Austere Helvetica Font As Metaphor For Roosevelt Island's Drab, Brutalist Main Street - Will RIOC Seek Master Leaseholder To Take Over
Blogger Evan Coyne Maloney grew up on Roosevelt Island and compares the Helvetica font with Main Street store signage, neither of which he likes.
... one of the more odd aspects of Roosevelt Island still remains: the storefront occupants on Main Street seemed to compete over whose sign would display the most generic and lifeless name:Hopefully, the reign of Roosevelt Island's Bolshevic store design may soon be over. The future of Roosevelt Island's Main Steet retail corridor as well as store signage typeface will be addressed on Friday during a meeting of the Roosevelt Island Board of Directors Real Estate Development Advisory Committee. Perhaps a private sector Master Leaseholder will finally be sought for Main Street and RIOC will remove itself from the business of retail landlord. According to RIOC:The drab brutalist architecture of Main Street, Roosevelt Island and the austerity of Helvetica always made me wonder if that’s what NYC would have “evolved” into had the Bolsheviks taken over here and not in Russia.
- THE THRIFT STORE
- HARDWARE AND VIDEO STORE
- FLOWER SHOP
- NAIL SALON
- ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH
- ...and my personal favorite: THE CHILD SCHOOL
PLEASE TAKE NOTICE that a meeting of the Real Estate Development Advisory Committee of the RIOC Board of Directors will be held on Friday, November 20, 2009 at 5:30 p.m. at the RIOC administrative office, 591 Main Street, Roosevelt Island, New York. The Committee will meet to discuss:More on the Roosevelt Island Main Street Retail Report can be read here.
1. the Main Street master lease appraisal;
2. the Main Street consultant recommendations;
3. the Main Street master lease and RFP; and
4. the Liberty of Roosevelt Island Corporation’s hardship application for a lease modification.
A live webcast of the meeting will be available from RIOC here and archived for approximately a month afterward.
