Governors Island comes closer to city ownership

New York City moved several steps closer to becoming the sole owner of Governors Island after two influential forces behind the island backed Mayor Michael Bloomberg's proposal to move the island into the city's hands earlier this month.

Community Board 1, which represents Lower Manhattan, and the Governors Island Alliance announced they would support efforts made by Mayor Bloomberg to see that this transition happens.

Currently, Governors Island is owned by two separate entities: the city and the state of New York. Coordination between these two groups has been notoriously complicated, and organizing funding has provento be exceptionally difficult.

This difficulty was highlighted last year when funding for Governors Island was overlooked and the future of the site was left in limbo for several months.

Elizabeth Case, program coordinator for the Governors Island Alliance, said avoiding instances like these is one of many reasons why a single entity should control the island.

"With the funding structure as it is, the island gets its money from the Empire State Development Corporation, which is then filtered through its subsidiary," Case said. "It's a lot of red tape and a lot [of] waiting."

The announcement comes as good news not only for the Governors Island community, but for NYU as well.

According to NYU Plans 2031 documents, the benefit of Governors Island is that "[it] has a large amount of square footage available for academic and residential uses; approximately one million square feet."

In an interview with WSN last December, NYU President John Sexton and Executive Vice President Michael Alfano explained some of the ideas NYU has for developing the island.

"One could conceive of it being a major center for academics," Sexton said. "If you were to ask me what we would recommend and what would be most likely ... we would be happy to participate, along with Poly, in creating a world center for thinking about cities there. An academic center thinking about cities, greening them, how you build big science."

They also said that the island's ownership situation may cause problems in the development of the island. Both agreed that handing the island over to the city would be beneficial, especially considering the state's weak financial situation.

"But the big thing is that the city and state have overlapping jurisdiction," Sexton said. "This might be a propitious moment because the state is so weak that the last thing they can talk about in the next 10 years is doing anything on Governors Island."

Vice president for government relations and community engagement Alicia Hurley said that NYU plans to announce its official plans regarding Governors Island later this semester.

Jaywon Choe is city/state editor.