50s: Starting with a storage ring

Chapter 588 Taking Over the Airport
The reason he was able to save so much on daily management costs is mainly due to the fact that he eliminated most of the high-paid management team in his first battle.

In terms of personnel salaries alone, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey reduced its administrative expenses by nearly half in one year.

While downsizing the Bureau's organizational structure, he also gradually consolidated the Bureau's armed units and began merging them into a separate traffic police department.

Once the reorganization is complete, all traffic-related armed security, patrols, and duties will be uniformly dispatched by him.

Moreover, the salaries of these security departments are all allocated from the administrative expenses of the sending units to the Administration Bureau's account, and then the Administration Bureau headquarters uses this money to pay the salaries of the security department staff.

After arranging the plan, Sun Zhiwei felt that this move was very familiar. After thinking about it, he realized that this was the same model as overseas troop deployment: stationing troops in your home and demanding protection money from you.

While this model is domineering, it does significantly reduce the expenses of the other party in building their own security team.

Overall, it's a win-win-win situation, with Sun Zhiwei winning twice. This allows him to retain a violent armed force while also monitoring the sold transportation assets.

His arrangements were certainly not for the benefit of others, as he had already reached an understanding with Governor Cuomo.

Once the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has been streamlined, the new department will be named the New York and New Jersey Transportation Authority, and he will serve as its first director.

The new Transportation Bureau's jurisdiction will not only include the units it originally managed, but will also be expanded to more transportation-related areas, including the approval of the construction of new transportation facilities, etc.

This is a very large right, because no one can avoid dealing with the transportation department, and any regulation issued by the transportation department may affect everyone under its jurisdiction.

Sun Zhiwei was busy at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey until mid-July before he finally completed the inventory of all the assets of his subordinate units.

After holding two more auctions in a step-by-step manner, the final transformation of the management bureau can be completed.

However, there's no need to be so fast, because after the first batch of auctions, the remaining units can at least be guaranteed not to incur losses.

In fact, after he cleaned up the corruption, these units could even guarantee a small profit.

Yes, only a small amount; any more would be too much, given their bloated organization and outdated management practices.

But that's not his concern; the capitalists who bought the various assets will naturally handle it afterwards.

However, he still has two priority rights to use among the remaining transportation assets.

The fact that the latter two waves of assets were mostly heavy industries, which small businesses and companies could not participate in, attracted the attention of many large groups in the transportation industry.

These include shipping giant Maersk Group, investment giant BlackRock Group, and civil aviation giant American Airlines Group.

These groups have ample financial resources and powerful networks; Sun Zhiwei currently lacks the strength to compete with them.

His current asset focus is still on mining, and he has not yet developed a group operation model.

What he needs now is to quickly address his shortcomings and then establish a group company to pool his resources so that he can compete with these large groups in the future.

Therefore, he turned his attention to some less noticeable projects, such as the Francis R. Bruno Memorial Bridge.

This bridge spans the East River and is the only bridge connecting Rikers Island to the mainland. The other end of the Francis R. Bruno Memorial Bridge is Hassen Boulevard in Queens, and the exit is only 800 meters from the LaGuardia Airport terminal.

Sun Zhiwei was preparing to photograph the bridge, but his purpose was not the bridge itself, but rather Rikers Island on the other side of the bridge.

Due to its geographical location, there is no more usable land around LaGuardia Airport; the only space available for expansion is water.

But now those environmental organizations are not easy to deal with. It is already very difficult to continue to fill in the river and create land like when LaGuardia Airport was first built.

But to the north of LaGuardia Airport lies a large natural island, Rikers Island.

Rikers Island covers 420 hectares, making it larger than the current LaGuardia Airport.

The southeastern tip of the island is separated from the airport runway by only a few dozen meters of water, making it a natural piece of land for the expansion of LaGuardia Airport.

The only problem is that Rikers Island has the world's largest prison: Rikers Island Prison, which holds tens of thousands of prisoners year-round.

Moving this prison would be a huge undertaking, requiring careful planning. He also had a considerable interest in the prison itself.

Rikers Island is actually quite famous among the public, not because of official promotion, but because in Marvel comics it is a prison used to detain criminals or vigilantes who do not have superpowers.

Famous characters such as Kingpin, Daredevil, and the Punisher were once imprisoned here.

Sun Zhiwei was interested because running a prison was a lucrative business in the United States in later years.

Historically, the first privately operated prisons were established in the early 80s.

The high crime rate and large prison population in the United States are a globally recognized fact.

With the increasing number of criminals, U.S. public prisons are increasingly facing a predicament of insufficient funding and chaotic management.

Because of the frequent occurrence of prisoner abuse and violence, and the media's relentless pursuit of these incidents, the government's image has suffered a great deal of negative impact.

As a result, state governments had to gradually privatize prisons in order to save the entire prison industry, and thus private prisons came into being.

Sun Zhiwei's plan was to first seize the only land route to Rikers Island, then take over the most difficult Rikers Island prison, and finally take over the entire Rikers Island.

Once he has acquired all the industries in this area, expanding the land use area of ​​the airport will simply be a matter of internal adjustment.

Ideally, the two-meter-deep river between LaGuardia Airport and Rikers Island could be completely filled in, which would create a considerable amount of usable land.

However, this must be done step by step. After securing the New York and New Jersey Port Authority, he had Huang Mingyu help him assemble a team to take over the operation of LaGuardia Airport.

On the morning of July 12, Sun Zhiwei led his newly formed management team to LaGuardia Airport.

There is currently a sense of instability at the airport, with many staff and managers worried about being laid off and losing their jobs, which has further reduced the airport's operational efficiency.

(End of this chapter)