New York Times
February 16, 2006

Big Ideas for Governors I., Like a Gondola, Perhaps

By JIM RUTENBERG

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A rendering of an elevated gondola system designed by Santiago Calatrava. It would link Brooklyn and Manhattan by way of Governors Island.

Plans for a futuristic elevated gondola system linking Brooklyn to Manhattan by way of Governors Island on a tramway were introduced yesterday by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

The system, estimated to cost $125 million, would be designed by the architect Santiago Calatrava, and would greatly change the face of Upper New York Bay.

But there is a catch: at a press briefing at which the mayor showed drawings of the tramway — which would feature the long and spindly arms that mark much of Mr. Calatrava's work — he acknowledged that the system was still only an idea. He said, however, that he hoped it would eventually become reality and in the meantime inspire others to come up with big ideas for the development of Governors Island.

At the briefing, Mr. Bloomberg and state officials publicly solicited ideas for the island.

"Its possibilities really are limitless," Mr. Bloomberg said. "And the challenge for us is to not just let it sit here, not just be engaged in endless conversations, not to look for the pedestrian, but to do something brilliant."

Over the years the city has asked for ideas for the island, a former Coast Guard base, which after years of negotiations finally came under local control a few years ago.

There has been talk of an amusement park, a casino, a movie studio and a biotech center, much of it dismissed as unrealistic or unworkable, an acknowledgment of the island's limitations; aside from the difficulties in getting people there, many of the buildings have landmark status and cannot be torn down.

But with the defeat last year of the administration's plans to significantly alter the look of the Far West Side with a football stadium, Mr. Bloomberg and his development team have renewed their focus on Governors Island as they seek to leave some other lasting mark on the city's landscape.

Governors Island is one of the few areas of the city with considerable space available for development, 150 acres in all, according to the mayor's office.

Mr. Bloomberg and his top development deputy, Daniel L. Doctoroff, who were joined by the state's top development official, Charles A. Gargano, said they were open to just about anything with imagination, and within reason.

They said they hoped that the proposed tramway would serve as an inspiration. "It is an idea, one of many for helping to transform this island, and it is feasible, we believe, from an engineering and cost perspective," Mr. Doctoroff said.

But, he said, its construction would require heavy analysis, planning and community consultation, and that for now he hoped the design would "help raise the bar for what the world imagines and what it expects from this great place."

All told, officials said, each of the tramway's two arms would extend 3,250 feet and its gondolas would be suspended from a height of about 200 feet. The tramway would be able to transport people from either Lower Manhattan or the foot of Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn to Governors Island in about four minutes, and commuters could also use it to go directly to Brooklyn or Manhattan.

Howard P. Milstein of Milstein Properties applauded the idea, and said it could entice him to make a proposal.

"The city has hit upon exactly the right approach, which is to have a very creative solution," he said. "To make this useful, you have to be able to get there."

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

I saw it on tv last night, it looks better on a model than on the render.
Still, I'm against it, it will ruin the skyline, and I hate Calatrava's work.
That guy could have 3 big structures of his built Downtown: the WTC hub, the 80 south street, and this bridge. A little too much if you ask me.
Unless if he brings the Fordham Spire along, then all will be perfect. :D

I'm not really font of this idea, and I don't like that design too. It's really seems to ruin the new york's skyline as it reminds me a bended volley net. I think the city needs some supertalls (like the fordham spire) which will give the city a more futuristic air.

I'd rather this will not get built, b/c it looks way too ugly and unrealistic.

I will like to see more about this development from Calatrava. Sounds kind of cool actually.

http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_145/thats125million.html
Volume 18 • Issue 40 | February 17 - 23, 2006

That’s 125 million dollars, not lira for this island gondola

By Josh Rogers

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Rendering of a proposed aerial gondola linking Governors Island to Lower Manhattan.

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Photo image of what the island could look like if you razed all of the buildings outside the historic district.

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Downtown Express photo by Jefferson Siegel
The Admiral’s Quarters Building.

Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Dep. Mayor Daniel Doctoroff have tapped renowned architect Santiago Calatrava to design an aerial gondola connecting Governors Island to Downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn for even less money than the two, dollar-a-year city officials make.

Calatrava, who already has two projects to reshape Lower Manhattan, may get a chance to do a third if Wednesday’s announcement proves to be the charm and a decade of promises to develop the 172-acre island come to fruition. Calatrava’s work may be gratis but the gondola and cables will not come cheap: $125 million.

