A flyer circulated before the hearing outlines the residents’ grievances. Photo by Cole Sinanian.

By COLE SINANIAN

new@queensledger.com 

At the first of three scoping meetings for the Brooklyn Marine Terminal redevelopment project, more than a dozen Red Hook, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens and Columbia Street residents slammed the NYC Economic Development Corporation’s (EDC) plan to build waterfront housing and upgrade the industrial port in Red Hook for its alleged failure to adequately address environmental and transportation concerns, and requested that planners improve community outreach and conduct a thorough environmental study. 

New Front, Same Battle Lines 

The BMT Vision Plan, approved September 22 by an EDC-appointed task force, has been both lauded for its ambition and criticized by community members for its haste and alleged lack of transparency. The $3.5 billion plan outlines what will be among the largest redevelopments in New York City history once completed by the late 2030s, with some 122-acres of waterfront land stretching from the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal to the southern end of Brooklyn Bridge Park slated for redevelopment. 

“For the first time in many years, there is a plan that offers a real long-term path forward to create a first-class facility for essential transportation infrastructure,” wrote president of the International Longshoreman Association Frank Agosta and Red Hook Container Terminal President Michael Stamatis in an April amNY Op-Ed. 

But since the beginning, the BMT project has been marred by controversy. Earlier this year, the vote to approve the plan was postponed five times— held only after the EDC had secured a two-thirds majority in a process that some have described as secretive and undemocratic. 

“We have been totally disheartened by the process,” said Cobble Hill resident and former Cobble Hill Association president Franklin Stone during her testimony at the October 28 meeting.  “I’m a believer that good processes lead to a good result. This is not leading to a good result.” 

The October 28 meeting was the first of a series of meetings that will eventually inform the City’s Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the BMT project. A virtual meeting was held on October 30, while a final in-person meeting will be held on December 1 at Sacred Hearts & St. Stephen Church in Carroll Gardens. The meetings are an effort to encourage public engagement in the Draft Scope of Work (DSOW), a document that will decide the specifics of the environmental review study, which will be conducted by the environmental consultancy group AKRF.

After the EIS is published, the state’s Empire State Development Corporation will use it to draft the BMT General Project Plan sometime in 2026. Members of the public can submit comments on the DSOW until December 11, after which a Final Scope of Work will be published that lists all comments and how they’ll be implemented into the EIS. 

Karen Blondel speaks in favor of the BMT redevelopment plan at a scoping meeting on Tuesday, October 28. Photo by Cole Sinanian

Divided Opinion 

Public testimonies at the October 28 meeting largely centered on traffic issues, environmental resilience concerns, and the EDC’s communication and outreach to the affected communities, which community members criticized as inadequate. The meeting began with a brief presentation by the EDC’s Senior Vice President of Neighborhood Strategies Nathan Gray, who described the project’s background and outlined the environmental review process. Then AKRF Senior Environmental Director Johnathan Keller explained what the EIS will include, followed by testimonies from members of the public, who were given three minutes each. 

In her testimony, Stone spoke about the inadequate transportation links in her neighborhood. The B61 bus, which serves Cobble Hill, is often delayed, while drivers are frequently stuck in stop-and-go traffic behind the large freight trucks coming from the area’s last-mile distribution centers. The BMT plan’s proposed housing — 60% of which would be luxury — could nearly  double the neighborhood’s population. 

“You are proposing to build this whole project in a transportation wasteland,” Stone said. “All you really have to do is live in the neighborhood, and you find that it takes you a half hour to go to three blocks. “It’s simply too much housing, and too much industrial, and all the attendant traffic for the amount of space.” 

Columbia Waterfront District resident James Morgan opened his testimony by recalling the destruction caused by Hurricane Sandy 13 years ago and reminding the EDC panel that climate change will only worsen natural disasters like Sandy. 

“Therefore we request that the EIS consider adaptive mitigation triggers that are tied to future conditions beyond 2038, through at least 2050 to 2080,” Morgan said. 

Sharon Gordon, a 20-year resident of Tiffany Place, echoed Morgan’s concerns and drew attention to the study area outlined in the DSOW, which would extend in a 400-foot radius from the proposed construction site. 

