The proposed landing pad was to be built and operated by Pan American World Airways on a city-owned pier used by the New York City Department of Sanitation as a snow dump and for equipment storage.

[4] Pan Am initially spent $50,000 to develop the 58,000-square-foot (5,400 m2) site, which included three landing pads for helicopters, an operations building and a parking area for autos.

[5][6] In February 1969, Flight Shuttle, Inc. began operation of a weekday on-demand taxi service to Kennedy and Newark airports using four-passenger Bell Jet Ranger helicopters.

[12][13] In 1984, a joint venue of Embassy Suites, developer Julien J. Studley and Pan American World Airways proposed the construction of a $40 million hotel for business travelers adjacent to the heliport (on the site of the former waste transfer station).

[11][14] The proposed hotel was never constructed; the site of the former waste transfer station was turned over to the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation in 1985, which later refurbished the structure, using funding from Rockefeller University and the Hospital for Special Surgery, into a public pavilion that opened in 1994.

[12][17][18] In the late 1990s, city officials indicated a desire to relocate the heliport due to its impacts on nearby residential buildings, hospitals and parks as well a conflict in flight patterns with the proposed Southtown development on Roosevelt Island.

[24] The stop was added to the Delta Water Shuttle, a ferry route that operated between Pier 11 and the Marine Air Terminal at LaGuardia Airport until December 2000.

[27][28] From 2002 to 2007, the site of the former heliport was used by the New York State Department of Transportation as part of a reconstruction project on the FDR Drive that involved the construction of detour roadway on a temporary bridge structure in the East River to facilitate repairs to the highway.