A phone call from the borough president the other day brought some pleasant news.
Vito Fossella and I have something in common. He grew up a stone’s throw from the beginning of the boardwalk in South Beach. I grew up a stone’s throw from the end of the boardwalk in Ocean Breeze.
Flags at Freedom Circle in Midland Beach blow in the wind ahead of Tropical Storm Isaias on Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2020. (Staten Island Advance/Paul Liotta)
Before the boardwalk-walkers take me to task and say it ends at Miller Field in Midland Beach, it does not. The boardwalk ends at Seaview Avenue. A stone promenade anchored by Freedom Circle, built 30 years later, extends to Miller Field.
Vito is a bit younger than me. Quite a bit. So he didn’t see the boardwalk in its heyday and into the early ‘60s.
But we both watched it deteriorate during New York City’s fiscal collapse in the 1970s.
It saw a renovation in the 1990s. More than 25 years ago. We’ll get into the renovation later. For now, the important news is that the boardwalk is deteriorating again. Money to fix it is scarce. The boards compete with every other park and playground on Staten Island.
Difference is, the boardwalk suffers the ravages of storms and salt off the Raritan Bay and Lower New York Harbor. Something that doesn’t happen at Clove Lakes or Silver Lake Park. And it’s made of wood. Wood warps. Boards are popping all over the place, walkers and joggers navigating them regularly.
Raised boards like this is commonplace throughout the FDR Boardwalk in South Beach creating potentially hazardous conditions to patrons. Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025. (Advance/SILive.com | Jason Paderon) (Advance/SILive.com | Jason Paderon)
“It’s horrible,” Grasmere’s Phyllis S. told us. “I have to walk with my head down because of all the nails and the lifted boards. Someone fell last week.”
Ocean Breeze’s Sal knows all about that. “The boards are getting worse,” said Sal, who has walked the boards for two decades. “My wife tripped and fell here last year. Her sunglasses broke and cut her eye.”
The FDR Boardwalk along South and Midland Beaches continues to pose safety risks with uneven planks and exposed nails. (For the Advance/SILive.com | Amanda Faublas) For the Advance/SILive.com | Ama
So what was the BP’s pleasant news?
Vito met with outgoing Mayor Eric Adams. He let the mayor know our boardwalk is on its way back to 1975. But he didn’t go in alone. He went in with the fact that Coney Island’s boardwalk has a dedicated repair fund – just for itself.
That’s what we need on Staten Island, Vito told the mayor. And the mayor agreed.
There’s a mechanism called the November Budget Modification, where things can be added to the massive city spending plan. Vito’s plan would allocate $1 million in the first year and $650,000 annually thereafter to keep the boardwalk in safer, cleaner condition.
The mayor is on board. The stumbling block could be the City Council, whose members must OK it. We have only three Council members of 51, and two are Republicans in the Democratic-controlled body. So our three Council members might have their work cut out for them. Discussions are now underway.
Memo to the 51 NYC Council members: It would be tragic if the boardwalk falls into what it was in the ‘70s.
New York City was on the verge of bankruptcy then. Cops and teachers were being laid off. Maintaining our parks was not a priority.
Fires left their mark on Franklin D. Roosevelt Boardwalk. (Staten Island Advance)Staten Island Advance
Some of our bad neighbors had a field day at the boardwalk, and promenade. Some stole cars, drove them under the boardwalk and set them afire – destroying swaths of the boardwalk along with the cars. Others stole metal railings that ran along the promenade, from Seaview Avenue all the way to Miller Field, and sold them for scrap.
Then the lights went out on the boardwalk and promenade for the entire 2.5-mile length.
That’s when things got uglier. Drug-dealing, and male and female prostitution was rampant on the darkened East Shore waterfront, both on the boardwalk and in the parking lots.
That’s when the Advance got involved. Both Borough President Guy Molinari and his successor, BP Jim Molinaro, poured millions of city dollars into boardwalk renovations.
But with all due respect to both, it was the Staten Island Advance that sounded the alarm before BP Guy stepped up.
We continually hammered the Parks Department to fix the lights. We didn’t know what was wrong with them, but did know they were on one day and off the next.
The Staten Island Parks Department commissioner then stonewalled us. Until he couldn’t any longer.
We discovered two things: Thieves stole the copper wiring from the lights along the 2.5-mile stretch from South to Midland Beach. And the Parks Department did not maintain the lights. The Department of Transportation did.
That’s when Guy Molinari got involved.
The lights were rewired and life at the boardwalk got better and better. Today, when you stroll the boardwalk or promenade, you’ll see wire strung from pole to pole at the top — keeping the copper, once run from pole to pole at the bottom, away from the greedy hands of thieves.
The FDR Boardwalk in South Beach before infusion of city funds in the 1980s, and after.
It was probably one of the most successful public/private partnerships on Staten Island. And it calls into question how much an independent newspaper should get involved with government.
That’s another discussion for another time.
For now, consider it for the good of Staten Island, which is our mission: To strengthen and empower the community we serve.
The city Council should consider doing the same.
Brian
Oh by the way: The boardwalk has a long history. Too long to tell in this space. Going back to the 1880s, South Beach was on its way to becoming another Coney island, with a vibrant amusement area, theaters, hotels, bathing pavilions and casinos. The same was happening in Midland Beach. Multiple fires destroyed much of the South Beach side, but rebuilding took place in the early 1900s. Fires again struck in the 1920s, again taking the boardwalk that was there. In 1930, the state put up $1 million to build a new boardwalk. The boardwalk we know today was built by the Works Progress Administration. The WPA was part of President Franklin D. Rosevelt’s New Deal, employing millions of Americans out of work. There are quite a few WPA projects on Staten Island, including wonderful murals in our own Borough Hall lobby, created through a WPA artists’ program. The boardwalk opened in 1935 – it never made it all the way to Miller Field — and was named the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Boardwalk, which I doubt many realize today. In the 1950s, the city’s “master builder” Robert Moses set his sights on Staten Island, building a bridge – the Verrazaano – and an expressway connecting that bridge to the existing Goethals, and changing the East Shore landscape, ridding it of aging waterfront hotels and amusement rides and extending the boardwalk with a promenade to Miller Field, with parking lots along what is now Capodanno Boulevard. He instituted a 25-cent fee to park and a 10-cent fee it get on the beach. Both of which infuriated Staten Islanders and were yanked not long after. The FDR Boardwalk’s history is long. It’s iconic. And it must be saved.
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