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JFK airport eyes boutique hotel for iconic TWA terminal

February 7, 2011
By Barbara De Lollis, USA TODAY

The iconic, former TWA airline terminal at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport could be reopened as a luxury boutique hotel, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The airport’s operator is looking for developers who could tackle the famous modernist structure, designed by Eero Saarinen. The curved, winged terminal opened in 1962 at the old Idlewild Airport and closed in 2001 after American Airlines bought TWA.
Boutique hotels usually offer guests something unique, and in this case, it would be the striking structure.

“There are few buildings designed for airports that have resonated with the public as much as this one,” Frank Sanchis, an advisor at the Municipal Art Society of New York, told the paper.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey hopes to squeeze a hotel with about 150 rooms in the space between the old TWA terminal and the new JetBlue building, the story says. The old TWA terminal would serve as an entry to the hotel and hotel lobby, which would also contain restaurants and shops.

The goal? To make some money back to offset the millions that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey spent restoring it, the article says. The agency spent about $20 million in 2008 to remove asbestos and restore the interior to make it more attractive to developers.

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