In 1966 the Army left, replaced by the Coast Guard, which in 1995 announced it was departing. A telephone call to someone you might think would pay a lot reveals why buyers are scarce. Trump says modern Americans are too antsy to wait on even very good ferry service. He says even Staten Island did not prosper until ferry service was supplemented by the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. A big problem, he says, is that government is chock full of blocking mechanisms.
Environmentalists are particularly nimble at litigating development to a money-eating standstill.
Once upon a time, Robert Moses, the master builder of modern New York, could drive the construction of bridges, highways and other large-scale public works. Arguably, some might have been better left unbuilt or done differently. But on balance the city is better off because, for a while, it was able to act with dispatch. Such dispatch is a distant memory today, when time and money are consumed by filing environmental impact statements, negotiating racial set-asides and generally being nice to snail darters and other grievance groups. It is passing strange that a congested city with a shortage of housing, green space and Revolutionary War landmarks cannot find a moneymaking use for an island that is going to waste within hailing distance of the capital of moneymaking, Wall Street.