Hartford Courant from Hartford, Connecticut • 8

A8 THE HARTFORD COURANT: Tuesday, February 2, 1982 New York's 'Little Apple': Problems Ahead in Paradise? Growth May Change Cozy Roosevelt Island York City, provides another historic setting. Young children face no traffic problems when they travel to school, because the schools are inside the apartment buildings. The island, in fact, is a young person's paradise. Ample parks and playgrounds promote an outdoor lifestyle. The Little League activities of suburbia go on just a couple of hundred yards from Manhattan's traffic.

Roosevelt Island has a large group of single parents who have found socializing easier there than in other neighborhoods. It also contains a growing number of diplomats and their families who live within a 10-minute commute of the United Nations. Youngsters learn some lessons not found in traditional classrooms because of Roosevelt Island's two chronic-disease hospitals. Many handicapped patients can be seen on Main Street. "Those hospitals convey to a young kid that being young and healthy is a transient part of life," Wade says.

"The volunteer activity of the young people in the two hospitals is high. There are volunteers all over the place." The residents of Roosevelt Island consider themselves part of Manhattan, even though Queens provides them with police and fire protection. But policemen are called to Northtown the community newspaper. "The gossip about private lives is exactly the same as in any small town." But to what degree the small-town atmosphere will remain in the future is uncertain. Roosevelt Island faces a dilemma: more housing is necessary for it to become economically self-sufficient, but residents fear too much housing could cause the community to lose its special ambiance.

Apartment dwellers also fear that a subway spur linking the island with Manhattan and Queens to be completed within the next two years will cut down security. Northtown's 2,100 housing units are concentrated in four residential complexes: Ri-vercross, a luxury cooperative; Island House and Westview, rental units, and Eastwood, which faces Queens and contains federally subsidized apartments. Roosevelt Island was designed to house a population that is 20 percent upper income, 30 percent middle income, 30 percent moderate income and 20 percent low income. But the economic need for more housing is pressing. Because Southtown has not been built, the island's most recent deficit on the state's books was $1.7 million.

And, in an era of Reagan administration budget cuts, which will cause pain at the state level, some residents are concerned about what the attitude of the Legislature in Albany will be. "Every budget session is an adventure for Roosevelt Island," says Steve Lambert, acting general manager of the Roosevelt Island Development Corp. "The residents are keenly aware of it. The annual subsidy to those people who have fairly high incomes staggers a lot of the upstate legislators." Several factors contribute to the deficit. Because of high insurance costs, the tramway operates at a loss.

It cost about $720,000 to insure the cable car last year. However, an increase in fares to 75 cents a ride equal to the fares of New York's subways and buses is expected to narrow the gap. The state also subsidizes the minibus carrying passengers from the tramway to Main Street, landscaping, maintenance, garbage removal and private security. "You have all the issues all municipalities have to focus on," says Shirley A. Margolin, the Division of Housing and Community Renewal's representative on the island.

"Energy costs are much higher than in 1976. What place hasn't suffered that?" The smaller-than-anticipated scale of Roosevelt Island also has caused some problems for its shopkeepers, who complain there aren't enough residents to really support their stores. Planners hope they will be able to attract more commercial tenants to the island because of Manhattan's skyrocketing office rents. Talks are under way with an investment banking firm about relocating some of its office functions, Discussions also are being held with a developer about building 1,100 more apartments. Construction could start by the end of 1982.

a IS UMfeH foil 'MMtllf Jr -1 r' HOW AP By JOHN J. GOLDMAN Los Angeles Times NEW YORK It is only 3 1-2 minutes away by cable car from Bloomingdale Country in Manhattan, but Roosevelt Island in the East River has become the "Little Apple" to New York's "Big Apple" a small town within the heart of the city. The crime rate is so low that some residents don't even lock their doors; walking alone at night is safe. Traffic is light; the streets are clean; garbage is sucked away by pneumatic tubes. The public schools boast some of the city's highest reading scores, and recreational facilities are plentiful.

Although the town has existed for only a little more than five years, many of its 5,500 apartment dwellers believe they live in the best of all possible worlds, a secure haven within hailing distance of some of Manhattan's most vibrant neighborhoods. Even the rent is relatively reasonable, and for some apartments there is a waiting period of up to two years. "It is small town, U.S.A. with a real sense of community," says Jane Pearl, who moved from Brooklyn a year ago with her son Jonathan. "There is a tremendous difference in the safety.

The first week I was here, I went to the supermarket at 8:30 at night. I wouldn't do that in Brooklyn Heights." "Many think of it as the only alternative to Manhattan if you have children," says her neighbor, Sandy Chen. "The genius of the thing is it is an island and it is controllable," adds Richard C. Wade, a distinguished professor of urban history at the City University of New York, who also lives in the community. "It can't be overwhelmed.

