Latest news with #BrooklynMarineTerminal
New York Times
4 days ago
- Business
- New York Times
Does Brooklyn Need a New Waterfront Neighborhood?
For artists seduced by dilapidated industrial shorelines, the Brooklyn Marine Terminal, spanning 122 acres along New York Harbor, has long been a source of romantic inspiration. Only real estate developers have looked toward the landscape with a more ardent sense of creative opportunity. For years now, in a city where most of the waterfront has already been repurposed in the name of views-first living, they have fantasized about turning the docks into a creative-class Oz. One proposal that emerged more than a decade ago imagined extending the No. 1 train from the southern tip of Manhattan, under the East River, to the terminal site with a stop on Governors Island. None of these ideas gained traction until last year, when ownership of the land transferred from the state to the city, and the vision-boarding took off with a momentum not generally observed in municipal governing. If you believe that the housing crisis is the most urgent problem the city is facing — as the many voters who made Zohran Mamdani the Democratic mayoral nominee clearly seem to — then the logic of what the city is advancing might strike you as irrefutable. The 'city,' in this instance, is the Economic Development Corporation, the agency charged with transforming a largely desolate property distinguished by underused cranes, containers and a noxious concrete recycling facility. In its place would be an entirely new, economically diverse neighborhood that would stretch from the brownstones of Cobble Hill to Red Hook, where roughly half of the neighborhood's 11,000 residents live in public housing. Last month, the city came forward with a plan that would seem to have addressed nearly every contingency and conceivable point of grievance. It calls for 6,000 homes to be built, with 40 percent of them — 2,400 rental apartments — set to be affordable in perpetuity. This is a significantly higher share of affordable units than most new developments provide. And they would serve people at lower income thresholds than these projects ordinarily deliver. Even opponents of the overall concept admit that the configuration is impressive. In an effort to acknowledge the historically neglected Red Hook Houses, devastated during Hurricane Sandy, 200 of the affordable units would be reserved for people who live there and $200 million earmarked for building repairs in the public housing complex. Among the 28 committee members tasked with studying the plan and approving or vetoing it — a group made up of local politicians, community board members, union leaders and others — is the head of a tenants' association at the Red Hook Houses; she has voiced her support. The plan includes other commitments suggesting a similarly broad civic spirit: 28 acres of parkland and public space, various resiliency strategies to protect against storm surges, 225,000 square feet of industrial space at discounted rents, more ferry service, more bus service (by way of priority lanes), more micromobility, a free shuttle bus to subway stations and an expanded and revitalized port that would supply a crucial node in what urban planners call the 'blue highway,' a means of transporting goods around the city via waterways to reduce dependence on trucks. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
CBS News
11-06-2025
- Business
- CBS News
Brooklyn Marine Terminal redevelopment plan faces some community opposition ahead of key vote
A controversial vote on the future of the Brooklyn Marine Terminal is set for June 18, as city leaders push forward a sweeping redevelopment plan that includes thousands of new housing units on the Red Hook waterfront. But local residents are pushing back. NYC looks to European waterfront cities for inspiration The site, an active shipping terminal, is in urgent need of repair, with officials warning that years of neglect have left parts of it crumbling. "As the piles deteriorate, the concrete pad on top of them also begins to deteriorate. And so you start to have pieces falling through," said Andrew Kimball, president and CEO of the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC). Kimball led a recent tour of the 122-acre site, which is currently responsible for less than 2% of container traffic coming into New York Harbor. City leaders say the terminal has been neglected for decades in favor of more modernized ports in New Jersey. To fund the $1.5 billion in necessary repairs, NYCEDC is proposing to build 7,700 units of housing. Kimball says it's a mixed-use vision modeled on successful European waterfront cities. "You go to Oslo and Norway, Malmö, Sweden — so many other European cities have figured out how to do this: port next to greenspace, next to housing, all in one," Kimball said. In the spring of 2024, the city and state transferred control of the terminal from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to the NYCEDC — a historic and controversial decision that officials said would transform the area into both a modern maritime industrial hub and residential community. The city says its plan includes meaningful community benefits, including priority access to affordable housing and upgrades to public housing infrastructure. "This plan is also giving an opportunity for local residents to have first dibs on a couple of hundred units of affordable housing and a $200 billion investment in Red Hook Houses," said Deputy Mayor Adolfo Carrión Jr. Critics voice concerns about project's pace, neighborhood costs But not everyone agrees with the direction of the plan. Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, a member of the 28-person Brooklyn Marine Terminal Task Force, argues the site should be used to revive shipping and manufacturing, not build housing. "This is city-owned site, which is also very rare ... and we're using it to build market-rate housing to pay for the housing that is being built in this site," Reynoso said. "So it's just backwards to me." Several task force members have voiced concern over the project's pace, noting that a key vote originally set for April was postponed to June after community pushback. Maria Nieto, a member of advocacy group Voices of the Waterfront, said the city's justification for pairing housing with infrastructure upgrades is flawed. "You don't have to build a skyscraper every time you want to fix the highway," Nieto said. "So that premise alone is false. Not to mention that you can build housing anywhere, but you can only build a port on the water." Pastor Alfred Adams, who leads the New Brown Memorial Baptist Church in the area, said longtime residents, including many of his congregants living in the nearby NYCHA Red Hook Houses, worry the redevelopment will drive up costs in the neighborhood. "Taxes are going to rise, the rents are going to rise, and it's going to be unaffordable," Adams said. "Because most of our congregation are on fixed incomes." If the proposal passes next week's vote, the city will move into an environmental review phase and begin seeking proposals, with construction targeted to begin before the end of the decade. Have a story idea or tip in Brooklyn? Email Hannah by CLICKING HERE.
