Among the many things that the 346,000 square foot Ikea now rising along Beard Street will bring to Red Hook are up to 50,000 additional cars a week on local streets. (Or, 2.5 million a year.) The impact they will have on the community–both in terms of quality of life and on the neighborhoods streets and infrastructure–remain to be seen. Neighbor Chris Curen sent us these photos of problems on Beard Street, which could indicate more to come. He writes:

There is a broken water main on the IKEA site, which is running water onto Beard Street, and has been for some time (at least a month). For some reason, the DEP comes by once and a while to mess with it (but not fix it). They’ve torn up Beard Street twice. This is Beard Street’s second water main break since Dec 30th (and Red Hook’s 3rd). I guess the question is why do guys need HAZMAT suits to fix a water main break? Is this indicative of future stress on Red Hook’s, um, antiquated, infrastructure?

If you’ve bee on Beard Street’s cobblestones recently, you’ve seen the impact that increased truck traffic has already had, in particular, the sinkage of paving stones here and there.