The Governors Island Alliance has laid plans to become an independent organization, wholly separate from the Regional Plan Association, which created it and has nurtured it from the beginning.
Technically, the Alliance has been a corporation since 2002, when it launched a flotilla in the harbor to draw attention to the Island, and needed corporate status for insurance coverage against possible mishaps. (There were none.)
This creation of the original three incorporators – Albert Butzel, John Doswell and Rob Pirani – has now been reinvented with a newly reconstituted board of directors, new officers and a plan to break away from the R.P.A. Meanwhile, the two organizations continue to work together, R.P.A. in key roles as the Alliance’s fiscal agent and provider of staff support, not least the services of Rob Pirani as executive director.
Donna Milrod of Deutsche Bank, will still chair the Alliance’s board. There will be an executive committee and an advisory committee that includes representatives of like minded non-profits, such as New Yorkers for Parks, as well as Island partners FIGMENT and the New York Harbor School. Board members will have three-year terms, staggered so that the terms of roughly one-third will expire every year. High on the to-do list is an application to the Internal Revenue Service for 501(c)3 status, to allow fund-raising as a non-profit. Click here for a list of all 27 board members.