The nine-member board of the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation (RIOC), which is the public authority that runs the island, voted 7 to 1 in favor of the proposal, with one member not present. The $45 million project, to be called Four Freedoms Park, after a well-known Roosevelt speech, has secured the entire $14.7 million in public and private money it needs for the first phase of construction, says Gina Pollara, who is supervising the project on behalf of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute (FERI), the sponsor. Plus, the park, which will be located on the island’s southern tip, across from the United Nations, has secured two-dozen necessary approvals from 18 city, state and federal agencies. “I’m thrilled,” says Pollara, who trained as an architect. Roosevelt Island is located between Brooklyn and Queens, in the shadow of the Queensboro - or 59th St - Bridge. The park’s dart-shaped design, which Kahn created in 1974, features stone-paved promenades that edge a sloping lawn, which is fringed with allees of linden trees. At the tip will sit a 3,600-square-foot enclosure ringed with 28 tall granite blocks inscribed with snippets of the “Four Freedoms” speech, which Roosevelt gave to Congress in 1941 extolling the freedoms of speech and religion, and from want and fear. Though some steps in the enclosure will give way to wheelchair-friendly ramps, to bring the park up to snuff with modern codes, the end result would be remarkably similar to Kahn’s original, says Paul Broches, AIA, a principal at Mitchell/Giurgola Architects, the lead architect. “We wanted to retain as literally as possible everything in that design,” says Broches, who drafted the original construction documents in 1975. The project was scuttled in the 1970s due to funding woes a revival of the scheme in the 1990s encountered political resistance. The first phase entails construction of the enclosure at the tip, and the adjoining sculpture court. Phases two and three, which still await funding, call for work on the east and west sides of the park, landscaping, and construction of the large granite sections, according to Pollara. When the park is completed, it will earn a pair of firsts. It would be Kahn’s premier project in New York City, in a state with just two of them: Temple Beth El, in Chappaqua, and First Unitarian Church, in Rochester.
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