It’s been more than four decades since the silos at the end of Columbia Street in Red Hook held any grain in them but at a time that the rest of the neighborhood is brimming with new large-scale commercial enterprises (think Fairway and Ikea) the owner of the site is seeking approval to turn it into a concrete production and cement storage facility. As reported in The Brooklyn Paper three weeks ago, John Quadrozzi Jr., president of the Gowanus Industrial Park, has applied for approval from the Department of Environmental Conservation; he estimates that the silos could hold 70,000 tons of cement. There are some deteriorated parts that are going to be removed, but the structure itself is like a bomb shelter, he said. The site has also been the holy grail for local photobloggers, several of whom risked life and limb (and arrest) back in January to sneak into the plant. Jake Dobkin, publisher of Gothamist.com, documented the outing on his person blog bluejake.com (where the above photo comes from). There are very few spots that I would risk getting arrested to photograph, he said, but this is one of them.
For a Rusty Industrial Relic, a Bid for Revival [NY Times] GMAP
Red Hook Grain Terminal Looks to Cement a Future [Gothamist]
‘Concrete’ Plans [Brooklyn Paper]
Photos of the Grain Terminal:
Bluejake
f.trainer
mercurialn
e-liz
gowanus