BY DENNIS LYNCH
With its sailing school leaving, Battery Park City residents are hoping the management will take a new tack.
The Florida-based Offshore Sailing School that operated out of North Cove Marina for the last two years is packing up its dinghys and moving out, so the marina’s management has to find a replacement by next summer, since maintaining a sailing school is a requirement of its lease with the Battery Park City Authority.
Commodore Michael Fortenbaugh ran a beloved summer sailing school for 20 years at North Cove Marina — and skippered the whole marina for ten years after answering a call from the BPCA for proposals to revitalize the facility in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The BPCA ousted him from the marina in 2015.
Some locals see it as an opportunity to encourage the marina manager, Brookfield Properties, to find an operator with more of a focus on the community, such as Offshore’s popular predecessor, longtime North Cove sailing headmaster and Battery Park City resident Commodore Michael Fortenbaugh.
Fortenbaugh ran the sailing school at the marina for 20 years. He took over management of the marina proper in 2005 after he won a competition by BPCA for plans to revitalize the marina post-9/11. He operated North Cove until 2014 when the BPCA decided to open up the job to new bids, and awarded the contract to Brookfield Properties, which owns the nearby Brookfield Place shopping mall.
Brookfield then brought in subcontractor Island Global Yachting to run the marina. Both companies have ties to Gov. Cuomo, who appoints all members of the BPCA board.
Battery Park City resident and Community Board 1 chairman Anthony Notaro said CB1 would not take a position on a private transaction at the marina, but he did say that the board would certainly welcome Fortenbaugh back.
“Where we do have a position is that whoever comes in has to be community orientated, and that’s what Michael represented,” Notaro said.
In December 2014, shortly before Fortenbaugh’s ouster, the panel unanimously passed a resolution urging the BCPA modify its request for proposals for the marina, with “greater weight given to the ‘community-based’ programming criteria.”
Fortenbaugh was extremely popular with locals who sent their kids to his sailing school or signed up themselves. Dozens rallied behind him in the dead of winter to save his summer programs back in 2014, and even started a now-defunct website SaveNorthCove.com to push the BPCA to reconsider its decision to hand the marina over to Brookfield.
A BPCA official said the bid for the contract was held pursuant to state laws and BPCA bylaws, and that Brookfield Properties scored the highest in their evaluation.
Brookfield hired Offshore Sailing School, a Florida-based school that runs programs at resorts there and in the British Virgin Islands. Offshore decided earlier this month to shut down its schools at North Cove and in New Jersey to focus on its resort businesses.
Offshore offered many of the same programs as Fortenbaugh’s Manhattan Sailing School. It had youth sailing courses — which were actually cheaper than Fortenbaugh’s — and offered scholarships and waived fees for students who couldn’t afford the full fees. But the school wasn’t nearly as popular with locals as the commodore’s operation, which Notaro called a tough act to follow.
“Michael was there for 10 years and if anyone thought Offshore would pick up where that business left off, that’s unrealistic,” Notaro said. “They only had a few boats where Michael had something like two dozen, remember it took 10 years to grow his business.”
Meanwhile, Fortenbaugh moved his school — still called Manhattan Sailing School — across the Hudson to Liberty Harbor Marina in Jersey City. He said that 75 percent of his students and customers are from Manhattan and that many of his marina customers followed him over to New Jersey. Offshore couldn’t “bring the magic back,” according to Fortenbaugh.
“We’re still by far the largest operation in the harbor. We’re still teaching 10 full boats of students every weekend and they’re doing two or three at the most,” Fortenbaugh said. “People come out and try to decide what feels good. They visit the schools and in the end they select our school.”
Brookfield told Fortenbaugh it was in discussions with another operator already, but he still hopes to return to the school’s “home” someday.
“Battery Park City is meant to be world class. The reality is, who does a better operation in the harbor than ourselves?” the commodore said. “We want to come back to make this great, we love teaching sailing, we have the best instructors and the best people.”
Brookfield Properties did not return requests for comment.
