A 630-Foot Ferris Wheel Meant to Boost Staten Island’s Image Is No More

NEW YORK — The boldest plan to draw people to Staten Island since the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge — a giant Ferris wheel that could be seen from Manhattan and Brooklyn — met an unceremonious end on Tuesday.

The developers of the New York Wheel, which was supposed to take more than 1,400 riders at a time for a spin high above New York Harbor, surprised city officials with a letter that pronounced the project dead. That surrender ended the brightest of hopes for an attraction that could draw tourists and cast a new light on the least famous of the five boroughs.

“After years of planning, the developers of the New York Wheel announce, with great disappointment, that the dream of building a world-class attraction in Staten Island will unfortunately not come to fruition,” Cristyne Nicholas, a spokeswoman for the project, said in a statement.

City officials said they were sorry to learn that the project’s developers had decided to stop trying to complete it. The city owns the site and had extended generous tax breaks to the project, but had not invested directly in it.

The project was a bit of a moonshot from the time Michael R. Bloomberg, the former mayor, settled on the North Shore of Staten Island as its site. Hordes of tourists ride ferries to the island from Manhattan every day, getting a free, drive-by view of the Statue of Liberty. But most of those visitors spend minimal time or money there before returning to Manhattan.

It was far from certain that one of the tallest observation wheels in the world, bigger than the London Eye at a height of 630 feet, would attract enough people to cover its costs. The estimate for the entire project was $500 million, and most of that amount had already been spent.

More than $200 million came from 412 foreigners who had invested $500,000 each in hopes of obtaining visas to live in the United States. On Tuesday, CanAm Enterprises, the New York-based company that brought in those investors, most of whom were Chinese, said it expected that they would remain on a path to U.S. residency because the project had fulfilled most of the federal requirements for them to earn visas.

“This project came very close to completion,” said CanAm’s president, Tom Rosenfeld, in a prepared statement.

That assessment might be news to the residents of Staten Island, who are left with a prime waterfront site that contains only the base of the planned wheel and a large parking garage that can hold 950 cars. The construction team that had been hired to design and build the wheel, Mammoet-Starneth, withdrew from the project last year and later filed for bankruptcy protection.

“It’s unfortunate that we’re stuck with the ugliest part: a parking garage that blocks the view from Richmond Terrace, without the wheel and any of the amenities” that the developers promised, said David Goldfarb, a former president of the St. George Civic Association who lives near the site. He said he hoped that city officials would demand the removal of the garage, so that “at least when you walk along Richmond Terrace that you’ll have a view of the harbor.”

The developers sought a new builder but progress bogged down in litigation. The two sides fought over the fate of the various components of the wheel: its legs and the large capsules that would have carried riders in slow loop.

As one of their last resorts, the developers sought to borrow more money by issuing bonds through the city. But Mayor Bill de Blasio rejected that appeal, calling the project speculative.

“The Wheel was a private sector endeavor that was supposed to pay for itself, and I think the economics were a little shaky from the beginning and they’ve proven to be shakier,” de Blasio said in a radio interview on WNYC last month.

He said that he expected an outlet mall under construction alongside the wheel site to draw visitors to spend money in the neighborhood. “The outlet mall, I should say, is about to make a big difference on Staten Island in terms of jobs and tourist spending,” he said in that interview.

Debi Rose, a councilwoman from the North Shore, criticized City Hall for not being more supportive. “The developer’s inability to complete the project is a deep disappointment for me and a blow to my district, as is the city’s refusal to issue bonds at no cost or risk to taxpayers, denying Staten Islanders needed amenities and a vision promised years ago,” Rose said.