Ikea Dock Destruction: 'Billion-Dollar Boondoggle'?
Is the destruction of a Red Hook graving dock in order to make way for IKEA a very costly mistake for the city? Might be, according to an article in the Post that uses findings from an Economic Development Corporation-commissioned study. The report talks about how important the maritime industry is for our local economy…
Is the destruction of a Red Hook graving dock in order to make way for IKEA a very costly mistake for the city? Might be, according to an article in the Post that uses findings from an Economic Development Corporation-commissioned study. The report talks about how important the maritime industry is for our local economy and says the city should construct seven new dry docks by 2016, including three graving docks like the one Ikea paved over in order to build a parking lot. The findings estimate that the New York port will lose between $50 million and $150 million in revenues over the next five years to other ports because it doesn’t have enough dry docks. Some say building a single graving dock comparable to the one Ikea paved over would cost $1 billion, leading John McGettrick, co-chair of the Red Hook Civic Alliance, to call the dock’s destruction a “billion-dollar boondoggle.” What the article doesn’t mention is how much revenue Ikea will bring in for the city and state, though one would think the store is gonna have to sell and reel in taxes on more than a couple Ektorps to clear the $1 bil mark.
Ikea Berth Pangs [NY Post]
Maritime Study [NYCEDC]
Photo of old graving dock by masnyc.
the NY Post can hardly be considered a “newspaper”, it is the political tool of the far right.
I didn’t realize you were such an Ikea shill. Did they hand you a free sofa for this blog post? Shabby journalism at its best.
Ikea has lovely fabrics. Check the catalog.
Sweden is destroying the fabric of communities all over the United States. it’s a full scale invasion.
Next thing you know city planners will be trying to turn the Gowanus Expressway into a parking lot too!
12:03 – working or not – an economic decision of Billion dollar proportion should not be made to simply accommodate the repair and service of some municipal boats. (which btw are small enough to NOT need a graving dock).
It may be true that losing a graving dock in Red Hook was a mistake BUT given all the FUD surrounding the Ikea – that btw currently seems WAY overblown- I have serious doubts about this new charge of ‘boondoggle’.
It shouldn’t be too hard to find some real metrics on how much business the dry dock was doing prior to Ikea, and how many people it employed. (but interestingly such objective data appears to be missing from all such reports about this issue)
I have to wonder whether this would even be an issue if instead of an IKEA the dock was filled in for a park or some sort of other non-controversial and non-big-box development.
It is also interesting that the single most important development that could make NYC a viable port again – the Cross-Harbor Rail Tunnel – gets ZERO press and was killed by total Nimby on the part of the Juniper Park Civic Association (in cooperation with a real failure by Bloomberg).
More drydocks are needed, according to local boat captains. Sometimes it they have to wait months to get into a drydock for routine repairs.
The GMD shipyard in the Brooklyn Navy Yard is doing as much business as it can handle with its drydocks. The shipyards in North Staten Island are full, too.
That graving dock was working up til the land was sold and the company running it was given the boot. (The company offered to buy the dock portion from IKEA and they refused.) If you doubt that it was functional go to Google maps and pull up a red hook map and you can see the satellite photo is just old enough that there’s a ship in the dock being worked on. Also these docks service important municipal boats that belong to the police and fire dept.s, among others. These boats will need upkeep regardless if the city is moving away from being industrial/manufacturing oriented. The ignorance and arrogance on this blog is staggering. B’stoner you should run a link to last week’s Brian Lehrer Live, which did a show with a huge portion devoted to Red Hook and the IKEA that discussed these issues and how expensive new graving docks are to build. There’s also a good article in the Brooklyn Papers discussing how the IKEA landed in Red Hook after being rejected by other Brooklyn communities, the residents of which are now all too glad to tell Red Hook residents they don’t have a right to take issue with IKEA being sited in their neighborhood.
Old timers? What old timers still live in Red Hook? How many have other people talked to?
In all my years in Red Hook, I’ve only run into two old-timers who were there before the housing projects were built. One was homeless and the other was about to die of old age.
Neither one liked the newbies, the housing projects or the Ikea, all of which had destroyed the neighborhood they once knew.