Rick Cotton, who oversaw the rebuilding of LaGuardia Airport and several other major infrastructure projects in the New York City region in more than eight years as executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, plans to retire in January, the agency announced on Monday.
Mr. Cotton, 81, has run the Port Authority longer than any executive director in more than 75 years, having outlasted his political patron, Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat who resigned as governor amid accusations of sexual harassment in 2021.
Mr. Cuomo’s successor, Kathy Hochul, left Mr. Cotton in charge of the Port Authority, where he had formed an unconventional partnership with Kevin O’Toole, the agency’s chairman who had been appointed by Chris Christie, the Republican former governor of New Jersey. Phil Murphy, the Democratic governor of New Jersey for the last eight years, never exercised his prerogative to replace Mr. O’Toole.
“Rick took on one of the toughest public-service jobs in America and delivered extraordinary results,” Ms. Hochul said in a statement. “LaGuardia’s transformation alone would define a career, but Rick’s impact spans airports, transit systems, bridges, and tunnels, as well as the renewed culture of a more accountable Port Authority.”
Mr. Murphy said in a statement: “I am grateful for Rick’s partnership over the past eight years, and for his leadership on several transformative transportation and infrastructure projects that will benefit our region for decades to come,”
Ms. Hochul has not said whom she plans to appoint to succeed Mr. Cotton.
When Mr. Cotton arrived, the Port Authority was still trying to recover from years of infighting and cronyism that had left it dysfunctional and scandal-scarred. In September 2013, allies of Mr. Christie in high places at the agency had concocted a scheme to tie up traffic approaching the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee, N.J., as a way of punishing a political enemy.
Several months later, Joseph R. Biden Jr., then serving as Barack Obama’s vice president, inadvertently set the Port Authority on a more ambitious path. In a speech in Philadelphia, Mr. Biden likened LaGuardia to an airport in “some third-world country,” embarrassing Mr. Cuomo.
The Port Authority had a plan to renovate LaGuardia, but Mr. Cuomo deemed it too modest and assigned oversight of the project to Mr. Cotton, an aide he had called the state’s “czar of infrastructure.” When Mr. Cuomo shifted Patrick J. Foye from the top job at the Port Authority to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in 2017, he appointed Mr. Cotton to replace Mr. Foye.
Mr. Cotton was 73 and had already completed a career as a lawyer and media industry executive. Rather than retiring, he drove the Port Authority to modernize its collection of airports, bridges and other transportation facilities. He was a frequent visitor to LaGuardia during its $8 billion rebuild that was completed last year, pressing the companies that built new terminals there to stay on schedule.
On his watch, the Port Authority completed construction of Terminal A at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey and embarked on a $19 billion overhaul of Kennedy International Airport in Queens. Work recently began on a long-planned, $11 billion reconstruction of the main bus terminal in Midtown Manhattan.
Mr. Cotton, whose salary was about $325,000 a year, said in a prepared statement that he and Mr. O’Toole shared a conviction that the region deserved world-class infrastructure.
“Working in partnership across two states, political lines and every corner of this agency, we have made historic progress toward that goal,” he said. “Together, we transformed our airports from appalling laughingstocks into award-winning, best-in-class gateways, and jump-started the Midtown Bus Terminal, which had languished for decades.”
Mr. Cotton said the work had been “enormously rewarding — and exhausting.” But he said it was time for him to hand over the reins. “Nothing is forever,” he said.
During Mr. Cotton’s tenure, the Port Authority grew substantially. The value of its assets grew by more than 35 percent, from $46 billion in 2017 to more than $63 billion in 2024. Last year, it collected $7 billion in revenue, about $2 billion of which came from the steadily rising tolls at its bridges and tunnels that cross the border between New Jersey and New York City.
Last week, the Port Authority announced a plan to increase the fare on the PATH train that connects Newark, Jersey City and Hoboken to Manhattan. The cost of a ride would rise to $4 by early 2029, in four increments starting next summer.
The agency also collects fees from airlines that use its airports and rents from companies that operate at its ports and transportation hubs.
Patrick McGeehan is a Times reporter who covers the economy of New York City and its airports and other transportation hubs.
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