Disgusting Season’s Greetings from Riverwalk Commons and RIOC –...

This year, Riverwalk Commons and the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation (RIOC) throw some disgusting season’s greetings at Roosevelt Island. Despite public complaints, Riverwalk Commons businesses throw trash carelessly all over the space directly opposite the F Train subway entrance. And the usual suspect, the routinely negligent state agency, looks the other way.

by David Stone

The Roosevelt Island Daily News

Disgusting Season’s Greetings

As tourists and potential new residents leave the Roosevelt Island subway station, they’re greeted with heaps of discarded trash. Shards of broken glass are scattered throughout. What looks like a discarded compressed air container catches the sun while rat-attracting bags of trash rest outside dumpsters.

You wouldn’t believe it if you didn’t see it yourself. The trash is a gift from the businesses in Riverwalk Commons as well as the MTA. But this is RIOC’s property, and the Hochul/Haynes administration is ultimately responsible. Governor Kathy Hochul heads both agencies, appointing board members and setting policies… but keeping her distance and her hands clean.

Is this how visitors to Roosevelt Island should be greeted? Should those of us who live here and foot all the bills for RIOC’s operations get this daily insult?

Those are questions for Governor Hochul, who has already shown her distaste for Roosevelt Island. You will not get through to her, though. Nor are you likely to get any attention from RIOC. The outsiders have a different DNA than those of us who live here and love our Island.

But maybe registering your disgust with Granny Annie’s, Starbucks, Duane Reade, Fuji East and the other Riverwalk Commons businesses will get them to grow a pair and initiate self-policing.

This disgusting season’s greetings tells a story about why small communities resist outsiders. Outsiders, like RIOC, often have little respect for the communities upon which they squat and disregard local values.