A summer hot spot is now a winter village. But will New Yorkers visit?

On a mid-December weekend, about 2,600 people took ferries to Governors Island, an artsy green space and former military outpost in New York Harbour, for the opening of its inaugural Winter Village. There was an ice rink, melting a little from unseasonably warm temperatures, but holding up enough for families to whirl around. Visitors lounged on Adirondack chairs around a bonfire or played cornhole. Others sipped coffee at the Arts Centre, the only indoor place that was open, watching ferries come and go from Manhattan.

“It is nice now, but imagine what it will be like when it snows,” said Ira Mittal, 21, a student at New York University who had gone to unwind with a friend in between her finals. “I would love to go sledding; I’m from Singapore, so snow is still a novelty for me,” she said. “I am definitely going to come back.”

But will other New Yorkers leave their cozy apartments to brave the winds and the frigid temperatures for ice skating and hot cocoa on an island reachable only by boat?

The pandemic, in full swing again, may inspire them to. For the first time, with its Winter Village, the island, a popular summer destination, is providing cold-weather programming for visitors. The Trust for Governors Island, which oversees operations for the 172-acre respite from urban sprawl, also plans a mobile sauna and a dog run in January and an ice-sculpting competition in February. For snowy weather, there will be sleds, snowshoes and possibly cross-country ski rentals.

“We had to think about what we could add to this island that would make it a place New Yorkers want to come in the cold weather,” said Clare Newman, the president and CEO of the trust. “To make this work, a lot of people had to believe that the island could be a positive draw for New Yorkers not just on a beautiful July day but on the coldest day in December.”

Some adventurous New Yorkers are interested.

Phil Caracci, 64, a retired software consultant who lives in Murray Hill, appreciates having a new and vast outdoor space to use, he said, especially with the omicron variant spreading across the city. “Particularly as we are leaning toward outdoors more than indoors it’s nice to have another option,” he said. “It’s such a peaceful place, you would never know you are a stone’s throw away from Manhattan or Brooklyn.”

He said he would visit even when the temperatures plummeted. “I have tons of ski gear,” he said. “If you ski in the Northeast you know what minus 20 feels like. I am not easily scared off by the cold. We are New Yorkers; we embrace the fact that we have seasons.”

Over the decades, Governors Island has rarely been fully empty during the winter. Army forces were stationed here between the world wars, and a large Coast Guard installation from the 1960s through the ’90s brought thousands of residents year-round. The New York Harbor School, a public high school that trains students for maritime and environmental careers, is open during the academic year. And anyone who works with the Billion Oyster Project, an environmental nonprofit, or has an artist residency at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, has also been on the island in the cold and snow.

“I was actually here last winter for an artist residency, and I was able to see the island after a blizzard, and it’s fun,” said Joseph Pinlac, who is now a tour guide and gardener on Governors Island. He explained that the island uses snow plows, but that parts of it are left untouched after a big storm for recreation. “One day when I was walking I was tempted to make snowshoes out of twigs.”

Caracci, who owns cross-country skis, is looking forward to gliding across wide expanses of unplowed snow. “With Central Park you have to get there early in the morning to beat the crowds and the plows,” he said. “I would definitely head here to ski instead.”

But New York City is no Vermont, which means there could be plenty of cold, blustery and snowless days coming up.

Michael Jarrells, who lives in Brooklyn and visited Governors Island in December, is not convinced he’ll be returning in say, February. “We had fun ice skating today, but it isn’t enough,” he said. “To be out here in the cold, they would have to open more indoors.”

So far, winter is attracting far fewer visitors than in the summer, when a typical weekend day can bring up to 10,000 visitors to the island, according to the trust. The Winter Village’s opening day, which had balmy weather, drew 1,400 people.

Bruce Monroe, who runs the tour guide program and has been volunteering on the island for a decade, said that winter visitors had been slow and steady, but that the number signing up for tours was in the single digits, down from “as many as 20” a day during the summer.

At Blazing Saddles, the island’s bike rental company, which will also rent winter gear like snowshoes, bicycle rentals have decreased to 10 or 15 per day, as opposed to thousands per day in the summer, according to Barry London, who works at the shop. “We are even selling gloves for $5,” he said. “That is a new thing for us.”

But Monroe seems ready for, and even inspired by, the challenge of making Governors Island a winter getaway for cooped-up New Yorkers.

“A couple of years ago they had a party for volunteers in the commanding officer’s house and they put all these Christmas lights on the pine trees, and there was a dusting of snow on the ground, and I just thought, ‘This could be a beautiful Christmas village,’” he said. “Now we have one.”

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