Mobilizing the Metropolis

Front matter

HOW THE PORT AUTHORITY p a oe eee ——_

BUILT NEW YORK dad te a

How the Port Authority Built New York

Introduction

Fostering Regional Mobility through Enduring Partnerships Turning Point: A Strike at Autonomy and a Blow to the Culture Moving Three Bridges from the Periphery to Center Stage Building and Rebuilding the World Trade Center

Notes Index

Digital materials related to this title can be found on the Fulcrum platform via the following citable URL: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.12009801 vii

309 361

ILLUSTRATIONS

Maps

1.1 Major Port Authority Facilities 25 3.1 The Region's Airports 62 7.1 Staten Island 175 7-2 Roadway Network around Midtown and Lower Manhattan 184 8.1 World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan 221 Figures

1.1 Port Authority Commerce Building 2 1.2 Traffic along the Hudson River 6 1.3 Recent Port Authority Organization Chart 26 2.1 New York Harbor in 1893 32 2.2 Aerial View of Manhattan 33 2.3. Hudson River Piers in Manhattan 34 2.4 Railroad Yards along Jersey City Waterfront 35 2.5 Timeline of Major Port Authority Projects 38 2.6 Shaking Hands in the Holland Tunnel 40 2.7 George Washington Bridge 45 2.8 Lincoln Tunnel Ceremony 47 3.1 LaGuardia Field 52 3.2 Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge 65 3.3 Planes Queued Up at Kennedy Airport 71 4.1 Trucks Lined Up for the Ferry in Hoboken 87 4.2 Unloading Freight on a Manhattan Pier 92 4.3. Manhattan’s Banana Docks 93 4.4. Containers on 1956 Maiden Voyage of Ideal X 94 viii

Little Island on the Hudson River

Trade Routes between Asia and New York

Shipping Containers in Elizabeth

Container Ships at Marine Terminal in Elizabeth Transcom Operations Center

TransitCenter’s TransitCheks

Manhattan Traveler Commuter Rail Map Construction of Outerbridge Crossing

Goethals Bridge Construction

Crossing the Goethals Bridge

George Washington Bridge’s Upper and Lower Levels Narrow Lanes on the Goethals Bridge

The New Goethals Bridge

Governor Chris Christie in Bayonne

Raising the Roadway on the Bayonne Bridge Container Ship under the Bayonne Bridge

PATH Sign Goes Up

Radio Row in Lower Manhattan

Original World Trade Center Complex

Remains of World Trade Center after September 11 Austin J. Tobin Plaza

Original Site Plan for World Trade Center

New Site Plan for One World Trade Center Construction of One World Trade Center

National September 11 Memorial under Construction One World Trade Center

Former Presidents at National September 11 Memorial Calatrava’s PATH Station

Port Authority’s Helicopter

Exclusive Bus Lane

Port Authority Officer in Lincoln Tunnel’s Catwalk Car Ramps Connecting Lincoln Tunnel and Bus Terminal

Illustrations

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Diligence and resourcefulness can only take you so far. Everyone relies on help from family members, friends, colleagues, and even kind strangers. We owe a special thanks to the late Jameson Doig who started us on our journey, inspired us to ask the right questions, and applauded us along the way. Jim was both a revered scholar and an academic who informed ongoing public policy issues.

We were extraordinarily fortunate that so many people connected to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey shared their stories and invaluable insights. The two of us are especially grateful to Alfred Doblin, Alice Herman, Amit Bhomick, Ann Freedman, Anne Strauss-Wieder, Bethan Rooney, Bill Armbruster, Bill Baroni, Bob Gordon, Bob Kelly, Cherrie Nanninga, Christian Bollwage, Christine Todd Whitman, Chris Rohner, Chris Ward, Dave Judd, David Plavin, Deborah Finn, Edmond Harrison, Enoch Lipson, Floyd Lapp, Frank Lombardi, Frank Caggiano, Frank McDonough, Gary Hack, George Cancro, George Marlin, Gerald Stoughton, Gil Medina, Greg Storey, Herb Ouida, Janet Cox, Jeff Zupan, Jeffrey Green, Jim Devine, Jimmy Diaz, Joan Verplanck, Joann Papageorgis, Joe Doria, Joel Ettinger, John Fruin, John Haley, Jon Peters, Ken Philmus, Laine D’Augustine, Larry Filler, Larry Lennon, Lee Sander, Leon Goodman, Lillian Borrone, Linda Spock, Loretta Weinberg, Lynne Sagalyn, Mark Muriello, Martin Robins, Marygrace Parker, Matt Edelman, Mike Miller, Pat Foye, Patty Clark, Paul Bea, Peter Goldmark, Peter King, Peter Rinaldi, Quentin Brathwaite, Rebecca Marcillo-Gomez, Richard Kelly, Richard Lobron, Richard Mroz, Richard Oram, Richard Roper, Rick Larabee, Robert Boyle, Robert VanDeventer, Ronald Shiftan, Rosemary Scanlon, Sandra Van de Walle, Stan Brezenoff, Stephen Berger, Steve Levine, Steve Rothman, Thom Carafella, Tim Gilchrist, Tom Wakeman, Tony Coscia, Tony Shorris, Victoria Kelly, and Wilfredo Guzman.

