NY Times Smacks Roosevelt Island Residents Across the Face

The NY Times today demonstrates how little regard it has for residents of New York City neighborhoods that do not have multi-million dollar condos or well connected political supporters. For instance, an editorial in today’s NY Times comes out in favor of the Louis Kahn/FDR memorial at Southpoint Park but does not even mention that there is a great deal of controversy and opposition to the project by Roosevelt Island residents who believe that this particular design is a blight on what could become a beautiful waterfront park. There is no mention in the editorial that when asked in a survey taken by the Trust for the Public Land the residents voted against the Kahn memorial or that the elected President of the Roosevelt Island Resident’s Association opposes the Kahn memorial as well (comment 75 to this NY Times City Room Blog article). Nor is there mention that for those Roosevelt Island residents who do support the Kahn memorial, it is primarily due to the great fear that if it is not built this magnificent site would become the location for more luxury condos and never become the waterfront park hoped for and promised.

If one has never been to the southern tip of Southpoint Park, seen the clear open views of the East River and Manhattan/Queens skyline and walked down to the water (not walking above it on a promenade like much of the NYC waterfront) it might be reasonable to support a design by a famous architect that purports to honor FDR. But even assuming such support is reasonable, for the NY Times to editorialize in favor of this project without at least mentioning that many, if not most, of the residents of Roosevelt Island oppose this memorial is a great disservice to the readers and reputation of the so called “Paper of Record”. Perhaps the editorial writers should have read this article from their own paper.

But those opposed to the memorial say supporters waited too long. “Kahn’s memorial was played out in a different time, a different era, a different world,” said Herbert Berman, president of the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation. “It was right for 30 years ago, not for now.” Today, he said, those who live on Roosevelt Island are interested in less formal uses for the land….

“Louis Kahn would have done it differently if he were alive today,” said Charles McKinney, the consultant in charge of the Roosevelt Island park proposal for the Trust for Public Land. “He was well known for his concerns about creating communal spaces, and he would have understood the importance of this community’s concerns, and he would have responded.”

The NY Times editorial states:

The eminent architect Louis Kahn was commissioned to design the memorial, and his concept was simple and elegant. Drawing inspiration from Roosevelts defense of the Four Freedoms of speech and religion, and from want and fear he designed an open room and a garden at the bottom of the island. Trees on either side form a V defining a green space, and leading to a two-walled stone room at the waters edge that frames the United Nations and the rest of the skyline.

And:

Theres a magic to the project. That the task is daunting makes it worthy of the man it honors, who guided the nation through the Depression, the New Deal and a world war. As for Mr. Kahn, he died in 1974, as he passed alone through New Yorks Penn Station. In his briefcase were renderings of the memorial, his last completed plan.

The NY Times editorial is wrong – there is no magic to this project – just raw political and financial power attempting to crush community opposition.If the editorial writer had done some homework he might have learned that most Roosevelt Island residents preferred this alternative to the Kahn memorial…

“Wild Gardens/Green Rooms, ” a picturesque park designed by Mark K. Morrison, a local landscape designer who is currently working on security fencing for the United Nations, as well as on numerous Manhattan playgrounds. The design includes a cafe in the ruins of the smallpox hospital and an earth mound providing enough contour for sledding in winter. The removable stage at the edge of a large lawn would be located at the southernmost tip, where Kahn put his granite room open to the sea.

The 14-acre “Wild Gardens” would cost approximately $34 million to complete, with a first phase planned at $10 million needed to stabilize the collapsing hospital ruins and clear pathways on the west side to the now inaccessible point. That’s $4 million more than Kahn’s 2.8-acre memorial design would cost, according to a revised budget prepared in 2003 for the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute by the Plaza Construction Corporation.

But then again it probably does not matter to the NY Times or the supporters of the Kahn memorial what Roosevelt Island residents think of this project in their own neighborhood. We’re not rich or politically connected.Video is a 360 panoramic view of the southern tip of Southpoint Park, Roosevelt Island where the granite structure of the Kahn memorial is proposed to be located. The effect of this crypt like mausoleum will be to destroy this view.You Tube link of video is here.Image of Kahn memorial is from Architectural Record.