EDC wheeling and dealing trying to pass their BMT, plan by Eric Newstrom

New York City’s Economic Development Corporation (EDC) has delayed the vote on the vision plan for the Brooklyn Marine Terminal redevelopment. Again.

“I’m very frustrated,” said Jim Tampakis, task force member, maritime expert and owner of Marine Spares International.

The Brooklyn Marine Terminal task force, a 28-member advisory body that since last summer has been working with EDC to shape the vision plan, was originally scheduled to vote in mid-April. A few days prior, however, the vote was pushed to June 18, officially to allow the task force more time to review the proposal for the site.

With June 18 around the corner, the vote was delayed again, this time to June 27. But that morning, with the vote just hours later, EDC leadership sent out an email to all task force members announcing another postponement. This time, the official reason was that co-vice chair of the task force, State Senator Andrew Gounardes, had received “positive updates to the ongoing conversations with the State regarding State funding being added to the project.”

How much money is potentially on the table remains unclear. Either way, the real reason for postponing the vote is that EDC, doesn’t have the backing of enough task force members, according to several task force members who spoke on the record or on background with the Red Hook Star-Revue.

By any means necessary
Going back to the weeks leading up to the original date of the vote in April, it has become increasingly clear that the goal of EDC and the Eric Adams administration no longer is to find consensus on a plan that works for the community, but instead to push through its proposal by any means necessary, task force members say.

“I don’t think they had the votes and they knew it, and I think they’re trying to figure out other elements to try to negotiate without really changing the plan. They’re just trying to figure out how they can peel people off,” said District 38 Council Member Alexa Avilés, who is also a co-vice chair of the task force.

The City’s attempts to convince skeptical task force members to vote for the current vision plans have transpired both in public and in private, and have ranged from opinion pieces and concessions to apparent coercion and outright threats.

The EDC has propagandized its ideas for the site throughout New York City media. Some task force members have joined in these efforts, including US Rep. Dan Goldman, the chair of the task force, who in late March penned an op-ed in the New York Daily News urging task force members to push the plan through.

EDC has also shared quotes on social media from the task force’s two representatives of Red Hook Houses, Karen Blondel and Frances Brown, as well as from Frank Agosta, president of the Local 1814 of the International Longshoremen’s Association, and Michael Stamatis, president of Red Hook Container Terminal, which operates out of the Brooklyn Marine Terminal (Agosta, but not Stamatis, is on the task force). In doing this, the public-benefit organization effectively pitted two factions — historically underserved residents of Red Hook’s public housing complex, and the maritime industry, which has seen its footprint along the New York City waterfront shrink dramatically in recent decades — against anyone and everyone concerned with how the planning process has been run.

“It’s in the EDC’s interest to do that and yet they’re not succeeding in doing that. If we were to take a vote right now, irrespective of how positively some task force members are talking about the project, they would not have a vote,” District 39 Council Member Shahana Hanif told the Star-Revue in April, referencing EDC pitting communities against each other.

Public threats
There have also been public threats: In early June, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso invited EDC leadership to a town hall, where Jennifer Sun, Executive Vice President of Planning at EDC, told the crowd that a no-vote could result in the city relocating some of its sanitation operations to the marine terminal. “It’s not an empty threat,” Sun said.

In private, the story is similar. Task force members have confirmed that EDC on multiple occasions have tried, in different ways, to garner support for its proposal.

“What we saw was both the standard negotiating — ’How do I get you to a yes?’ — to the threatening posture and bullying tactics. All of those things have been real and have been part of this process,” Avilés said.

Another elected official, State Assemblywoman Jo-Anne Simon, did not respond to request for comment for this story, but speaking to the Star-Revue in April, she contended that the “side deals” risked engendering distrust among task force members.

“You’re losing the power of this process by dividing and conquering. These are not easy conversations, but you can’t have those conversations with any trust in either the process or the people around the table if you’re making side deals with people, and that I find very troubling,” the assemblywoman said.

When the carrot hasn’t worked, city officials have tried the stick. Determined to score a big political win for his boss, Nate Bliss, Mayor Adams’ representative on the task force, recently told another task force member, Hank Gutman, that if he didn’t vote with the plan, future expansions of his beloved Brooklyn Bridge Park could be in jeopardy. (Gutman is a former board member of Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation.) “I thought it was offensive, inappropriate and ineffective,” Gutman told The New York Times, which initially reported on the exchange.

Andrew Kimball has also threatened to not renew Stamatis’ operating lease at the Brooklyn Marine Terminal, if the task force doesn’t vote “yes.” Kimball knows that the task force is committed to a working waterfront, Avilés said. “We all work for the public interest, and to threaten the people whose interests we represent feels like a dereliction of duty. It’s highly offensive way to operate,” she added.

While the president of the Red Hook Container Terminal isn’t on the task force and, thus, doesn’t hold a vote, public and private threats of sinking the city’s last working waterfront could impact the task force members who have a vested interest in the port remaining active.

But some task force members, like Avilés and Tampakis, believe that the risk of the port shuttering, even if there is a “no” vote, is overblown. “I don’t think they can,” Tampakis said.
Avilés noted that millions of dollars have already been invested into repairs of the site, and that the city would probably like to avoid the negative press tanking the port would generate.

The vote is now scheduled for mid-July, either July 17 or 18. But task force members are exhausted, and some doubt much will change until then, which adds to the frustration. One, who spoke on background, said that there are still fundamental disagreements on the plan and unless something happens to change that, it’s unlikely that anyone will change their mind.

“This is something that should have gotten voted on, and then we move on to the next step, whatever it is. The fact that now they’re delaying it again, it doesn’t make me happy,” Tampakis said.