There have been a few large community meetings and some smaller ones following Mayor Adams’ May 14 announcement about a planned transformation of the local waterfront. This has been the plan of the NYC Economic Development Corporation (EDC) who is tasked with leading the transformation.
I attended one of the smaller sessions on October 23. Four people showed up to listen to EDC’s Annelies De Jong and Chris Rice of WXY Studio. WXY is an architectural consultant whose clients include numerous city agencies. EDC has picked them to lead their outreach efforts.
“We are working on the project in a couple of different ways,” Rice said. “We’re leading the planning and engagement so we’re organizing the public workshops and surveys. We make all of the materials to engage people and our work is to synthesize everything we’re hearing and make sure that that’s getting fed into the Master Plan and any proposals or designs that come out of this project.”
Both Rice and De Jong said that this project is still in the very early stages and that a big part of the project is listening to what people in the community think. In the bigger meetings, not everyone will have time to speak or ask questions which is why they believe the smaller feedback sessions are also important.
“Right now, it seems like a lot of people are concerned about housing and have said that they do not want tall buildings,” De Jong said. “People have been adamant about not compromising the view.”
At the Oct. 23 event, a few people said the same kinds of things. Housing has always been listed as part of the eventual plan, although EDC has rarely spoken about it publicly.
Another concern that evening was a lack of trust between some Red Hook residents and the EDC. Members of the EDC are trying to earn the trust of those in the area, including those who are skeptical, and they are hoping that having the feedback sessions will help.
“We want to make sure that community feedback is the foundation of what comes out of this process,” Rice said. “Some of the emerging topics that people have been interested in are public spaces, parks, and waterfront access. That has come up in the public workshops and it’s still very early so I’m hesitant to say definitively that that’s what people want, but it has come up in conversations.
Four people is not a lot of people to influence. But it’s a start. There will be more meetings as well as actual tours of the site. You can register for tours at the BMT website (just google Brooklyn Marine Terminal).
