The Octagon, located just south of Coler Hospital, was the centerpiece of the "Pauper Lunatic Asylum" designed by a prominent architect of its time, Alexander Jackson Davis. He had intended it and a duplicate structure as the cornerpieces of a symmetrical U-shaped building, but only half was ever built, leaving the single Octagon as the focal point. Today, only the Octagon remains standing – barely.

A few residents cautioned the RIOC Board that a modification of the Island's General Development Plan (GDP) – part of the 99-year Lease under which the State of New York controls the Island to 2068 – should be sought, saying development of the Octagon Park area for residential housing is not provided for in the GDP. But apart from concerns about the GDP, there was no strong resident opposition to the Becker and Becker plan itself. Many residents appear to have adopted the view expressed by resident Board member David Kraut: "We were presented with a project that, at the expense of the building footprint... we would get the majority of [Octagon] park finished out, and the picnic grove, and the Octagon building dome saved, and to me it seemed like a pretty viable trade-off to give up much less than an acre to the footprint of the building to get all the rest of that in return... Sometimes you have to give up something to get something, and to me it seemed like a logical trade-off to make."

At the same time, Kraut said he was voting for the project "because I'm confident that we're only moving the process forward a single step and we will have a final chance to say yea or nay before the project is cast in concrete." In fact, the resolution approved unanimously by the Board had been amended to formalize a requirement that the Board would have final say-so on the Octagon development.

The Becker and Becker plan currently calls for about 350 units, primarily studio and one-bedroom apartments, in a configuration in which two eight-story wings would radiate west and south from the Octagon structure just as the original structure did when it was visited by Charles Dickens in 1842, three years after it opened.

The Octagon, at the intersection of the wings, would be preserved in the Becker plan, restored to its former glory with a sweeping spiral staircase, with specific uses yet to be determined.

The site control granted to Becker and Becker essentially gives the architectural firm time to work out specifics of a plan, check the market for financing, continue its discussions with the community, and finally present a fully-developed plan to RIOC, and to negotiate the financial terms of a ground lease.

Community activists have received the Becker firm warmly, even while expressing reservations about its plan being outside the scope of the GDP, as well as concerns about the apartment mix being targeted at singles and couples without children, who are likely to leave the Island for larger accommodations as they marry and have children. Bruce Becker told a community gathering in January that his firm would take another look at the mix of apartments and, possibly, at the planned target market of medical researchers.

Recent history has been hard on the Octagon. Most recently, a Labor Day fire in 1999 gutted what was left of the building, which had already been damaged by a 1982 fire that took its wooden dome.

The RIOC Board's full February 15 proceedings are available in transcript form on Website NYC10044 at www.nyc10044.com.