TEN (10) REASONS

TO OPPOSE

IKEA-RED HOOK



  • 275red1 Description: Opponents argue that Ikea-Red Hook is a bad idea not just for Red Hook, but for New York City. Here are some reasons for opposing other big projects as well as Ikea-Red Hook.

    Red Hook, Brooklyn, is a peninsula reaching into New York Harbor, with spectacular views of the Statue of Liberty and lower Manhattan. Red Hook has no highway, no subway, and narrow cobblestone streets. Opponents say it may be the least appropriate place in New York City for a big box store. For information about the lawsuit that concerned Red Hook residents and businesses brought on February 10, 2005, represented by attorney Antonia Bryson, see this blog.

    Here are ten reasons, not all of them included in the Ikea-Red Hook lawsuit, why the far-reaching consequences of Ikea-Red Hook will damage not only Red Hook, Brooklyn, but the City of New York.

    1. Ikea – Red Hook will create bad precedent for New York City’s future dealings with big box stores. It will encourage big boxes to pick inappropriate sites and to insist on building blank-walled warehouses, without sidewalk entrances, without show windows, and without any attempt to fit into New York City’s traditional neighborhoods and urban streets.

    2. It will introduce a gigantic suburban transplant into the street grid of Red Hook, Brooklyn. It will tilt the balance in Brooklyn away from New York City’s tradition of transit-oriented neighborhoods and towards suburban automobile-dependency. It will lead inevitably to the demand for additional expressways, with additional suburban sprawl, inside New York City.

    3. It will cause traffic to back up on the already-overburdened, and soon-to-be-rebuilt, Gowanus Expressway. It will so greatly increase traffic on local streets that it will imperil local businesses whose trucks need to use the streets as well as endangering local residents.

    4. It will create bad precedent for New York City’s future treatment of neighborhood planning, encouraging multinational corporations to come into New York City, create their own pressure groups, and use big spending to override community 197-a plans like the Red Hook 197-a plan that the City Planning Commission approved in 1996.

    5. It will blight the historic New York City waterfront with a mammoth billboard for Ikea, visible from the Statue of Liberty and lower Manhattan.

    6. It will raise real estate values in Red Hook from the modest level for manufacturing, with its high economic multiple, to the level for big retail, which adds little to the local economy, thus increasing demand for re-zoning from manufacturing to retail and driving out manufacturers who lease their space, plus manufacturing jobs. This is just when the Mayor is announcing the importance of manufacturing areas.

    7. It will send local income away from New York City to Ikea headquarters, instead of that income’s flowing through New York City’s banks, professional firms, service businesses and suppliers.

    8. It will deaden the creative synergy of New York’s manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, and designers. It will substitute an out-of-town formula for local ingenuity.

    9. It will force local shopkeepers out of business, deaden local shopping streets, and destroy more jobs in local retail stores and distributorships than it creates.

    10. It will tear up cobblestone streets, bulldoze historic structures on the Erie Basin, and incapacitate the historic graving dock. ####

MCG, Why Ikea Red Hook Project Should be Rejected

IKEA-RED HOOK,

HIGH STREETS,

& THE ECONOMY


  • 275red1 [NOTE TO VISITORS: This section of BigCitiesBigBoxes.com is under re-construction.] THIS BLOG CELEBRATES THE VITALITY OF GREAT CITIES AND THEIR HIGH STREETS. IKEA-RED HOOK is a suburban-style big box store, now in litigation, proposed for the Brooklyn waterfront. The Red Hook site, however, is more than one mile from the nearest highway off-ramp. Red Hook has no subway, and it has narrow cobblestone streets. To reach the site, thousands of cars would have to navigate the already-congested Gowanus Expressway and then drive through Red Hook to the waterfront. This is the most inappropriate site in New York City for a big box store.

    All big boxes, including Ikea and Wal-Mart, say that they create jobs and increase tax revenues. These are claims we should not take on faith. I have looked at the evidence. So far as I can see now, the big boxes' promises are largely false: the costs of big boxes to the city, to other businesses and to the environment are huge. They claim to create jobs, but economists' studies show that they actually destroy jobs. I report that research in my Newsday op-ed Superstores Come With Too High a Price.

    There has never been a full public debate in New York City about whether we want to let in big box stores and, if so, what they should have to look like and how they should have to pay their employees. There is an urgent need for public discussion. For my reasons for opposing Ikea in Red Hook, see my Brooklyn Papers op-ed, Why Red Hook Ikea Project Should be Rejected. There are considerations in city planning, aesthetics, urbanism, law, historic preservation and economics to think that an Ikea store is not the right use for the Red Hook waterfront. Read Ten (10) Reasons to Oppose Ikea-Red Hook.

