Clarifying the Current Status of the TWA Flight Center at JFK Airport and Its Transformation into a Hotel

We’ve been actively following the developments at the TWA Flight Center at JFK Airport ever since the National Trust asked us to highlight the Eero Saarinen designed building in early 2012 in hopes of spurring the adaptive reuse of the landmarked terminal. The terminal has been in the news a lot this month, with news in the New York Post that Andre Balazs of the Standard was transforming it into a hotel called The Standard, Flight Center.

We’ve been deliberately sitting on this news so that we could confirm it with our Port Authority contact officially. The update is that nothing is set in stone yet, but Balazs and the Port Authority are in “earnest negotiations and have a well advanced draft lease developed. Both the developer and the Port are very pleased with the proposed hotel design (the annexed building structures) which will not take away from the splendor of the landmarked building.”

All this (somewhat misleading) press is just moving the process along faster, so there may be official news in the next few months. On our photo shoot last year, we were told that a hotel complex was the preferred reuse, with new buildings to be constructed on the sides of the Saarinen building at heights that would not distract from the integrity of it.

See more photos inside the beautiful TWA Flight Center here.