at our airports.”
She faces a third-degree grand larceny charge and one count of official misconduct.
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