The water controls everything. It controls access It is the only successful 'new town' I have ever studied, as a historian." For all the superlatives, however, Roose- velt Island's residents have some complaints of restless teenagers, construction defects, worries about long-term financing and growth on the island, and a feeling of isolation when the tramway breaks down and only a narrow bridge to Queens remains open. "There are some problems in paradise; there is no community that will be perfect," says David Lustig, president of the Roosevelt Island Residents Association. "But on the whole, the island is a tremendous community to live in." Roosevelt Island's transformation began in 1968 when it was still named Welfare Island and when former Mayor John V. Lindsay appointed a committee to study its potential.

The committee made an audacious recommendation that a new town be created on it. In 1969, the city asked the New York State Urban Development headed by Edward J. Lo-gue, who had masterminded New Haven, and Boston's highly successful urban renewals, to carry out the mandate. Today, Logue says of Roosevelt Island, "It is a living, breathing demonstration that racial and ethnic and economic integration in the New York City public schools can work, and in fact produce a superior student. It's a stable environment I think history will remember Roosevelt Island as a pleasant experience.

It is a working neighborhood with a genuine sense of self." The original plans called for two communities, Northtown and Southtown, on the two-mile-long island, which is only 800 feet wide at its broadest spot. But, because of New York's budget crisis, only the development called Northtown has been built. The result is that the state's housing and community-renewal division runs the island at a deficit because of its smaller-than-anticipated population. Roosevelt Island's heritage was far from distinguished. It had served as a storehouse for New York's forgotten population: prisoners, the poor, mental patients, the contagious, chronically ill and infirm.

After a visit in 1841, Charles Dickens wrote of it, "Everything had a lounging, listless madhouse air about it, which was very painful." Although two hospitals for those with chronic diseases still operate there, the island Dickens described has vastly changed. In the five years since the first residents of Roosevelt Island occupied their apartments, the aerial tramway the first to be used for urban mass transit in the United States has carried more than 11 million passengers. The 125-passenger, red cable car makes a spectacular run of 3,100 feet across the East River at a maximum speed of 16.3 mph. Passengers boarding the tram at 60th Street in Manhattan can watch as the car rises alongside apartment buildings, passes over the East River Drive and a heliport below, then travels within view of the soaring white buildings of New York Hospital, where the Shah of Iran was treated. The cable car then descends and runs parallel for a few hundred feet with the Queens-borough Bridge, outracing autos on the bridge's roadway during the rush hours.

From the cable car, the view of the skyscrapers of mid-Manhattan is impressive, especially at night. Riders can see the United Nations, the Empire State Building and Citicorp's ultramodern headquarters, among other sites. The ride ends as the car descends into a station on Roosevelt Island, where red buses wait to take passengers to the new community's Main Street. The tram runs every seven minutes during rush hours and every 15 minutes the rest of the time except when winds are blowing more than 40 miles an hour or during a thunderstorm. Multilevel apartment buildings facing both Queens and Manhattan slope down to the water, 70 percent of the apartments have river views.

Main Street, which winds through the center of N6rthtown, is patterned after the A unique view of mid-town Manhattan is available from' Roosevelt Island under the Queensboro Bridge. relatively rarely. Day-to-day problems are handled by the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal, which operates the island and maintains its 30-man police force. Compared with many other Manhattan neighborhoods, the crime rate on Roosevelt Island is minuscule. When a murder-suicide occurred some years back, it was a shock to residents as a major cr is a shock to any thoroughfare of an Italian hill town and is paved with dark red blocks.

Traffic is extremely restricted. Drivers can park their cars with special permits for 20 minutes to make deliveries along Main Street; all other cars, which can reach the island only over the bridge from Queens, are directed to a Motor-gate Parking Garage, north of the apartment area. Main Street is the cleanest street in New York City. No dogs soil the sidewalks because they are banned from the island. Garbage is collected by an underground pneumatic system that speeds the refuse at 30 mph through tubes from each apartment building to a central collection station.

There, trucks transport it to the mainland. Adding to the ambiance is a series of parks and historic renovations. Two landmark buildings have been completely restored. The neo-Gothic Chapel of the Good Shepherd, built in 1889, stands on a Main Street plaza. The church serves as the island's community center and house of worship.

Blackwell House, one of the oldest colonial farmhouses in New small town. Unlike Manhattan, up its sidewalks at night theater. There is no loa agers. The drug store close Main Street's only two social centers. The Gre open latest until 2 a.

restaurant's branch on th hattan is open all night. "Like most small tow can be a rumor mill at with most rumors in mosi end up 90 percent ficti truth," says Paula Crandi sevelt Island rolls I'here is no movie hangout for teen-soon after dinner, aurants serve as Kitchen remains In contrast, this 'ast Side of Man-Roosevelt Island es. The problem tall towns is they and 10 percent former editor of i.