We want to give a very special thanks to Dave Gallagher, Lou Venech and the Port Authority Retirees Association for helping us with every aspect x Acknowledgments of the book. We do hope that our readers appreciate all the great maps that Md. Shahin Rahman made for us, because we certainly do. We are grateful to Elizabeth Demers and Haley Winkle at the University of Michigan Press who early on recognized the importance of our work. Their team (including editors and designers) is remarkably sharp and diligent. Thanks also to all the archivists who helped us uncover documents and old photographs that have been stored across the United States.

We would also like to thank the friends and colleagues who read drafts of the book and offered their comments and suggestions. Adam Brown, Jen’s frequent collaborator and a fellow infrastructure dork, suffered through countless early drafts. Jen’s father, H.V. Nelles, read the manuscript with the eyes of a historian and gave us valuable feedback that helped bring our story to life. Her mom, Diane Nelles, was also super valuable, offering encouragement and mostly restraining herself from commenting on Jen’s creative use of punctuation, while delivering all-important virtual hugs. Tim Vorley ensured that Jen had time and space for this project and a job to fall back on in the off chance that it’s not a runaway bestseller. He doesn’t care about ports or authority, but this book is for him. Jen would also like to thank her husband Robby Gutmann, who gamely tolerates her infrastructure obsession and without whom life would be way less fun. Her kids, Ozzy and Archie, are the best snugglers around and every author knows that’s key for good writing.

Phil’s wonderful wife, Amy, has been a real trooper on this book adventure—tagging along on romantic outings to container terminals, cargo facilities, suspension bridge towers, trash incinerators, and the swamps of Jersey. Phil is thankful for his sister, Laura Gagnon, who splendidly took on a lion’s share of family responsibilities so he could go to Seoul for a year as part of the U.S. Fulbright Scholars program. That adventure provided him with tremendous insight into the problems and potential of American cities. Phil also wishes to thank his teachers (from P.S. 128 in Brooklyn to his professors at Hunter College and the New School) along with his remarkable colleagues at the Eno Center for Transportation who provide him the support to continue his important research efforts. And, a special shoutout to Cynthia and Andrew who always give Phil such “naches””

CHAPTER 1 Introduction

A remarkable structure sits on the west side of Manhattan. Although 111 Eighth Avenue is only eighteen floors high, it consumes an entire massive New York City block and was built with big things in mind. The building (see fig. 1.1), which contains 50 percent more square feet than the Empire State Building, was designed with elevators so large they could accommodate trucks weighing twenty tons. It is perhaps appropriate that today it houses Google’s New York City headquarters, a firm often described using similar superlatives. However, from when construction was completed in 1933 until 1973, the building had very different uses. It served as an enormous transfer facility for railroads and truckers (President Franklin D. Roosevelt once described it as the first great post office for freight) as well as the city’s largest exhibition hall. The owner of the building, the Port of New York Authority, had its headquarters on the upper floors, where ambitious public officials mobilized the metropolis to build even more impressive structures, securing New York’s role as one of the greatest cities in the world.

The Authority (since 1972 known as the “Port Authority of New York and New Jersey” or simply the “Port Authority”) is a bistate partnership between New York and New Jersey that builds, operates, and maintains critical transportation and real estate assets. It was established in 1921 in an effort to find solutions to infrastructure development and freight mobility conflicts inherent in the economically integrated but geographically and politically fragmented New York metropolitan region. Although the Authority’s name suggests that its responsibilities are limited to managing the region’s shipping ports, in fact its influence extends to developing, planning, and regulating a wide range of transportation infrastructure on water, roads, rails, and in the air. Almost all its assets are located within a twenty-five-mile radius of the Statue of Liberty, with a portfolio that includes five airports, four marine terminals, three bus stations, four bridges, and two tunnels, as well as numerous real estate sites including the World Trade Center.

