We were lucky enough to spend a couple of hours on Friday touring the Brooklyn Navy Yard with its president Andrew Kimball. There are a ton of initiatives underway, from adaptive reuse to new construction that will remake both the yard interior and well as its relationship to the surrounding neighborhoods. Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll drill into some of the most interesting projects.

One of the biggest concepts aims to turn a problem into a solution. Dry Dock A is in desperate need of dredging, but since Fresh Kills closed, there’s no place to dispose of the dredge. What Kimball et al hope to do with it is to fill in the channel (1) next to the salt pile (3) along Kent Avenue. The 15-foot-deep channel is man-made and has no aquatic life. Combined with the city auction lot (2) and the Keyspan site (4) that the gas company is under court order to clean up, this would create a 16-acre site fronting on Kent Avenue. The Navy Yard Corporation is hoping to put out a Request for Proposal at some point in the next six to 12 months for a series of multi-story building with a mix of commercial, industrial and, get this, retail fronting along Kent Avenue. What kind of impact do you think that would have on South Williamsburg?