Applied Sciences NYC Ushers in a New Phase for Roosevelt Island

Author’s Note: This is one of a series of blog posts that are related to assignments from my business reporting class.

In the 1970s Roosevelt Island was like the combination of Hill Valley in Back to the Future and Back to the Future II says Jonathan Kalkin, a mixture of an idyllic 1950s small town and something more futuristic.

Roosevelt Island with a view of Manhattan

The island was outfitted with the last technology: electric buses, an aerial commuter tram, and an automated vacuum collection system that removed waste from the streets.

“It was a World’s Fair kind of place of the future,” said Kalkin, a former Roosevelt Island Operating Committee (RIOC) board member, “and then it all stopped.”

But as a proposed site for a city project to bring a science and tech research institution to New York City, all of that may change and Roosevelt Island may catapult back to the future once again.

The establishment of this institution, called Applied Sciences NYC, on Roosevelt Island would signal an unwritten phase in the community’s Development Plan and intensify the economic and demographic shifts focused around the retail sector and affordable housing that are just now brewing in the community.

Roosevelt Island is unique neighborhood in New York as it is a completely planned community. Created when the New York State Urban Development Corporation leased the island from the city in 1969, their hope was to create a multi-ethnic and mixed economic residential community that met the special needs of both the senior citizen and the disabled populations. (For more about the island prior to 1969, see video below.)

“We were a planned community meant to push the envelope and test how these different groups can live together,” said Matthew Katz, President of the Roosevelt Island Residents Association and resident of 22 years.

This island of 12,000 residents never lacked in ethnic diversity due, in large part, to its close proximity to the United Nations. The short commute made it popular with UN employees and diplomats, including Kofi Annan who lived on the island during his tenure as UN Secretary-General.

And the Roosevelt Island General Development Plan ensured the economic diversity of the island by laying out the island’s development from 1968 to its current state. The plan is defined by the building of four major housing developments on the island – Northtown I, the WIRE Buildings, Northtown II and Southtown– each of which would have 20% of their units dedicated as affordable housing.

As the Development Plan intended, the institution of affordable housing on the island has created a community of diverse economic levels that were more evenly dispersed than New York City as a whole. The 2000 U.S. Census shows the distribution between lower, middle and upper income groups to be 37%, 40%, and 23%, respectively, in comparison with New York City where the levels are at 41%, 44% and 15% (the 2010 census is not yet available for Roosevelt Island).

Two hospitals for long-term care and rehabilitation– Goldwater and Coler –  also shaped the island. Most of the island, for instance, is accessible by wheelchair and because of that there is large disabled population on the island both in the hospital and out of it.

But Goldwater Hospital on the south end of the island will close in 2014, freeing up 10 acres of city-owned land. And this is one of the sites in the city has made available for Applied Sciences campus.

Applied Sciences NYC is the brainchild of Mayor Bloomberg, whose office created the project as a response to the economic downturn. While financial services make up a huge part of the New York City economy,  said Eugene Lee, Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Economic Development, the mayor thought it prudent to diversify the city’s economy.

Noticing a lack of  strength in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) the mayor’s office offered $100 million in government subsidies for a university to come to the city and set up a high tech shop.

A sketch of the proposed Cornell campus. Courtesy of Cornell Univ.

The underlying hope, he said, is that this research institution will spawn enough start-ups to create a new Silicon Valley in New York City. Seven schools submitted proposals for the campus in November and by the beginning of January, the mayor’s office will choose one proposal to move forward.

Both Stanford and Cornell have submitted proposals naming Roosevelt Island’s Goldwater Hospital as their site of choice. But today, Stanford unexpectedly bowed out of the race after Cornell announced it received a $350 million gift to help fund their proposed campus.

Rallying around the project, Roosevelt Island residents met with both Stanford and Cornell staff to discuss the proposal and how they might partner with these universities.

Their excitement stems from flood jobs and energy that this research institution would undoubtedly bring to the island. And RIOC estimates that the campus could generate around $6 billion in economic activity over the next 35 years along with 30,000 jobs for New York City residents.

