red hook
Red Hook View. Photo by Bluejake
According to Brooklyn Papers, A German cargo line that offered to bring the city $1.6 billion in trade — and with it 400 Brooklyn waterfront jobs — was shunned by economic development officials who refused to commit the Red Hook Container Port to shipping operations through 2009. According to the port’s operator, cargo-unloader American Stevedoring Inc. (ASI), the Bremen, Germany-based cargo company Hamburg Sud was set to ship its wares to Brooklyn but is now looking elsewhere after the city cast doubt as to whether the port would remain open beyond 2007, when ASI’s lease expires. City Council Speaker Gifford Miller and Councilman David Yassky, who along with Rep. Jerrold Nadler, want the Port Authority to extend ASI’s lease, sent letters to Gov. George Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg asking them to reconsider comments made at the council hearing by city EDC Executive Vice President Kate Ascher. How do area residents feel about this?
City Shuns Cargo Line [Brooklyn Papers]


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  1. I’m personally in favor of keeping the industrial jobs, but it’s based more on hunches I have that they would be higher pay/more long term than the service-type jobs that would be created by tourist & residential development. (Plus I think Red Hook’s character would disappear fast if the whole area is overtaken with cruise ships. Ugh.)

    In either case, real projections about number and quality of jobs produced by different options would be great to have…