Red Hook: Industrial Zone or Residential Nirvana?
On the eve of the City’s final decision on whether–and where–to establish formal industrial business zones, emotions are running high in the most contentious case, Red Hook. As reported in The Times today, the conflict is epitomized by the disagreement over the fate of the Rever sugar factory, bought last year by Thor Equities for…
On the eve of the City’s final decision on whether–and where–to establish formal industrial business zones, emotions are running high in the most contentious case, Red Hook. As reported in The Times today, the conflict is epitomized by the disagreement over the fate of the Rever sugar factory, bought last year by Thor Equities for $40 million. On one side is Thor CEO Joseph Sitt, with John McGettrick of the Red Hook Civic Association and Dorothy Shields of the Red Hook Houses East lined up behind him; on the other is Robert Hughes Jr. and his cousins who own the Eerie Basin Bargeport and fear that allowing the Revere to be turned into residential housing is a slippery slope that will ultimately lead to the port’s extinction and an accompanying loss of jobs. Hughes has the support of the South Brooklyn Local Development Corporation as well as Community Board 6 and Ray Hall, a founder of community group Red Hook Rising. Tom Fox, president of New York Water Taxi, looks at it this way: “There are plenty of places to build luxury housing,” he said, “but there’s only one working waterfront.”
Port Owner says City Wavering [NY Times]
Re: toxic chemicals…Whole Foods, Ikea, all the new developments coming in to Red Hook, Gowanus, etc. are bound by the EPA and local gov’t to clean up the brownfields.
Clueless as you are, you may now know that this is why the Gowanus Whole Foods has added another year to its construction schedule, to remediate and remove hazards as required.
But I guess you are in favor of just keeping it all in the ground and letting it rot, and letting Stevedoring plant a flag in it.
And why on earth isn’t it a better idea anyway to have the shipping come in to the much-better-located Sunset Park terminals, and have most of the trucking traffic and pollution eliminated by the proposed Sunset Park – NJ cargo rail tunnel?
More jobs? Less Pollution? Less trucking traffic on these small streets? Stronger community? Better schools? Less crime? Better, wider long-term economic opportunities?
Nope, you’d rather prop-up a single failing company at the expense of everyone else.
Have fun sleeping at night knowing that, as the legions of trucks thunder by and spew filth and continued atrophy into the neighborhood.
How about the toxic chemicals seeped into the ground all along the brooklyn waterfront after years and years of contaminating industry? You think that’s gonna disappear once you stick a 40 foot project (or condo, whatever you want to call it) on top of it?
I would leave. But thanks to NY law, developers have not been able to sprawl over my favorite neighborhoods. It’s against the law. So as long as the law stands, I stay.
The last 20 years showed me that the law is stronger than the money. No matter how much greed there is, not everyone will be relocated to make way for crap. Some areas can survive the property binges. As they have survived the crashes.
“I don’t believe in the artificial life support of a dying industry, but people, this is a living, thriving part of new york,”
Hah, now that is a laugh. It’s a money-losing, $25 MILLION subsidy suckhole that suppports 150 jobs, and just ships everything to NJ anyway, filling the neighborhood with trucks, traffic and pollution.
Personally, I’d rather see that $25 million annually be piped into improving the school district and economic opportunities for residents, but I guess you’d rather have that go to suppot 150 people and all that traffic and pollution.
Nice surfaces, those.
Hey anonymous 2:41 and 2:45,
I am merely describing what transpired throughout Manhattan and other parts of Brooklyn in recent decades.
If you don’t like that, leave.
Who said anything about “suburban” or Long Island.
It’s people like you that make discussions on this board spin of into ridiculous, narrow, ill-informed tangents.
If you had any clue, you would have recognized that was the story of the last few decades of our city, as a result of which we have more jobs, better schools, less crime, etc than we had 20 years ago.
Open your eyes.
oooh “better kitchens, bathrooms, surfaces” to look forward to. It brings to mind Long Island. They had that BOOM; real estate developpers went wild all along the Nassau Suffolk border. And now it’s a wasteland of half-empty neighborhoods and depressed, drugged up teens and old people. The surfaces don’t look so good anymore. Believe me.
URRRRGGGHHH. Go find a friggin home elsewhere. Do you have to suburban-sprawl over EVERY SINGLE LIVING ORGANISM in this city? Can’t any industry (except the suburban service industry) exist here anymore? Why can’t all you residence-needers go satisfy your needs in the gazilllions of towers rising on the Jersey Waterfront, or those ordained for Williamsburg.
I don’t believe in the artificial life support of a dying industry, but people, this is a living, thriving part of new york, this is our waterway. This is the reason Red Hook is Red Hook and not Englewood.
1:14 can say all they want, but it’s pretty clear that having a public marina in the Erie Basin would be hazardous and that residential right next to the bargeport would lead to pretty intense conflicts b/t residents and industrial
If hughes didn’t think it would be a problem would he make a stink about it? He owns his land, so he’s not going to be priced out of the neighborhood.