Lee also expects that the new campus will produce a number of start-up companies that will spill over not only on to the island, but also into Western Queens and Long Island City.

But the island residents are also eager to be test subjects for cutting technology as they were when the residential community was founded and they know that the unique demographics of their island means that they are “sitting on gold in terms of a testing ground,” said Kalkin.

While start-ups may still take a while to root within the community, the influx of students, staff and residents that would come along with this institution will surely bring a strong stream of new revenue to the island, particularly to the retail sector.

“The retail strip has been the Achilles’ Heel of marketing the island and bringing in new residents,” said Andrew Jackson, a project manager at Hudson/Related Development. “It has been the subject of chronic and profound complaints.”

Main Street

To anyone visiting Roosevelt Island, it is obvious that there is major turnover on Main Street, the main retail area on the island. Every other storefront is empty, and where there is a shop open there are few shoppers.

What can’t been seen is that currently 88 cents of every dollar that residents spend, they spend at a store off the island, according to Jackson.

To remedy this, RIOC gave Hudson/Related the masterlease to all of the Main Street retail spaces in August. Their goal is now to get residents to shop on the island, by opening the kind of shops they desperately lack, and attract new residents to the island.

But Alfonso Dicioccio, who owns three restaurants in the Southtown, is skeptical that the current residents will be able to sustain the new Main St. retailers that will be opening shop, as it is difficult to change the shopping behavior that people develop over decades living on the island.

Owning a bar and pizza restaurant that would be closest to the campus, Diccuccio has a lot to gain from thousands of hungry graduate students calling Roosevelt Island home. But he thinks that success of the Main Street project really depends on whether or not the Applied Sciences campus is built on the island.

While Margie Smith, a RIOC board member and resident of thirty years, disagrees on the point that people will be hard pressed to change their shopping habits, she does agree that the arrival of the academic community will make the Main St. retailers more profitable and more essential.

A big push in filling these stores is to bring in more tenants to the current Hudson/Related properties in Southtown.

Developers Hudson/Related began work on the Southtown buildings in 2000 and have finished six of the nine buildings they are contracted to build. They are still trying to fill building five, according to Jackson.

A statue in the East River: The Marriage of Money and Real Estate

The lease on the land ends in 2012, so the hope is that buildings 7,8,and 9 will break ground before then. When asked about the buildings, Jackson noted that they had not yet begun work on those projects, as they were waiting for the market to develop.

There is some speculation that the development group is holding off on construction until a decision is made on the Applied Sciences campus. If Roosevelt Island were chosen as the site, buildings 7,8, and 9 would be the apartments closest to the campus, which may change the purpose for which they are built.

According to the General Development Plan, buildings 7,8, and 9 must hold 20% of the units for affordable housing. Despite being very excited about the campus, Margie Smith, RIOC Board Member, worries that the state and city will cut this remaining affordable housing if they find it necessary once the Applied Sciences campus is established on the island.

This, combined with the privatization of affordable housing already happening on the island and the closure of Goldwater, would effect the demographics of the island that make it so unique.

Many residents of who live in the affordable housing are senior citizens or disabled. When their buildings are turned private, many cannot afford the market rates of these units on their fixed budgets.

“These two groups, senior citizens and the disabled, that are so intrinsic to our community will disappear, and that’s a crime,” Matthew Katz said.

Others, like Jonathan Kalkin, takes a less dramatic view saying, “There is probably going to be a shift from what was originally intended for the island.”

Kalkin, who is heading up the residents committee for the Applied Sciences campus, is optimistic that research done on the campus might aid the island in keeping housing affordable and maintaining the diversity that has made the community so special.

“These [affordable housing] buildings were built with electric heat, which is the most inefficient and expensive source of energy,” Kalkin said. “The research that would be done on clean energy would benefits the island by making it more affordable, which speaks to the original plan of Roosevelt Island.”

(Click to scroll through slideshow)