Airport Hotel
The former Ramada Plaza JFK Hotel is Building 144. The hotel, with 478 rooms, was the only on-site hotel at JFK Airport. It was previously a part of Forte Hotels and previously the Travelodge New York JFK. After the crash of TWA Flight 800 in 1996, relatives of TWA 800 passengers and crew, as well as the media, gathered at the hotel. Many waited until the remains of their family members had been recovered, identified and released. For several years the PANYNJ had a ground lease to the hotel's owners, Westmont Hospitality Group. A spokesperson for PANYNJ said that Westmont Hospitality Group decided not to renew the lease for 2009. After the lease expired in late 2008, the PANYNJ became the owners of the building. PANYNJ hired Highgate Holdings to operate the hotel for one year. In 2009 the PANYNJ stated in its preliminary 2010 budget that it was closing the hotel due to "declining aviation activity and a need for substantial renovation" and that it expected to save $ 1 million per month. The hotel was scheduled to close on December 1, 2009. Almost 200 employees were to lose their jobs. Lisa Fickenscher of Crain's New York Business said that a hotel industry expert said "he Port Authority has been trying to build a hotel at JFK for years. Most major global airports have hotels that are attached to the airport. New York doesn’t have that."
Read more about this topic: John F. Kennedy International Airport
Famous quotes containing the words airport and/or hotel:
“Airplanes are invariably scheduled to depart at such times as 7:54, 9:21 or 11:37. This extreme specificity has the effect on the novice of instilling in him the twin beliefs that he will be arriving at 10:08, 1:43 or 4:22, and that he should get to the airport on time. These beliefs are not only erroneous but actually unhealthy.”
—Fran Lebowitz (b. 1950)
“The talk shows are stuffed full of sufferers who have regained their health—congressmen who suffered through a serious spell of boozing and skirt-chasing, White House aides who were stricken cruelly with overweening ambition, movie stars and baseball players who came down with acute cases of wanting to trash hotel rooms while under the influence of recreational drugs. Most of them have found God, or at least a publisher.”
—Calvin Trillin (b. 1935)