Roosevelt Island Resident, Tennis Coach, Community Activist, Consent Awareness Advocate And Dog Parent Joyce Short Profiled In NY Times Sunday Routine Feature Today

Roosevelt Island resident, tennis coach, community activist, consent awareness advocate and dog parent Joyce Short was profiled in the NY Times Sunday Routine feature today.

NYTimes Sunday Routine features Roosevelt Island resident today . https://t.co/xFQgtF2FP2 via @NYTimes

— Roosevelt Islander (@Rooseveltisland) December 15, 2024

According to the NY Times: 

 Joyce Short, 77, has survived many things....   

Click here for the full NY Times Sunday Routine article about Ms Short.

In June 2022 Ms Short told me about the NY Junior Tennis & Learning program on Roosevelt Island that she runs and is a big part of her Sunday activities.

Ms Short is the President of the Roosevelt Landings Tenants Association and reported last August about electricity submetering issues in the building.

Ms Short is also a leading advocate

in support of Consent Awareness laws.

6 Months Ago Today US Capitol And Constitution Were Attacked - Every Roosevelt Islander And All Americans Should Watch NY Times Video Days Of Rage: An In Depth Look At How A Mob Stormed The Capital

Six months ago today our Capitol and Constitution were attacked.

Every American should watch this.

Day of Rage: An In-Depth Look at How a Mob Stormed the Capitol - The New York Times https://t.co/GusO0uc1bf

— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) July 6, 2021

NY Times Reports On Roosevelt Island Resident Moving Down Main Street To Building Of Her Dreams With Help Of Local Media - Take A Virtual Tour Of The Hudson Related Riverwalk Park Roosevelt Island Affordable Housing Building

As reported just before Thanksgiving last year: 

Roosevelt Island resident Rodica Miller thought she hit the jackpot when she learned  her lottery application for an apartment in the Roosevelt Island Hudson Related Riverwalk Park affordable housing building was selected. But there was a problem - getting out of her existing lease recently renewed this summer at Roosevelt Landings....

In reply to my inquiry for comment on the situation last November a C+C spokesperson replied:

... C+C typically does not allow mid-term lease breaks, but Ms. Miller now has an opportunity to live in affordable housing, which we won't deny her. Due to the unusual nature of her lease-break request, we are happy to grant an exception to our policy so Ms. Miller can move into her new apartment and avoid any undue financial hardship."...

After learning the good news just before Thanksgiving, Ms Miller wrote:

... I just received a phone call and an email from C+C Management and they agree to terminate my lease early. I’m so excited and relieved! Thank you so much for your help!

Also, Rebecca Seawright’s office responded right away and offered me a free legal clinic. I was impressed by their prompt follow-up. The person from C+C Management who contacted me was Doryne Isley. She was super nice and she wrote me a lovely email. So happy it all worked out!...

Yesterday, The NY Times featured Ms Miller's story in the Renters column.

Roosevelt Island resident gets affordable housing apartment of her dreams with help of local media. ⁦@TheHudsonCos⁩ https://t.co/pFPAsQms5j

— Roosevelt Islander (@Rooseveltisland) April 26, 2021

Would you pay more for an affordable apartment? https://t.co/m8JzVAe101

— Kim Velsey (@kvelsey) April 27, 2021

Click here for the full NY Times Renters Column story.

Hudson Related is the private developer of the Roosevelt Island Riverwalk Park affordable housing building. 

Last November, before residents started to move in, Related Companies representative Jamar Adams gave a tour of the building.

Over 77 thousand applications were sent in for the 313 available units.

Mr Adams has recently started his own firm to build affordable housing.

NY Times Article Profiles Cornell Tech, Says Made LIC Appealing To Amazon HQ2, Created Over 50 New Tech Start Ups And Mixed Reaction From Roosevelt Island Residents

This Graduate School Helped Make New York Appealing to Amazon - profile of ⁦@cornell_tech⁩ on Roosevelt Island https://t.co/2GlrgBFxCf

— Roosevelt Islander (@Rooseveltisland) December 17, 2018

The New York Times profiled Roosevelt Island's Cornell Tech in this December 17 article highlighting the Graduate Tech School's role in attracting Amazon HQ 2 to nearby Long Island City

Nearly 7 years to the day after @MikeBloomberg announced @cornell_tech was coming to Roosevelt Island, the many at @NYCEDC and elsewhere who made it a reality couldn’t have envisioned a better headline: https://t.co/SWaSJisDjK

— Benjamin M. Branham (@benbranham) December 18, 2018

and creating over 50 new start up tech companies including Kipit



Revercare

Cornell Tech startup ReverCare connects family caregivers to care coaches who help them craft a personalized, long-term care plan. https://t.co/1zXlLvc9V8 pic.twitter.com/cplcY1PqIn

— Cornell Tech (@cornell_tech) November 20, 2018

Full Plate

Cornell Tech startup Full Plate serves low-income communities by combining affordability and convenience to create access to fully-prepared, nutritious meals. pic.twitter.com/wxP2lSgyPu

— Cornell Tech (@cornell_tech) November 6, 2018

and Nanit.

