The streaming connection was blurry with some stuttering, but RIOC’s Deputy Chief Counsel Gerrald Ellis came through clearly. The setting was a Community Board 8 Committee meeting. Ellis was invited to share his insights on an extension being discussed for the master lease governing Roosevelt Island’s development.
by David Stone
The Roosevelt Island Daily News
More than a decade ago, when I began covering Roosevelt Island politics, then-RIOC CEO Steve Shane shared his concerns about community leadership. The pioneering leaders – Ron Vass, Patrick Stewart, David Kraut – were aging out. Who would replace them?
Shane didn’t see any rising stars on the horizon, but now, after some delay, a few emerged. One is Paul Krikler, an Island House resident, who volunteers a lot of hours in keeping Roosevelt Island plugged in with CB8.
As chair of the Roosevelt Island committee, he hosts monthly streaming sessions on issues facing the community. For June, it was the master lease, a foundational document without which Roosevelt Island would not exist in its current incarnation.
Gerrald Ellis and the Master Lease Extension
A core member of RIOC’s interim leadership team, Ellis took part in an initial discussion concerning an extension of the master lease in January. Other participants included Council Member Julie Menin and representatives from the governor’s and mayor’s offices along with Health & Hospitals officials.
The master lease, arrived at in 1968 but taking affect a year later, ceded the development of Roosevelt Island to the state. The city was in no shape to tackle the project, having wrestled with threats of bankruptcy for years.
Roosevelt Island wasn’t much to look at then, but New York poured cash and imagination into “the city of tomorrow.” Although that was eventually a misnomer, the results set the stage for the unique community we experience today.
It’s not a city at all, yet it’s probably the most admired of all New York neighborhoods. Tourists flock here from all over the world, although there’s not a single carnival ride, four-star restaurant or beach anywhere.
Even some residents underestimate its value.
A picks in-the-ground achievement…
What the master lease allowed was building – building residences, streets, promenades and infrastructure that made a community possible. Community building was something else, but it depended on it and still does.
Now, it has hit a critical juncture. Although it’s a 99-year agreement between city and state, it gets complicated when it comes to financing. As Ellis explained, leases – whether starting or renewing – need a minimum of 40 years of certainty in ownership, but with a bucketful of leases for condominiums and complexes coming up, that standard is getting harder to meet.
That’s because the state’s deal with city, which eventually led to creating RIOC, has only 44 years left on its term. The agreement expires in 2068, but the foundations it built begin crumbling sooner. If the real estate deals constantly rolling across RIOC’s field of vision can’t be completed, the whole enterprise falls apart.
And, as Ellis emphasized, once broken, it will not be rebuilt.
How the necessities lay out…
While four years may seem like a lot of time, it’s not. The negotiating process plus the bureaucratic demands for the master lease extension can gobble that up fast.
The Uniform Land Use Review Process, more commonly known as ULURP, will take up to a year but can’t even begin before all the parties agree on the terms of an extension.
That, Ellis said, is tricky and getting trickier. His preference would be “just a number,” that is, the number of years for the extension. He preferred 32, extending the master lease out to the end of this century, because it’s simple, easy to agree on.
But that’s not happening because of three – so far – considerations, all heavily involving Health & Hospitals.
- What becomes of the dilapidated steam plant inching closer to collapse by the day?
- Same for the no longer active steam tunnel running from the plant all the way up to Coler. According to inspectors, it’s been at risk of “catastrophic collapse” for years already.
- And more recently, how the Berm Project protecting Coler from floods plays out on RIOC-controlled land.
To be clear, if any of these were simple challenges, they’d have been cleared off the deck by now.
The Master Lease Extension and the Future
The master lease will be extended. That’s not in question, but the devil is always in the details.
When Health & Hospitals demolished Goldwater Hospital, it left its steam plant, which served both it and Coler, intact. No arrangements were made for its retirement or the steam tunnel that forms Roosevelt Island’s east seawall. That was careless on everyone’s part, but if governing parties can’t kick the can down the road, who can?
Well, that can is at our feet today, and it can’t be kicked much farther without crippling the pillars holding up Roosevelt Island’s real estate foundations. Without a timely master lease extension, developers will not be able to refinance their mortgages and individual condo deals will not go through.
The facts are as simple as Ellis explained, but the details are not. And there’s the smoldering issue that didn’t exist initially – resident involvement. During a Q&A after Ellis’s presentation, multiple Roosevelt Islanders expressed concern that the folks here were not involved and were barely informed until now.
There are a lot of balls in the air, each is fragile, but the jugglers are still in the training phase. Nothing about this looks easy, but everything about it calls out for haste. The next time that can gets kicked, it just might fall apart.
Is there an EMS for bureaucracy on the ropes?
“I Can Ask”
Chair Fay Christian opened the Operations Advisory Committee on February 12th, reading out member names from a prepared sheet that omitted Melissa Wade. It didn’t feel intentional, but it struck me as odd precisely because it came from something prepared. Lydia Tang gently corrected her, noting that Wade was, in fact, a member of the committee. Wade met the moment with grace, or perhaps she simply wasn’t bothered by it.
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