The Marina Operator Taking Over Transmitter Park

The Marina Operator Taking Over Transmitter Park By , an Emmy Award–winning Curbed writer who has reported on New York City for four years This view may soon include a city marina, operated by the scion of a Broad Channel marina family. Photo: Shutterstock The winning proposal for a concession stand in Greenpoint’s WNYC Transmitter Park has done the unthinkable: united the newbies in the neighborhood’s waterfront condominiums with the holdouts who can remember the park when it didn’t have a speck of green and catching the sunset required climbing over a chain-link fence. “This is not a project that there’s two sides to,” Councilmember Lincoln Restler said. “People just don’t like it.” Most of the outcry has focused on how big and out of character the plan for the park seems. Transmitter Park is just 1.6 acres, a little larger than a football field, with a slender fishing pier that curls out into the East River. It’s the perfect scale for a picnic, a neighborhood movie night, or a meditative stroll. The winning proposal would expand the pier into a 24-hour marina where tour boats of sightseers might unload, rent kayaks and paddleboards, or wander into the park, where the winning operator plans to install a two-story restaurant. The proposal also leaves open the possibility of razing the neighboring 1937 radio building and transmission tower that gives the park its name and some of its charm — even though the 2025 guidelines for proposals required protecting the building, including a plan to “restore the decorative metal chimney.” All this for a contract intended to bring the park a public bathroom. At a public meeting this month, attendees also raised concerns about the marina pouring fuel and sewage into the same waters park volunteers have been trying to clean since a 2012 partnership with the NYC Water Trail Association. “This just seems like a takeover,” the chair of the Friends of Transmitter Park, Elissa Iberti, told me. “Why do we need this?” The Parks Department says that the proposal was the only one to pass the city’s standards and that three attempts to find an operator since 2017 had failed. One prospective operator had some insight into why. As the owner of the Lot Radio told a researcher at the Center for an Urban Future, he was thrilled at the idea of moving his indie station into the old radio building at the park and had visions of running a café and bar there but “balked at the price tag” for what the city asked of operators. He said he would be on the hook for the renovation of a 1937 building, boarded since 1990, that has sprung a leak. On top of that, this is a particularly brutal time for restaurants, when even popular spots are closing over rising costs for insurance, energy, staff, and food. But the city asks concessions operators to hand over a lump sum every year and a percentage of gross receipts, money that goes into the parks’ central fund. The park opened in 2012 as a passive park with a fishing pier, designed by WXY Studio. Photo: NYC Parks The winning proposal is offering $60,000 per year — a number that grows, by year 25, to $168,000 — as well as 2 percent of gross receipts over $3 million. The bid came from Josh Cohen and David Schmitt. Cohen is a local restaurant guy — a co-owner of Lilia, Saint Vitus, and Chez Ma Tante, buzzy spots favored by locals and tourists alike. Schmitt also owns restaurants, both on marinas, as Greenpointers reported when news broke of the plans with an exclusive from the Parks Department. But it turns out both of Schmitt’s restaurants were created through the same park-concession program that selected his application for Transmitter Park. Schmitt seems to be building a small empire of city marinas. In 2023, he won a city contract to operate a marina in the Bronx, in Hammonds Cove, just off the Throgs Neck Expressway. One year later, he won the license to operate the marina in Bayside, Queens, just south of Fort Totten Park. Both include space for a small restaurant, which he signed up to operate. At least one of the licenses was controversial: The owners who were forced to give up the space in the Bronx called the city’s decision “horseshit,” and the Bronx Times reported that locals were calling for a boycott. Then–local councilmember Marjorie Velázquez asked Parks to provide an official explanation for why it took the contract away from the female-owned business that had been operating there for 20 years. Schmitt told the Bronx Times he “isn’t just an owner with a big checkbook coming in” but had 20 years of experience in boating. But the company that lost the concession contract cited his résumé in a lawsuit it filed against the city and the Parks Department. The suit claimed the city had ignored Schmitt’s lack of experience running a restaurant and overlooked his work for a marina that the plaintiffs noted “was closed years ago for horrendous environmental problems.” That is Schmitt’s Marina, founded in Broad Channel by David Schmitt’s grandparents and run by his father, an ex-cop named John Schmitt. That site was at the center of a series of lawsuits alleging John Schmitt had illegally dumped trash into a protected tidal wetland. A 1989 federal suit found John Schmitt guilty of violating the Rivers and Harbors Appropriations Act and the Clean Water Act, and he was convicted again in 2008 for illegally dumping at the same spot. A neighbor told the New York Daily News they had spotted John throwing foam, springs, and even car seats into the waterway — dumping so blatant that locals would try to block access to the wetlands with trucks. The marina was remediated and turned into a park called Sunset Cove, and the family cleaned up its public image, rebranding a business on the same site as Buster’s Marine Service, a boat mechanic and sales shop named after a member of the family that was incorporated in 1984. (Its marketing materials claim it has been family run for over 50 years, but that math only works if you factor in Schmitt’s.) Buster’s Marine Service is next to Sunset Cove, a park constructed at a cost of $14 million on the site of the former Schmitt’s Marina expansion. Photo: Google Maps The judge in the Bronx lawsuit ultimately sided with the city, claiming it had followed the correct procedures for sealed bids. And the city provided comment to the Bronx Times, saying background checks and searches into Schmitt’s record by OSHA and New York’s Department of State found “no open issues.” Learning more about how successful these marina operations are is harder. A state database shows business filings for the shop in Broad Channel and for the marina where Schmitt operates Dakota’s on the Cove are both overdue. The Parks Department didn’t respond to queries about Schmitt’s background or its process for checking the records of applicants and didn’t seem aware of the late filings. Schmitt didn’t respond to calls and emails requesting comment. It’s difficult to assess Schmitt’s record running restaurants, but it doesn’t look very promising. In the Bronx, Dakota’s on the Cove announced it was slashing hours this summer. And in Queens, his seafood spot — DJ’s at Bayside — closed within a year. The space is now being run by another operator. At the hearing on August 10, the Parks Department made it clear this is the winning proposal and any changes will only be tweaks based on community input. “Significant capital will be needed to invest if any amenities are to come alive at this site,” said Alexander Han, the chief of concessions for NYC Parks. “We’re proud to be entering into a license agreement with Dave Schmitt. Dave has proved himself as a reliable partner.” The Marina Operator Taking Over Transmitter Park Your product is saved! You’ll receive emails when your saved products go on sale. Manage preferences.