The following year the Port Authority approved an agreement with Delta Air Lines to rebuild, and largely pay for, another terminal, with work expected to be finished in 2024. By then, the total cost for the airport work was $8 billion.

Even after it began, the project had challenges that came with their own costs. News outlets reported traffic snarls so severe at times during construction that taxis and buses couldn’t get close enough to pick up or drop off passengers, some of whom resorted to lugging suitcases down the main highway near the airport to get to the terminals. And plans to build a train link to the airport were reportedly abandoned as costs grew and Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who championed the project, left office in disgrace.

Still, by 2022, after the challenges of the pandemic and the opportunities presented by a sharp drop in airport use, the first of the terminals was finished, with two satellite concourses and pedestrian skybridges. The arrivals and departures hall of the second terminal, under Delta’s purview, opened months later, and work is expected to be finished this year.

New York officials have said the rebuild cost $8 billion, in line with 2016 estimates. It was funded mostly by private financing, with the Port Authority chipping in.

Mitchell Moss, former director of the Rudin Center for Transportation at New York University, said the project’s culmination came down to political will. When then-Vice President Joe Biden compared the airport to something that could be found in “a third-world country,” Cuomo was spurred to act.

“Gov. Cuomo ruled with a strong arm and a powerful presence,” Moss said. “And that is what made the Port Authority get the airport done in a timely way.”

Also playing a key role is the public-private partnership developing and operating one of the terminals at the New York airport, said Justin Marlowe, director of the Center for Municipal Finance at the University of Chicago. Though government agencies set standards for the airport, the partnership is responsible for running it, meaning the partnership likely was driven to help design and build the new terminal efficiently, he said. And because they are also operating the terminal, the companies involved stand to make money once the airport is up and running and meeting standards, so they have a strong incentive to get the project finished.

The partnerships can be controversial, though. In Denver, a public-private partnership tasked with completing a planned $650 million terminal renovation reportedly fell apart in 2019.

And the partnerships have long been met with skepticism in Illinois, Marlowe said. Plus, Chicago’s record of bringing the private sector into public infrastructure is questionable, he said. In an infamous 2008 deal, the city leased its parking meters to a private investment firm for an infusion of cash, and the firm recouped the cost and began profiting off the meters with decades left on the lease.

Still, Marlowe said, those efforts reflected political will. And regardless of how it got done, the completion of LaGuardia can be a comparison for business leaders who want to see if it’s possible for Chicago to complete a major infrastructure project, he said.

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