BJ Jones began his second year as the President of the Roosevelt Island Operating Corp (RIOC) this month having started in September of 2025. I spoke with Mr Jones about the challenges and successes of his first year in the job.
According to Mr Jones:
… In the challenge department, it’s no surprise to anyone there’s a lot of deferred maintenance needs on the island that need to be addressed, that are overdue. A great example of that is Eleanor’s Pier and we’re getting started on repairing and restoring that so that we can open it back up to the the community. And I’m really excited that work has begun and look forward to that opening up next year.
But we see that with other areas along the West Side, the dilapidated peers. the Prow. It’s why we’re engaging the community on the West Side Infrastructure Assessment and beyond {including} Blackwell House and Nelly Bly Monument.
There’s just work that needs to be done as good public stewards to take care of our infrastructure and public assets….
… we need to be clear with stakeholders that are invested in our success at the City and State level that we welcome support. We need investment to be able to maintain the island long term. Just thinking about capital needs, resiliency needs, the steam tunnel and and more.
We’re fortunate that we are able to generate funds to provide services to the community for the {Red} Bus, operating the Tram, the Youth Center, taking care of our public spaces. But we really need more to be able to do everything that we want to do and everything that the community deserves.
Even though we have a funding stream we aren’t set up, structurally to do everything to meet those needs. We need to advocate for resources for vital projects on this island. And so that’s another challenge, but again, important opportunity and I think people will really be willing to help us because they’re invested in the success and long-term sustainability of the Island….
… The future of Roosevelt Island certainly includes doing our part in helping to address the housing crisis and the affordability priority of, both the City and the State. That will mean taking a look at opportunities on the Island to build more housing, build more affordable housing.
But just as importantly to take a look at what the needs of the Island are to support the potential of new residents, and to make investments that are already needed today, whether it’s transportation, public spaces, climate adaptation or what have you. We are engaged with the City and talking about next steps in pursuing that study and community engagement process. so I hope that we’ll be able to make some more progress on that soon….
… We don’t have the the same flow of funds that the Battery Park City Authority enjoys. They have much more in the way of excess revenues but they were also set up to be able to finance capital projects in a way that’s very helpful in terms of ongoing maintenance needs. We need to pursue that here. We need to pursue legislative changes so that we can finance capital projects. We have to be a little more scrappy when it comes to taking on projects on the Island. That’s why it’s important to engage with stakeholders across the City, State and even the Federal government to help…
During the September 10 RIOC Board of Directors meeting (video here), Mr Jones said in his President’s report:
… We have started important conversations with city, state, and federal stakeholders about how we can get more support for island needs from government funding, are exploring obtaining legislative authority for us to have the ability to finance capital projects, and to change the economics for certain ground leases where we should be getting more of our fair share….
I followed up today asking RIOC Assistant Vice President Communications and Government Affairs Bryant Daniels:
Is RIOC looking to get authority to issue bonds?
Mr Daniels replied:
Yes, just like the Battery Park City Authority.
Here’s the full text of September 10 RIOC President’s Report (full video here):
When I came to RIOC a year ago, I had a key goal: make sure the Corporation would deliver for Roosevelt Island today while putting it in a stronger position to do so tomorrow.
While we are on our way to doing that, it has not, and will not, be without its challenges. Island residents and stakeholders have been an invaluable resource in understanding the keys to island living, and RIOC staff have done a strong job of highlighting some of the longstanding issues the corporation has faced for years. A backlog of deferred maintenance, dilapidated piers, running a transportation network that had not been properly invested in, all on a shoestring budget with forecasted negative cashflow are just some of the bigger obstacles we face.
Though we do have to be realistic, this isn’t a doom and gloom story. At the most basic level, our job is to make sure the Island works. Over the past year, our operations teams have focused on doing that more effectively and consistently. We completed more than 7,400 work orders and closed out the vast majority, including our Grounds team closing out 99 percent of the requests it received. Public Safety continued to operate around the clock, respond to 5,164 island calls for service and Roosevelt Island remains one of the safest neighborhoods in New York City, with our already low number of index crimes actually decreasing slightly year over year. In addition, PSD has made a major push on traffic enforcement, including greater enforcement of reckless delivery drivers, and parking violations.
Transportation remains one of the most important services RIOC provides, with a ridership of more than 1.8 million relying on our Red Bus each year and slightly more than 3 million riders taking the Tram. This past year we took a number of steps to improve the reliability of the Red Bus fleet. We purchased two new hybrid buses, which when combined with the two new buses we received at the end of last year, will give us 4 new buses on Main Street by early 2027. We completed mid-life overhauls on some of our other aging buses, giving new life to those. What’s more, we worked with the Citizen project to allow for Red Bus tracking integration with the visitRI app, giving riders an additional tool to help plan their travel.
