Today I am participating in the Staten Island community by acting as a judge at the New York City Chili Cookoff at Historic Richmond Town in the middle of Staten Island.

My son Thomas and I are sitting here in the Courthouse in this restored 300 year old village that is one of the many wonderful sights on the island for visitors to enjoy.  We are about to judge 12 red and 12 green chilies.  This event is 46 years old and the winners go on to the national finals in Palm Springs in October.

If you ask me what this has to do with the New York Wheel, it’s that the entire redevelopment of the north shore should be of benefit to ALL of Staten Island and its undiscovered attractions.  I now get asked to events like this chili cookoff because of the wheel and its growing notoriety.  It seems only appropriate that I should use these occasions to herald the other pleasant spots on Staten Island like Historic Richmond Town.

Now we have to go home and take some much needed Alka Seltzer…..

At one of the first community meetings I attended , a Staten Island woman approached me.  Her name was Frizzi Linck and she is a voice pathologist and a resident of St. George.  She was all swaddled up with a baby on her chest.  She had a simple request; could our open space green roof include a playground for both local children like hers and possibly for visitors with small children.  I said we would look into it.  I’m sure she thought it was a standard non-committal response.

As I have previously explained in this blog, we have over 5 acres of planned open space on our green roof, with undulating hills and paths winding amongst the sustainability exhibit and its alternative energy generators (photovoltaic solar cells and vertical wind turbines).  There was one portion of the roof plan, the Western-most portion near Nicholas Street which seemed lonely and underutilized.

So much to everyone’s surprise, we said yes, we would include a playground.  When I next saw Frizzi, it was at a Community Board meeting and during the Q&A she asked again about the playground.  This time I told her we had one planned based on her request.  I’m not sure she believed me.  Such is the inherent distrust for the developer in modern American society.  While I’m sure it is a reputation that is well-earned, we consider ourselves less developers and more wheel builders.  That may sound trite, but this is the only project we have underway and we are totally focused on doing it the right way to create a world-class venue that emphasizes the visual history of New York Harbor, the high tech world we all live in and the importance of sustainability in our future.

Building a playground is a relatively small thing to do for a community where we plan to live for the next 99 years.  It will add to the visual beauty of our site looked at both from Richmond Terrace and from 625 feet in the air.  We want our visitors to stay on our site for several hours after riding the wheel.  We are including various elements to make that stay worthwhile, interesting and fun.

Frizzi and St. George, I would love you to think that I decided to build the playground for you, but the truth is that it was simply the right thing to do for the site.  Thank you for the idea.  We have had our landscape architects, M. Paul Friedberg & Partners, do a preliminary design showed below:

At one of the first community meetings I attended , a Staten Island woman approached me.  Her name was Frizzi Linck and she is a voice pathologist and a resident of St. George.  She was all swaddled up with a baby on her chest.  She had a simple request; could our open space green roof include a playground for both local children like hers and possibly for visitors with small children.  I said we would look into it.  I’m sure she thought it was a standard non-committal response.

As I have previously explained in this blog, we have over 5 acres of planned open space on our green roof, with undulating hills and paths winding amongst the sustainability exhibit and its alternative energy generators (photovoltaic solar cells and vertical wind turbines).  There was one portion of the roof plan, the Western-most portion near Nicholas Street which seemed lonely and underutilized.

So much to everyone’s surprise, we said yes, we would include a playground.  When I next saw Frizzi, it was at a Community Board meeting and during the Q&A she asked again about the playground.  This time I told her we had one planned based on her request.  I’m not sure she believed me.  Such is the inherent distrust for the developer in modern American society.  While I’m sure it is a reputation that is well-earned, we consider ourselves less developers and more wheel builders.  That may sound trite, but this is the only project we have underway and we are totally focused on doing it the right way to create a world-class venue that emphasizes the visual history of New York Harbor, the high tech world we all live in and the importance of sustainability in our future.

Building a playground is a relatively small thing to do for a community where we plan to live for the next 99 years.  It will add to the visual beauty of our site looked at both from Richmond Terrace and from 625 feet in the air.  We want our visitors to stay on our site for several hours after riding the wheel.  We are including various elements to make that stay worthwhile, interesting and fun.

Frizzi and St. George, I would love you to think that I decided to build the playground for you, but the truth is that it was simply the right thing to do for the site.  Thank you for the idea.  We have had our landscape architects, M. Paul Friedberg & Partners, do a preliminary design showed below:

At the nearby World Financial Center in an area reserved for art expositions, Art Brookfield has sponsored the 20th Annual Design/Build Competition and Food Drive in support of City Harvest.  At that exhibit of what they call Canstruction, the firm of Ch2M Hill Yolles chose to “keep an Eye on hunger” by building their rendition of The Staten Island Eye: