Red Hook Piers: Industrial Use May Survive After All

Via the Observer, we learn that the Bloomberg administration is reconsidering its efforts to replace a part of the working waterfront with more condos and cruise ships.

The Bloomberg administration, which has long advocated phasing out the container port in Brooklyn to make way for more residential-friendly development, may decide to keep the shipping facility there after all.
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ONE OF THE INEFFICIENCIES OF the port is that, while Red Hook is the only container port on the east side of New York Harbor, cargo is sometimes sent back over to New Jersey or Staten Island by barge because there are better distribution channels on that side.

In the past, both the Bloomberg administration and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the piers, played down the idea that Red Hook would ever amount to anything. The container port there is much smaller than the region’s other ports on Staten Island and in New Jersey, and it lacks any rail connection or much upland storage space, necessitating the use of barges.

Urban renewal projects, adaptive reuse, and brownfields redevelopment are all good things . . . when you're renewing, adapting, or redeveloping unused, abandoned, or derelict properties.

Forcing out active businesses with solid working class jobs to shoehorn in more condos and beer gardens is shortsighted (and I love a good beer garden).