The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey announced that it has approved a long-term lease with Aero JFK II, LLC for a state-of-the-art 346,000 square-foot cargo handling facility at John F. Kennedy International Airport.

The $132 million combined investment in the facility and taxiway upgrades represent the first phase of the modernization of air cargo operations at JFK, fulfilling a major recommendation of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Aviation Advisory Panel to enhance the airport’s position in the international air cargo market, and is a key first step in the ambitious plan to transform and modernize JFK into a world-class airport.

The JFK cargo industry currently supports 50,000 jobs, $8.6 billion in sales and almost $3 billion in wages, and these investments will help grow the industry and create additional jobs. Agreements associated with this project will include the goal of reaching a combined participation rate of 30 percent minority and women-owned businesses.

In addition to approving the $70 million investment for the new cargo warehouse, the Port Authority Board also approved a $62.2 million project to rehabilitate and enhance Taxiways CA and CB, which were last rehabilitated in the 1980s and designed for aircraft that predate today’s larger cargo planes. The runway rehabilitation includes the realignment of portions of both taxiways to allow the industry’s largest cargo planes to access the airport’s north cargo area, along with electrical and drainage improvements and upgrades of crossing taxiway areas.

The panel’s recommendations for enhancing cargo operations call for consolidation, upgrading, and expansion of cargo facilities onto the airport’s north side, reducing transfer times, positioning cargo operations where there is convenient, efficient road access to off-airport cargo operations, and phasing

out existing obsolete and underused warehouses. More than half of JFK’s cargo buildings are more than 40 years old, and do not meet current industry standards, including the two that will be demolished on the site of the proposed new facility.

JFK, which handled more cargo than any other airport globally in 1990, has seen its cargo traffic shrink over the past 25 years and is now ranked 22nd globally. The airport handled 320,000 tons of cargo in 2017, down from 1.6 million tons in 2007.