B-roll, Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Announces Completion of Expansion and Modernization Project at Syracuse Hancock International Airport

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul announced that work has been completed on a project to enhance the passenger experience at Syracuse Hancock International Airport, creating a world-class travel hub that will benefit the entire Central New York Region. The expansion and modernization project, which was awarded $20 million from the Governor’s $230 million Upstate Airport Economic Development and Revitalization Competition, is part of New York State’s continuing commitment to build out Syracuse’s airport to facilitate increased passenger traffic and accommodate the generational changes taking place in the area’s economic landscape. New features include an expanded North Concourse with additional seating, concession areas and improved passenger flow. The project also renovated the second floor of the terminal building in the location of gate 15 to expand the Federal Inspection Station facility, ensuring the airport retains its international designation.

B-ROLL of the Governor walking through the terminal expansion project at Syracuse Hancock International Airport is available to stream on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.

VIDEO: The event is available to stream on YouTube here and TV quality video is available here (h.264, mp4).

AUDIO: The Governor’s remarks are available in audio form here.

PHOTOS: The Governor’s Flickr page will post photos of the event here.

A rush transcript of the Governor’s remarks is available below:

Good afternoon everyone. So happy to be back in Syracuse. I spent four years as a college student here — I actually graduated — and always have the warmest memories here, but it's so fantastic to see and experience the transformation of this entire region. It is extraordinary what has happened since I left many years ago and how this community has been revitalized beyond anyone's expectations — and there's a lot of reasons for that, but I also want to start off by thanking some of our elected officials here.

I know we have Mayor Ben Walsh. Where are you, Mayor? Good to see you again, thank you. Senator Chris Ryan has joined us. Senator, thank you; good to see you again. We have Assemblymember Al Stirpe who's been visiting me here for many, many years.

We also have our Commissioner of the DOT who you’ll be hearing from briefly, Marie Therese Dominguez, and she's done an amazing job shepherding in the completion of so many improvements at our Upstate airports. I want to thank her for her leadership and her entire team that worked tirelessly to do this as well. Also, we have our director of the airport, Jason Terreri — you will be hearing from him momentarily as well. So, let's get round applause to Jason. Deputy Mayor's here as well. I want to welcome her, and just had a great conversation about plans for the future.

Well here we are to announce that this is the completion of an investment time of great importance to this community. And I speak about Syracuse with great fondness, as I mentioned, because I know what it's like to be from Upstate New York. I was born and bred here. People know how to speak the language. Someone just said, “Go Bills,” as I walked by, so they understand what's important to us up here. But also a sense of being overlooked for so long that our communities didn't matter as much as perhaps the big city, New York City. And I've worked so hard as the first Upstate Governor in 100 years to really show that this is a critically important region of our state.

And Central New York has so many incredible assets, and the architecture downtown — I was just at a new restaurant Sugar Grove, a great bakery there, and saw so many young people gathering there in this energetic, lively place. And I know there are people who have long believed in Syracuse, but weren't sure how long the future would take to arrive. And with projects like this, I'm really proud that the future has arrived — it literally landed here today.

As I said, for a long time an airport was overlooked, but now we understand this is the welcome mat to a community. This is also the place of first impressions, and when you have wonderful amenities, and ample seating space, and new concessions and improvements that you'll be hearing more about, it signals that this is a place that matters — it has value. And that's so important to me, and letting people know that — communities that just didn't know people would invest the resources in them.

And I look at projects like I-81, how many decades was that talked about? When I was a college student, we didn't understand why the university was literally segregated away from the rest of the community by this monstrosity, this I-81, and my friends, I'm watching the progress closely as is Commissioner Dominguez — she knows how important this is — but we can start making Downtown Syracuse a walkable place, a livable community.

You get two other products like Micron. We literally just left the offices, which would be open in three weeks, the executive headquarters for Micron — their welcome center on the first floor, their press center, their offices on the eighth floor — and it's amazing to see the view they're going to have when the people coming from all over to populate that space to help us get over the hump and just get through the next few weeks and years of progress and planning for Micron to come.

They're also going to have that “wow” factor, looking out over a beautiful city that is so rich in history but great promise as well.

So here, Micron is coming, but what do you have to do? You have to get ready for it. And this airport is getting ready for that because we know there's going to be so many more people, members, supply chain ecosystem and new employees wanting to come here. We're going to have 50,000 people working on this site over the next couple of decades — it's extraordinary, but this is the place they're going to come to perhaps for the first time. So we're building the housing, we're making the investments in infrastructure, I-81, but also this airport was so important to us.

So we talked about back in 2022, I announced $230 million for regional airports. Again, the ones that needed little TLC — they've been overlooked for such a long time. And I wanted to make sure that we were positioning communities like this to be able to benefit from them and to reap the rewards of having a world-class airport, and that included $20 million to support this $28 million terminal project and there had been previously awarded $35 million. I think the state, my term and previously, about $65 million in this airport — and you can see it and you can feel it, and people know the difference of what a world-class facility looks like.

And you think about who comes through here — 3 million passengers came through here last year, it's 3 million people; whether they’re local residents who deserve to have nothing but the best, or visitors or people on vacation coming to our great Central New York region. It's one of our busiest years ever, 5 percent up from last year, the previous year. And so, the economic impact for the region is about $830 million. So our investments in this definitely pay dividends time and time again, so it's really important to us. So we've added 4,600 square feet to the North Concourse where we stand today, additional seating — used to be crowded, I used to take planes out of here when I was Lieutenant Governor. It was packed, it was not that comfortable. And making sure we address the whole issue of passenger flow, and energy efficiency and others.

But also upgrade the federal inspection station — you'll hear about how important this is — making sure we maintain our international status, whether it's for vacation flights to Mexico or other opportunities that lie ahead. We had to make sure we made those investments when we were in danger of losing our international airport status, and that's really important to us. We have separately invested $10.5 million to rebuild the Airport Boulevard Bridges over I-81 to make it easier to get to and from — we got some more work to do there. But also, I want to continue these investments.

So today we're announcing an additional $25 million for 16 regional airports across the state. And we're not overlooking Syracuse, although we've already done $65 million. Here's another $2.5 million to construct something that you might find has a lot of value — a new snow removal center. So that's a place that people will understand how important it is to keep the runways clear in 12 months of the year, regardless of the weather, and I'm always proud that Upstate New York — despite the reputation of getting a lot of snow, and we do — we always can survive through it, and that means continuing to make sure our airport is opening and functioning. That's for you as well.

Again it's more than just the bricks and mortar, and the infrastructure investments. It's about creating connections, and how we connect people, and their communities and their businesses through a beautiful place like this airport, and it makes me really proud to be here today and I want to thank everyone involved.

It's about improving the quality of life. This quality of life here in Central New York — in my personal opinion and in my experience — is second to none. And our best days do lie ahead with so many products — they're on the cusp of breaking through, but it all starts with this investment here today.

Thank you very much for joining us for this important announcement.