Governors Island (nationaltrust.org)

NEW YORK, NY September 29, 2006 —Manhattan’s Far West Side. The new Penn Station. Ground Zero. The list seems to be growing, and the skyline isn’t. No one said it was easy to build mega-projects. But why are so many stuck in the mire of planning and politics? Meanwhile, out in New York Harbor, sits a piece of land larger than all of them combined, waiting for attention. The board that oversees Governors Island was expected to meet this week to discuss a rejected slate of proposals, but officials are now taking more time to plot the next step. WNYC’s Fred Mogul explains why.

REPORTER: Last February, top officials unveiled a package of models, maps and computerized images of Governors Island. Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff asked New Yorkers to. . .

DOCTOROFF: . . . imagine the island not as it is, but as it could be…

REPORTER: The city was launching its “Request for Proposals” – inviting developers to bid on parts or the whole of the 172-acre island. Architect Santiago Calatrava was on hand with just the thing to get the creative juices flowing – or maybe flying.

CALATRAVA: A slender mast gives a touch of modernity…

REPORTER: Calatrava’s idea: transport people to Governors Island not by ferry, but by a futuristic aerial tram. This “gondola” would reach the island from two different points, one in Lower Manhattan and one in Brooklyn.

CALATRAVA: What we are offering as new here is a very modern structure…who tries to be from the impact, the environmental impact, to minimalize the amount of points of support. We have only three [towers]. [There's] no support in the water . . .

REPORTER: No support in the water, and none, apparently on the land, either. After three months gathering proposals and another four months narrowing them down to a short list, the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation, or GIPEC, put the process on hold. The joint city-state agency won’t comment officially, but sources say Doctoroff, its board chairman, wasn’t satisfied with any of the developers’ proposals. Not the Nickelodeon network entertainment center, not a replica of the Elizabethan Globe Theatre:. and not several different combinations of hotels, schools, entertainment attractions, or research centers. Oh, and not the drug rehab program. By this week, GIPEC tentatively planned to announce it had four or five finalists. And by December, after some bid-tightening and public comment, GIPEC had hoped to pick a winner. Robert Pirani, a watchdog from the Governors Island Alliance, is not surprised the process has hit the skids.

PIRANI: The more specific a question is, the better the answer. And I think in this case, GIPEC really didn’t provide enough information and enough commitments to generate the kind of specific responses they were looking for.

REPORTER: Pirani says despite millions of dollars and years of studies, surveys and workshops, GIPEC was hoping to get inspiration from the developers. So it didn’t want to restrict them. But in the end, they didn’t get enough guidance, and what they produced did not inspire GIPEC.

PIRANI: This is Planning 101. Just like the development of Manhattan was preceded by a street grid, the redevelopment of Governors Island has got to start with some decisions about the place before any sort of development is possible, and that’s really government's responsibility.

REPORTER: Congressman Anthony Weiner, who helped submit one of the eliminated plans, says the Bloomberg-Doctoroff “visionary approach” puts the cart before the horse.

WEINER: The first thing we see announced is this idea for a gondola to get you there. Well, you can have the fanciest gondola in the world, but if we can’t reach a consensus soon on what we’re gonna have on Governors Island, not too many people are gonna be getting on it.

REPORTER: But there’s no reason to expect a consensus soon, says Rick Rosan, the president of the Urban Land Institute. A decade ago, he was on a panel that studied what to do with the island. The former head of the New York Real Estate Board and the city’s Economic Development Corporation says projects of this scale are difficult enough even when cities are pressed to get them done, and there aren’t many other competing projects or basic transportation issues. Take the waterfront park project across the harbor in Brooklyn. It’s been long stalled, but....

ROSAN: …you know that will work, because there’s just a lot of people with a lot of accessibility to get to it. You can go around the city of New York, and there are projects like the Brooklyn waterfront that are huge and have actual financial and economic feasibility.

REPORTER: Rosan and other observers credit the administration for its grand ambitions and point out that many projects on this scale take generations to develop and entail numerous false starts. And they hope that after what has turned out to be yet another round of fact-gathering, Governors Island finally has enough information to lay out a plan and plunge ahead.

LINKS:

Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation

Governors Island Alliance

Urban Land Institute

Santiago Calatrava