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November 19, 2005 |
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The RIOC Column
Roosevelt Island is a community in change, and one where
open communication among the stakeholders – residents, businesses, management,
elected officials, and others – is critical. That is why RIOC has decided to
begin a regular newsletter – with the first one scheduled to arrive in your
building the week after Thanksgiving – to residents in which we can directly
improve that communication. We want to keep you as informed as possible about
what is happening on the Island, and what changes might be in store.
And we also want to stay on top of rumors that sometimes fly around the Island
without a basis in fact.
Our request for interest in five development sites, for example, was just that –
a request to see what kind of ideas are out there for the sites. Whether or how
to proceed on those sites will come far down the road, and will be subject to
public review. But the idea started circulating about firm plans that don’t
exist even in the conceptual phase. The newsletter will be an opportunity to
quickly respond to those kinds of rumors.
This is a time of change, not the least of which is that we have a new
Chair-designate for the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation board of
directors in Deborah Boatright, who will bring her decades of involvement and
expertise in providing affordable housing to the service of the 9,000 residents
who live here.
And we all face the challenge of working together to ensure that any future
development stays true to the guiding principles of the General Development Plan
that guide our progress. At the same time, we must protect the fiscal stability
of RIOC, which since the end of State subsidies has become a model of
self-sufficiency and pay-as-you-go management.
The newsletter will also be an opportunity for us to explain better the legal
underpinnings of how the Island works and how RIOC, a State-created public
benefit corporation, fits into the larger picture.
There has been great concern, for example, about the possibility that the WIRE
buildings – Westview, Island House, Rivercross, and Eastwood – might lose
protections under the state Mitchell-Lama law. We share those concerns, as
evidenced by our commitment to Manhattan Borough President-elect Scott Stringer
to meet with him to discuss the issue in the near future.
But RIOC’s powers are limited by the fact that the buildings are privately
owned. Our commitment to maintain mixed-income housing will guide our
participation in this process, but it is one in which we are not all-powerful.
The newsletter is an opportunity for us to communicate directly with you. It
will be dropped in each building, and also appear on our website at
www.rioc.com.
As always, we encourage you to attend monthly RIOC board meetings to see for
yourself what is happening, and what is coming up, for those of us who share
this special Island in the middle of the East River.
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