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“Downtown Skyport to be New Operator for New York Manhattan Heliport, First Global City to Support Such Infrastructure”

Down­town Sky­port (DS), a joint ven­ture between Sky­ports Infra­struc­ture and Group ADP, has been cho­sen by the New York City Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (NYCEDC), as the new oper­a­tor for the Down­town Man­hat­tan Heli­port (DMH), fol­low­ing a Fran­chise and Con­ces­sion Review Com­mit­tee (FCRC) pub­lic hear­ing approval, reports a press release. 

In Novem­ber 2023, May­or Adams and NYCEDC announced a new vision of trans­form­ing the heli­port into a sus­tain­able, mul­ti-modal trans­porta­tion and logis­tics hub.

Fol­low­ing a com­pet­i­tive Request for Pro­pos­al (RFP) process, “Down­town Sky­port is to take over man­age­ment of DMH to con­tin­ue exist­ing oper­a­tions and upgrade the City-owned heli­port to pro­vide the sup­port­ing infra­struc­ture for eVTOL air­craft, as well as last-mile mar­itime freight deliv­ery,” explains the release. 

Sky­ports and Groupe ADP have exten­sive expe­ri­ence in heliport/airport oper­a­tions. Sky­ports owns and oper­ates one of two pub­lic heli­ports in Lon­don and is devel­op­ing eVTOL infra­struc­ture across mul­ti­ple con­ti­nents. Groupe ADP owns and oper­ates 26 air­ports world­wide, includ­ing Issy-les-Moulin­eaux Heli­port and Charles de Gaulle Air­port in Paris, France and is part of a joint ven­ture oper­at­ing New York Stew­art Inter­na­tion­al Air­port.  

After a tran­si­tion peri­od with the heliport’s cur­rent oper­a­tor, DS is to assume con­trol of oper­a­tions at DMH ear­ly next year. The com­ple­tion date of trans­form­ing the heli­port for elec­tric air taxis will occur dur­ing 2026.

Maria Tor­res-Springer (Cred­it: Yahoo News)

Maria Tor­res-Springer, First Deputy May­or, remarked, “New York City’s Har­bour of the Future takes a huge step for­ward today, advanc­ing the City’s vision for an inter-modal, elec­tri­fied trans­porta­tion net­work that sets a glob­al exam­ple for elec­tri­fied, qui­et flight in urban envi­ron­ments and a Blue High­way net­work for improved last-mile move­ment of freight.”

Andrew Kim­ball, Pres­i­dent and CEO of NYCEDC, added, ”With their exper­tise in glob­al trans­porta­tion, Down­town Sky­port is per­fect­ly posi­tioned to advance the vision of trans­form­ing DMH into a hub for cut­ting-edge mobil­i­ty. By inte­grat­ing eVTOL tech­nol­o­gy and facil­i­tat­ing mar­itime freight and last-mile deliv­er­ies, this ini­tia­tive will not only reduce truck traf­fic but bring huge qual­i­ty of life improve­ments for all New York­ers.”

DS has com­mit­ted to mak­ing DMH and the New York City skies qui­eter and more sus­tain­able by:- 

: Invest­ing in the sup­port­ing infra­struc­ture (e.g charg­ers) and any nec­es­sary util­i­ty upgrades with­in the ini­tial five-year term in antic­i­pa­tion of eVTOL cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and com­mer­cial via­bil­i­ty. 

: Incen­tivis­ing the adop­tion of qui­et eVTOL tech­nol­o­gy to address com­mu­ni­ty qual­i­ty of life con­cerns. 

: Diver­si­fy­ing DMH activ­i­ties and mit­i­gat­ing the chal­lenges of traf­fic con­ges­tion in the City by devel­op­ing and oper­at­ing a mar­itime facil­i­ty for last-mile micro-dis­tri­b­u­tion  fund­ed in part by near­ly USD1 mil­lion of a USD5 mil­lion grant from the U.S Dept of Trans­porta­tion Mar­itime Admin­is­tra­tion (MARAD) grant  award­ed to NYCEDC to cre­ate and sup­port a “Marine High­way” net­work.

: Expand­ing minor­i­ty and women owned busi­ness enter­pris­es (M/WBE) out­reach required for all work includ­ing 30 per­cent util­i­sa­tion goals for site devel­op­ment and con­struc­tion activ­i­ties.

: Intro­duc­ing work­force devel­op­ment train­ing pro­gram­sthat improve access to career path­ways in avi­a­tion, mar­itime, trans­porta­tion, logis­tics and oth­er rel­e­vant sec­tors.

: And improve­ments to the main pas­sen­ger ter­mi­nal to enhance the over­all cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. 

The Present Day Down­town Man­hat­tan Heli­port (Cred­it: Wikipedia)

Dun­can Walk­er, CEO of Sky­ports, com­ment­ed, “The facil­i­ty will serve as a lynch­pin to advance the City’s goals of cre­at­ing a com­pre­hen­sive micro dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work along the ‘Blue High­way’ and improve qual­i­ty of life for New York­ers.” 

For more infor­ma­tion

https://skyports.net/

https://www.parisaeroport.fr/homepage-groupe

(Top image cred­it: Down­town Sky­port)

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