Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Governors Island

Mayor Michael Bloomberg led the groundbreaking ceremony for the first $260 million worth of developments on Governors Island today, the New York Times reported. The initial renovation phase of the increasingly trafficked island – visitors jumped to a half-million last year from 8,000 in 2005 – will add formal gardens, lawns, play areas and woodlands. But the bulk of the budget will be spent on much-needed infrastructure: repairing 2.2 miles of seawall, building a water-line to Brooklyn, demolishing 18 abandoned buildings and improving electrical and telecommunication facilities. [more]

Governors Island

The New York Community Trust earmarked $216,000 this month to repurpose vacancies on Governors Island and the Brooklyn Army Terminal as affordable studio and rehearsal space for artists, the Village Voice reported.

The money will be used by the Department of Cultural Affairs to refurbish some 85,000 square feet of space. [more]

The Center for Urban Real Estate, a new research group at Columbia University, has proposed connecting Lower Manhattan and Governors Island with millions of cubic yards of landfill, the New York Times reported, to create a new neighborhood called LoLo, which stands for Lower Lower Manhattan.

The project represents the kind of big thinking that New York needs, said Vishaan Chakrabarti, the director of the center. It would create 88 million square feet of development and generate $16.7 billion in revenue for the city over 20 to 30 years, he said.

Chakrabarti unveiled some elements of the proposal at a meeting held by the Municipal Arts Society earlier this year, the Times said. [more]

Port Authority of New York & New Jersey Executive Director Chris Ward offered somewhat of a strange proposal for the Brooklyn waterfront and Governor’s Island yesterday during a visit to the Time Warner Center at Lincoln Square, the New York Observer reported, calling for the relocation of the Red Hook Container Terminal, currently located at 70 Hamilton Avenue in Red Hook, to Sunset Park.

To fix Governor’s Island, you must first fix Red Hook, he suggested. “Red Hook is in the wrong location if Governors Island is to succeed,” he said.

In Sunset Park, the shipping capacity would be insulated by Industry City, Ward said, and there it could connect with a trans-harbor freight rail tunnel. [more]

New York City will commit $260 million to upgrade Governors Island in hopes of attracting commercial development to the 172-acre island in the harbor off Brooklyn and Manhattan, the Wall Street Journal reported. The city took control of the island last year after a city-state partnership to develop the island produced few results. The island had formerly been home to Army and Coast Guard bases, before the partnership bought the land from the federal government for $1 and vowed to develop it into a major destination. Though attendance to the island has increased every year thanks to more concerts and art shows, there are significant challenges to attracting development to an island without historical ties to the city or easy public access. [more]

Governors Island

The city’s sole maritime and environmental public high school also became Governors Island’s first tenant in nearly 15 years yesterday when it marked its official opening with a fishing net-cutting — as opposed to a ribbon-cutting — ceremony attended by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal reported. The island, which the city took control of earlier this year, hasn’t had a tenant since the Coast Guard left in 1996. The Urban Assembly New York Harbor School had been located in Brooklyn since its debut in 2003. Its new home is a former medical clinic with science and aquaculture labs and marine technology facilities. The Governors Island location “brings the students to the water and marine life into the classroom,” Bloomberg said. [WSJ] [more]

Douglas Durst and Governors Island

Now that developer Douglas Durst’s plan to build a $100 Ferris wheel on Governors Island has been shelved, the future of the 172-acre space remains uncertain, the Observer reported. Since the city took over the formerly state-controlled space, the island will undergo a seven-month rezoning process, which in turn must follow the creation of a giant environmental impact statement, which can take years to create. In the meantime, no permanent commercial development can be permitted. The zoning process “may present obstacles for proposals that didn’t fit within the current zoning,” said Ken Fisher, a land-use attorney who chairs the nonprofit advocacy group Governors Island Alliance, but “in the long run, it may turn out to be beneficial,” he said. The Bloomberg administration contends that whatever uncertainty the zoning may cause pales in comparison to that of the prior structure of shared governance. The state wrote funding out of the budget for the island, designs sat on a shelf, shutdown plans were drawn up and there was little forward thinking. “Things were happening on the island in terms of programming, but nothing was happening in terms of our ability to deliver more certainty to the development community,” said Leslie Koch, president of the city-controlled Trust for Governors Island. [NYO]

[more]

Robert Lieber, the city’s deputy mayor for economic development

Robert Lieber, the city’s deputy mayor for economic development, will vacate his post next month and return [more]

Robert Lieber, the city’s deputy mayor for economic development

Robert Lieber, the city’s deputy mayor for economic development, will vacate his post next month and return [more]

Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s capital budget allocates $104 million for a Javits Center overhaul that has been shelved for years, according to the Observer. The original 2006 plan was a $1.6 billion modernization and expansion of the convention center, for which the city pledged $350 million. In 2008, that idea was scaled back to a $463 million renovation, paid for by a hotel room tax, but the Javits Center has since remained in the city’s budget, albeit at a diminished sum. [more]