New York mayor proposes public health center on Governors Island

Ever since the city and state paid the federal government $1 for an island in New York harbor, officials have wondered what to do with it. Mayor Michael Bloomberg floated a new idea: spending his own money to create a public health center there.

The billionaire and longtime philanthropist who gives away multimillions each year has recently begun shaping his official charitable foundation. He suggested on his weekly radio show Friday that the foundation could lease some of the historic buildings on the 172-acre (70-hectare) Governors Island and create an international campus dedicated to public health.

Visiting scholars would come and study together, hold conferences and present research, he said.

"Something that pulls together — where you'd have a conference on malaria, let's say, and there'd be papers presented and people from around the world would come and could actually stay there on the island in these old houses and use one of the buildings for dining rooms and meeting rooms and presentations."

The island, about half a mile (800 meters) from lower Manhattan and accessed by ferry, is virtually uninhabited now, apart from a firehouse, small security operation and staff from the National Park Service, which still owns and operates 22 acres (9 hectares) there. A new high school is set to open there next year, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The island served as a British and then American military base for more than 200 years. Captured Confederate soldiers from the secessionist southern states were imprisoned there during the American Civil War in the 1860s, and it was an Army supply base during World Wars I and II. Landfill from the excavation of the Lexington Avenue subway was added in the early 1900s, forming 103 acres (42 hectares) of its total area.

The federal government ceded most of the land to the city and state in 2001, but since then officials have not been able to decide what to put there.

Public comment has been collected, environmental studies have been done, and more than once officials have put out feelers asking for development ideas. Those have included casinos, housing complexes, a skate park and various commercial developments; Bloomberg said Friday that none of the ideas submitted has been feasible.

Bloomberg said he estimates it would cost $100 million (euro72.11 million) to renovate the buildings and create the center, plus about $30 million (euro21.63 million) a year to run it.

He added that a public process would be needed before he could take over. A 12-member board, half appointed by him and half by the governor, governs the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation that oversees the island now.

On Friday, the group issued a statement encouraging but not endorsing Bloomberg's idea.

"The mayor's vision would fit with the concepts advocates have long called for on the island... We would be happy to meet with representatives from the mayor's foundation as we would any individual or group considering tenancy on the island."

Bloomberg said he has been exploring the concept of creating such a center for some time, and that Governors Island is just one potential location out of several. Another likely place could be Baltimore, where the public health school at Johns Hopkins, his alma mater, bears his name.

Public health is one of the main areas where he has focused his philanthropic giving over the years; money has gone toward many aspects of the cause, from stem cell research to anti-smoking campaigns.