    This blog aims to paint the whole picture. I will be posting all of the court documents in the litigation.

    About me. I am a professional writer and speaker, a business owner and non-practicing lawyer, and I live in Manhattan. I have no personal economic interest in these issues in general or Red Hook in particular. As a citizen, however, I think that we need to constrain the big boxes, make them look like other New York City stores, locate near New York City public transit like other New York City stores, and behave like other New York City employers. Otherwise, I am concerned about what the big boxes will do to our lively New York City high streets and our urban way of life.

    Boilerplate. I am delighted if you want to refer to or even use short excerpts from this site, as long as you credit me and link back to this site. If you want to quote a larger chunk of my material, please send me an e-mail.

    Peace.

    MCG
    Mail to: MCG@BigCitiesBigBoxes.com

PRESS RELEASE

IKEA LAWSUIT

STARTS (2/10/05)


  • PRESS RELEASE

    CONTACT: Antonia Bryson, Esquire
    (212) 483-9120

    RED HOOK GROUP ALLEGES
    IKEA LAND GRAB ILLEGAL

    NEW YORK, February 10, 2005. A diverse group of Brooklyn residents and businesses seeking to promote the waterfront has filed suit in New York Supreme Court to stop Scandinavian retailer Ikea from building its proposed 22-acre tax-subsidized suburban-style superstore project on the waterfront in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

    According to attorney Antonia Bryson, when the New York City Planning Commission and City Council approved Ikea’s Red Hook superstore project in October 2004, they acted illegally, betraying the commitments they had made to the Red Hook community and to the City--commitments backed up by years of work and planning--to keep the site for maritime use.

    City planners have always considered the Red Hook waterfront a critical piece of New York City’s industrial infrastructure. Over a two-year period between 1992 and 1994, with help that the City Planning Department itself provided, people from all parts of the Red Hook community hammered out a plan for developing and re-populating their isolated Brooklyn waterfront neighborhood, which faces the Statue of Liberty and lower Manhattan. The City Planning Commission ("CPC") sponsored, encouraged, and finally approved the Red Hook plan. As reported in The New York Times and other media, the Red Hook community’s plan was one of the first community plans in New York City under section 197-a of the 1989 New York City Charter, designed to give citizens a voice in development.

    The Red Hook community plan adopted the recommendations of the City Planning Department’s 1992 Waterfront Plan for the site on which Ikea wants to build. The site has unique maritime features, and the plan recommended that it remain zoned and dedicated to continued maritime activity. It also recommended that commercial activity and public waterfront access be fostered in another area of the peninsula nearby, where in fact a new Fairway is about to open.

    In 2001, however, after citizens in both New Rochelle, New York, and nearby Gowanus, Brooklyn, emphatically rejected Ikea’s efforts to build a New York-area superstore in their communities, Ikea next turned its attention to the remote Red Hook peninsula. Although it has no subway, no highway, and narrow cobblestone streets, the Red Hook waterfront will provide tax subsidies to a developer, because it is within a New York State Empire Zone. Such tax subsidies for Ikea are unfair, the petitioners allege, because they come at the expense of local Brooklyn shopping streets and New York City businesses. The City Planning Commission and City Council, however, jumped at this chance to turn the New York City waterfront and the Red Hook community over to Ikea. They examined no alternative uses for this waterfront site.

    The lawsuit asserts that the CPC and the Council exceeded their legal powers when they re-zoned the site to allow Ikea to build its gigantic big box store--probably the largest store in the city--with a 1400-car parking lot in a mall-like setting right on the water, destroying a number of historic structures in the process, including one of the few working graving docks in New York harbor, and vandalizing the City’s waterfront.

    The lawsuit asserts that in order to justify turning the site over to Ikea, the City Planning Commission and City Council used a manifestly faulty environmental review, and an Environmental Impact Statement ("EIS") that employed unrealistic assumptions and specious reasoning in order to minimize the project’s significant environmental impacts, both on the socioeconomic character of the neighborhood, and on traffic conditions in Red Hook and in greater Brooklyn.

    The lawsuit emphasizes that the huge suburban Ikea store will damage the waterfront, bring excessive traffic to Red Hook’s streets, produce gridlock on the major traffic corridors surrounding the neighborhood, including the already-overburdened Gowanus Expressway, and fail to produce any real economic development in Red Hook. The Ikea project will consume 22 acres of industrially-zoned waterfront land that recent trends show is in increasing demand, and that employment trends show will continue to be in demand. On January 19, 2005, in fact, Mayor Bloomberg announced that preserving industrially-zoned land in NewYork City is vitally important.