“It is necessary to expand the technical study to at least Third Ave and Tillery Street,” Gordon said. “Otherwise, communities that will certainly be affected from pollution and flood risk aspects, such as Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens and Gowanus, will be excluded from the impact assessment.”

In a statement to the Star, EDC spokesperson Chuck Park clarified that the 400-ft study area around the BMT site is not the only area that will be studied in the environmental assessment. A separate transportation study area, for example, will look at surrounding transportation features like BQE ramps and intersections well outside the 400-ft radius. 

A handful of speakers at the meeting, including Morgan and Gordon, proposed splitting the environmental study into separate processes— one for the industrial port section of the development, and another for the housing component, which is currently slated for the northern portion of the BMT property. 

When asked if this was a possibility, Park — who attended the meeting — emphasized that the BMT Vision Plan was approved by a two-thirds supermajority in September, then later provided a generic email statement praising the plan. 

“NYCEDC remains fully committed to transforming this waterfront site into a modern all-electric maritime port, alongside a vibrant mixed-use community – delivering thousands of permanently affordable homes, thousands of new jobs, public open and green space, and an engine of economic opportunity for the community and the city,” the statement read. 

During his testimony, Columbia Street Waterfront District resident and tenant organizer John Leyva criticized the EDC’s failure to elect residents of the neighborhood to its task force. 

“The Columbia Street Waterfront, which will bear the brunt of this redevelopment— the traffic, the sound, the construction that will happen right here next to us — has never had a representative of its own on the task force,” Leyva said. “That exclusion is unacceptable.”

Still, some attendees had a more positive outlook on the BMT development. Karen Blondel, a community activist and president of the Red Hook Houses West — which forms the largest public housing complex in Brooklyn and one of the largest in the country — was optimistic about the BMT development’s potential to continue the transformation of a neighborhood that has historically been associated with crime and industrial decay. 

“This project could bring good industrial and maritime jobs, it can strengthen our local economy— that’s something that’s been neglected in Red Hook since I got here in the 1980s,” Blondel said. “When I got here at 19, all the industrial places were closing up, it felt unsafe. Prior to that, this was known as Al Capone land. So we’ve come a long way in a short period of time.” 

At the start of her testimony, Blondel drew attention to the room’s occupants, emphasizing that many of the speakers were from the wealthier Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens neighborhoods and none were from the Red Hook Houses. 

Blondel continued: “We have to start addressing the residents, the children who are here now. I want to know what the socio-economic impact is on neighborhoods like Red Hook Houses, when we’re not as organized as some of our more affluent neighbors.”

Brooklyn’s current industrial-zoned areas. Photo via NYC Department of City Planning.

By COLE SINANIAN 

news@queensledger.com

At a town hall in Downtown Brooklyn on October 16, city planners faced sharp criticism from activists and North Brooklyn business leaders as they presented a first draft of the “NYC Industrial Plan” —  a report first published in September that recommends rezoning some of the city’s historically industrial areas to allow for different kinds of economic uses and housing construction. 

Although it could inform future land-use policy decisions, the plan is a draft report and does not guarantee any future rezonings, city planners stressed at the town hall, with a final version set to be released on December 31. Still, the plan drew swift condemnation from groups like Evergreen, a manufacturing business alliance in North Brooklyn, and Uprose, an environmental organization based in Sunset Park who warned that the plan’s failure to recommend protections for industrial areas in Williamsburg and Greenpoint would soon bring real estate speculation and could displace some of North Brooklyn’s last remaining manufacturing hubs. 

“It’s sending a message to the market that it’s open season,” said Leah Archibald, Evergreen’s executive director. “They’re signalling to the market that they’re open to rezoning. And that alone imperils our business.”  

In a written statement to the Star, Department of City Planning (DCP) Deputy Press Secretary Joe Marvilli urged that public feedback from the town halls would inform the final report and that nothing is set in stone yet:

“As the first comprehensive look at our industrial sector in decades, the NYC Industrial Plan is a great opportunity to ensure that these businesses, workers, and surrounding communities all continue to thrive,“ he wrote. “These recommendations can guide policies to create enough space for everyone and secure the city’s economic success for years to come.” 

