By Ronda Kaysen
Governors Island is on the cusp of change. Sitting silent and empty just off of Manhattan’s shore, it is a ghost town waiting to breathe again.
“We want these buildings to come to life,” said Leslie Koch, the new president of the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation, the state-city authority vested with transforming 150 acres of the abandoned island into a vibrant wonder in the New York Harbor.
Her agency is reviewing requests for proposals for commercial development there. The National Park Service controls the remaining 22-acre National Monument of Fort Jay and Castle Williams.
Since the federal government sold the island to New York City and State for $1 in 2003, its future has been the subject of unending speculation. Open to the public for the first time ever — it was controlled by the U.S. Army until 1966 and then the U.S. Coast Guard until 1996 — New Yorkers are increasingly curious about what will come of the slip of land that sits 800 yards off the coast of Manhattan and 400 yards from Brooklyn.
“It’s such a unique opportunity for New York,” said Koch, 44. Formerly C.E.O. of the Fund for Public Schools, a nonprofit organization affiliated with the New York City Department of Education, Koch assumed her post in late May. A lithe, energetic woman Koch was undeterred by a passing summer storm as she toured the island’s historic Nolan Park neighborhood of Yellow Victorian houses with Downtown Express. “It’s been this mystery for New Yorkers for hundreds of years.”
And the future of this historic swath of land with breathtaking views of Manhattan and the harbor will remain a mystery for at least the time being. GIPEC has been largely silent about the proposals being reviewed and how the teardrop shaped island, peppered with historic buildings, will look in the future.
“While we’re very encouraged by the progress that has been made in the last year, we’re still a little concerned about the process that they’re following,” said Robert Pirani, executive director of the Governors Island Alliance, a civic organization under the umbrella of the influential Regional Plan Association. Pirani looks toward Battery Park City as a model for how Governors Island could be developed. Plans for the future of the 92-acre, planned neighborhood — public spaces, residential and commercial development — were laid out before developers were invited to bid on the parcels. At Governors Island, R.F.P.’s were sent out before an overall plan for the island’s uses and design was devised, leaving open the possibility that private developers — and not the public — will shape the island’s future.
“I expect that they’ve gotten some good responses back” from the R.F.P.’s, said Pirani. “We want to make sure that as they evaluate them, they evaluate them in the context of parks and public spaces.”
The deed for the island has several restrictions. It cannot be used for residential development and 92 acres must be used for public benefit, 40 of which must be a public park and 20 of which must be for educational use. The remainder of the island, including many of the historic buildings, is up for private use.
The public has opinions about how it would like to see the island developed. An Alliance poll showed that 51 percent of respondents would like to see the public space consolidated at the southern end of the island with its sweeping views of the Statue of Liberty and the harbor. Although the poll was not scientific—any visitor to the Alliance’s Web site, www.governorsislandalliance.org, could take the poll—Pirani said it was consistent with earlier public comments. Thirty-six percent of participants liked the “harbor” alternative, which placed the public space around harbors lining the east side of the island, facing Brooklyn.
City Councilmember Alan Gerson sees the island as a fitting home for a science think tank, along the lines of the M.I.T. Sea Grant Center for Coastal Resources in Boston or Research Triangle Park in North Carolina.
“We have many fine universities, but we don’t have a collaboration center,” said Gerson. “Governors Island just lends itself to this kind of endeavor.”
The island is in need of a major overhaul of its infrastructure—cost estimates run as high as $1 billion—and some worry that the pressure to cover those costs will result in development that caters to a high-spending tourist market.
“The conceptual plans seemed overly tourist driven,” said Community Board 1 chairperson Julie Menin, referring to concept plans that included luxury hotels, spas and entertainment complexes. “We don’t want it geared toward tourists… We’d like to see uses that residents can enjoy it as well.”
Menin said the community board would like to see more access to the island’s ball field, and parks that lure New Yorkers seeking badly needed open space. “We have a dearth of open space Downtown,” she said.
The island is a likely tourist destination. Ferries to Governors Island leave from the historic Battery Maritime Building, which is not far from the World Trade Center site. Nine million tourists are expected to visit the Trade Center memorial every year when it is completed in 2011 and Koch was heartened by the prospect of so many visitors.
The island must also be a public space, she said. “It can be and will be a great public space,” said Koch, adding later, “We are very aware and respectful of the need that those [commercial] spaces integrate well with the public spaces.”
GIPEC has taken steps to make the island more accessible than before. It launched an ad campaign and is hosting a series of free events all summer, including Jazz Age, a daylong Roaring Twenties event on Aug. 5 and Civil War Living History, a recreation of the New York City Draft Riots of 1863 on Aug. 12.
The biggest change to the island this summer is the ferry ticket price. It’s free. Last summer the ferry cost $6 a person and in 2004, the first year it was open to the public, it cost $5.
The changes have had an impact. Last summer, only 8,000 people trekked to the island. This summer, the island has already seen more than 13,000 visitors since it opened in June and the summer season does not end until September 2. “It’s very different who comes here when it’s free,” said Koch. “You see New York on the ferry.”
But there are still limitations. The island has no concessions, so visitors must pack food and water. There are no plans to bring concessions to the island in the foreseeable future.
Many still see room for improvement. “Was it everything that we wished for? No. But it was a step in the right direction,” said Menin, of C.B. 1. “There should be more marketing, there should be more advertisements. Overall there should be more events and it should be open more than two days a week.” GIPEC increased public access to the island at the insistence of C.B. 1, said Menin, adding that the board pressured the agency to open the ball fields for Downtown Little League.
Island visitors on Fridays and Saturdays can mill about the 15-acre Parade Grounds and walk along the 2.2-mile long promenade that skirts the island. They can putter around Colonels’ Row, a neighborhood of historic brick buildings, and take guided Park Service tours of Castle Williams and Fort Jay.
On the morning Downtown Express visited the island, a flock of geese milled about the empty Parade Grounds, seemingly headed nowhere. They return here every spring to revel in this moment in time where a ghost town exists on the edge of Manhattan.
“This is a complex island,” said Koch. “How do you think about a place that no one has ever been to?”
Governors Island is open to the public on Fridays and Saturdays until Sept. 2 and accessible by a ferry that leaves the Battery Maritime Building in Lower Manhattan every hour. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, there are free guided tours only with ferries leaving at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. until Aug. 31. www.Govisland.com.
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