Davids Island

A Sphere reader (part of a small but loyal group, or more likely a small group with enough time on their hands to read blogs) sent me an e-mail this morning with a link to a news story about Davids Island, which is in the far western end of the Sound, off New Rochelle. I hadn’t linked to it or to a story from last week about an Army Corps of Engineers meeting to discuss the island’s future. Here’s what I wrote back:

I'm conflicted about Davids Island because the organization I work for has been involved in trying to convince the county to buy it, and we'll probably get more involved as time goes on. I've been trying not to blog about things I do for work, to avoid conflicts -- I want to be able to say what's on my mind, regardless of whether it pisses anyone off; and I don't want to piss anyone off that we need to keep on good terms with to do what we do here at work. It's a problem because I was so heavily involved in the Davids Island stuff 15-20 years ago, when Xanadu was trying to build there.

Maybe I should just explain that on Sphere and link to stories without comment.

And as I wrote it, I realized that was a reasonable idea. So henceforth I’ll link to stories about Davids Island and otherwise keep my mouth shut about the issue, except to say perhaps that it should not be developed into anything except a park for relatively low-intensity use.

Here’s today’s, and here’s last week’s.

Update: My friend and former boss and colleague, Phil Reisman, has a good column today about Davids Island. Phil met up with a fellow named Michael Cavanaugh who lived on the island when it was Fort Slocum and has been contacting fellow former residents. He has a website with lots of really interesting pictures of the fort. Click here and then scroll and click around. Phil’s column is here.