The only smart baby monitor that delivers personalized insights to help your baby’s dreams come true. #getnanit pic.twitter.com/5S9a47OhBv

— Nanit (@getnanit) August 14, 2018

The opinions of two Roosevelt Island residents about Cornell Tech are quoted in the article too. One critical:

... Some Roosevelt Island residents have also complained about the continuing campus construction, while others said Cornell Tech had not paid enough to support local neighborhood services, such as street cleaning and landscaping.

“They’re a very prestigious institution that is free-riding off the backs of a working population to function in an environment that they really are not adequately paying for,” said Joyce Short, a writer and longtime resident....

and the other positive:

... The school’s technology lessons have spilled over to the neighborhood. Cornell Tech has supported computer science instruction at the public elementary and middle school. Its students have taught classes at a senior center on protecting against online fraud and created a web page featuring open spaces on the island for the gardening club.

Jay Jacobson, 82, a retired lawyer who lives on Roosevelt Island, recently worked with Cornell Tech students to address a daily problem for older people: how to carry a shopping bag when holding onto a walker? They came up with a 3-D-printed hinge to attach to a walker.

“I’m so glad I’m part of their community,” he said. “It’s just a delight to have them.”...

Click here for the full NY Times article

NY Times Real Estate Article On Roosevelt Island Living Today - Part Of Manhattan But Apart From It

Waves of change wash over Roosevelt Island https://t.co/UhuvfBZgzv

— NYT Real Estate (@nytrealestate) October 4, 2017

Part of the city, but connected to Queens by a bridge, on land in the East River owned by the city but mostly leased to the state, Roosevelt Island appears to be in a class by itself.

But as sure as the tide comes in and goes out, certain aspects of island living feel universal, said Stephen Quandt, observing that Roosevelt Island in some ways reminds him of where he vacations every summer, Little Cranberry Island in Maine.

In both places, cars are few, like restaurants and stores. Evenings are quiet. And sea gulls are never far away, said Mr. Quandt, 56, who works in the animal-welfare field....

... Major changes have altered the island’s 147 acres, especially over the last 15 years. High-rises have gone up on long-empty lots, while promised parks have come to life. Last month, Cornell Tech, a new science-focused graduate school, opened a portion of its new 12-acre campus where a hospital used to stand.

And tourists have come in droves, if mostly for the sweeping views from a tram that whisks over from Manhattan....Click here for full NY Times article.

Also, more from new Roosevelt Island resident Stephen Quandt at this previous post.

Life On Roosevelt Island Profiled Yesterday In NY Times And Brick Underground Articles - A Quiet Affordable Oasis With Big Changes Coming But Not Much Shopping Or Restaurants They Say

 Image From NY Times Ruth Fremson

Check out November 5 NY Times article on Roosevelt Island headlined:

Quiet Island, With Change Coming
The Quiet Manhattan: Roosevelt Island

According to the NY Times:

... “It’s like a suburb in the city,” said Corinne Volpe, an agent with Sotheby’s International Realty who has lived on the island since 2006. Formerly an Upper East Side resident, she said, she was attracted by the “knock-your-socks-off views” from nearly every spot on the island, which is 800 feet across at its widest and two miles long. She and her husband were also impressed by the lack of city sounds. “It’s so quiet, it’s eerie,” she said.

But change is coming to this island, which is technically part of Manhattan (though leased by the state through 2068) and parallels its shoreline from around East 46th to East 85th Streets....

Click here for the entire NY Times article on Roosevelt Island.

NYC real estate web site Brick Underground reported on Roosevelt Island living November 5 too with the headline:

Roosevelt Island: an affordable oasis—and Uber deadzone—in the East River

noting:

Brooklyn and Queens are go-to options for apartment hunters priced out of Manhattan (and even they don't offer much in the way of savings). But one subway stop or a tram ride from Midtown is another oft-overlooked option: Roosevelt Island, the two-mile strip of land in the East River.