Fig. 1.1. The words “The Port of New York Authority Inland Terminal Number One” are still visible below the Google sign on 111 Eighth Avenue.

(Photograph by Scott Roy Atwood, June 2013. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.)

As the Port Authority marked its centennial in 2021, few would have disputed its significance to the region. Its facilities permit the (usually) effective circulation of millions of people and a more than a million tons of goods every day.’ It is a crucial actor, and often leader, of major infrastructure development projects across the region. The Authority has emerged as a critical voice in regional planning and has unquestionably operated on an epic scale—orchestrating the construction of monumental infrastructure such as the George Washington Bridge across the Hudson River (the world’s busiest motor vehicle crossing), consolidating the management of three of the nation’s busiest airports, and constructing (and then reconstructing) the World Trade Center. As an organization, it has frequently proved masterful at achieving its goals—often in the face of daunting opposition.

However, the organization has also faced its share of challenges. To say that the modern Port Authority has been immersed in controversy in recent years is an understatement. In September 2013, a Port Authority staff member created a traffic jam at the George Washington Bridge because a local mayor refused to support New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s reelection bid. This incident, known as Bridgegate, exposed the infiltration of politics into the Port Authority’s once touted independence and rational decision-making processes. Three years later, the Port Authority opened a magnificent train station at the World Trade Center; but at a cost of $4 billion, it has been widely regarded, even within the Authority itself, as wasteful and excessive. The Authority has faced repeated calls for reform, and it has been subject to an ongoing critique of its handling of some high-profile projects. It is worth noting that in the last fifty years, the Port Authority has not attempted to execute as many projects that have rivaled the accomplishments, scale, and impact of its earliest efforts. Whatever its faults, the Port Authority is an organization with an important legacy and a central place in the future of the New York metropolitan region.

This is a book about an organization that has done big things—won big but also failed big—in one of the most complex and dynamic regions in the world. It can be read as a reflective history of this organization and its significant moments building the infrastructural foundation for the New York metropolitan region. However, we also use the Port Authority’s experiences to develop a better understanding of the internal attributes that help or hinder an organization’s ability to execute its vision. The Port Authority’s success in this respect is tied to its ability to construct supportive coalitions around projects and to counter opposition from multiple quarters. Our analysis shows that four factors (internal resources, autonomy, culture, and leadership) all contribute to an organization’s ability to generate supportive coalitions.

The Port Authority, the nation’s very first public authority, now has more than 35,000 copycats in the U.S., alone. These authorities provide a wide variety of services such as building and operating parking facilities, convention centers, low-income housing, and hospitals.* While our book focuses on a very particular organization—a bistate infrastructure development entity that has had an uncommon degree of autonomy and a powerful reputation—we believe the lessons revealed in this book are relevant for any organization that needs to balance the interests of its individual members against its collective mission. In short, we offer both a fascinating story about an organization that has shaped a modern metropolis as well as insights to guide it, and other organizations, to a bright future doing big things.

The Rise of a Modern Metropolis and the Origins of the Port Authority

New York was transformed from a regional hub into a center of world commerce thanks to one of the nation’s most successful infrastructure projects. In the early 1800s, the Port of New York was the nation’s fifth busiest behind Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New Orleans.‘ In 1825, after the Erie Canal was built to connect the Hudson River with the Great Lakes, Manhattan’s piers began handling more goods than the next three cities in the United States combined.’ New York became the North American hub for materials and goods from the Caribbean, Europe, Midwest, and the entire Eastern Seaboard. The city’s rise as a global trading hub spawned the city’s prominence as the nation’s center for manufacturing. When the nineteenth-century railroad tycoons built their lines, they all wanted to connect with the nation’s busiest port and manufacturing center. By 1900, eleven different railroad companies carried goods and passengers to New York’s port. Most of the railroad terminals were located in New Jersey on the west side of the Hudson River. To get across the river, passengers took ferries while railroad box cars crossed on barges.°

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the port became not only the gateway for goods traveling by water and rail but also the entry point for millions of immigrants from Europe. Many of the new Americans made their homes in New York’s neighborhoods where they could continue speaking their native languages and attending familiar houses of worship. The city’s government and business leaders encouraged the rapid growth by building streetcar lines and elevated railroads that transformed farmland into densely populated neighborhoods. Between 1800 and 1900, New York City’s population soared from less than 80,000 to more than 3.4 million.

