It is zero hour. At this very moment, the first customers are streaming through the doors of the new Red Hook in Ikea, the first of hundreds of thousands of people that will come to this formerly remote and industrial corner of Brooklyn over the new few months to shop for Billy bookcases and Ektorp sofas. Once upon a time, we went to Red Hook to soak up its quiet and take photos of its industrial ruins. It could be eerily quiet on Beard Street sometimes. No longer. The Red Hook landscape has changed forever. With the influx of shoppers and what is certain to be a lot more big box retailing and real estate development over the next five years, the neighborhood itself will never be the same. Some people cheer this development. Others are angry or melancholy. Regardless, this kind of development is the direction that Brooklyn’s leaders have chosen. Now, everyone will have to deal with both the benefits and the consequences.
We have nothing against Ikea (although we wish they would have been more responsive to community concerns during the development process) and we certainly understand why the corporation wanted to develop the waterfront property, but we believe that putting a major retailer in this location represents a planning failure of some significance and that it is a bad decision for the neighborhood itself. It is the sort of thing that, like some of the lousy decisions made by Robert Moses generations ago, will be viewed negatively by a future generation. Why do we say this when 500 jobs are being created and thousands of people are seized by Ikea shopping frenzy and couldn’t be happier? Because we don’t think the highest use of valuable Brooklyn waterfront property is big box retailing surrounded by acres of parking and we don’t believe it makes any sense to place things that will generate tens of thousands of car trips a week in place that is not accessible. A different development scenario for this land–even if it had taken longer–would have been better in the long-term, and if done properly, could also have generated community jobs.
Those that don’t care about Red Hook as a community–who will view it as a place to drive through to get some furniture or buy something at the big boxes of the future–will have no problem with the impact of these flawed planning decisions on it. How does a city calculate lost opportunities and the cost of directions not taken? It is difficult. Yet, one could easily have foreseen a different future of mixed use development, parks and preservation of the neighborhood’s industrial heritage and maritime industry. It is not an issue of development, but it is fundamentally an issue of the kind of development we encourage.
On a personal level, we’ve shed some tears as we’ve wandered on Beard Street and seen buildings that were part of a landscape we loved coming down. It’s been like losing friends. Still, we’ve made our peace with the Ikea even as we mourn a Red Hook now relegated to the pages of Brooklyn history books and photo exhibits. Everyone now needs to make the best of the new Ikea, whether it’s making sure they give back to Brooklyn as a community or keeping their feet to the fire in terms of truly employing Red Hook residents in jobs with decent benefits or simply buying some furniture.
Yet, today, it’s still hard not to be a little wistful about the loss of the Red Hook that was and the one that will never be. We’re a little perturbed about the short-sighted public policy choices that Brooklyn and New York City leaders have made that have brought us to this point. Just as some of the things that former shapers of the New York landscaper did are viewed very dimly today, so will the decisions made by our current leaders. Check back in about 10 years. We think there will be some bad reviews of their choices and actions.
17 responses so far ↓
1 DW // Jun 18, 2008 at 10:14 am
Well that was just one long whine, was it?
As said in a previous post, why didn’t you and some friends pool your trust funds, purchase the shipyard and make it into a passive park?
2 cg // Jun 18, 2008 at 10:32 am
I really appreciated that thoughtful post.
3 gk // Jun 18, 2008 at 10:43 am
gee, it just is too bad that those old industrial sites aren’t still in operation , where their smakestacks without any control could blacken the red hook sky. time marches on.. thank goodness
4 cc // Jun 18, 2008 at 11:29 am
Bob – thank you for the intelligent coverage over the years. Obviously many people attach little value to aesthetics, quality of life, or a sense of community – at least not when compared to particle board furniture. But those of us that do appreciate your documentation of what has been a very, very special place, and my hope now is that at least through that documentation IKEA can eventually take it’s place beside the new Penn Station as useful, if grotesque, cautionary tale for the future. Thanks again.
5 nd // Jun 18, 2008 at 11:38 am
thank you for writing this and for articulating the fact that the slapdash, take the $$ and run approach to development is not what builds communities that are strong and durable and places where people want to come and stay and live their lives.
as you say, time will tell, but for people who have bigger dreams than buying cheap disposable furniture without having to take the jersey turnpike, many of us think of this as an opportunity lost.
6 Schnipp // Jun 18, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Red Hook could have been so much more, complete with Jobs. Complete with new housing. Complete with a revitalized waterfront. Complete with change and new development that respected the past and looked to the future.
Other cities do it. They really do. Go bicycle along the Lachine Canal in Montreal. Go to the old warehouse district behind Central Station in Amsterdam.