    Among the failures of the EIS with respect to traffic impacts, meanwhile, is the fact that on a typical Saturday there will be almost 2,000 vehicles driving to and from the Ikea store in the peak hour. The EIS the Commission and City Council relied on, however, contends that these automobiles can be squeezed down the funnel of Red Hook’s narrow streets to the waterfront with no disruption to any part of the neighborhood, including a large, heavily-used park and recreation area just across the street and the City’s new Passenger Ship Terminal being built nearby.

    The lawsuit seeks to annul and vacate the Environmental Impact Statement and the Planning Commission’s and City Council’s actions with respect to the Red Hook site, and to enjoin Ikea and the other defendants from beginning demolition or construction in connection with the project. Petitioners’ court submissions will be posted on the internet.

    ####

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May 27, 2005

Transcript of Ikea-Red Hook Court Hearing, pp. 30-40

30

1 Proceedings

2 area, she has said, it is per se inconsistent with

3 those -- with the policies that protect significant

4 maritime-industrial areas. That is not the case.

5 As is cited in the record on page 3667,

6 which contains this area, Policy 2 of the Waterfront

7 Revitalization Program clearly states, and I'm

8 paraphrasing here: Nonwater-dependent industrial

9 and commercial uses may be considered appropriate

10 in significant maritime-industrial areas so long as

11 shore-front infrastructure is maintained to permit

12 subsequent water-dependent use.

13 Here, there will certainly be subsequent

14 waterfront use; there will be over a thousand linear

15 feet of shore front maintained and there will be new

16 water-dependent uses brought in, such as a ferry

17 service --

18 THE COURT: Be careful with that ferry

19 service. That ferry service, from my understanding,

20 is just to help people to get to Ikea on the

21 weekends, and back. That's not significant ferry

22 service. Let's not overstate it.

23 MR. GREENE: It is a new use.

24 There is also reconstructed piers for

25 berthing barges and tugboats, and this is a very

26 important use in the city right now. Barging [sic]


ALAN F. BOWIN, CSR, RMR, CRR


31

1 Proceedings

2 these large vessels, also, like I said, this will

3 repair infrastructure that is literally falling

4 apart. And the Waterfront Revitalization Program

5 looks favorably on projects that are going to repair

6 infrastructure in these dilapidated industrial areas.

7 THE COURT: But are you creating a

8 situation where it can no longer be industrial

9 development, by putting in this commercial store,

10 which is one of the original parts of the plan?

11 MR. GREENE: Well, as I stated before,

12 commercial development is not per se inappropriate

13 in significant maritime-industrial areas. In fact,

14 it can be entirely appropriate, so long as the shore

15 front is maintained for future water-dependent use,

16 and here that is the case.

17 MR. CHERNIAK: In order to run the ferry

18 service, regular ferry service daily, let's say, for

19 everyone, would they be able to use the landing docks

20 there?

21 THE COURT: Yeah? Go ahead.

22 MR. GREENE: Please.

23 MS. BINDER: May I?

24 THE COURT: Yeah, go ahead.

25 MS. BINDER: Are you asking, physically?

26 I mean, I understand --


ALAN F. BOWIN, CSR, RMR, CRR


32

1 Proceedings

2 MR. CHERNIAK: Yeah.

3 MS. BINDER: Could they create a license

4 agreement, perhaps, with Ikea to be able to use its

5 piers? I really don't know the answer to that.

6 MR. CHERNIAK: What I'm asking, as a

7 practical matter, is, will the piers be limited to

8 Ikea's use?

9 THE COURT: Right now the plan is, "yes";

10 right?

11 MS. BINDER: No.

12 May I jump in?

13 THE COURT: Yes.

14 MS. BINDER: Actually, the answer to that

15 is "no," because Pier 4 is going to be maintained

16 and available for local barge and repair operations,

17 non-Ikea related. So if you're asking if there are

18 users other than Ikea users and customers, the answer

19 is "yes."

20 MR. CHERNIAK: That's the one that's going

21 to be separated from the land; correct?

22 MS. BINDER: No, no.

23 THE COURT: It's actually -- it's Pier 4.

24 MR. CHERNIAK: Oh, okay.

25 MS. BINDER: It's part of the project site

26 that is --


ALAN F. BOWIN, CSR, RMR, CRR


33

1 Proceedings

2 THE COURT: She's (indicating) shaking her

3 head no.