“What we are presenting is not only a sketch of a simple idea, it is the result of a maturation,” said Calatrava, who designed the World Trade Center PATH station under construction and a distinctive, 800-foot, condo tower planned for South St. He worked on the gondola design with STV Inc. and Leitner-Poma of America.

Calatrava, whose designs, sketches and sculptures are on exhibit at the Met, said the Sept. 11 attacks drew him to the city from Spain. Though 9/11 was horrific, he said the city also “gained a sense of the tragic” with the attack that gave it a historical significance comparable to three other cities that rebuilt — Jerusalem, Rome and Athens.

On Wednesday, the city and state also announced the release of a request for proposals to develop the island and they hope to select a developer by September and finalize an agreement by the end of the year. An environmental impact statement will take at least a year, and under the most optimistic scenario, construction of the island’s next use could begin by the end of next year. The gondola project will be dependent upon implementing a plan for the island, which the Coast Guard left in 1996 because of high maintenance costs.

Many of the same ideas that have been kicking around for Governors were mentioned as possibilities at the announcement: a hotel-conference center, university, museums, historical center and a marina. One third of the island is an historic district made up of buildings and military facilities dating as far back as the Revolutionary War. Under an agreement with the federal government, housing would be prohibited unless it relates directly to the island’s use such as faculty homes for a campus. The new plan for the island will also include a 40-acre park and an esplanade that circles the perimeter.

When the federal government returned Governors to New York for $1 in 2003, Gov. George Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg toured it together and talked about building a City University of New York campus that would free up room for city high schools.

The mayor said Wednesday the plan was hard to implement because the island’s draw also has costs. “It’s advantage is it is isolated,” Bloomberg said. “That’s also a disadvantage.”

Doctoroff said the city and state have worked hard over the last three years and are finally in a position to turn the island over to a developer. He is chairperson of the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation, a state-city authority charged with managing and developing the island.

Rob Pirani, executive director of the Governors Island Alliance, said he has concerns the gondola may “cream some of the tourists off the ferry. It may create more demands for subsidizing the ferry service.” Pirani, also a director at the Regional Plan Association, helped start the Alliance 11 years ago in an effort to bring civic groups together to advocate for opening the island to the public.

The gondola will leave from an area near the Governors I. ferry in the Battery Maritime Building, close to Battery Park, the East River waterfront section that is being renovated and Hudson River Park. It will leave from Downtown Brooklyn at the end of Atlantic Ave., near the southern end of Brooklyn Bridge Park.

It will take four minutes to reach the island from each borough and about 6,000 passengers would be able to get to the island from the tram every hour. Weekdays, it could be a commuter line transporting about 2,000 people an hour from Brooklyn to Lower Manhattan in about 10 minutes if the system went in only one direction during rush hour.

The cables holding the gondola look like a decorative bridge and Calatrava, also an engineer, assured reporters the high, narrow structure could withstand harbor winds. It will not touch the water, which will make it easier to get environmental approvals.

U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner, who announced an island plan for parks, a hotel/conference center and a biotech lab last year during his mayoral campaign, released a statement Wednesday praising the mayor and governor for focusing on the island but he added that an “elevated gondola as a method for visiting the island would be an expensive and ugly diversion from the common sense travel option — the ferry.”

Pirani, who has attended many Governors Island announcement ceremonies over the years, had a feeling this one might actually happen because of “the focus of the mayor and deputy mayor — making it part of their legacies.”

Doctoroff said everyone he has spoken with agrees “this is an opportunity we will never have again.”

Josh@DowntownExpress.com

New York Times
February 23, 2006

New York Wonders: An Island Fit for What?

By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF

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Renderings by the architect Santiago Calatrava of his proposed aerial gondola system that would link Manhattan and Governors Island.

Slide Show (http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2006/02/22/arts/20060223_GOV_index.html)

It's the kind of choice development site that would have made an old-school planning czar like Robert Moses salivate: 172 acres of waterfront property just off the tip of Manhattan.

Yet city and state officials clearly are at a loss about what to do with Governors Island. Abandoned by the Coast Guard 10 years ago, it is half occupied by a sprawl of abandoned military buildings, including two brooding early 19th-century Army forts, protected by landmark status. The other half mostly consists of modest housing built by the Coast Guard in the 1970's and 80's. Last week, city and state officials issued an open call to development teams in the hope of forging a new vision. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg touted a proposal to create an aerial gondola linking the island to Lower Manhattan, but he was essentially pleading for any idea that could rescue the site.

