More Big Box Shops for Red Hook
Joining Fairway and IKEA in Red Hook will be BJ’s Wholesale Club, says the Brooklyn Paper. Their new home will be the site of the former Revere Sugar Factory on Beard Street, currently used as an IKEA parking lot. The developer, Thor Equities, offered this statement: “Thor is committed to ensuring that whichever organization leases…
Joining Fairway and IKEA in Red Hook will be BJ’s Wholesale Club, says the Brooklyn Paper. Their new home will be the site of the former Revere Sugar Factory on Beard Street, currently used as an IKEA parking lot. The developer, Thor Equities, offered this statement: “Thor is committed to ensuring that whichever organization leases this property, it will fully augment the historic revitalization occurring today in Red Hook.” They haven’t admitted that BJ’s is the new tenant, but an insider at the Borough President’s office let the news slip. The Beep assured the potential use of the site would be subject to a public review. “While welcoming major retailers to our borough could bring economic vitality and much-needed jobs to previously underserved and underutilized areas, we must also be sure to ‘grow smart’ and preserve a neighborhood’s character, he said. This wouldn’t be Kings County’s first BJ’s. There’s another near Starrett CIty.
BJ’s on Tap for Red Hookers [Brooklyn Paper]
What’s Left at Revere Sugar. Photo by Lock.
What will become of the brick building on that site?
I shop at Home Depot and when I can, at costco. I don’t have a car so it’s when a friend and I rent a zipcar. There is a huge demand for these types of stores but I still can’t but wonder if there is a better way to handle the way they interact with the community and with overall urban planning. I’m also a proponent of having my cake and eating it too- not always successfully.
Yet I don’t quite see how having big box stores in areas that are difficult to reach makes sense when we are complaining about the traffic congestion, the environment, global warming and the price of gas. One the one hand it promotes the use of cars, while decrying that very thing. As my father would say, talking out of both sides of our mouths.
There is a BJ’s opening on Shore Parkway right off of the Belt Parkway near Bay Parkway. It is taking the the place of the school bus parking lot. This is also waterfront property but there was no resistance to that store opening. There must be a huge demand for these types of stores or else they wouldn’t stay in business.
GWH would try to limit people’s choices by stopping big-box stores from his self-admitted aesthetic enjoyment of this city. That’s pretty rich!
A lot of working and middle class people shop at these places because it’s one of many small ways they can save up to pay the mortgage, college tuition, and a variety of other expenses. GWH, your romanticism is not more important than their reality.
Lurker notes that it’s hard for many people to decide which choices are better than others. All the more reason why we should not allow a few people (GWH etc.) to prevent the many from exercising their free choice in retail outlets.
GWH, unfortunately with so many different needs competing it’s often hard for people to actually decide which are the right choices, for themselves or for the greater good.
Maybe it’s me but the way I see it,we’ve been told for so long that it’s all about “me”, and for so many years the number crunchers and paper financiers have determined everything we can or can’t do that we really don’t think of the common good anymore. If its all about money, nothing else is important. Think about the implications when you need emergency surgery and you don’t have money.
Very good point, Flatbushwacker. BJ’s would not exist if people chose not to shop there. However, it also wouldn’t exist if it couldn’t count on a dispersed base of customers from a large area to drive into the neighborhood, fill up their trunks, and leave.
Taking personal choice one step further, people can also choose to take place in the public review process and get the project stopped.
Most likely, the thing will be built. Hopefully, though, we can save urban new york.
Flatbushwhacker;
Well said!
The day BJ’s starts handing out employment applications, you know there will be a line around the block six hours ahead of time. And the same will happen when they open the doors to shoppers. This will reflect hundreds of individual decisions about where to seek work and where to go shopping. People don’t need to be told which jobs are beneath them. They can figure it out on their own.
Nobody will force Biff or GWH to shop or work anywhere they don’t want to, but I’d prefer to let individuals make these decisions for themselves. The fact that the NYC Costco and Home Depot stores are the top performing locations in these companies suggests to me that there are plenty of New Yorkers who do value what they offer.
I just can’t share your apathy, smeyer418, and say “so be it.” With all due respect, we just seem to value different things. You still “drive down on Saturdays.” I like to ride my bike around the streets and warehouses.
I just cannot stomach turning Red Hook into a little suburban shopping center. A lot of what makes it so unbearable to me is aesthetic. I’m here because I value the urban lifestyle, something that does not include driving to big-box retail outlets. It means getting to know my neighborhood stores and the people who work there. It’s a romantic notion I have about the sense of urbanity and neighborhood that was idealized by Jane Jacobs. Every BJ’s or Costco or Target that is grafted onto New York destroys some of that.
But I also don’t think that these stores are good for the city economically. They take the money that is spent here and ship it to their headquarters located in who knows where. They destroy opportunity for local merchants, take up space that could be used much more effectively for housing or for light-industrial uses or even artist spaces.
Lastly, people don’t just need jobs, they need vocations, and BJ’s does not provide that.