New York’s claim to global preeminance in design, planning, commerce is laughable. Smaller cities with fewer resources do more with less. But they have political leaders with vision and community activists less than eager to sell their soul to corporate promises, be they from swedish multinationals or Cleveland-based developers.
And the result is apparent. Livable cities that can grow and evolve and that are beautiful and provide myriad opportunities.
We would rather turn Red Hook into “Jersey Gardens,” which is to say, another Elizabeth, NJ waterfont. And celebrate the tired, gaudy wreck we’ve embraced. Enjoy your bookcase.
7 Brenda from Flatbush // Jun 18, 2008 at 3:11 pm
I also mourn the haunting old Red Hook of industrial ruins, weed-poked cobblestones, and strange little tumbledown row houses as they fast disappear under the onslaught. But I’m also uncomfortably aware of a certain decadence attached to our love for picturesque ruins and moody abandoned wharves. For those actually living in the community (I do not), development needs to be more robust than a few little coffee houses and microbrew pubs tucked among the warehouses. I am reminded of–was it Leo Durocher?–who said, “Nobody ever goes there anymore, it got too crowded.”
8 lg // Jun 18, 2008 at 8:37 pm
It was Yogi Berra. “No one goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.”
I just figured out how great Red Hook was last year. So much for that. Oh well. I felt like I was in a different place entirely — as if I’d taken a jaunt out to the countryside.
r.i.p.
9 Nokilissa // Jun 18, 2008 at 8:55 pm
I have been furiously opposed to this for a very long time. Have probably antagonized a number of Brownstoner folks with my pontificating. Anyway. I cut and paste a few things I have said in various threads leading up to this sad day, in memoriam of sorts.
” (in response to some knuckle head who asked ‘who in the hell loves Red Hook?’)
…scratching head…
Who loves Red Hook??
Are you serious?
Ever walked around? Taken in a pizza and a brewsky at O’Sullivans? Ever had a brownie and latte at Baked? Walked through the garden center and over to the park overlooking the statue of Liberty? Had a Key lime pie or a frozen Swingle (sp) at Steve’s? picked a fabulous, difficult to locate, bourbon or two at Nell’s? Watched the sun set over the harbor? Wandered through the lovely, quiet, cobblestoned streets taking in the buildings?
I already mourned the opening of Fairway, which brought a deluge of traffic onto Van Brunt and environs, though I have to admit after much conversation with locals and others that it is…sigh…good for the neighborhood. But I’m hard, HARD pressed to imagine the same of Ikea. Can’t do it. A giant, cheap-ass furniture and accessories emporium one must DRIVE to to accumulate more crap for our throwaway, gas guzzling selves. Woo hoo!
Have at it.”
Another:
“Though, as of June 18th, one could risk life and limb with any sort of stroll through the Hook, due to any one of the twenty bazillion new drivers racing through the once sleepy streets on their way to pick up a crappy table and chair set along with a couch and formica entertainment unit which will last a total of 2.8 years and then head straight to the curb where it will be picked up to take its place in the nearest landfill.
Van Brunt has already become something of a game of Frogger getting along and across. Can’t imagine what it will be like after the opening of this ginormous blue albatross.
Ah. I can’t talk about it anymore.
Except to say that I cannot believe people can’t come up with a better place to plunk an Ikea than here.
This is the WORST place for it. Unbelievable. I can just imagine the thought bubbles, ‘Just a bunch of poor project people and ancient fishing guys and drunks living in shacks on the edge of oblivion. F**k em. Let’s put it there.'”
“It’s like a giant Garden Gnome sticking up out of a field of purple flowers in some beautiful Monet painting.”
And finally,
“I’ve said it many times before, but this, Red Hook, was becoming a truly special place. If we’d given it more thought, planning and time, it could have been a “chelsea market” kind of treasure. Even better.
5:24, it wasn’t a matter of romanticizing an bygone era, replete with crime, it was a matter of watching a place transform into something really unique and beautiful. Something that will now never have a chance to happen.
Instead, it is to be… well, as Heather summed it up for us all, she really just wants her sofa… and she didn’t really get it after all, where the “cool” parts were hiding, that is. She just wants her MTV, er, sorry, Ikea.
And Red Hook has just become a big traffic congested thru-way to Ikea. No more quiet cobble-stoned streets waiting for ideas. The big idea is a giant Ikea.
Forgive me for laying down my head to cry.”
10 dave // Jun 18, 2008 at 9:46 pm
Still, I am amazed at how down right mean most of the pro Ikea posts have been. On this site and others, check out some on brownstoner, wow! The anti Ikea folks never seemed that personally attacking. Maybe that’s why it ended up here and not in park slope.
