Will NY Water Taxi’s Dropping of it’s East River Route Cancel the New Octagon Dock?

As reported today by the Roosevelt Islander (via Curbed and others) and the New York Times, the struggling New York Water Taxi company is cancelling its service on the East River route for the next four Winter months. What impact that has on the construction / refurbishment to the Octagon dock is unclear. But it can’t be a good thing if Octagon LP was expecting to receive year round service from NY Water Taxi and was going to be footing the bill for the construction. At least the Octagon residents did not lease their units with the promise of such a dock and the ferry service.

Update 5:00 pm

According to e-mails received this afternoon from Bruce Becker of Octagon LP the plan is to provide year round ferry service from the dock once constructed with the initial stop being 34th Street. Mr. Becker acknowledged that “long term feasibility of water taxi service is dependent on a larger network of routes so any reduction of service elsewhere is not helpful”.

Mr. Becker also informed me that a meeting was held today with representatives from both Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney’s office and the NYC Economic Development Corporation, which were “encouraging” in that the EDC is “studying how they can [aid] our efforts”.

According to Mr. Brice Peyre, of the Congresswoman’s New York City office, the staff member who attended the meeting had already left for the long holiday weekend so he could not add any comments regarding the aforementioned meeting.