Though it’s a sleepy part of the city, several new rental towers have come to the island in recent years, including the Octagon conversion and Riverwalk Crossing, joining apartments previously earmarked for middle-income residents. Unfortunately, restaurants and shopping have not yet caught up, which residents say is one of the biggest downsides. But does cheap(er) rent and access to green space make it worthwhile? We talked to Roosevelt Islanders to find out the best and worst parts of living there....

Click here for the entire Brick Underground article.

Both articles, the NY Times and Brick Underground, have some interesting quotes and thoughts from residents.

More Roosevelt Island photos from NY Times photographer Ruth Fremson here.

NY Times Spotlights NY State Assembly Candidate Gus Christensen In Roosevelt Island Affordable Housing Article Today - RIRA Hosting 76 Assembly District Candidate's Forum June 25 With Hartzog, Menegon, Seawright & Christensen - Update 6/24, The Candidate Forum Has Been Postponed To A Later Date

Affordable housing was the subject of a NY Times article today headlined:

Affordable Island in the Sun
Roosevelt Island Maintains Its Mix

The Big City column focused its first two paragraphs of a Roosevelt Island affordable housing story on one of the NY State Democratic Party 76th Assembly District candidates - Gus Christensen. According to the NY Times:

Gus Christensen was, until six months ago, a managing director at Evercore Partners, the boutique investment bank, a position preceded by stints at JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs and an education at Wharton. Some years ago, befitting that profile, he was a Republican; but eventually the religion of the free market lost its hold on him, so much so that his politics migrated aggressively to the left. Last week he posted on Twitter a link to a tabloid piece about a billionaire who was buying a $70 million pied-à-terre for his children at 740 Park Avenue, with the hashtag #Signoftheapocalypse.

Mr. Christensen is running for the State Assembly in the 76th District, which runs east of Third Avenue on the Upper East Side and includes Roosevelt Island, a community that might be seen as a template for the kind of equitable and more economically integrated city that he and other progressives, fearing the eclipse of all but the wealthiest faction of the plutocratic class, want to see achieved....

The article continues here to discuss Roosevelt Island affordable housing.

The Roosevelt Island Residents Association (RIRA) will be hosting a meet the 76 Assembly District Democratic candidates. According to RIRA:

There will be a Town Meeting on Wednesday, June 25 at the Good Shepherd Community Center (543 Main St.) with RIRA hosting the four 76th Assembly District candidates at a Q&A. The event will begin at 8pm and end by 10pm.

We encourage members of the community to attend this event to find out who they’re choices will be in the September Democratic primary and in the November election for our Assembly representative, replacing Micah Kellner.

Jeff Escobar
President, RIRA

Sherie Helstien
Vice President, RIRA

Sharon Pope
Chair, Government Relations Committee of RIRA

Here's more information on the candidates:

• Gus Christensen
• Ed Hartzog
• David Menegon and
• Rebecca Seawright

as well as this previous post.

David Garland is the only announced Republican candidate for the Roosevelt Island/Upper East Side 76th NY State Assembly seat.

UPDATE 6/24 - The Assembly Candidate Forum has been postponed to a later date.

UPDATE 6/25 - RIRA's Sherrie Helstien reports that the Assembly Candidate's Forum has been rescheduled to Tuesday August 5.

NY Times Writes A Commercial Advertisement For the Kahn/FDR Memorial

Image from NY Times

I have had a bad cold for the last couple of days but after Roosevelt Island 360 alerted me to this NY Times commercial, disguised as a news article on the Kahn/FDR memorial, I was forced to get out of my sick bed to respond. From the NY Times City Room blog:

Don’t doubt the power of documentary films.That is one lesson William J. vanden Heuvel, the lawyer, diplomat and businessman, has learned. He says that the long-delayed project to build a memorial to Franklin D. Roosevelt on the southern tip of Roosevelt Island — first proposed in 1973 — is finally moving forward in large part because of “My Architect,” a 2003 documentary by the son of the architect Louis I. Kahn.

Not a word in the article about opposition to the Kahn design by Roosevelt Island residents and others at all. I know that the NY Times has editorialized in favor of the Kahn/FDR memorial boondoggle but I would have thought that such an attitude would not have seeped into so-called "news" coverage.

Anyway here's my response from the NY Times comments page, #9.

