By now, the community meeting on the future of the Brooklyn Marine Terminal, the 122-acre waterfront property running from Atlantic Avenue to Wolcott Street has taken place. There is more about this meeting and the NYC Economic Development Corporation (EDC) process inside these pages.
As my publisher has pointed out in his column last month, this decision made by the city at-large will change the future of our own local Red Hook community forever.
I decided to ask “people on the street” if they had any thoughts about the redevelopment of our waterfront. This paper has expressed concerns about the worst-case scenario playing out before our eyes— in order to pay for what they define as a revitalized waterfront serving as a “blue highway” for goods-carrying vessels and barges, the EDC is saying it requires new housing – a LOT of new housing. Of course, EDC officials are not omitting the term “affordable housing” from their online postings, but there are disagreements about what exactly affordable means. Not to mention that all this development would be completely out of context with our existing neighborhood, which has affectionately been called “sleepy” by many travel writers and others.
So the question is: Will the EDC take the path of least resistance and cater to developers salivating over Red Hook – or will they “do the right thing” and work with conscientious urban planners, in the private or nonprofit sectors, who can come up with creative ways to generate income for the redevelopment of the Marine Terminal while addressing the real need for affordable housing and preserving the unique flavor of this community?
I had a hard time getting people to talk to me about the waterfront redevelopment. Either they weren’t even aware of it, or they struggled to decide what to say about it. Most of us are so accustomed to powerful developers riding roughshod over the neighborhoods of New York City that we can’t envision a way to stop them from turning our charming, funky, post-industrial “village on the water” into another Williamsburg or Long Island City. Here are comments from the handful of people who shared their thoughts:
Cody Bralts:
I’m not a NIMBY. I think we’re going to have development. But Red Hook is a very tight-knit community and it can be challenging to have so much new development all at once. So the crucial question remains, how much affordable housing is there going to be? If it’s going to be 90% luxury it’s not going to do any good for the community. We need to have more equitable access to housing. And the problem is, they say, okay, we’re going to have ten percent affordable housing, but then, because they have that ten percent, they’re exempt from paying property taxes. So it’s like a scam. They say, this (luxury building) will include five units of affordable housing. But you can’t find them online. I don’t actually know how you find affordable housing in this city. How do they make it accessible? From what I’ve seen, they make it the process very difficult. You have to jump through a bunch of hoops.
Sylver Pondolfino (customer at Red Hook Coffee Shop):
One thing we do not need is luxury condos, and I imagine that would be a very tempting option for developers. But this city already has enough market-rate housing. Someone who’s pulling down a six-figure income, two hundred or three hundred thousand dollars a year, does not have trouble finding a place to live. It’s the working class that’s getting priced out of the city. Hopefully there is room for (the waterfront) to become a working port, not one more luxury community.
Peter:
My views are conservative, compared to most people around here. I believe you have to pay as you play. You need a fair amount of affordable housing, but I think you need in that mix market-rate apartments, that a builder can pay for, and make a profit from. A developer loses money on affordable housing, because of the cost of materials and labor, so it needs to be subsidized.
So the controversy becomes – Red Hook is a unique, historic community, people have a lot of affection for it, but in a worst case scenario we can imagine the neighborhood turned into something that looks like Long Island City.
Yeah, and nobody wants to see that happen, myself included. On the other hand, change is inevitable, and if you stay here long enough you see the change happening in front of your eyes. It’s zoned here in such a way that you’re not going to have high rises in your midst and that’s a good thing, so you’re still going to have a cap on population density.
The question is, how high are the high rises? The developer says I need to build 25-story housing to make a profit, and the city goes, well no, the neighborhood’s not going to allow 25 stories, we’ll give you 15. They do their dance and end up with a compromise. Developers don’t have to build a lot of high-rises to reap a nice profit. They can make a profit on mid-rise apartments as well.
Adele: (employee at Chelsea Garden Center) :
High rise apartments will strip the neighborhood of its character and its history. We need to preserve the skyline. I’ve been coming to this neighborhood for years. My dad and I would do our Thanksgiving shopping at the supermarket here when it was still Fairway.
So you have a lot of affection for this neighborhood.
I do. When I was a kid I never imagined that I would end up working at a plant shop here! But people who love this kind of neighborhood do not want to see a lot of luxury housing here. It may be seen as a sort of means to an end, that this housing will pay for things that are good for the neighborhood, but how can it be good for a neighborhood when it’s destroying it?
Cory Hill: (owner of Wet Whistle Wines):
When Mayor Adams signed the plan to buy the property, as I understood it, the plan was to keep it as a functioning port. But not all of it. Part of it was going to be mixed-use residential, and they were going to extend Brooklyn Bridge Park further south. But based on what has happened with previous administrations, the skeptic could say, they’re not going to follow through with the plan, they’re going to turn the whole thing over to private investors, and just pay lip service to public input.
There’s going to be a public meeting on Monday.
I’ll attend the meeting, but I’m not optimistic about having any voice. It could end up being like that big development on the west side of Manhattan, where they used all this federal money earmarked for low-income housing to develop an exclusive, private zone for rich people. We could end up with the kind of waterfront they have in Miami, where people with money get the view of Manhattan and the water and the people who have been here for generations have their view blocked. Professionally I would love to see more people living in Red Hook because people buy wine. So it’s not complicated for me. But I also cherish the character of the neighborhood. There has to be a balance. They need to keep the housing in character with the neighborhood. Not 20-story towers that block everybody’s view.
Developers in general don’t seem to be sensitive to those issues.
I’ve been to meetings where they say they care, but they don’t. In Brooklyn Bridge Park, they built that hotel, and it was several feet over what they were allowed to do, and they said, oh shoot, that was a mistake, well, we’ll just pay the fine. And of course they got to keep the hotel.
Or they say, well, we met the guidelines for affordable housing, but you end up with housing that’s not really affordable.
My philosophy is, you never step in the same river twice. I can say, oh my gosh, the neighborhood’s not the same, I loved Red Hook 20 years ago when my brother lived here, it was a quiet neighborhood, you didn’t have to look both ways to cross the street, and it’s changed so much. Woe is me. You can complain about change, but I always think, well, my dad complained about change. And his dad probably complained about change. Everyone complains about change. But change happens and we can’t stop it. We just have to fight for good change.
Trequell Ruffin:
I’ve been living here for years and I’ve seen a lot of opportunity for growth, for new businesses. But it’s up to the city to make the right decision. It’s important to preserve the character of the neighborhood. Red Hook isn’t like any other neighborhood, even in New York. A lot of people don’t even know where it is. You have to explain it. We’re in a weird spot right here.
It’s almost like a little fishing village out here.
Yes. It’s not big and bustling, but it has a lot of culture, there’s a very strong community. We do need more housing, but getting housing that’s really affordable always seems like a magic trick. They build what they call affordable housing, but nobody in the neighborhood can afford to live there. We have a lot more diversity here than we used to and that’s good. There are wealthy people here, but they’re not so flashy that they stand out from the rest of the neighborhood. We don’t want Red Hook to end up looking like Miami.
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