A $65 million luxury pet terminal at JFK Airport is on the brink of closing after just one year - and its owner is furious

Mark Matousek / Business Insider

The Ark at JFK was nearly empty when I visited in early February.

• The Ark at JFK is an animal care facility designed for animals traveling in or out of John F. Kennedy International Airport.
• But the Ark is seeing just 10% of the business owner John J. Cuticelli Jr. expected.
• He filed a lawsuit against the Port Authority, which operates JFK Airport and issued the Ark's lease, claiming the agency isn't enforcing the Ark's "exclusive right to provide specified animal handling services" at the airport.

John J. Cuticelli Jr. is paying $200,000 of his own money each month to keep open a business that sees just one-tenth of the customers he expected when it opened in January 2017. His employees are restless.

"Those people come to work saying, 'We don't know if we're going to have a job.' And the only reason they have a job is because I continue to put money into this thing. But how long can anyone human being do that?" he said in an interview with Business Insider.

Cuticelli owns the Ark at JFK, which was designed to provide medical, quarantine, and general care services for animals coming in or out of John F. Kennedy International Airport, as well as boarding services for animals whose owners were traveling without them.