Andre Balazs isn’t the only big-name hotelier with his eye on the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey’s boutique hotel project at John F. Kennedy International Airport. The Wall Street Journal dropped a few more hints today as to who might soon be jockeying for the opportunity to build a 150-room hotel adjacent to Eero Saarinen’s Trans World Airlines Flight Center, among them: Donald Trump, Starwood Hotels & Resorts and pod hotel owner-operator Yotel. Comments

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The famed Trans World Airlines Flight Center at John F. Kennedy International Airport could become part of a new boutique hotel under a plan by the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, according to the Wall Street Journal. The agency, which has already poured $20 million into asbestos removal and restoration work at the vacant, Eero Saarinen-designed terminal, is now seeking developers to help recoup some of that money by converting the space into a lobby for a small hotel that would sit adjacent to the new JetBlue building. The lobby would have restaurants and shops, while the hotel would have around 150 rooms, said Port Authority Executive Director Chris Ward. [more]

A rendering of the new theater (Source: H3 Hardy Collaboration)

For those of you who worry about the potential desecration of the Vivian Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Center, in the form of Hugh Hardy’s newly announced black box venue that is scheduled to take up residence on the landmark’s roof, I can offer this consolation: the work that has already been done on the Beaumont’s plaza and surroundings, according to designs by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, has wrought such a change upon the place that the new addition should make little difference.

We will not know until next fall, apparently, the success of that work, which includes, among other alterations, the creation of a huge grassy mound for sunbathing and a new restaurant along the sides of the reflecting pool that continues to hold Henry Moore’s titanic “Reclining Figure.”

What we can say is that the feel of the place will be — indeed already is — vastly different from what it was. The spare, almost minimalist, geometry of the post and lintel theater, the perfectly square reflecting pool, and the surrounding grounds, together with the way they all responded to the striated side of the Metropolitan Opera, provide one of the most muscularly modernist experiences in New York City. [more]