In asking developers to take the lead, government officials risk quashing creativity at the outset. More broadly, their appeal raises questions about how American cities — New York in particular — are approaching large-scale urban development these days, handing over enormous swaths of public land to private interests. In the past, such a process tended to favor conventional design solutions

For an architect, of course, the site could not be more inspiring. The view from the island is a reminder of the unlimited architectural aspirations that made New York such a radical urban creation. A half-mile from the cluster of towers rising in Lower Manhattan, it offers the same thrill to a New Yorker that a view of Santa Maria della Salute does to a Venetian; it is a machine age counterpart to the entry to the Grand Canal.

The split personality of Governors Island is also intriguing. The northern half seems frozen in time, a collection of 18th-, 19th- and early-20th-century landmarks ranging from the pretty Victorian frame houses that envelop Nolan Park to the massive neo-Classical brick shell of Liggett Hall, completed by McKim, Mead & White in 1929.

By comparison, the rows of bland brick Coast Guard housing on the island's southern half are all eligible for demolition. Aside from an appealing 1960's-era elementary school building with simple, brick-clad geometric forms, little of it has architectural merit.

That divide makes Governors Island an ideal laboratory for exploring competing desires to preserve the past and embrace the present — and for dreaming up alternatives to worn-out urban planning formulas that degrade history by mimicking it.

But to architects who have followed the process, the halfhearted planning studies of the last few years do not inspire much confidence. Even government officials acknowledge that proposals from both state and nonprofit groups like the Governors Island Alliance were dull and uninspired.

The new call for proposals is an acknowledgment that the government no longer has the resources or ambition to drive a major public works project.

To the extent that the city has any vision at all, it is its yearning to link the development to a broader harbor district that includes a new landscaped promenade along the East River waterfront and Brooklyn Bridge Park. Pushed by Daniel L. Doctoroff, the deputy mayor for economic development, and Amanda Burden, chairwoman of the city planning department, the district would visually link Manhattan, Brooklyn and Governors Island while drawing life out to the river. If that plan becomes reality, it could well be one of Mayor Bloomberg's most lasting legacies.

In the city's view, the exotic aerial gondolas, conceived by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, would further that plan. Suspended from a cable system that evokes gigantic badminton nets, the round cars would have a 360-degree view of the city below.

It's an elaborately overblown structure for such a limited function, and it would tamper with one of the world's most spectacular views. But Mr. Calatrava's sketch is really nothing more than a teaser to give the project some desperately needed cachet. The underlying message to developers is that the city will go to remarkable lengths to overcome Governors Island's isolation from tourists milling around downtown Manhattan.

A more troubling problem with the city's approach is that there is no cohesive master plan that could provide a framework for development.

According to the federal guidelines set out in the island's deed, 40 acres of the new development must be reserved for a public park. Developers will also have to provide a waterfront esplanade.

Otherwise, conjuring an image for the island's future will be left up to developers. It could include anything from a think tank to a theme park, Mr. Doctoroff has said. Not all countries operate this way. In Spain and the Netherlands, city and regional governments typically organize elaborate design competitions for a major urban site, then hire a developer to figure out how to put the idea into practice.

An aggressive government role in galvanizing the best creative minds is virtually nonexistent in the United States, where political and financial power has shifted to the private realm. That's why New York has fallen behind cities like Barcelona, Rotterdam and even London in terms of the level of ambition behind public works projects. In New York, the system can foster a poisonous mix of political self-interest and commercial greed, as it did at ground zero.

Fortunately, Governors Island lacks the political and emotional baggage of the former World Trade Center site. But reinventing the island — a historically strategic military base at the center of one of the world's great harbors — may require an even higher level of creative imagination. What is needed is an architect and developer willing to take a joint leap into the unknown.

Anything short of that will probably leave us with another white elephant. For now, let's cross our fingers and enjoy what's left of the view.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

I don't see too much of a need for this gondola system, plus it feels so unnecessary.

This is officially the first Calatrava project that sucks.

^^agreed

Please scrap this idea right now.

man that's ugly. I hate all of Calatrava's projects, esp. the one at 80 south st.

A New Motivator for Governors Island
By JOSEPH BERGER
31 March 2006
The New York Times

An accomplished fund-raiser for New York City's public schools has been picked as the president of the corporation devoted to the reinvention of Governors Island, a $1 gift to the city and state whose future has been mulled over for three years with little to show for the effort.

