[NYguy]

A little more info on the proposal...

http://www.silive.com/northshore/ind..._proposed.html

Mammoth Ferris wheel proposed for Staten Island sets pulses racing

June 27, 2012
By Jillian Jorgensen/Staten Island Advance Staten Island Advance

Plans for the New York Wheel show a stunning spectacle on the edge of Staten Island — and several borough elected officials say they’re on board for the ride. That’s an hour-and-twenty-minute ride, for a full rotation on the Ferris wheel at least.

The New York City Economic Development Corporation, which owns the parcel just to the north of the Richmond County Bank Ballpark at St. George, is “very close” to a deal with investors interested in building the massive wheel, said Borough President James Molinaro, who expects an agreement in principle next month. From there, he said, he hopes zoning issues, City Council and agency approval can be ironed out by November 2013.

“They could actually start construction in 2014, and hopefully by Valentine’s Day on 2015 everybody could [go] up and propose to their sweethearts,” Molinaro said.

Molinaro said the wheel, not far from the Postcards Memorial and titled The New York Wheel in planning documents obtained by the Advance, would be between 600 and 635 feet — bigger than the record-holding, 541-foot Singapore Flyer. Riders would be inside glass capsules that could hold 35 people, and the wheel would rotate so slowly it won’t stop — people will step on as it passes through a building beneath the wheel.

It would be modeled on other giant observation wheels like the London Eye, which draws 3.5 million people annually. “They have cocktail parties on it. They have weddings on it,” Molinaro said. But the Ferris wheel on Staten Island would have one thing Singapore and London don’t — a built-in audience being shipped in daily. “I have 2 million tourists that come and ride the Staten Island Ferry every year. Just a little push and they’re here,” the borough president said.

Molinaro said he has yet to hear any opposition to the project — and rebuffed concerns about the wheel’s effect on householders’ harbor views. “It’s a wheel; it’s a hollow wheel,” he noted.

The planning documents list Plaza Capital Management, LLC as investors; Skidmore, Owings & Merrill as project architect, Distributed Sun, LLC, as an alternative energy provider, and says the Cornell University Atkinson Center for Sustainability is in discussions to be an alternative energy exhibitor.

Conceptual drawings show a retail terminal and exhibition hall behind the wheel, and next to it, a parking garage with 720 parking spaces and space for as many as 40 buses. A second EDC parcel, to the south of the ballpark, is slated to be turned into upscale retail shops, called St. George Station in the plans. The waterfront retail development would sit on a three-level car garage for another 1,550 cars. Molinaro said that between the outlets and the wheel, he expects a hotel to crop up in the area. That would allow folks to spend more time in the borough. “We spent 50 years being the borough with the largest dump in the world — it’s only fair that we have the largest Ferris wheel,” Molinaro said.