Those who rage about the underused bounty of natural energy that surrounds New York City, rage no more. As the 10-year journey to get the Roosevelt Island Tidal Energy project (RITE) up and running has finally been sunk. To the bottom of the East River, that is. Read More
Cornell University and its partner, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, have won a highly competitive, global competition to develop a 21st-century engineering school on Roosevelt Island. But that’s not the only good news to emerge from Mayor Bloomberg’s visionary plan to transform the city into a hub of 21st-, and 22nd-, century technology.
Along with details of Cornell-Technion’s winning bid, the mayor announced that, in essence, he’s not done yet. Read More
Affordable Housing or Lack Thereof
Roosevelt Island was once known as Welfare Island. Although they shook the unfortunate the name back in 1973, it looks like the community is taking another step to break from it's subsidized past, The Wall Street Journal reports. Read More
Our colleague Nitasha Tiku over at BetaBeat has a rundown on where, exactly, the city might place Mayor Bloomberg's ballyhooed tech campus. Turns out Roosevelt Island wants it badly and is flexing some political muscle to get it: Read More
Though the Roosevelt Island tram was a month behind schedule, the diplomats and tourists who used to pack the breakdown-prone system can finally rejoice. As of this morning, the city's only cable car transit line is back in action.
In addition to adding a new cable system, the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation has replaced the cars with Read More
In late 2006, as a set of projects calling for hundreds of millions in funds languished in their planning stages, Dan Doctoroff, then deputy mayor, became frustrated.
Operating under the code name “Project Repo,” aides to Mayor Bloomberg’s right-hand man for development drew up a clandestine list of where the city could seize control of major Read More
Even at the height of the Thursday morning rush, Roosevelt Islanders have time to stop and talk about transportation. That's because they're likely watching two or three or four F trains go by, packed to the doors with Manhattan-bound commuters. As newcomers flock to Roosevelt Island, transportation on and off the 147-acre landmass is becoming Read More
In 2000, Roosevelt Island had less than 10,000 residents. Since then, 1,331 new apartments have gone up or are under construction. Another 1,160 are expected within the next five years. These new structures will pile thousands of fresh faces--and Fresh Direct trucks, as one resident put it--onto the sleepy spit of East River land once Read More
Carmen, a 30-year resident of Roosevelt Island, remembers when mom-and-pop shops lined the main commercial drag of what was once an enclave of affordable housing in the middle of the East River. Now most of the storefronts on Main Street are empty and much of the retail space surrounding the gleaming, luxury condos of the Read More
David Kramer, a principal at Hudson Properties, confirmed in a phone interview today Read More
The Greenwich Village-based university recently purchased 58 units at the soon-to-open Riverwalk Landing condominium on Roosevelt Island as part of a new faculty housing program. Under the Riverwalk Landing Purchase Program, the school will resell the units to N.Y.U. faculty at below-market value. And it only Read More
525 E. 72nd Where there's a plane crash, there's the NTSB. Today the agency released a few conclusions from their ongoing investigation of the Cory Lidle plane crash from last month. Here's what we know: The plane should have had 2,100 feet of clearance space from buildings on the east side but because (1) Read More
Tomorrow kicks off a conference on rising energy costs at the Community Church of New York. Then, the City Council Transportation Committee meets to discuss Roosevelt Island tram safety. In the afternoon, NARAL Pro-Choice New York hosts their annual Champions of Choice awards at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, where last year's champion, Mike Bloomberg, Read More
Eight sides to every story It just so happened that Tuesday's tram-jam took place during opening week at the Octagon on Roosevelt Island. That wouldn't seem like good news for a real estate proposition--converting a former insane asylum into market-rate rentals--that was a little crazy to begin with. Not so, says architect and developer Read More
Speaking at fire department headquarters in Brooklyn this afternoon, the Mayor seemed to grow a bit frustrated with questions about why it took so long for rescuers to retrieve all the people trapped in a Roosevelt Island tram stranded above the East River. "They didn't rush to do anything," Bloomberg said, reminding that the rescue Read More