Leslie Koch, chief executive of the Fund for Public Schools, the Department of Education's fund-raising arm, was selected by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Gov. George E. Pataki. She awaits confirmation by the city-state partnership that is trying to redevelop the island, a 172-acre former military base 800 yards off the southern tip of Manhattan. That confirmation by the 12 directors of the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation is expected by today, City Hall officials say.

Governors Island, a former Army and Coast Guard base with stunning wraparound views of Lower Manhattan and New York Harbor, was turned over to the city and state in 2003, spawning visions of a college campus, a place for concerts and athletic events, a hotel and conference center, or an amusement park. The city and state have poured in $10 million a year to maintain the buildings and ferry slips, but nothing grander has emerged.

Robert Pirani, executive director of the Governors Island Alliance, a watchdog group affiliated with the Regional Plan Association, said government officials have been distracted by bigger, more controversial projects like the rebuilding of ground zero and a football stadium on the Far West Side of Manhattan. Others say development has been caught up in wariness between Governor Pataki's staff and that of Mr. Bloomberg and that those tensions contributed to the departure a year ago of the corporation's first president, James F. Lima. The post of president was temporarily filled by Paul Kelly, an assistant general counsel at the city's Economic Development Corporation. Filling the job is regarded as crucial to rekindling momentum to develop Governors Island.

Ms. Koch, along with Caroline Kennedy, the vice chairman of the schools fund-raising group, attracted more than $150 million in gifts to create small schools, train principals and finance other initiatives from deep-pocketed philanthropists like Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft. Ms. Koch, 43, the daughter of a public-school teacher, was a marketing executive at Microsoft from 1989 to 1996.

In an interview, Daniel L. Doctoroff, the mayor's development czar and chairman of the island corporation, said it was not so much Ms. Koch's fund-raising that led to her appointment as her experience with public-private undertakings and with ''the kind of entrepreneurs we hope will partner with us on the island.'' He described her as ''hard driving, leaves no stone unturned, very proactive, always looking for more interesting better solutions to issues.''

Beyond the politics, the island has limitations: Getting there requires a six-minute ferry ride (though Mr. Bloomberg has proposed an aerial gondola like the one to Roosevelt Island), many buildings have landmark status and cannot be torn down, and the agreement with the federal government bars commercial development and housing.

''Until very recently it's been very unclear what the game plan was,'' Mr. Pirani said. ''The real challenge for whoever becomes the permanent president is that they be able to instill confidence in the private sector that the city and state meet responsibilities for taking care of the infrastructure and creating the parks and other amenities promised for that island.''

As chairman for most of last year, Mr. Doctoroff revived attention on reshaping the island, and in February the city solicited proposals from developers. Those proposals will be compared starting in May. Joel I. Klein, the school system's chancellor, described Ms. Koch as ''disciplined and organized,'' someone who ''knows how to think outside the box'' and ''knows how to work across agencies.'' In raising money, he said, Ms. Koch had a talent for getting donors to appreciate the effects a project would have on enhancing schools.

Ms. Koch, who was raised on the Upper West Side, graduated summa cum laude in history from Yale in 1984 and received a master's degree in management from the Yale School of Management. She lives in Boerum Hill in Brooklyn with her husband, Douglas Gray, a theater consultant and producer. The couple have been generous donors, giving more than $10,000 to the Seattle Library Foundation, for example. City Hall said she would not be available for an interview until confirmed.

While the paralysis at ground zero and the defeat of the West Side stadium has prompted cynics to doubt that anything ambitious can ever be built in the city, Mr. Doctoroff ticked off projects that have started or are about to be started, including the reconstruction of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, the extension of the No. 7 subway line from Times Square to 11th Avenue and 34th Street, a new Yankee Stadium, and the Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn whose centerpiece will be an arena for the Nets basketball team.

Competing Visions for Governors Island

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A rendering of a proposal for the 40-acre park area on Governors Island by the design team of Diller Scofidio & Renfro, Rogers Marvel Architects, West 8, Quennell Rothschild & Partners and SMWM.

By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF
Published: June 20, 2007
nytimes.com (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/20/arts/design/20gove.html?_r=1&ref=design&oref=login)

In the four years since the federal government sold Governors Island to the state and city for $1, government officials have been baffled over what to do with this isolated but magically haunting place.