In the early twentieth century, New York City was an industrial and economic powerhouse with nearly 900,000 people employed in the manufacturing sector. Most of the nation’s furs, hats, leather goods, women’s clothes, pipes, and pens were made in New York City, along with more than 40 percent of the nation’s jewelry, umbrellas, and men’s clothing.’ The insurance and banking industries grew along with the shipping, trading, and manufacturing sectors. Exchanges for trading commodities and stocks prospered as well. Corporations across the country chose to locate their headquarters in the city to be near each other and to be close to law firms and other business services that catered to their needs.

An early twentieth-century visitor's guide to New York described the Hudson River waterfront along Manhattan’s west side “as the great shipping section with one long succession of steamers, ships, piers, docks and ferries” Practically the entire foreign fruit trade of the country was conducted in just a few blocks. Steamships and railroads brought in their produce and meat including apples from Oregon, grapefruit from Florida, pineapples from Hawaii, and cattle from Nebraska. Visitors were amazed to watch how thousands of barrels and hundreds of tons of perishable goods were removed almost immediately after they were delivered to make way for the next train and ship. “One can hardly realize that lemons in lots of twenty-five thousand boxes are frequently disposed of in a few moments.”®

By 1915, only one U.S. state, Pennsylvania, had more residents than the New York metropolitan area’s population of 7.1 million people, and nearly half of the nation’s international commerce passed through the Port of New York. Calling it the “Port of New York” was actually a misnomer because it was not a single waterfront nor a single waterway but rather nearly 2.000 piers, wharves, and quays along 650 miles of waterfront in two states.’ Ships came into the city’s five boroughs (Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens, Staten Island, and Manhattan) on the New York side, and into New Jersey’s industrial cities (including Newark, Elizabeth, Hoboken, and Jersey City). As the volume of goods increased, moving goods to and from the waterfront became increasingly congested and chaotic (fig. 1.2). Businesses throughout the region were concerned because they depended upon reliable and inexpensive transportation services to move their goods. Military leaders added to the clamor for improvements to the port, after experiencing major backups moving troops and supplies through the port during World War I.

To fix the port’s problems, New York and New Jersey needed more extensive and ongoing cooperation. In 1921, the two states established the Port Authority as a quasi-independent corporation because the governors and legislatures in both states understood that the residents and businesses of the 105 municipalities located near the port would be best served by working together. The Authority could spur economic development and reduce the cost of transporting goods by improving the infrastructure and facilities for ships and trains. Over the course of the next one hundred years, the Port Authority’s mission evolved from improving rail freight to building motor vehicle crossings, seaports, airports, heliports, bus stations, office towers, industrial parks, and truck terminals (including the one on Eighth Avenue). The Port Authority saw government action as a way to moderate the ineffiw a Coppel so bp d

Fig. 1.2. Traffic along the Hudson River, circa 1920. (Photograph by Irving Underhill. Reprinted by permission of the Museum of City of New York.)

ciencies of untrammeled competition and fill gaps in services that the private sector could not provide. The Authority relied on scientific expertise and rational planning as a route to solve problems, improve transportation facilities, and enhance the region’s economic strength.

One thing that most of the Port Authority’s initiatives have had in common is that they involve facilities and networks that can be used cooperatively and efficiently by individuals and multiple firms. Numerous truckers and shippers use the airports and seaports where goods are gathered, sorted, and dispatched to their destinations. Two dozen different bus carriers use the Port Authority’s Midtown Manhattan bus terminal, while more than seventy different airlines serve John F. Kennedy Airport. From the Port Authority’s perspective, it did not make much sense for each airline, bus company, railroad, and trucking firm to build its own airport, bus terminal, rail terminal, or river crossing. Even the Port Authority’s justification for building the World

Trade Center fit this model, since the complex was designed to serve as a center for the efficient sharing of information about importing and exporting products and services.

The Port Authority still bears many of the hallmarks of its Progressive Era origins (discussed in detail in chapter 2). Although it never achieved the degree of political and financial autonomy that its architect, Julius Henry Cohen, envisioned, the Authority’s institutional design came as close as any of its vintage to enshrining the Progressive Era principles of nonpolitical and professionalized agencies and bureaucracies, vigorous executive action by competent leaders who were appointed on merit, and adherence to principles of scientific rationality and efficient practice. The Port Authority Compact, signed in 1921 and approved by Congress, created an organization with a broad mandate to manage mobility in the region, though its authority was limited to the specific areas designated by the two states.

