New York Wheel, planned for Staten Island, would be a king among giants

on October 24, 2012 at 6:20 AM, updated October 24, 2012 at 6:50 AM

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Generally speaking, there's nothing new about people riding rotating wheels for fun and a great view. The idea of carrying people skyward in seats swinging from a more or less circular apparatus has been around at least since the early 17th century.

Pittsburgh bridge builder George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr. literally reinvented the wheel and took the art to new heights. His 264-foot contraption wowed and dizzied throngs at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Its successors have been known as Ferris wheels ever since.

Ferris wheels are a staple of amusement parks and traveling carnivals, and many a city uses them, in one form or another, to attract the attention of tourists. Some are wheels-within-wheels. Others are eccentric. Dozens of them are really big.

So the plan to fit Staten Island's North Shore with the biggest of the world's big Ferris wheels has a me-too feel about it.

Soaring 625 feet above the St. George waterfront, the so-called New York Wheel would reach heights no other such wheel has yet attempted.

The wheel would easily be the tallest structure on Staten Island. If you figure 10 feet per story, we're well above 60 stories here. That's more than twice the height of the Statue of Liberty -- including its base.

The spinning colossus would be equipped with three-dozen climate-controlled capsules, each as big as a bus and capable of hoisting 40 passengers. At any given moment the New York Wheel might have as many as 1,440 scenery-hungry thrill seekers aboard.

Like many of its not-quite-as-large counterparts, the wheel would seldom stop. A complete rotation would take about half an hour, slow enough for people to simply walk on and off.


Wheel would bring big changes to Staten Island


While no Ferris wheel has ever stood taller, the projected capacity of the proposed New York Wheel will set no records in the passenger-carrying department.

Though it was less than half the size of the New York Wheel, the clanking, steam-powered original Ferris wheel could carry 2,160 passengers in its 36 gondolas. We'll spare you the math; that's an impressive 60 passengers per car.

The New York Wheel would tower over its nearest rivals -- the 541-foot Singapore Flyer, and the 525-foot Star of Nanchang, in the eastern Chinese city of Nanchang. It would dwarf the London Eye, currently the largest wheel in the Western Hemisphere, which stands a mere 443 feet above the southern bank of the Thames River in London.

Brooklynites might not like to know that the New York Wheel would be more than four times taller than Deno's Wonder Wheel, the famed 150-foot Ferris wheel that has been a fixture along the Coney Island Boardwalk since 1920.

Even if the New York Wheel meets its scheduled 2014 opening-day deadline, the bragging rights as the world's largest may not last long.

Russia has plans for an innovative non-rotating wheel -- the cars would circle the rim on a monorail -- that would stand an astounding 722 feet tall.

China's proposed 682-foot Beijing Great Wheel ran into money problems, but it is still officially on the planning board.

Even Iraq has its eye on big-wheel fame: The proposed Baghdad Eye would stand 650 feet tall. Proponents say the ambitious and expensive plan may be scaled back.

One side note: The operators of some of the world's largest passenger wheels reject the term "Ferris wheel," because it harkens to the relatively crude machines of the past. Their preferred term is "observation wheel" -- a sobriquet bestowed on wheels with their capsules mounted outside the rim.

The passenger cabins on the Flyer and the Eye are even motorized to keep them properly oriented.

Despite this twist of nomenclature, for clarity and simplicity, we will stick with the term "Ferris wheel" for now.

If the New York Wheel lives up to expectations and really does accommodate 4.5 million riders per year -- or about 12,000 people per day, it would outdraw any of its rivals.

For comparison purposes, the Staten Island Ferry boats S.I. Newhouse and Andrew J. Barberi each carry a maximum of 6,000 passengers.

A ticket on the original 19th century Ferris wheel cost 50 cents - about $12 in today's money. If the New York Wheel follows a similar price-point scheme, it will be a money machine.

And the local wheel may only be the start of things to come. A proposed outlet mall, and a high-end hotel, both to be located hard by the New York Wheel might, each day, draw many thousands of shoppers and visitors, including altitude-aversive acrophobiacs whose distaste for high places would make a ride on the wheel more nightmare than dream.


Former Staten Island BP skeptical of the Wheel plan


It remains to be seen how the narrow waterfront, the indirect patchwork of local streets, the rickety, ill-designed infrastructure and the lack of development opportunities along Richmond Terrace can be made to accommodate all those people and, for no few of them, their automobiles.

Gaining sufficient financial traction is one of the more common problems that hamper big-wheel plans.

The Great Dubai Wheel (607 feet), the Bangkok Eye (577 feet) and the Great Berlin Wheel (574 feet) are among the projects stalled by a lack of funding. The same thing happened to the 285-foot Pepsi Globe, proposed for the New Jersey Meadowlands complex in 2008.

The London Eye narrowly avoided financial collapse when the government came to its rescue with some political arm-twisting and a brokered deal. The Eye is now owned by Tussaud's -- of wax museum fame.

No matter how huge they are built, the world's great wheels are not too big to fail. They also present municipalities with unusual difficulties and safety concerns.

Power failures and fires -- and the resulting potential need to evacuate the wheel quickly -- can be especially problematic. The tallest tower ladder in the New York Fire Department inventory has a maximum working height of jut 70 feet, so alternatives must be incorporated into the plans.

The reigning giant, the Singapore Flyer has, on several occasions, demonstrated some of what can happen.

The Flyer, located just north of the equator in the city-state of Singapore, has a history of stranding passengers for hours upon steamy hours because of bad weather and various failures.

On one notable occasion the Flyer's brakes didn't work properly. In a separate incident, a control-room fire stopped the wheel and cut off air-conditioning for nearly seven hours. Some passengers were evacuated in a sort of sling, which suggests their situation must have been dire.

Another time the Flyer's power went out when the wheel was struck by lightning.

Sometimes the difficulties are more fundamental. The 394-foot Great Southern Star in Melbourne, Australia, had turned for just 40 days when large structural defects appeared in its framework. That was in 2008. The Star was promptly shut down, soon dismantled, and has yet to rise again.


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