Five proposals for the 40-acre park area at the southern half of the island offer the clearest evidence so far of what the island’s future could hold. The designs, commissioned by the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation, should be regarded as preliminary sketches. After the winning design is selected next month, it will no doubt face significant revisions. Even so, the five proposals hold clues to what’s right and wrong about how public space is designed.

The proposals are on view at Governors Island on weekends and at the Center for Architecture on LaGuardia Place in Greenwich Village. A forum is scheduled for tonight at 6:30 at the Fashion Institute of Technology to solicit public reaction.

All five concepts are thoughtful approaches to a complex design problem. And the emphasis on public space is reassuring; responses to the agency’s earlier requests for proposals typically included more commercial development. But the five plans still fall short of the sweeping ambition such a unique parcel of undeveloped public land in New York City should inspire. We are mostly left with good intentions.

Among those intentions is the decision to not develop the entire island at once but to focus first on the island’s main public component, which can then lure future development. This approach will familiarize New Yorkers with a mostly unvisited site, aiding public support for future plans and possibly stemming overdevelopment. It also suggests that the state and city recognize Governors Island as more than real estate: Its history and location give the island the potential to become one of the great civic undertakings in New York City, a rival in beauty, if not in scale, to Central Park and Prospect Park.

At 172 acres, the island is relatively small, about one-fifth the size of Central Park. Its northern half, a landmarked historic district, must essentially be left untouched. What’s left is a flat expanse of landfill that is pockmarked with abandoned Coast Guard buildings.

As all the design teams recognized, the magic comes from the island’s setting. It is surrounded by the Manhattan skyline to the north, the Brooklyn waterfront to the east and the Statue of Liberty to the west, giving it a remarkable stillness. That is enhanced by the strange juxtaposition of scales. If the twittering birds and briny smell can make the island feel too quaint, the Staten Island Ferry then cruises into view, its bright orange form looming up to make the island part of a bigger, tougher composition.

But the best of the designs play up the magic of the landscape while visually binding the island to the city that envelops it.

In the proposal by Hargreaves Associates and Michael Maltzan Architecture, a pedestrian promenade unfurls along the island’s edge, protecting a bucolic landscape of hills, pathways and meadows. The hills and pathways frame a series of views over the water to landmarks like the Statue of Liberty and the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. A series of cylindrical buildings — cultural center, marine ecology center, restaurant — punctuate the promenade. Lighted at night, they would envelop the island in a necklace of geometric forms visible from surrounding boroughs.

The buildings are essentially crude place markers, for they have yet to be designed. But the strategy is a cunning attempt to engage the broader context of the city. The carefully framed views lock the island into its surroundings, reinforcing the sense of expansiveness and freedom that make it such a delight.

Similarly, a design by Field Operations and Wilkinson Eyre proposes a series of rolling, scallop-shaped earthworks, modeled on the mollusks that once encrusted the island’s shore. (Maybe pushing the theme a bit too far, a cluster of mollusk-shaped buildings sits on the site’s eastern edge.) To the south, a sea wall breaks open to allow the tides to flow in and out of this landscape. At the site’s northern edge, a dense forest of oak and maple trees defines the boundary between the park area and the historic district. A dense fog, created by a grid of misters, evokes a fairy tale setting.

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WRT and Urban Strategies’ plan in the island’s Liggett Gardens.

The plan by REX/MDP is conceptually less refined. Taking a different approach, the designers transform the island into a matrix of public zones, playing fields and community gardens based on a Jeffersonian grid. The lush renderings convey the island’s potential as a sort of urban wilderness. But the grid, which in its current form seems somewhat simplistic, cleaves too closely to Manhattan; it ignores one of the island’s best features, its potential as an intersection among various boroughs.

By comparison, a proposal by WRT and Urban Strategies is sadly conventional: a collage of wetlands, wooded areas, sculpture parks and farmland anchored by an oval meadow. A hill at the meadow’s southern tip, in fact, blocks out one of the most gratifying views of the harbor.

Perhaps the most thoughtful of the five is the design proposed by the team of Diller Scofidio & Renfro, Rogers Marvel Architects, West 8, Quennell Rothschild & Partners and SMWM. The scheme includes a mountainous landscape, this one framing a view toward the Statue of Liberty and dividing the site into two zones, with a great lawn to the north and a fresh-water marsh to the south.

