Five design teams presented competing visions for a park on Governors Island at a public forum in New York City last week. Although roughly 350 people attended, they were a subdued crowd and only 40 returned comment sheets, underlining one of the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation’s (GIPEC) biggest challenges—how to make New Yorkers care about the relatively unknown, 172-acre landmass located a seven-minute ferry ride from the southern tip Manhattan.

“A grand total of probably 50,000 people have ever been on the island who were not members of the military forces and their families,” Leslie Koch, GIPEC’s president, said of the former Coast Guard facility, which was given to the city in 2003. GIPEC initiated a design competition last year that asked architects and designers to develop concepts for the island’s open space that would boost the number of visitors. Proposals from the five finalists were unveiled last month.