Through this mandate, it has built and operated transportation facilities throughout the metropolitan area and raised revenues by charging fees to use its assets and floating bonds to finance future projects. This has provided the Port Authority with a measure of fiduciary independence that has proved crucial to its infrastructure development ambitions. However, the organization has been limited in important ways—it cannot tax, use eminent domain without explicit state authorization, veto local plans that contravene its own, or create regulations outside its own facilities. These limitations are designed to ensure that the organization cannot trample over the powers of local counties, cities, and towns. In practice, this has meant that the Port Authority has had to muster all its creativity and organizational assets to change minds, diffuse opposition, and build coalitions to support its initiatives.

An Organization Apart but Not Sovereign: Coalitions and Capacity

Political organizations and partnerships can rarely act unilaterally. Even if they have considerable power and capacity, they still must operate in environments that typically will not be unanimously supportive of their goals. Even when they are designed to have a significant measure of autonomy, they will still have to consider the positions of external constituencies and political masters. As such, an organization’s ability to mobilize coalitions at various scales to overcome opposition is a crucial factor in its capacity to get things done.

The Port Authority is one of the most powerful infrastructure governance agencies in the world by many measures—the significance of its portfolio of assets; the number of passengers, vehicles, and goods that pass through its areas of influence; the scale of the projects that it has completed; its influence on state and national policies, and on private firms; and even occasionally its role in shaping global trends. Yet, as the previous section demonstrates, while its architect had hoped to invest the Port Authority with as much autonomy as possible, at its foundation it was firmly bound to its bistate political masters. As such, despite its size and significance, the Port Authority faces many of the same constraints that all intergovernmental and collective organizations do: it cannot act alone and its ability to accomplish its goals depends on its capacity to mobilize and maintain a supportive coalition.

This book develops this argument by focusing on noteworthy initiatives— successful, less successful, and still uncertain—from the Port Authority’s more than one hundred-year history. Where the organization was able to construct a viable supportive coalition, it was able to implement a version of its agenda, and where it failed to, the Authority’s projects fell short. In some cases, this required compromise. In almost all, it required creativity to navigate the complex political waters and muster support against the inertia of opposition.

One important point about coalitions is that they do not merely exist, but rather they must be constructed and then they can be leveraged. Groups and individuals who share common goals may be coordinated and unified, but often they are not formally organized. Astute leaders recognize the constellation of actors who share interests and objectives and use them to support their mutual policy goals. Coalition participation can be passive or active. In some cases, leaders will point to groups that share their interests to demonstrate the breadth of support for a cause and highlight the political consequences of failing to deliver. In other cases, leaders will more actively organize interest groups to put direct pressure on decision-makers from various quarters. Additionally, coalitions can be expanded as those most centrally interested seek to convert others to support their goals. Any political outcome can be understood as the result of a struggle between interests, and many of those outcomes are the results of the concerted efforts of coalitions. But coalitions are neither permanent nor transferable. Those that support an organization's actions in one sphere may not in another, or the next time. As a result, collaborative organizations must constantly work to build and maintain support.

Despite the New York and New Jersey statehouses’ relatively strong general support for the Port Authority in principle, and confidence in its utility to the region, when it comes to major projects the Authority has had to mobilize coalitions to overcome resistance. This has become particularly important when projects appear to benefit one state over the other. One of the interesting aspects of cooperative organizations like the Port Authority, which are constructed and to a certain degree controlled by their members, is that their objectives can be at odds with the interests of their membership. Consider how the goals of the United Nations oftentimes conflict with the goals of its individual members.

The Port Authority’s membership consists of only two states, but each state does not necessarily speak with one voice because the governor, state senate, state assembly, and the men and women serving on the Port Authority’s board of commissioners do not necessarily have the same interests. Since cooperative organizations are dependent on the funding and political support of their members, conflict between those members can undermine organizational aims." In such cases, it is often necessary to convince not just the organization’s leaders (such as board members) but also officials in both state capitols who have the power to block projects in various ways.