But the mountain range itself turns out to be an illusion. Arranged in a petal-like pattern that fans out toward the water, the forms conceal a series of buildings — maritime gallery, climate research center, greenhouse — that inject the site with a dose of urban energy. These forms extend out into the water, transforming into a series of floating “bubbles” that house a seafood restaurant, a bar and a marine life tank. The mountain range has unfortunate theme park connotations, and the design seems overpacked with unformed ideas. Yet it also seems to capture the ethereal nature of the site.

Based on a candid appraisal of the government’s limited resources, this design envisions the island developing in a series of stages over decades. The first phase is simply a network of bicycle paths, complete with a storehouse of free bicycles that could be installed as soon as demolition is complete.

The fresh-water marsh comes next. By then, it would be easier to gauge what aspects of the mountain range should be built, and how much more development the island could sustain without losing its soul. This approach, realistic in an age of fewer government resources, has the potential of finding a proper balance, over time, between public park space and commercial development.

But there’s also something sacrificed. It has been nearly 150 years since Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted laid out their plan for Central Park, the democratic utopia that is among 19th-century America’s greatest achievements. The plan was as notable for its audacity as for its aesthetic beauty. By comparison, all of these designs seem strangely subdued. This reflects not only budget restrictions, but also a climate of thinking small. How much more inspired would the designs have been if plans for the entire island, including its architectural components, had been requested, and if the teams were confident that there was money to carry them out?

Strolling across the barren loveliness of the island today, you long for a grander breadth of vision, for someone to step into Olmsted’s shoes.

Designing an Island’s Future
nytimes.com (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/19/nyregion/20070619_ISLAND_GRAPHIC.html)

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Five conceptual designs to redevelop the 40-acre park on the southern half of Governors Island are currently on view on the island on weekends and at the Center for Architecture on LaGuardia Place in Greenwich Village. A final design will be selected next month.

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Biking Dutchman Hijacks Governors Island Planning Meeting

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A rendering of Geuze's island.

by Alec Appelbaum
6/21/07
nymag.com (http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2007/06/biking_dutchman_hijacks_govern.html)

Walking into a presentation by the five finalists vying to design a new Governors Island park last night, everyone thought there were two front-runners: James Corner, who has proposed a "superthick" promenade abutting a dense lawn and a "fog forest" with misters to lead you to soccer fields, and Joshua Prince-Ramus, whose plan calls for a patchwork of parcels around the edge that can adapt to private development. But then Adriaan Geuze, another of the finalists, rode into the Chelsea auditorium on a wood-frame bicycle, and he stole the show. Geuze is a Rotterdam architect with corkscrew hair and, last night, a floral-print shirt, and he got the crowd laughing when his PowerPoint presentation showed a butterfly landing on the island and then spreading into a "poetic pattern" of zany footpaths.

Geuze doesn't subscribe to the conventional wisdom that parkland on this flat, 172-acre harbor gem should lure private developers; instead, his team proposes demolishing the existing buildings on the island and landscaping their rubble as mountains and ravines. Some 3,000 wood-frame bikes would be available for free, for exploring a "botanical forest" and traversing the edge of the island. "The island should be as green as broccoli," he proclaimed, to amens and giggles. The jury may be less amused — there were good reasons Corner and Prince-Ramus were front-runners — but Geuze seems, despite that hair, unruffled. "America is about entertainment, about show," he told us later. "I was a little surprised that everybody else seemed so serious."

NY hires architects to create urban park at Governors Island
19 December 2007

NEW YORK (AP) - An urban park with artificial hills built with recyclable materials, waterfront walkways and free bicycles may be coming to a small island in New York Harbor.

The city and state chose a design team led by the West 8 architecture firm to redesign 90 acres of parkland on Governors Island, a half mile from lower Manhattan. The team was one of five finalists picked earlier this year.

West 8 hopes to create a landscape of hills facing the Statue of Liberty that cover buildings like restaurants and marine galleries, with a two-mile promenade circling the island.

The island was run by the federal government and housed the U.S. Army and U.S. Coast Guard, until the city and state took over 150 acres of the island in 2003. Since then, the island's future has been discussed and debated, but it has remained largely deserted.

Park Plan Is Chosen for Governors Island

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By ROBIN POGREBIN
Published: December 20, 2007
nytimes.com (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/20/arts/design/20gove.html)

More than 10 years after the Coast Guard left Governors Island in New York Harbor, a team of architects has been selected to design a grandly whimsical green 40-acre park on its southern half that public officials hope will ultimately attract commercial development.

