Our View : Region will soar with a growing Stewart Airport

With its $78.5 million purchase of the lease for Stewart International Airport in Newburgh, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has laid the groundwork for what business and political leaders could only dream about for decades: The emergence of the Hudson Valley as a premiere destination for business and leisure travel.

The Port Authority has promised to grow underutilized Stewart into the New York metro area’s fourth major airport, on a par with LaGuardia, John F. Kennedy International and Newark-Liberty International airports. The authority is buying the remaining 93 years on the 99-year lease originally held by National Express Corp. with the state Department of Transportation.

“We can turn that sleepy, underutilized facility into a dynamic transportation hub that will, along with our other investments in our regional airport system, allow us to meet the incredible growth in demand for air travel,” Port Authority Executive Director Anthony E. Shorris said in announcing its lease purchase plan.

And why not? Stewart can handle a few more planes. Its longest runway of 11,818 feet is among the longest of any non-military airport in the nation. At 2,220 acres, Stewart is larger than Newark-Liberty.

According to the Port Authority, LaGuardia, JFK and Newark-Liberty airports are expected to handle a combined 150 million passengers by 2025, up from the current 104 million. Eleven million of those current passengers hail from Westchester and the other counties within the Hudson Valley a fertile potential market for the new Stewart to tap into.

Stewart now accommodates 300,000 passengers a number expected to triple this year alone. It has the infrastructure to handle 1.5 million, a number the Port Authority hopes will reach 10 million passengers a year by 2025.

ITS TIME HAS ARRIVED

One sign that Stewart’s time may have arrived: Two airlines have already begun jockeying for Hudson Valley passengers. AirTran and jetBlue have announced plans over the past year to launch service there as well as Westchester County Airport.

Experts in air traffic trends have warned for years that the New York region cannot grow without addressing its need to handle more flights. At a June conference Mitchell Moss, professor of urban policy and planning at New York University, said Stewart Airport was an ideal spot for air travel expansion: “It makes more sense to incorporate Stewart into a regional system than to fight the political battles to try to pave or build more within New York City,” Moss said in a summary of the conference published by NYU.

For years the question was, where should the additional flights go? In the 1960s, the port authority pursued plans for a 6,000-acre airport in New Jersey’s Great Swamp, only to retreat when opposition surfaced.

By the 1980s, Westchester County Airport was considered for that fourth-airport role. Public opposition precluded county and local officials from carrying that out, though county government pursued improvements to the airport during the 1990s.

Stewart’s takeover by the Port Authority will have no effect on Westchester airport, says Susan Tolchin, chief adviser to County Executive Andrew J. Spano and the county’s director of communications.

Maybe not on current operations. But by taking over Stewart, the Port Authority has done Spano and Westchester one huge long-term favor by steering the region’s future air traffic away from the county airport thus relieving what otherwise would have been a source of pressure to reconsider airport expansion.

FACING TWO CHALLENGES

In resolving to develop Stewart, the Port Authority has two challenges on its hand. One is drawing more passengers to an airport 55 miles from Manhattan, indeed an hour or so away from Westchester.

The other challenge is Stewart’s inaccessibility. Cars will have an easier time traveling in and out when construction is completed on the new Interstate 84 interchange at Drury Lane. The project offers the additional economic benefit of creating a new commercial corridor, Frank Tomasulo of CB Richard Ellis Inc. told the Business Journal last month.

Yet as a poster on the Gothamist blog noted, Stewart is removed from mass transportation, whether within the Hudson Valley, or south to Westchester and New York City. “The nearest rail stop is across the river in Beacon on Metro-North’s Hudson Line. Is the (Port Authority) going to build (a) rail link from there? Probably not. Something really needs to be done to make the place easily accessable (sic)!”

On the whole, though, the economic promise of expanding Stewart outweighs the problems.

“Stewart Airport will provide much-needed relief for our three major airports, greatly reduce delays, and help us prepare for inevitable population and passenger growth,” Gov. Eliot Spitzer said in a statement hailing the Port Authority arrival at Stewart. “The expansion of Stewart Airport is a critical component of the continued growth of the Hudson Valley.”

We couldn’t have said it better.

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