In this introductory chapter we focus in on three examples of significant Port Authority initiatives to help illustrate the mechanisms and factors that influence its ability to build coalitions supportive of its goals: (1) the conceptualization and construction of the George Washington Bridge; (2) the Port Authority’s acquisition of the region’s three major airports; and (3) the Authority’s bid to dominate maritime shipping through developing the region’s ports. While we develop these cases in more detail in chapters 2, 3, and 4, these summaries provide both a preview of what is to come and demonstrate how the factors that influence coalition-building capacity function and interact.

The Bridge

The construction of the George Washington Bridge connecting New Jersey with New York City across the Hudson River remains one of the Port Authority’s most monumental and enduring accomplishments. In fact, Jameson Doig in his book about the Port Authority, Empire on the Hudson, paints this early accomplishment as particularly decisive for the fledgling organization, one that consolidated its position as the preeminent bistate Authority and, crucially, provided a financial foundation for future projects through the tolls it would collect from motorists."

The construction of the bridge is an important story of coalition-building because it is an example of how the Port Authority managed to seize an opportunity largely of someone else’s making and maintain control of the project through potentially disastrous political challenges. In fact, the plan by the bridge designer, Othmar Ammann, for a trans-Hudson motor vehicle span was originally in competition with the Port Authority’s own plans to construct rail tunnels between New Jersey and Manhattan. However, the Authority astutely recognized that crossings for cars and trucks would be crucial to the future of the region and, after detailed study of alternatives, pivoted to adopt the bridge plan and its designer and engineer.

Ammann himself laid much of the groundwork for the political approvals of the bridge plans in 1925 before he joined the Port Authority by relentlessly promoting his initiative to local politicians, business communities, and state legislatures. These supportive constituencies were instrumental in securing political buy-in for the project and would come in handy again once approvals had been secured. As work on the bridge began, political battles brewed between the two states and threatened to derail the project and the construction of three other bridges in the region that were proceeding in parallel. Factors related to the bridge’s construction and design provoked a movement in New Jersey to give the legislature approval power over all Port Authority contracts. This sparked an arms race of sorts between the two state governors, both of whom sought a veto power to ensure that they had the final word on Port Authority matters. A decisive political communication strategy was needed to overcome these hurdles. In a bold maneuver, the Authority’s leadership suspended construction activities on the four interstate crossings in progress while the political battle raged. Halting work produced the desired effect, resulting in widespread protest from business interests and local politicians who argued that the shutdown threatened economic growth. The offending legislation in New Jersey was repealed relatively quickly and both states had passed laws limiting veto authority over the Port Authority’s actions to the governors. Work on the crossing resumed, and the George Washington Bridge opened successfully in 1931.

The Airports One of the most significant elements of the Port Authority’s current portfolio of infrastructure is the region’s three major airports—Kennedy, LaGuardia, and Newark Liberty—which serve more than 140 million passengers annually. Today, the Port Authority’s role as steward of these crucial assets is taken for granted, but airports were not initially included in the organization’s domain. For one, when the Authority was created commercial aviation was not a pressing concern, and once airports started to be seen as important economic engines, cities regarded them as valuable local government assets. As such, when in the 1940s the Port Authority leaders wanted to gain control over the region’s airports, they faced an uphill battle.

A formidable group of interests arrayed against the Port Authority’s airport ambitions, including local officials in Newark and New York City who wanted to retain control of their respective airports and had plans of their own to modernize facilities. Robert Moses, who at the time headed up many of New York City’s infrastructure authorities, had his own imperial eye set on the prize of air infrastructure. New York’s state legislature and its governor, Thomas E. Dewey, supported Moses’s effort by enacting a law creating a competing authority to modernize what is now John F. Kennedy Airport. This is a notable example of where the Port Authority’s ambitions were opposed by one of its members, namely the state and governor of New York. As such, this case demonstrates how the organization prevailed despite strong opposition, highlighting the power of building and activating strong external coalitions as a strategy for organizations that find themselves at odds with their political masters.

In order to overcome these significant challenges, the Port Authority mobilized an equally impressive coalition of supporters, including the Regional Plan Association (a highly regarded civic organization), the region’s business community, the press, airlines, and investment banks, among others. The narrative that finally won the day was that the Port Authority “had far greater financial resources and staff expertise, and a strong general reputation, than the patronage-riddled city agency of the new Airport Authority?” In broad strokes, the Port Authority leveraged some unique organizational resources to bring together a supportive coalition that turned public opinion and exerted sufficient pressure on its “enemies” to achieve a total victory on the matter of airport control. Its use of its financial resources, internal expertise, and skillful deployment of data were critical in winning over a variety of coalition members.