Column: Government should be our friend when it comes to land use, by George Fiala

Last month I wrote about an idea I have about the future of this part of Brooklyn, concerned mostly with land use. I think it was kind of complicated, so let me say it again but with a little more clarity.

The idea is to to balance the needs and desires of real estate developers, commercial shop owners, apartment dwellers and athletic and cultural enthusiasts in order to create a future that both enhances and protects Red Hook from becoming like Williamsburg, and bringing Williamsburg to Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens and the Columbia Waterfront District. I’m basing this thinking that this is what the people of these respective neighborhoods would be happiest with.

So here is the summary:

1 – Allow Brooklyn Bridge Park to extend south to Hamilton Avenue. This would involve the Port Authority selling their land to private developers and using the money to a) move the containerport to Sunset Park and b) give money to the City to use to pave over the BQE, once again allowing everybody from Court Street to the water to live in the same neighborhood and enjoy the same amenities.

2 – Send the Cruise Terminal back to Manhattan. Red Hook does not gain anything from the Cruise Terminal, and neither do the passengers. The first thing most people disembarking from the Queen Mary and other ships do is to call an Uber to go to Manhattan. All the terminal does is use up a big part of our waterfront, making it off limits to all those without a ship ticket.

Get rid of the Terminal and you have room for open space right by the water, and perhaps a medium size stadium where somebody like Pioneer Works can present concerts and other cultural events, with access to us, and to others coming to Red Hook via the nearby ferry. Those people would no doubt enjoy dining at places like San Pedro and the Ice House both before and after the shows. An arena could also be used for local school sporting events and various fairs.

3 – Have the City buy back the UPS lot and make it part of the community again. Because of the outdated ‘as-of-right’ zoning regulation, the United Parcel Service paid a lot of money to buy up many acres of prime Red Hook industrial space just south of the Cruise Terminal.

They then proceeded to knock down historical buildings, including the Snapple facility, to create a humongous empty lot that currently  stands fallow.

They claimed at the time to be planning to build a logistics facility, but because somebody at UPS made a dumb decision, they ended up not doing anything. There’s lots of rumors about what exactly their plans are, but telling their neighbors about what those plans hasn’t been one of them.

So instead of keeping the neighborhood waiting for whatever shoe to drop, why not be pro-active. Let the city, in combination with our community (not the Park Slope-centered community board, but us) hold town halls, work up a plan which includes low-rise housing (both affordable and market), public amenities and perhaps a hotel, and whatever else we can think of, and buy the land from UPS. If they won’t sell, use public domain to take it, like what was done at Atlantic Yards.

The whole idea of government is to create and continue a future that works best for the people it governs. Those people include regular working people, people with handicaps and other disabilities, people with businesses, people with families to bring up, people hanging out with their friends and lovers, people who work or own real estate development companies, people who work in construction, people who are architects – in other words, let’s create a resilient and livable future that works for the most amount of people possible.

Right now we have a containerport that is necessary because it is the only one on Long Island, a cruise terminal that brings in a ship of vacationers every week or so who leave as quickly as they come, an empty lot, and a highway that cut two neighborhoods in half (Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens).

These are all bad uses of land.

Lets cover the highway, relocate the Containerport and Cruise Terminal, and solve UPS’s problem of having to maintain a giant empty lot in an urban setting.

These are all huge jobs, but a well functioning government is designed to handle huge jobs—and not just in wartime.