A feedback form about the plan can be found at www.nyc.gov/content/planning/pages/our-work/plans/citywide/nyc-industrial-plan. 

The Industrial Plan

The draft plan is set to be updated every eight years, and was mandated by 2023’s Local Law 172, a bill sponsored by the Bronx city councilmember Amanda Farias. 

City planners researched the evolution of New York City’s industrial economy and surveyed the current distribution of industrial jobs across the five boroughs. The city’s industrial economy peaked in the mid-1950s, when industrial jobs accounted for nearly half of total employment. The industrial sector has shrunk since then but has also diversified, the draft report states. Newer kinds of industrial activity the report names include high-tech, prototyping, film, and green energy. More traditional industrial uses include construction, transportation, manufacturing, energy, utilities and waste management. 

The report found that less than half of the identified industrial jobs in the city are headquartered in areas zoned for manufacturing, or M zones, while only 25% are located in “Industrial Business Zones,” or IBZs. These zones, created in 2006, provide tax credits to industrial and manufacturing firms that relocate to one the of 21 currently designated IBZs in New York City. IBZs also carry a stated commitment by the City to not allow rezoning that would permit housing, all in an effort to preserve their manufacturing and industrial uses. 

Critics fear the plan’s failure to protect industrial zones in North Brooklyn’s IBZs — which, according to Evergreen, generate $15 billion in industrial economic activity — could invite real estate speculation and lead to future neighborhood displacement. 

City planners highlighted the ways in which New York City’s industrial economy has changed at a Brooklyn town hall on October 16. Photo by Cole Sinanian.

“An immigrant industry”

Visitors to the 5th floor event space at St. Francis College where the town hall was held were promptly handed a flyer by an Uprose activist titled “The New Draft Plan is a Death Sentence for Manufacturing.” The flyer highlighted key points of the plan that activists saw as threatening to local manufacturing companies, like the proposed allowance of non-industrial development — namely office buildings, creative studios and housing — in what are currently IBZs.

Meanwhile, Archibald walked around the room arguing with DCP staffers and handing out copies of Evergreen’s condemnation of the plan. Evergreen’s statement argues that the plan would “create a blueprint for gentrification” and “drive out industrial employers,” thereby erasing “accessible, family-sustaining jobs.”

The custom tailor Martin Greenfield Clothiers is one of Evergreen’s North Brooklyn manufacturing companies. Founded by Martin Greenfield, a Holocaust survivor who immigrated to Brooklyn in the 1940s after escaping Auschwitz, the company has dressed the likes of Bill Clinton, Lebron James, Leonardo DiCaprio and Barack Obama. Martin Greenfield passed away in 2024 and his sons Tod and Jay have since taken over. Tod, who attended the town hall, said his company has provided a gateway to the American dream for countless immigrants. According to statistics provided by Evergreen, industrial jobs in North Brooklyn, like those at Martin Greenfield Clothiers, pay significantly higher wages than the Brooklyn average for workers with only a high school diploma. 

“These people can’t get a high tech job,” Greenfield said. “These jobs are the jobs they need. They live in the neighborhood, they walk to work, and this plan is going to gentrify the neighborhood. It’s going to push out their jobs, and it’s going to push them out.” 

“We have 70 employees and they’ve all put their kids through college,” he continued. “And they’re all immigrants. It’s an immigrant industry. It’s a place where someone without a college degree, and even without any language skills, can get a steady job. All they have to do is show up to work and be diligent. They have health care, they have a pension, they have a good wage, and they have an opportunity to establish their family and become citizens.” 

Greenfield compared his father’s experience in America with those of the immigrants who currently work for his company. When Martin Greenfield arrived in America, he was an orphan who didn’t speak English. It was a well-paying job in the manufacturing industry that allowed him to raise a family of first-generation Americans, his son said. The office jobs and tech jobs that the City’s plan suggests should come to North Brooklyn’s manufacturing corridor are generally not accessible to immigrants without English skills or a college degree. A major rezoning, Greenfield worries, could push many immigrants out of the area. 

“Those jobs are critical to that community,” Greenfield says. “And that community is important. Where am I going to get people to run our sewing machines once the neighborhood gentrifies?”