On one of the most desirable tracts of waterfront land in Brooklyn, underwater pests have eaten through the wood pilings of two piers. A freight terminal is in a state of disrepair. Four out-of-order cranes stand rusting and are about to be sold for scrap.
… but that view!
With panoramas of Lower Manhattan and New York Harbor, the 122-acre-property in the Red Hook neighborhood offers developers an enticing and potentially lucrative opportunity to reinvent a gritty industrial district into a residential neighborhood with high-rise apartment buildings, shops and offices.
While some see the area’s vast potential for redevelopment, others want to protect the existing marine operations and restore the working waterfront they see as vital to New York City.
For decades, supporters of Brooklyn’s maritime industry have fought against and defeated near-constant efforts to sell the land and shoreline, once one of the East Coast’s busiest ports.
“This view here is a curse,” said Mike Stamatis, the chief executive of the port’s operator, Red Hook Terminals, adding that he was not surprised the land was seen as desirable. “If I’m a commercial real estate developer, there would be very few other places that I’d want to reimagine and create a new development.”
But now, after a land swap deal between the city and the land’s owner, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the city and state are moving ahead with the most serious effort yet to transform the area, pledging to usher through a large-scale, mixed-use development with housing while consolidating and upgrading the port.
City and state officials insist they have no specific plans yet for the land, which straddles Red Hook and the much smaller Columbia Street Waterfront District, stretching one mile from the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal to the southern end of Brooklyn Bridge Park.
But they want to move fast, and they have asked a newly formed task force of community members and elected officials to make suggestions by the end of the year about what to build.
An environmental review will follow, which will become the basis for a project plan written by the state that will lay out the details. The state’s involvement allows the project to skip the city’s typical land-use process for rezoning, meaning the City Council will not get a say. Construction could start in 2026 or 2027.
The plans would include a review of potential transportation upgrades in the area, which is difficult to reach on public transit. Such upgrades may ultimately involve ferry and bus service, rather than an extension of the subway under the East River; the last subway tunnel constructed beneath the river took 20 years to complete and opened in 1989.
If it moves forward, the transformation of Red Hook could mirror other waterfront developments, like the creation of Battery Park City in Lower Manhattan in the 1970s, the transformation of Roosevelt Island in the 1970s and 1980s and the revitalization of Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood in the early 2000s.
Whatever shape the project ultimately takes, it could be one of the largest developments in modern city history, a rare chance to transform a neighborhood and provide much-needed housing at a time when New York City has become unaffordable for many.
“This is a generational opportunity for the city on a site that has been long underutilized and underinvested,” said Andrew Kimball, the president of the New York City Economic Development Corporation, the municipal organization overseeing the project.
“Very rarely in the city’s modern history do 122 acres of waterfront land become available for development,” he said.
Undoubtedly, any project in the Red Hook area will face serious obstacles, climate change chief among them.
In 2012, Hurricane Sandy overwhelmed the piers with several feet of water, and the neighborhood was among the hardest hit in the city. Some homes were inundated with more than 10 feet of water.
Philip Orton, an associate professor of ocean engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey, said new buildings in Red Hook could be constructed on an elevated area to withstand flooding, similar to what was done in Battery Park City, and sea walls could be erected to keep out rising waters.
“I’m optimistic that they could make it work,” said Mr. Orton, a member of the New York City Panel on Climate Change.
But, he added, buildings on the waterfront would always be vulnerable to extreme flooding, noting that Hurricane Sandy caused the city’s highest flood levels in at least 300 years.
Red Hook, despite its proximity to some of Brooklyn’s most sought-after neighborhoods, such as Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens, also feels detached from the rest of the city.
Developers have told officials that the success of any project depends on extending the subway to the area. But subway construction is extremely expensive, and only one major expansion of the system has happened in the past 80 years.
Currently, the nearest subway stop is a 20-minute walk from the area, which is served by a single bus line. The Brooklyn-Queens Expressway also acts like a roaring, overheard dividing line.
James O’Brien, the owner of Popina, an Italian restaurant on Columbia Street, said he once considered giving diners credits on ride-hailing apps to encourage them to visit.
“The idea of more people down there, I love it,” he said. “Maybe we’d lose the view of the skyline, but that’s a fair trade-off.”
Coco and Ben Van Meerendonk have lived across the street from the port for 30 years. Their front yard has become a public art gallery of sorts, with artwork curated by Mr. Van Meerendonk, a retired artist.
It was a gritty neighborhood when they first moved in, Ms. Van Meerendonk said, and it was not uncommon to see needles on the street and car windows broken.
While they have loved living in Red Hook, and have seen more families move to the area, it still has its drawbacks, she said. The nearest pharmacy, for instance, is a one-mile walk over a highway.
She said she did not oppose a redevelopment.
“I’m sure they are going to put in high rises, and maybe even in front of us,” said Ms. Van Meerendonk, 82, a former teacher. “But we have seen everything you need to see here.”
Long before the land swap this year, Related Companies, a developer, and Aecom, a design and engineering firm, had sketched out ideas for the area as they lobbied local and state officials to open it up to redevelopment.
In 2016, Related drafted a confidential 14-page brochure outlining its vision: “New York’s Next Big Thing.” The proposal, obtained by The New York Times, featured a rendering with dozens of high rises that held 40,000 housing units, including some offered at below-market rates.
Currently, about 11,000 people reside in Red Hook, mostly in public housing, and 4,900 in the Columbia Street Waterfront District.
At more than 40 million square feet of space, the proposal was significantly larger than Hudson Yards, Related’s largest development in Manhattan.
The 2016 proposal also included an expansion of the No. 1 train from Lower Manhattan to Red Hook, with a stop on Governors Island. Related proposed it be privately built and paid for, estimating a $2.9 billion price tag.
Jeff Blau, Related’s chief executive, said in a recent interview that the brochure was made to lay out possibilities. It did not reflect the city’s current plan to keep the port in some form.
“It’s about what’s good for New York City,” he said. “When you think about the city and its housing shortage, we could do something that’s so spectacular.”
In New York City, it is nearly impossible to try to redevelop an area without generating some vocal criticism. But so far, no organized opposition by local residents has formed against a redevelopment on the land, which is surrounded by fences and a security gate.
Mr. Stamatis said that while he was not opposed to redevelopment, he and the several hundred longshoremen who still work at the port would resist any effort to downsize the marine terminal, which fell into disrepair decades ago as most container freight moved to New Jersey.
Over the years, Representative Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat whose district included the area, had repeatedly intervened in any attempt to remake the port, according to state officials and Mr. Stamatis.
But Mr. Nadler’s district lines have shifted and earlier this year, the Port Authority transferred the property to the city in exchange for Howland Hook Marine Terminal on Staten Island.
The city reached its agreement with the authority and state to redevelop the land as part of the swap. Mr. Nadler criticized the deal, saying that it was “imperative” that the only container port on the New York side of the Hudson River be preserved.
Under the deal, the city and state have pledged $95 million to repair several piers, add a new crane and build a cold-storage facility for produce. In addition, the city last month received $163.8 million in federal grants to invest in the marine terminal.
The area is now served by Representative Dan Goldman, also a Democrat, who is leading the task force guiding the redevelopment.
In a statement, Mr. Goldman said he would work “to ensure a thriving waterfront and modern maritime facility is at the core of this project.”
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