TWA Hotel at JFK Airport

Terminal to Hotel Conversion
Jamaica, NY

Challenge

After sitting unused for 14 years, the iconic mid-century TWA Flight Center terminal at the John F. Kennedy International Airport (originally built and opened in the 1960s) was converted into a state-of-the-art hotel complex, boasting 512 rooms, 200,000 square foot lobby with a conference center and several restaurants.  To complete the project, the team faced a series of technical and aesthetic challenges – notably:

• Technically, limitations on available electrical infrastructure meant that the CUP had to provide power to the entire hotel complex, including all CUP equipment.
• Aesthetically, the curvature of the new hotel wing had to be consistent with the architecture of the adjacent Flight Center.  And since the CUP would be set on the roof of the hotel wing, it too had to match the same curvature.

Solution

MCR Development engaged Turner Construction and Epsilon to overcome a myriad of design-, site- and schedule-related challenges in providing a new Central Utility Plant (CUP) using the Off-Site Construction (OSC) approach.

To address the project’s primary technical challenge, the Epsilon CUP delivers 1 MW of power generation, along with 1,400 tons of chilled water cooling and 1,200 MBH of hot water heating – enabling the hotel complex to operate “off the grid”.

To address the project’s primary aesthetic challenge, each module of the Epsilon plant was designed and built in the factory as a trapezoid – as opposed to the traditional rectangular shape. Once assembled on the roof, the series of trapezoidal modules created a unique curved CUP, matching the hotel below.

Furthermore, utilizing the OSC approach enabled the entire team to meet aggressive milestone construction dates, since the CUP could be fabricated and pre-commissioned in parallel with other on-site activities. This enabled rapid installation and start-up of the complex CUP systems once the Epsilon modules were delivered to the site, keeping the high-profile project on track.