4 You're saying, "no," it's not? Go ahead.

5 MS. BRYSON: I hate to contradict you,

6 but I just went to the meeting on Wednesday and I do

7 believe it was said there that Pier 4 is the ferry

8 pier and it will be continued to be connected to the

9 land, and the pier [sic] at which the barges are

10 going to dock are cut off, and I believe there's 1

11 and 2 and -- I don't remember, exactly, the numbers

12 but two of them are going to be demolished and two of

13 them are going to be cut off and have barges docked

14 on them.

15 THE COURT: Go ahead.

16 MS. BINDER: While piers 1 and 2 will be

17 cut off at a portion, Pier 4 will be made available

18 for local barging operations; non-Ikea, local barging

19 operations.

20 THE COURT: Okay.

21 MS. BINDER: Does that answer your

22 question?

23 THE COURT: Yes.

24 Okay, let him continue. Thank you.

25 MR. GREENE: This is clearly consistent.

26 The legal standard in making a waterfront consistency


ALAN F. BOWIN, CSR, RMR, CRR


34

1 Proceedings

2 determination is a "rational basis." There is case

3 law cited in the papers that clearly shows this.

4 As this project conforms with the 197-A

5 Program and the Waterfront Revitalization Program,

6 it was clearly developed in accordance with a

7 comprehensive plan for Red Hook. This strongly

8 rebuts petitioners' argument that this constitutes

9 some sort of spot zoning.

10 THE COURT: Don't go there, with the

11 "spot zoning." I don't need you to address that

12 issue. That's not an issue I'm concerned about.

13 But you're not addressing the fact

14 that you failed to consider volume of traffic and,

15 therefore, the neighborhood-character impact.

16 MR. GREENE: I'll go right to that point,

17 your Honor. I apologize.

18 THE COURT: Please do.

19 MR. GREENE: Neighborhood character --

20 THE COURT: By the way, I don't think this

21 is spot zoning, but go ahead.

22 MR. GREENE: Neighborhood character, under

23 SEQRA, is to look at a compilation of factors, not

24 just one factor; and moreover, it is undoubtedly the

25 most subjective area of review that -- subjective

26 area of potentially significant impact --


ALAN F. BOWIN, CSR, RMR, CRR


35

1 Proceedings

2 THE COURT: But the bottom line is,

3 did you consider it or not?

4 MR. GREENE: We did consider it, your

5 Honor. We took a hard look at it.

6 THE COURT: Did you consider volume?

7 MR. GREENE: We considered traffic and we

8 also considered --

9 THE COURT: Did you consider volume?

10 MR. GREENE: We considered the mitigation

11 measures that were taken --

12 We considered volume, yes. We considered

13 the mitigation measures that were taken, substantial

14 mitigation measures that exceed transportation-

15 engineering standard, and we're allowed to do that

16 under the SEQRA Technical Manual.

17 THE COURT: Do we have it anywhere in the

18 papers?

19 MR. GREENE: Record cite 902, your Honor.

20 THE COURT: What's that; record?

21 MR. GREENE: Yes.

22 THE COURT: 902.

23 MR. GREENE: Yes.

24 THE COURT: Okay, record.

25 Says you talked about the volume.

26 MR. GREENE: Yes. We talked about the


ALAN F. BOWIN, CSR, RMR, CRR


36

1 Proceedings

2 volume, yes.

3 THE COURT: Okay, okay. Just checking.

4 Continue.

5 MR. GREENE: Therefore, petitioners'

6 argument that an increase of traffic is a per se

7 impact on neighborhood character is simply not true.

8 Neighborhood character was given its own

9 chapter in the EIS; Chapter 9. It was thoroughly

10 examined, all the relevant factors, in accordance

11 with the SEQRA Technical Manual.

12 And there was also an extensive

13 chapter devoted to traffic movements, where there

14 were extensive mitigation measures proposed, an

15 over-two-mile study area for this project -- around

16 this project site -- including the entire Red Hook

17 peninsula and areas of Flatbush --

18 THE COURT: But I don't remember

19 reading -- I have to tell you, I don't remember

20 seeing anything about the Gowanus and the highway;

21 just the local streets. I may have missed it, so

22 please let me know.

23 MR. GREENE: Well, your Honor, I can cite

24 you to the record right here.