The readers of the NY Times might be interested in knowing that there is significant opposition to the so called FDR memorial by residents of Roosevelt Island and other users of Southpoint Park, the proposed site. How can anyone object to a memorial designed by Louis Kahn to FDR? Simple, Mr. Kahn designed this memorial in the early 1970’s when Roosevelt Island was a very different place than it is now.

In 1973 there was no residential community on Roosevelt Island but now in the 21st century we are a neighborhood of approximately 12 thousand people and still growing with great need for park land, green space as well as open unobstructed waterfront views and access. Instead, what we get is the Kahn Memorial, and let’s not fool anyone it is the Kahn not the FDR memorial, with it’s concrete and granite replacing grass and open waterfront views. Amazingly, the design intentionally obstructs the existing panoramic 360 degree views of the NYC skyline and East River waterfront from Southpoint Park and the current architect and Kahn worshippers thinks that is a good thing.

In reality, the memorial is more to the architect Louis Kahn than to FDR. As the prominent art critic Thomas B. Hess, a self described friend of Kahn and admirer of Franklin Roosevelt said of this design:

“This is the sort of political edifice that the Italian fascists loved and Speer perfected for the glory of the Third Reich… The site itself is treated heartlessly. What was a modest, picturesquely rugged shoreline has been disciplined to straight lines and symetrical angles that have no significance beyond the alarming one of man’s ability to impose a meaningless geometry on nature. The ultimate irony is that Roosevelt, who fought totalitarians to the death, is commemorated in the harsh style propogated by the dictators.”

That hardly sounds like a memorial to the values that FDR represented, does it?

The sponsors of this memorial, FERI, have a 35 year record of failure to raise funds, missed deadlines and broken promises for this project and are now seeking at least $20 million in taxpayer funds for this vanity project. Surely, in these times of fiscal crisis and budget cuts, New York City and State funds could be better spent keeping libraries open, schools funded, garbage picked up, police on the street, fire department protecting us etc.

I am astounded that politicians like City Council Member Lappin prioritizes spending 4 million dollars in City Council funding for this very controversial memorial over the future needs of essential services to the citizens of New York City. Perhaps her colleagues at the City Council will examine this budget allocation more closely when essential services for their constituents are being cut but this boondoggle receives $4 million.

Wouldn’t it be a better to have a great landscape architectural competition for this fantastic site, for which the outmoded 1970’s Kahn design can compete, together with new 21st century plans, to determine the most suitable outcome for Southpoint Park? Of course FERI will never agree to this because they know that their proposal would never be selected in a fair competition for a 21st century Southpoint Park waterfront park.

What Roosevelt Island’s should have at this site is a real waterfront park, not the Kahn Memorial.

For anyone interested below is a link to more information on why the Louis Kahn designed FDR memorial is a bad idea for Roosevelt Island and the City of New York.

— Posted by Roosevelt islander

Back to bed.

UPDATE - 6:30 PM - The webcast of the 9/11 RIOC Board meeting that approved conditional site control of the southern portion of Southpoint Park for the Kahn/FDR memorial to FERI is available here. It is the first new item on the agenda. Watch and see how decisions get made on Roosevelt Island. Note that no opponents of the Kahn memorial were allowed to speak.

Cost of Living in Roosevelt Island

According to the NY Times, living in Roosevelt Island has joined the mainstream:

...People who earn a certain percentage of the city’s median income are eligible for Mitchell-Lama housing, though the exact requirements vary from building to building.market-rate units on Roosevelt Island are priced many multiples higher, they’re still 30 percent less than comparable units in Manhattan, says Jason Haber, a sales agent with Prudential Douglas Elliman.

A new two-bedroom 1,000-square-foot condo costs about $820,000, but if the same apartment were located along Third Avenue in Turtle Bay, he said, it could go for $1.2 million.

“There was a time when families bolted for the suburbs en masse, and now they want to stay,” Mr. Haber said. “Here, they get open space and amazing views, but the vibrancy of city life.”

Rents, meanwhile, range from $1,700 for a 500-square-foot studio to $4,000 for a 1,400-square-foot three-bedroom, he said. That’s about 20 percent cheaper than the price would be across the river.

Roosevelt Island Getting Noticed

Roosevelt Island 360 kindly informed me that the Roosevelt Islander blog has been added to the NY Times City Room neighborhood blog section. I agree with the fellow Roosevelt Island blogger that:

I am ... excited that NY Times readers will see a link to issues affecting Roosevelt Island. Very very cool.