Ferry service to Governors Island may be expanded, according to an article today by Lisa Fickenscher at crains.com.
"Leslie Koch, president of Governors Island Preservation & Education Corp. has been discussing an arrangement with the National Park Service to expand its ferry operations with Statue Cruises, the company that provides ferry service to the national monuments," according to the article.
Statue Cruises, it continued, has studied the idea of adding Governor's Island to its current routes as part of a feasibility study it completed for NPS. A spokesman for the National Park Service said there is "no immediate plan to add Governor's Island," but added that the service expects to "complete a dock by October on Governor's Island that would allow additional ferries to land there."
Ms. Koch said that 400,000 people are expected to visit the island this summer, up from 275,000 last year and that "some of the increase will come from Brooklyn, where a new dock closer to Governors Island is nearly completed."
To accommodate the greater crowds this summer, the article said that "GIPEC is also increasing its programming, hoping to entice more people to arrive at 10:00 A.M. when the island opens on Saturday and Sunday instead of at noon, when most New Yorkers tend to get there."
On Sunday, an announcement was made that New York City will take control of the island from New York State and "push ahead with a plan that inclues a 2.2-mile-long waterfront promenade and a 40-acre park, leaded Nicolai Ouroussoff to write in an article in today's edition of The New York Times that the plan "offers reassuring evidence that even in difficult times it is possible to get the tricky balance between public good and private interests right - or at least right enough."
"The plan, by Adrian Geuze of the Dutch landscape firm West 8, calls for a park that, if realized, will eventually include a cluster of steep, artificially created hills that form a focal point at the park's center, visually tying it back to the city...[and give the island the kind of strong identity it currently lacks."
"When considered with Michael Van Valkenburgh's Brooklyn Bridge Park, under construction across the harbor in Brooklyn, it represents a shift in the character of the city's park system as a whole that is as revolutionary as Robert Moses' early public works projects or Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux's Central Park," Mr. Ouroussoff wrote.
The city has committed about $41.5 million to the first phase, which is tentatively planned to start construction in 2012 and the city needs to raise about $220 million for a second phase.
In its recently announced expansion plans, New York University has indicated it might want to put some facilities on Governor's Island.
"Leslie Koch, president of Governors Island Preservation & Education Corp. has been discussing an arrangement with the National Park Service to expand its ferry operations with Statue Cruises, the company that provides ferry service to the national monuments," according to the article.
Statue Cruises, it continued, has studied the idea of adding Governor's Island to its current routes as part of a feasibility study it completed for NPS. A spokesman for the National Park Service said there is "no immediate plan to add Governor's Island," but added that the service expects to "complete a dock by October on Governor's Island that would allow additional ferries to land there."
Ms. Koch said that 400,000 people are expected to visit the island this summer, up from 275,000 last year and that "some of the increase will come from Brooklyn, where a new dock closer to Governors Island is nearly completed."
To accommodate the greater crowds this summer, the article said that "GIPEC is also increasing its programming, hoping to entice more people to arrive at 10:00 A.M. when the island opens on Saturday and Sunday instead of at noon, when most New Yorkers tend to get there."
On Sunday, an announcement was made that New York City will take control of the island from New York State and "push ahead with a plan that inclues a 2.2-mile-long waterfront promenade and a 40-acre park, leaded Nicolai Ouroussoff to write in an article in today's edition of The New York Times that the plan "offers reassuring evidence that even in difficult times it is possible to get the tricky balance between public good and private interests right - or at least right enough."
"The plan, by Adrian Geuze of the Dutch landscape firm West 8, calls for a park that, if realized, will eventually include a cluster of steep, artificially created hills that form a focal point at the park's center, visually tying it back to the city...[and give the island the kind of strong identity it currently lacks."
"When considered with Michael Van Valkenburgh's Brooklyn Bridge Park, under construction across the harbor in Brooklyn, it represents a shift in the character of the city's park system as a whole that is as revolutionary as Robert Moses' early public works projects or Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux's Central Park," Mr. Ouroussoff wrote.
The city has committed about $41.5 million to the first phase, which is tentatively planned to start construction in 2012 and the city needs to raise about $220 million for a second phase.
In its recently announced expansion plans, New York University has indicated it might want to put some facilities on Governor's Island.
Architecture Critic
Carter Horsley
Since 1997, Carter B. Horsley has been the editorial director of CityRealty. He began his journalistic career at The New York Times in 1961 where he spent 26 years as a reporter specializing in real estate & architectural news. In 1987, he became the architecture critic and real estate editor of The New York Post.
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