Leaving Piles of Sitt In Red Hook, commentary by George Fiala

Developer Joe Sitt continued his twelve year hate affair with Red Hook last month when a couple of his minions showed up at a committee meeting of Community Board 6.

Sitt owns Thor Equities, a real estate development and investment company he started in 1986.

It has  grown into a $10 billion behemoth, with offices and properties all over the world.

Like Woody Allen, Sitt is from Coney Island. His Wikipedia entry claims that he chose the name of his company because he was a comic book fan.

He is said to be a high minded philanthropist, active in African American and Jewish charities, and honored by many business firms.

However, here in Red Hook we know him as someone who has warehoused valuable property for over a decade, with absolutely no thought for his neighbors.
When he first purchased the Revere Sugar Factory land, 280 Beard Street, it housed the same civil war era warehouses that Greg O’Connell slowly restored. It is an O’Connell building that houses Fairway.

Sitt had them torn down before anyone could protest. Same with the iconic dome which is where the sugar was processed. There were those that wanted the unique structure landmarked, but Sitt beat them to the punch with his bulldozers.

Sitt’s original plan was to turn over the land to BJ’s, for a box store to compete with Costco, but the deal fell through.

Next, Sitt floated plans to build student housing for any school that wanted it, but that didn’t happen either.

The $10 billion company then put Red Hook on the back burner as it pursued other deals. For years it was completely barren, while the neighborhood around it began to slowly come alive with economic activity.

However, Sitt finally thought of something even worse then nothing. He allowed the 8 acres to be used as a truck parking lot, with trucks plowing down the local streets every day starting at sunup.

He seemed to forget that NY State regulations require paving for truck parking lots, so after complaints were registered, parts of the area did get paved – but not before the land, most probably already in some sort of state of pollution do to its prior industrial use, got more polluted from leaking truck fluids.

For whatever reason, he gave that up after a year or so, and hired a very fancy design firm to cook up a very fancy and innovative plan to finally develop the site.

Finally, Thor Equities acknowledges Red Hook. But only because they needed a couple of variances.

Last year, they presented their plan with beautiful renderings in order to get community approval to a parking reduction.

When that happens around here, there are often people who want community benefits in order to show approval. Sometimes those benefits are for themselves, sometimes, ostensibly, for the community.

But it is rare for people to ever see the bigger picture—that maybe communities should have a little more control over large development plans in its midst. Alternative plans are not usually made that might sit better with the locals.

Although it is true that in this city, where politicians mingle with real estate developers like bartenders do with alcoholics, community plans— when they are written— are often ignored.

One example of that, in fact, was in the 2003 rezoning of downtown Brooklyn, which Sitt, owner at the time of the Albee Mall, was a big part of.

He testified on behalf of the zoning change, and then flipped the mall for a cool $100 million profit. A community plan was not even considered by the city planners.

In any case, Thor Equities came again to CB6, this time asking for permission to ignore certain zoning rules in order to build a fancy esplanade.

Between these meetings, Thor had dug up the perimeter to create new bulkheads, ostensibly to prepare for their esplanade. They left huge piles of fill in the middle of their property, causing neighbors to complain about blowing toxic dust.

There are two things that stand out to me are the seeming sincerity of the people that Thor presents at these meetings (one who didn’t speak was Chris Christie lawyer Randy Mastro, who was taking notes in the back).

The other is that we seem to take them at their word.

They will never build the project they propose without an anchor tenant. Which they don’t have and don’t seem to be working too hard to get.

Yet we take them at their word – approving variances that they will probably just use to make the property more valuable to sell to someone else.

When I say we, I leave out CB 6 member and Red Hook local Allison Reeves, who cast the only vote against Thor Equities’ request.

Jerry Armer, another local member of the community board, was able to negotiate a public toilet, and with that, his motion carried.