Like just about every other meeting held these days, the Long Island City Partnership’s annual luncheon and trade show was emotionally involved with the damage and displacement left October 30 by Hurricane Sandy. Two weeks after the disaster, the LICP’s event at Terrace on the Park had many visitors who, in the words of LICP Chairman Gary Kesner, took an “extra effort” to attend the show. (One who could not was Borough President Helen Marshall, who had to see to storm damage in the Rockaways.)
Kesner introduced President Gayle Baron, who marveled that the Long Island City Business Improvement District (BID) is now seven years old. She introduced the slightly tardy City Controller John Liu, who reported briefly about the money his office has thus far dispensed for Sandy relief: $134 million, to go with the City Council’s $500 million. City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer introduced Jet Blue Chief Executive Officer David Barger, who delivered an address covering personal history and the story of Jet Blue and its choice of Queens Plaza as the site of its home office. An account of the company’s reaction to the storm was of course included.
Barger began by saying that Jet Blue Airlines has 14,500 employees. The company was formerly located in Forest Hills, but that was a situation likely to change, as it did with removal to Long Island City in 2011. He said he wanted to stay in New York but had to consider offers from other localities, finding the one from Orlando particularly attractive. His conclusion was that New York was the place, the Long Island City offer being one promising great location in an area of the city that had every appearance of being on the rise. An additional advantage was the chance to set up a partnership with Aviation High School, a few blocks to the east on Queens Boulevard.
Barger, a native of Detroit, had worked in New York before, for New York Air (though he said that in his youth he never dreamed he would ever get here) before moving on to Continental Air. He praised Long Island City’s services and the coming of hotels—20 operating ones in Long Island City and Dutch Kills, according to Gayle Baron. “I can’t tell you how important that streetscape is,” he said, proclaiming the pleasure he finds in walking through the new Dutch Kills Green, finished and opened earlier this year, on his way to work. He even joked about getting another lighted Jet Blue sign on the roof, having pleaded to skeptics that the one he did manage to put there would not cause illumination pollution or lead to a succession of lighted signs and the “Times Square effect” in Queens Plaza.
Jet Blue, he said, has 187 aircraft and flies to 77 cities. He said it is the “youngest fleet” among U.S. airline companies. Hurricane Sandy, which began as usual in the Caribbean, hit Jet Blue offices in several localities. Barger said that 125 crew members lost their houses. What he called the company’s “care teams” were sent to see about any crew members considered to be in harm’s way. Additionally, the company has a crew members’ emergency fund that has been built up in the last 12 years. After the October 30 storm, Jet Blue personnel supported New York Food Truck relief to the point where, he said, “we practically took it over.” Also, it is funding repairs at Shady Park, behind the 108th Precinct headquarters, where the trees were heavily damaged in the storm. Barger was expansive about Jet Blue’s part in post-Sandy operations but said it’s just the company code, not an attempt to gain glory. But to conclude his presentation, he made the endearing gesture of presenting a model airplane, with “I Heart New York” inscribed on it, to Gayle Baron.