11 mod squad // Jun 18, 2008 at 10:49 pm
Nokilissa, your romanticizing of red hook is the equivalent of going down south and looking at the old plantations and missing all the the darkies working the cotton fields. For better or worse this is progress for red hook. I live in Dumbo and walk my dogs through Farragut and have noticed quite a few people getting off the bus fully decked out in their IKEA garb, obviously very proud of their new job. Red Hook was a great place for underemployed lonely white men to wander around taking pictures of empty landscapes.
12 Nate // Jun 19, 2008 at 8:59 am
Thank you Robert for this thoughtful analysis. Very touching, very well written.
Though its tempting, I won’t stoop to responding to some of the comments you’ve received here, especially the racist screed written by “mod squad.”
You’ve written a fitting eulogy for the neighborhood, with thoughts that we can all appreciate.
13 Shadi // Jun 19, 2008 at 10:43 am
Well, to be honest: even if the area were restored as mixed use waterfront property as an alternative to big box stores what else could be done with the area other than just letting it ease into its restful slumber?
It could turn into another one of those williamsburg-bedford avenue scenes where all that land is consumed as independantly owned retail space. True, it would have greater cultural value but over time those kinds of places tend to take on that post-hipster atmosphere that is evident in all things trendy & passe. The next logical progression would take that into a more mainstream phase in which you’d find that the trendy are now disgruntled by the glut of “out of area-ers” who come in to experience something off the beaten path, who’ve arrived just precisely to enjoy what others had found.
And then again, perhaps this waterfront could be used to place a museum like ps1 or create a new south street seaport or whatever tourist attraction that the powers that be see fit to develop.
I personally don’t care if there’s an ikea in bk–to me its the same as if I had to drive to jersey. But I wonder whether something better could have been, and if so for how long would it actually be “better?” In the end though, regardless of what happens, people are still gonna complain. That’s always been the pitfall in the debate over authenticity.
14 mod squad // Jun 19, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Please stoop Nate, by anybody’s standards Red Hook is a damaged neighborhood. Most of the people living in Red Hook are poor and black. Both Fairway and IKEA bring jobs to these people, it is quite simple. To get all misty eyed and wring your hands over preserving our industrial past, to bleat about mixed use and green space is denying the future and is racist in and of itself. The use of the work darkie was intended to convey my disgust in Nokilissa’s argument in keeping Red Hook the same.
15 Nokilissa // Jun 19, 2008 at 8:44 pm
Mod Squad. Please, take a moment to make sense.
I said nothing about keeping it the same, take a closer read. In fact, I was describing my sadness at what it COULD have become. Developed into.
And to compare “bleating about mixed use and green space” (your words, which you decided also meant denying the future) to racism is a giant leap in logic at best. It is foolish and makes you sound hysterical.
Finally, you use of the word “darkie” made me a little sick. Was that the point because you were feeling disgust at something you’d projected upon me? Find a better way.
16 ac // Jun 19, 2008 at 11:35 pm
Red Hook was on it’s way up, undiscovered by many and with so much potential to be Brooklyn’s next great neighb!–And on June 18, 2008 Red Hook was forever changed with the arrival of Ikea and with the expectation of more of it’s kind to come. What a loss. I hate Ikea for doing this to us!
17 donflan // Jun 20, 2008 at 11:37 pm
One wonders what sort of progress those accusing we of the anti-IKEA contingent are actually opposed to. Do they admire the architecture and facades of CVS drugstores and cheer their arrival on brownstone streetcorners? The massive box-like construction of the IKEA, every square inch of its imposing surface painted blue and yellow as part of its branding exercise, has permanently diminished the visual appeal of the Brooklyn waterfront. There were competing visions of development (one by the same thoughtful refurbishers of the Baltimore harbor) which would have brought better jobs than the sort of retail furniture version of burger-flipping most IKEA work seems to represent. I’m pleasantly surprised by the care and thought that IKEA put into designing and building the public-use waterfront park (compared with, for example, the virtually useless strip of canalfront sidewalk at the bottom of the Lowe’s parking lot) even if the maritime theme and the preserved shipyard tools feel a bit ironic, like cutting down a grove of trees and building some tract housing named “Cedar Court.” But the landscaping and the free water taxi to Manhattan don’t make the vast acreage of parking spots good urban planning, or the big blue box less of a blot on the landscape. The blinkered, narrow-minded and almost violent scorn of those who reject any feelings of nostalgia is really quite disturbing.