25 THE COURT: Go ahead.

26 MR. GREENE: It's record cite --


ALAN F. BOWIN, CSR, RMR, CRR


37

1 Proceedings

2 THE COURT: Go ahead.

3 MR. GREENE: -- 880, 910 --

4 THE COURT: 880, 910. Go ahead.

5 MR. GREENE: -- through -11.

6 THE COURT: Go ahead.

7 MR. GREENE: 1256 through 1257.

8 THE COURT: I missed it, then.

9 Okay, and that deals directly with the

10 Gowanus and other highways?

11 MR. GREENE: Yes, it addresses the Gowanus

12 and other highways.

13 THE COURT: Okay.

14 MR. GREENE: Also, the areas that were

15 examined, the on- and off-ramps, the areas that are

16 most likely to experience traffic impacts. And that

17 is a critical understanding here. This is where

18 traffic backs up. This is where you want to look,

19 and a hard look was taken at the -- several -- the

20 closest and next-closest intersections to these two

21 expressways.

22 THE COURT: And how is that going to be

23 affected by the new project, the rebuilding of the

24 Gowanus?

25 MR. GREENE: The rebuilding of the Gowanus

26 is a project that is taking place far into the


ALAN F. BOWIN, CSR, RMR, CRR


38

1 Proceedings

2 future.

3 THE COURT: How far?

4 MR. GREENE: I believe Miss Binder will

5 correct me if I'm wrong. It is going to be 2012,

6 I believe, is the estimated date for it.

7 MS. BINDER: That's correct.

8 MR. GREENE: And I think the critical

9 thing here, when you're addressing -- and I believe

10 we're addressing the build-year issue right now --

11 is that environmental review, pursuant to the Jackson

12 case, is not meant to be perpetual. You -- a

13 rational projection was chosen for the date of this

14 project.

15 As Miss Bryson concedes, the traffic

16 study was increased to cover other areas, such as

17 the passenger ship terminal, the Fairway supermarket,

18 and a truck study done by New York City Department of

19 Transportation. This was expanded.

20 You have to pick a rational date, and this

21 is a rational date. It is still the date it's moving

22 forward.

23 So --

24 THE COURT: Okay.

25 Do you have anything else you want to ask

26 him? No?


ALAN F. BOWIN, CSR, RMR, CRR


39

1 Proceedings

2 Forgive me for interrupting. Let me get

3 Miss Binder up.

4 MR. GREENE: Certainly, your Honor.

5 THE COURT: Do you have anything you want

6 to add to all of this? Go ahead.

7 MS. BINDER: I just want to say, your

8 Honor, and I will be brief, this is not the Jets

9 stadium. This is a project that has gone through --

10 it has been an extraordinary project.

11 To think that the community board voted

12 favorably for this project, the borough president

13 did, the City Council did --

14 THE COURT: What she pointed out is on the

15 community board was -- what? -- one or two Red Hook

16 residents and the rest were outside of Red Hook?

17 So, you know, if you have people outside, they don't

18 have the same interests as the people inside.

19 MS. BINDER: But, your Honor, if I may --

20 THE COURT: Go ahead.

21 MS. BINDER: -- seventy percent of the Red

22 Hook residents are in favor of this project. So that

23 we sit here today talking about --

24 THE COURT: Be careful with that. I mean,

25 how do you know that? Did you go to every door of

26 every resident in Red Hook?


ALAN F. BOWIN, CSR, RMR, CRR


40

1 Proceedings

2 MS. BINDER: No, but we do have in our

3 submission the Red Hook Association's petitions that

4 are about this (indicating) thick.

5 THE COURT: Okay.

6 MS. BINDER: And they testified at every

7 single public hearing. And we probably had, easily,

8 80 presentations throughout Brooklyn and in the Red

9 Hook community. And they were consistently not just

10 there; they were vocally there.

11 THE COURT: Okay.

12 MS. BINDER: So this is not the Jets

13 stadium.

14 THE COURT: Okay.

15 MS. BINDER: And the reason this is

16 not the Jets stadium, and it is unprecedented --

17 the chair of Community Board 6 said this is

18 unprecedented; the chair of the land-use City Council

19 [sic] said this is unprecedented -- because Ikea is

20 an extraordinary company. It has done here what

21 nobody else has done. There are other big-box

22 developments in the city and Brooklyn; you see Home

23 Depot, you see Costco, you see Lowe's. Nobody has

24 done what Ikea has done, and I'll put the ferry

25 service aside.

26 But let's talk about this 6.3-acre


ALAN F. BOWIN, CSR, RMR, CRR

Continue reading "Transcript of Ikea-Red Hook Court Hearing, pp. 30-40" »

May 27, 2005 in #12 (5/26/05) Transcript of Court Hearing, pp. 30-40 [1] |

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