Column: Since the community doesn’t seem to have much sway on the future of the Brooklyn Marine Terminal, the courts beckon, by George Fiala

Money and politics often get in the way of what economists call “The Public Good.”

Here is Wikipedia’s  definition:

“In economics, a public good (also referred to as a social good or collective good) is a good that is both non-excludable and non-rivalrous. Use by one person neither prevents access by other people, nor does it reduce availability to others. Therefore, the good can be used simultaneously by more than one person.

This is in contrast to a common good, such as wild fish stocks in the ocean, which is non-excludable but rivalrous to a certain degree. If too many fish were harvested, the stocks would deplete, limiting the access of fish for others. A public good must be valuable to more than one user, otherwise, its simultaneous availability to more than one person would be economically irrelevant.”

Lets put that aside for just a moment and remember how this whole BMT saga, which reporter Oscar Fock so excellently details for us elsewhere in this issue, began less than a year ago.

For years we’ve been reporting about the Red Hook Container Terminal and the Cruise Terminal and their relationship to this community, or actually, lack of one. You knew there was water all around us, but north of Valentino Pier Park, all the way to Atlantic Avenue, the only place you could actually get to it is around the Atlantic Basin, which is where the Mary Whelan is docked, and where, since 2017 you could catch the ferry.

However, since most of the rest of it was used by maritime and related industries, that was ok. Owned by the Port Authority, the land was rented out to the kind of commercial interests who needed the harbor.

A big problem though was that the Port Authority really didn’t want to be in the shipping business, especially since they could make a lot more money by selling the land to real estate interests.

How it was explained to me was that it was politically not viable to evict maritime businesses because New York is a Democratic, Union town, and the workers were ILA Local 1814 members.  I also believe that Jerry Nadler, who actually was able to finagle the shoreline into his Manhattan council district until recently, protected them.

So what they did was to kick the can down the road, offering only five year leases to the Red Hook Container Terminal and not maintaining the piers. Politics had to change for them to be able to leave.

That finally happened last May when out of the blue the Mayor and the Governor appeared at the pier to announce a huge new idea—that the private good that was the maritime business would finally get the investments they needed while most everything else would become a public good, namely parks and other amenities. And maybe a bit of housing.

To me, who has watched government at work around here over the past 15 years, it seemed a bit too good to be true, but the EDC did a good PR job convincing even me for a while that they would really listen to the community and not do anything that locals might object to. The people I know like it here because we haven’t yet become Williamsburg or Dumbo.

People now actually pay a lot to live here, in most cases simply because we are NOT Williamsburg or Dumbo.

Last summer in this column I tossed off some ideas about this land’s future. What I called my 11 points were: 1 – Modernize the container terminal; 2 – A mix of low, affordable, and market rate housing;  3 – Create a logical truck route; 4 – A stadium; 5 – Open Space; 6 – Restaurants; 7 – A museum; 8 – Possibly some maker space 9 – NO public/private partnerships. Taking profits out of housing and arenas would lower end costs for the public. Since the State is heavily involved, let them bring us some new Mitchell Lama housing; 10 – NO truck parking; 11 – NO industrial use (We are talking about things like the controversial concrete recycling plant on Kane).

I think what I was trying to get at was that the new owners of the land, the City, should avoid private use of this land. Except for shipping, it should be ours. Now being city land, adjacent to the water—what a great opportunity to do something to make our great city even greater. After all, who is the city – we are!

It has since become evident that all the talk about the modern maritime facility and open space was subservient to what MONEY AND POLITICS have wanted all along—expensive waterfront luxury towers. Just like in Dumbo and Williamsburg and Long Island City.

I did suspect that, and so did Carolina Salguero, proprietor of the Mary Whelan who for as long as I have been here has railed against the EDC.

Here is where I make my new pitch, as I will do everything I can to prevent the death of this neighborhood.

The only thing that can stop the EDC runaway train will be the courts. It’s kind of ironic that the most analogous situation to this is the  redevelopment of the Atlantic Terminal, which is best known for the Barclay Center—ironic because the Mary Whelan sits in the similarly named Atlantic Basin.

That plan was held up for over a decade by Daniel Goldstein and his Develop Don’t Destroy movement.

Hopefully we can find a lawyer or a group of lawyers that can devise a strategy to have this whole process upended, or modified, or thought through better.

The best case scenario would be what could have happened at Brooklyn Bridge Park except for the greed of the real estate community. A plan that would really be a community plan, incorporating things that would allow the existing maritime industry to co-exist with it’s neighbors, sharing the shoreline in an environmentally just way, a sharing of both the public and private good in an equitable manner.

If you would like to get involved in planning a legal strategy, get in touch with me and we’ll get to work. 

My email is [email protected], and my phone/text is 917 652-9128.

Thanks.