What Makes a Legacy Most?

By Robert Pirani, Vice President for Environmental Programs, RPA

It was standing room only at MoMA the other week when Adriaan Geuze of the Dutch firm West 8 presented Governors Island's recently released draft Park and Public Space Master Plan. The sharply dressed and design-savvy crowd poked at the plan's precedents, from Versailles to climate change.

Not present, but clearly hovering in spirit, was the man responsible for us all being there: Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The Mayor's ambition of creating a new center of gravity for the City at Governors Island was clearly understood. Less clear was whether his ambition could be realized in the three years he has left at City Hall.

At an April press conference, the Mayor had announced the Governors Island plan at a City Hall press conference in April. But the real story was that he had reached an agreement with the New York State to assume full control of the Island. The agreement ended the City-State partnership that had guided the Island since 2003. A similar arrangement had been announced earlier this spring for the Brooklyn Bridge Park. Whether this move is a fire sale by a budget-challenged State or a smart divestiture for government efficiency, the result is the same: the Mayor is now in sole control of a 235-acre waterfront greensward spanning the East River.

For Governors Island, City control cleared the way for the Mayor to act on important funding and planning issues that had fallen through the cracks of State-City relations. The City will provide $62 million of capital funds. The city also assumes responsibility for "all funds necessary to maintain full operation", ensuring there will be no repeat of the squabbling that almost resulted in the Island shutting down last summer.

Planning can also move forward. While the Park Master Plan was completed almost a year ago, public disclosure was held up while the city and state negotiated ultimate disposition of the Island. Release of the long awaited draft Park and Public Space Master Plan launches an initial 18-month public review process. This is all good news for a project whose progress has waxed and waned several times since the Coast Guard left in 1997.

But more significantly is that the agreement enables the Mayor to truly create a physical legacy right at the heart of City and Region. The conversation among the designers at MOMA echoed the opinion of Nicolai Ouroussoff of the Times. The Island's public spaces, together with Brooklyn Bridge Park, will have same the region-shaping impact as the projects of New York's greatest park masters, Robert Moses and the team of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. Once the Brooklyn Bridge Park and the Governor's Island plan are complete, the Harbor will be transformed into a bold and watery front yard that both links and frames Brooklyn and lower Manhattan.

It's a legacy-defining opportunity for someone who will be one the four longest serving Mayors in City's 345-year history. When it comes to Governor's Island, success depends on successfully navigating two challenges. The first is the familiar one of protecting the project during annual budget debates so that progress continues unabated. The second is trickier, attracting tenants for the Island's historic buildings while respecting the public interest: the ultimate definer of legacy. The Mayor has taken a great step forward by defining the parks and public spaces on the Island. He has three years to formalize that park plan, and set the right public template for development on the rest of the Island.