Port Authority to Create Advisory Panel for Airport Development

By Judy Rife, The Times Herald-Record, Middletown, N.Y.

Sep. 13–NEW WINDSOR — The Port Authority will create a community advisory panel to serve as a sounding board as it crafts a master plan for its development of Stewart International Airport.

“Up here, frankly, we’re newcomers,” said Anthony Shorris, the Port Authority’s executive director, speaking to 290 business and community leaders yesterday. “We don’t know Orange County — yet. But we know what we don’t know, and it’s a lot. We intend to learn.”

Shorris said the listen-and-learn process has already begun and will accelerate with the formation of the advisory panel after the Port Authority closes on Stewart’s lease around Nov. 1.

The panel could have as many as 30 members drawn from Orange, Ulster and Dutchess counties in such diverse fields as business, labor, environment, health care and the community at large.

Although the details about the panel’s exact composition and purpose are still being developed, Shorris said it is likely to outlive the drafting of a master plan for the airport — a process that will take at least a year. The panel, however, will not have any legal authority over the agency’s operations and will not conflict with the existing Stewart Airport Commission.

“This is an opportunity, an important tool, for us to hear more diverse voices than we usually do as we build a vision for Stewart,” said Shorris.

He pointed out that the interdependency between airports and the communities in which they are located only increases the desirability of close and constant interaction. For example, he said poor land-use planning around an airport can be as much of a headache for the airport as poor airport planning can be for the community.

Regardless of this rationale, activists and politicians have browbeaten the Port Authority to create such a panel ever since its plan to acquire Stewart’s lease became public in January. U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, for example, put out a media release taking credit for the panel before Shorris even spoke yesterday.

“They really need to have the community involved as they move forward, so I think they made the right decision [about a panel],” said County Executive Ed Diana. “But I think they should continue to work with the Stewart Airport Commission, too.”

Jim Wright, the chairman of the commission, said the Port Authority already is working with that regional body, which advises the state Department of Transportation, the owner of the airport.

Shorris also reiterated the Port Authority’s commitment to leverage Stewart as an economic development engine in the Hudson Valley and to maintain a dialogue across the region about noise, air quality and other “challenges.”

The Orange County Chamber of Commerce and the Orange County Citizens Foundation sponsored the luncheon at which Shorris spoke.

He will speak again on Nov. 1 at the Mid-Hudson Pattern for Progress annual meeting.

Port Authority official is new Stewart manager The Port Authority’s first general manager of Stewart International Airport will be Diannae Ehler, a civil engineer who came to the agency as a summer intern in 1983.

Ehler, who lives is Nyack, has been general manager of the Lincoln Tunnel and Port Authority Bus Terminal. The tunnel and the terminal function as one of the region’s busiest mass transit hubs, delivering more than 65,000 commuters on 1,800 buses to the city every morning.

In announcing the appointment, Anthony Shorris, the Port Authority’s executive director, told a story about how Ehler had enticed “a fancy French restaurant” that’s become a foodie destination to the tired bus terminal, adding, “Diannae knows how to make change happen.”

Ehler’s first years at the agency were spent in the Port Commerce Department, working at the Red Hook Terminal, Port Newark and Port Elizabeth. Then she transferred to the Aviation Department, where she oversaw more than $150 million worth of renovations at La Guardia and Newark airports.

She was manager of airport facilities at La Guardia when she was tapped for the Lincoln Tunnel job in 2002.

Ehler grew up in Queens Village and received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in engineering from Manhattanville College. She also has an MBA in management and finance from Fordham University.

Her assistant director for operations will be Jack Martini of Newburgh. Martini, now chief operations supervisor at La Guardia, worked at Stewart for almost 20 years before joining the Port Authority in 2000.

Ehler will round out her staff after the Port Authority closes on the purchase of the airport’s lease around Nov. 1. The agency’s presence, however, will be limited to a small coterie of senior managers.

The majority of airport employees will work for AvPorts of Baltimore, Md., the private company that the Port Authority has hired to operate Stewart. AvPorts also operates the airports in Teterboro, N.J., Albany and White Plains.

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