As with any large project that is so transformative and audacious, it has always been difficult to believe that the New York Wheel would ever get built. The groundbreaking has been postponed several times and the completion date has become one of those fictional futures that hang like a fig leaf over delayed projects for years beyond their expiration. Like most residents of the neighborhood, I have had a wait and see attitude: I’ll believe it when I see it!
Ear-pounding pile-driving going on.
But now it seems that it is actually inching closer to reality and I can almost see it… or at least the most fundamental innards of it. On a walk along the shoreline today, I snapped these photos of work in progress on the Wheel. It is a real, functioning construction site, with a couple of dozen workers busy at work digging and pile-driving and driving around in their gadgety construction vehicles. It is a welcome sight for those of us eager for some change in this neighborhood.
Thus, the Wheel joins the Empire Outlet Mall, already under construction and presages the start of construction of the Lighthouse Point project, all ferry-terminal-hugging projects at the center of St. George redevelopment.
More construction activity at the water’s edge. Is this where the unloading pier will be built?
The Rock Across the Harbor 
Glad to note that the wheel will become a reality soon… Unfortunately it won’t be the tallest in the world as they advertise…see..http://newyorkwheel.com/ That distinction will soon go to the Dubai wheel… see http://www.torontosun.com/2013/02/19/worlds-top-10-biggest-ferris-wheels… who seem intent on making everything bigger once something gets classified somewhere as the biggest in the world!