Newsday (Suffolk Edition) from Melville, New York • 148

itting there in the glum, green-gray waters of the East River, Welfare Island seems an unlikely subject for sociclogical reincarnation. The 147-acre island swims in the shadows of Manhattan's high-priced East Side but all splendor stops at the shoreline. Welfare Island has a grim past, filled with memories of an insane asylum, a penitentiary, and a smallpox hospital. Now, several of its buildings are either vacant or in shambles and those that still function do little to relieve the somber spirit: two hospitals are there and, also, a city steam plant. But Welfare Island is about to experience resurrection.

These days, cranes tower over the slender, two-and-a-half-mile island. Bulldozers crunch. Cement mixers spin. New buildings are on their way up and old ones are being restored. If things go as planned, Welfare Island by 1980 will be a well-knit community of 5,000 familiesdiverse in background, age and economic situation--living together on what is to be called "Roosevelt Island." The 18,000 inhabitants will have a subway station and a Manhattan tramway at their disposal.

They will have 40 acres of parkland. They will not have to dodge cars (autos will be parked in a single garage just off the Welfare Island Bridge from Queens, which offers the only access to the island). They will walk on waterside promenades, send their children to island schools only minutes away from home, ride to on-island destinations via nonpolluting electric minibuses. And they won't even have to worry about carrying down the garbage. On Roosevelt Island, refuse will travel from a chute in apartment house hallways, through underground tubes and into a compacting plant, from which it will be carted away.

This sort of instant-pudding civilization is a rare phenomenon in America, and when such a community is built it usually happens in the suburbs or on the periphery of cities. "New Towns," they are called. Welfare Island, on the other hand, is a "newtown-in-town," as the planners like to say. It is a CrOSS between Utopia and Main Street, an attempt to celebrate anew the potential of the cities and to find an alternative to urban chaos. "This is a new community with all the essential urban services that we all dream -schools, residences, day care, police, fire, office space and parkland," said Robert Litke, general manager of the Welfare Island Development Corp.

"If Welfare Island is successful and nobody copies it, it hasn't done anything." The Welfare Island Development Corp. is, in 1973 turn, controlled by the New York State Urban De'SI velopment a housing agency with something of a wunderkind reputation for producing attracJUNE tive, livable accommodations for low- and moderate-income families. FRIDAY, by New When the York Urban City to come Welfare Development up Island, with Corp. a the was plan for asked a new community on agency NEWSBAY, a sought Johnson, master a a plan. big-name genuine architect-in leased superstar--and by this the case, UDC commissioned Philip from Welfare Island was the city for 99 years.

Arrangements were made with two private developers. (UDC works through private industry, providing money for the concept of a project and then a low-rate mortgage for developers.) No less than 17 architectural and engineering firms were hired. And, in 1972, construction began. Plans call for two communities on Welfare Island, Northtown and Southtown, with a common public space in between. (The hospitals at either end-Goldwater and Bird S.

-will remain. The city steam plant will go.) Northtown is being A built first and occupancy is anticipated by the fall 4 of 1974. Southtown should be done in 1976, and by 1980 "Roosevelt Island," complete with subway station and office buildings, is scheduled to be completed. But what is the admission charge to all this? By Fred Bruning The Big Town Is Getting a New Town Looking south at a model of Northtown, the first of two planned communities (Southtown is the other) being built on Welfare Island. At lower left is the Welfare Island Bridge, the only access, and autos will be parked in the facility at lover left.

After that, it's walking to destinations or riding an electric minibus. This is a new community with all the essential urban services that we all dream of Welfare Island is city land, so visitors can use the public lands free. For residents, the costs will vary as widely as the people who live there. Because the $325,000,000 development will offer housing to families in such disparate economic categories, there is a wide range of rental fees and purchase prices. Sixty per cent of the apartmentsfrom efficiency to four-bedroom-will be rental, 40 per cent will be "cooperative" units "bought" just like a single-family residence.

Rents go from $25-a-room for low-income families to $42-a-room for moderate-income households, to more than $100-a-room for middle-income wage earners and $150-a-room for those in the luxury category. Low and moderate rentals are federally subsidized; middle-income rentals and co-ops are provided under the state's Mitchell-Lama program. Cooperative apartments will be expensive. A middle-income family (generally, a family whose income is more than $15,455 a year) wishing to purchase a seven-room co-op would have to put $8,400 down and pay carrying charges of $700 a month. The family would realize the same tax benefits as a private homeowner.

Despite the difficulties some middle-income -Continued on Page 19A.