City and state officials announced Wednesday that the design — by the Dutch firm West 8, Diller Scofidio & Renfro, Rogers Marvel Architects, Quennell Rothschild & Partners and SMWM — had triumphed in a competition that had narrowed to five finalists.

Governors Island “has languished without sufficient attention, without sufficient investment,” Gov. Eliot Spitzer said at an outdoor news conference at the Staten Island Ferry terminal in Manhattan with Governors Island as a backdrop.

In an interview, he added, “We are committed to building it.”

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg echoed the governor’s determination. “It is one of the jewels of our city,” he said. “We couldn’t have a better location. Now it’s up to us to do it.”

The design, commissioned by the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation, calls for transforming much of the flat, sober island, which is roughly a half-mile from Lower Manhattan, into green space. That includes a two-mile promenade at the water’s edge, a new park on the southern flat expanse of landfill — where abandoned Coast Guard buildings are to be demolished — and an improved park in the island’s northern historic district. The architects proposed using the detritus from the buildings that are to be destroyed to form hills that would exploit the island’s views, which include the Statue of Liberty.

“We have to create a completely new and original experience,” Deputy Mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff said yesterday. “We’ve always seen the parks as the catalyst to the development of the rest of the island.”

Jerry van Eyck, one of the West 8 partners, said in an interview that the architects hoped to set a standard of quality design on the island so “we don’t end up with Disney or casinos.”

Financed by the city and state, the park project is expected to cost about $400 million and to be completed by 2012.

Isolated and vaguely mysterious to many New Yorkers, Governors Island served as the site of American military installations since 1794. In 2003 the federal government sold it to the state and city for $1 under a general understanding that it would be developed into park space and a cultural destination, among other uses.

The National Park Service continues to own and operate 22 of the 172 acres, including Castle Williams and Fort Jay, two early 19th-century Army forts that are protected by landmark status.

The architects were asked to set aside space for new buildings that Mr. Doctoroff said could ultimately include cultural or academic institutions. “Part of the plan was to leave areas that can be allocated as developers come in,” said Ricardo Scofidio, one of the architects. “You kind of set the stage with the park.”

A jury of city and state officials and design professionals picked the architects over four other teams: Hargreaves Associates and Michael Maltzan Architecture; Field Operations and Wilkinson Eyre; REX/MDP; and WRT and Urban Strategies.

The winning design “was really the scheme that best addressed the issues of phasing,” said Frederic M. Bell, the executive director of the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects, who served on the corporation’s advisory committee. “If money is going to be the problem, how do you create something at the outset that can grow and change over time?”

In the main, however, the architects were charged with imagining a park that was compelling enough to prompt visitors to get on the ferry — to design a destination that would “justify the journey,” said Leslie Koch, president of the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation.

The notion was, “What can you do in this park that you can’t do anywhere else?” Ms. Koch added.

For West 8, that includes providing a fleet of bicycles on the island that can be used at no charge; the architects even designed a wooden prototype bicycle for that purpose.

For now the island’s environmental conditions are harsh and windy, said Adriaan Geuze, one of West 8’s partners. So the architects aimed to create a landscape where people would feel shielded from the elements. “We believe we have to change that into a more intimate, human-scale green island where you’re protected,” he said.

Jonathan Marvel, one of the architects, said: “We tried to establish different ecological zones with the park. Topography, shoreline, freshwater places for migratory birds to land because they use the Hudson River as their compass.”

The firms involved in the winning proposal met several times to brainstorm and map out the project. “In a way it started as a think tank,” Mr. Scofidio said.

The city has been studying the possibility of building a gondola designed by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava that could transport people to and from the island. “Based on what we’ve seen so far, it is definitely very feasible,” Mr. Doctoroff said.

Avi Schick, president of the Empire State Development Corporation, was named chairman of the Governors Island corporation yesterday; he replaces Mr. Doctoroff, who is leaving the city administration in February to become president of Bloomberg L.P. but will remain a member of the corporation’s board.

At the news conference Governor Spitzer played up the symbolism of enlisting a Dutch architecture team to design on an island where the Dutch were the first European settlers in the early 17th century.

Asked whether he was gratified by his involvement in the high-profile project, his first in New York, Mr. van Eyck said, “Look at my face” — and then smiled.

the winning proposal
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