We also completed necessary upgrades to the Tramway system, including adding new onboard communications for passengers, and secured $250,000 in federal funding for the next phase of Tram modernization. Currently, we are working with POMA to plan future key upgrades, which we are angling to do during periods of lower ridership to limit disruptions to daily life, and we have emphasized the need for POMA to improve attendant efforts in the stations themselves, including on the platforms, and in the cabins to improve rider experience especially for seniors, disabled, and youth.
Elsewhere around the island, we opened Commons East, fully upgraded the sidewalk adjacent to the west promenade from Meditation Lawn down to the subway station to improve ADA access and reduce issues of flooding, repaved the west roadway adjacent to the tram and racquet club, and fixed approximately 600 potholes (and counting) following the tough winter.
Speaking of that tough winter, we also saw how important coordination across departments can be when the Island faces difficult circumstances. During and in the days after 2 major blizzards, our RIOC Winter Warriors worked together to maintain access and essential services as the snow fell, tackling the Herculean task of snow removal quickly and efficiently.
When the weather was a bit more forgiving, we also began addressing a number of long-standing deferred maintenance and public space needs, including repairs to Eleanor’s Pier, The Prow, Blackwell House, Blackwell Playground and the Girl Puzzle Monument. Re-opening Eleanor’s Pier, in particular, is one of our biggest priorities for 2027 and I am pleased that the repair work for that longstanding issue will soon begin in earnest.
We continued changing the way RIOC operates environmentally, expanding recycling across the island, transitioning to an all-organic approach to landscape maintenance with organic fertilizers and pesticides, adding hybrid and electric vehicles and equipment to our work fleet, and continuing to support the growth of the Manhattan Healing Forest, the only pocket forest in all of NYC.
And we improved the way we communicate with residents and visitors, including through a redesigned website, new digital displays and a new newsletter platform. Our slate of annual events were also a great success and continue to be a positive way for RIOC to build bridges with the community. We’ve also made a concerted effort to gather more feedback from island residents on everything from basic questions of quality of life to upcoming projects and what they would like to see us achieve.
Behind the scenes, we strengthened the organization as well. We filled critical vacancies and shifted to more in-house personnel from third-party contractors.
Indeed, it was a busy and impactful first year. But while there is a lot to be proud of in that time, there is also a lot left to do.
It’s abundantly clear to me today that long-term planning was not always top of mind for RIOC administrations in the past. The corporation can no longer afford to be short-sighted in its thinking.
We need to invest more in infrastructure. There are significant needs across the Island, and we have to be strategic about where we invest our resources and how we prioritize projects, particularly given the corporation’s tight finances.
To that end, we are working to help make sure RIOC has the financial capacity to support the Island over the long term. Operating a community with its own transportation, public safety, aging AVAC and infrastructure systems comes with significant costs. Growing sustainable revenue and making smart capital investments will be critical to our ability to meet those responsibilities. We have started important conversations with city, state, and federal stakeholders about how we can get more support for island needs from government funding, are exploring obtaining legislative authority for us to have the ability to finance capital projects, and to change the economics for certain ground leases where we should be getting more of our fair share.
We will need to take look at additional housing as another important part of that work. Roosevelt Island has nearly 6,000 housing units today, with more than 45 percent affordable. At the same time, we saw the number of affordable units decline modestly this year under existing regulatory agreements. We need to protect the affordability we have while identifying opportunities to expand it.
The biggest accomplishment of this past year was securing the extension of RIOC’s Master Lease through 2078. It affords homeowners, building owners, and tenants in affordable housing more protections and peace of mind at a time when there is significant uncertainty in the housing market. But, an even longer-term Master Lease extension must also be prioritized as soon as possible.
Resiliency for an island situated in the middle of the East River is also going to be an important area of focus for us, with climate change already affecting our way of life. The comprehensive flood mitigation study we’re embarking on will provide an important roadmap to help guide us in ensuring this island can handle a warming planet.
Tied into that conversation is the future of the Steam Tunnel, which also needs to be urgently addressed in the next few years. The can has been kicked down the road far enough; we will need stakeholders across all levels of government to help us solve this issue, which will be costly but is completely necessary to tackle.
So, as I look back on this first year, RIOC is a stronger organization, with improving services, important projects underway, and a renewed focus on the future. Our next phase is about building on that foundation: continuing to improve the everyday experience on the Island, addressing long-deferred infrastructure needs, protecting and expanding affordability, and strengthening our financial position. We have achieved a great deal, and there is more to come. But I want to end with a note of gratitude to everyone within the Corporation who has worked so hard to make this progress possible. It is the dedication of our staff, day in and day out, that allows RIOC to deliver for Roosevelt Island, and I am grateful to everyone who has contributed to what we have accomplished this year.
Thank you all.