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Tom Fox

A city plan to transform the Red Hook waterfront is meeting with resistance. Currently, part of the area is used for parking New York Water taxi boats.

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Transforming a cargo port on the Red Hook waterfront into a maritime tourist attraction will cost $326 million, according to an internal city document obtained by The Brooklyn Paper this week.

And that price tag could be the final straw for the controversial plan, officials said this week.

“These are large numbers for a half-baked plan,” said City Councilman David Yassky (D–Brooklyn Heights). “This plan is clearly not well-thought out, and the numbers demonstrate that a viable ongoing business shouldn’t be kicked out in its service.”

The “ongoing business” is the Red Hook Container Port, which the city plans to evict this spring to make way for a hotel and shops, a boat repair facility, a Brooklyn Brewery plant and tourist-friendly beer garden, as well as a smaller industrial port, a ferry connection to Governors Island and a second pier for cruise ships.

The cost of the ambitious project had been unknown until now.

The bulk of its budget — $230 million — would modernize the piers so they could support new buildings. Opponents say they do not want to see new structures on the waterfront if it means closing the container port, which they believe is important for the city’s long-term growth.

At a City Council hearing last month, Kate Ascher, vice president of the city Economic Development Corporation, defended the cost, saying the new mix of industrial and recreational uses would triple the number of jobs along the waterfront while opening it up to residents.

“Under our plan, no existing longshoreman jobs will be lost,” she said, repeating the line for emphasis.

The pier plan is part of Mayor Bloomberg’s larger vision of a tourist-friendly “Harbor District” of waterfront parks that would connect all the boroughs and Governors Island, just a few hundred feet off the Red Hook coastline, via ferry connections.

“It is fair to say that EDC is undertaking the most-ambitious redevelopment of the Brooklyn waterfront in half a century,” Ascher said.

But Yassky’s doubts echo concerns that have dogged the agency since the plan was made public last spring. In fact, not one elected official or local resident spoke in support of the plan at the December hearing.

“It is not clear what kind of economic development will be generated,” said City Councilwoman Jessica Lappin (D-Manhattan), chair of a Council subcommittee that must approve all uses of waterfront land.

“Once you lose waterfront land [to building], it is gone forever,” she said.

Lappin pointed out that the $60-million Brooklyn cruise ship terminal failed to create as many jobs as the city expected.

Only 10 of the 255 jobs at the terminal are full-time. Nonetheless, the EDC document obtained this week claims that 810 full- and part-time jobs would be created if the $326-million maritime district expansion becomes a reality.

By comparison, the container terminal supports just 133 full-time jobs, according to the EDC — although American Stevedoring, which operates the port, says it has 623 jobs.

Besides that, neighbors say the cargo port is a considerate neighbor that generates less traffic than a tourist attraction while maintaining the area’s historic maritime identity.

“People have come to a remarkable consensus about keeping the working waterfront and, at the same time, adding more open space,” said David Lutz, executive director of the Neighborhood Open Space Coalition, who lives on Columbia Street.

“There is plenty of developable land elsewhere,” he said.

©2007 The Brooklyn Paper