Giving an Identity and Purpose to Governors Island

Critic Nicolai Ouroussoff reviews the plans and argues that the redesign will bring the island exactly what it needs -- an identity.

The City of New York "will push ahead with a plan that includes a 2.2-mile-long waterfront promenade and a 40-acre park, offers reassuring evidence that even in difficult times it is possible to get the tricky balance between public good and private interests right — or at least right enough.

The plan, by Adriaan Geuze of the Dutch landscape architecture firm West 8, calls for a park that, if realized, will eventually include a cluster of steep, artificially created hills that form a focal point at the park’s center, visually tying it back to the city. Its wildly original array of parkscapes — including a 'hammock grove,' a grottolike shelter, playing fields and marshlands — will give the island the kind of strong identity it currently lacks."