Large container cranes at Red Hook's waterfront. (Nicole Anderson / The Brooklyn Ink)

Colossal container cranes, towering up above the waterfront in Red Hook, have long been part of Brooklyn’s landscape. But in the next decade, this visual landmark will likely disappear, say former city officials and community activists, as the port facilities are expected to eventually shift to a new location.

The Red Hook Container Terminal sits on one of the most coveted real estate properties in South Brooklyn. Red Hook’s waterfront has long been caught in a tug-of-war between competing interests that have divided the community. On one side, there’s a push to rezone the area for mixed-use, thus paving the way for commercial and residential development, and on the other, a fight to preserve Red Hook’s maritime business.

However, recent events signal a slow fade out of containerization in Red Hook, marking the possible end to the neighborhood’s working waterfront.

“I think that all parties recognize that it [Red Hook] is an inappropriate location for the container port given the lack of space and given the failure to have a rail connection. Subsequently it should be re-located to probably Sunset Park and that would be a much more efficient use of the space there, which has access to a rail service,” said John McGettrick, an influential community activist and co-chair of the Red Hook Civic Association.

The most significant event boding change for the waterfront came in September with a decision by the Port Authority, which controls the property where the Red Hook Container Terminal sits. American Stevedoring, the shipping company that had operated the containers on Piers 7-12 since the early 1990’s, had allegedly fallen into financial difficulties and the Port Authority cancelled its lease.

A new operation lease was quickly signed with Phoenix Beverage Inc, a beer distributor, but only for one year. The brevity of the lease seemed to indicate more change was afoot, perhaps in anticipation of the eventual shift of the container facility to South Brooklyn Marine Terminal in Sunset Park.

Chris Ward, the former executive director of the Port Authority, insists that the one-year lease isn’t just a temporary fix.

“The purpose of signing a one-year deal with Phoenix was to secure quickly a new anchor tenant in the face of American Stevedoring’s financial incapacity to meet its obligations going forward,” says Ward. “Having said that, it would have been impossible in that quick rush of time to re-negotiate a long-term, ten-year lease.”

While Ward anticipates that the one-year lease will be extended for a number of years, he also says that the Red Hook Container Terminal should be relocated to the Sunset Park location, adjacent to Industry City, in the near future.

“Clearly New York City and Brooklyn need to retain its working waterfront primarily active for containers, but the land use patterns now hinted that it is far better to locate them down in South Brooklyn than it is to continue to burden Red Hook,” says Chris Ward.

The move to South Brooklyn Marine Terminal in Sunset Park, however, can’t happen overnight. Phoenix has poured $10 to $14 million dollars into the piers in Red Hook, and according to Ward, will need “to amortize that investment.” It will also take time to develop a plan to build and expand the infrastructure needed at 39^th Street to support the relocation of the Red Hook containers.

The Red Hook Container Terminal may relocate to South Brooklyn in the future. (Nicole Anderson / The Brooklyn Ink)

This move, though, could benefit the development of Governor’s Island. The Red Container Terminal sits directly across from this 172-acre island and would be a natural departure point for ferries. The city began a redevelopment plan for the island in 2006 that focused on building parks and public spaces. The first phase of construction will start in 2012. Before stepping down from his position as director of Port Authority this past November, Chris Ward emphasized the need to create a connection between the piers where the Red Hook Container Terminal resides and Governor’s Island.

“More importantly it [the Red Hook Container Terminal] was going to limit growth for both Governor’s Island and restrict the utilization of the waterfront for public access. Better the containers are industrialized and everything take place on 39th Street behind Industry City.”

The ouster of American Stevedoring in mid September came on the heels of an announcement from Daniel A. Zarrili, the senior vice president of asset management at the New York Economic Development Corporation, that the NYEDC is investing over $115 million in infrastructure improvements to reopen the South Brooklyn marine Terminal in 2012.

Initially built in the 1960’s as a container port, the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal in Sunset Park shut down its operations in the 1980’s and functioned as a tow pound for the NYPD. This new investment will provide the infrastructure for the reopened port to connect rail service from the site to the national freight system, which in turn, will reduce truck traffic in the area. The terminal will house a new municipal recycling facility and import and export automobiles along with other kinds of cargo.

The South Brooklyn Marine Terminal is 22.4 acres larger than the Red Hook Container Terminal, and offers the quickest access to the open ocean than any other facility in New York Harbor, according to Port Authority. From a geographic and land-use standpoint, Sunset Park appears better situated for containerization.

Jonathan R. Peters, a Brooklyn Waterfront Research Center fellow and Professor at The College of Staten Island CUNY, says that the changes in the shipping industry will make it difficult for a small container port like the Red Hook Container Terminal to stay competitive. The size of container ships are increasing along with the amount of cargo they are transporting.

According to a presentation on “Brooklyn’s Waterfront Economic Base and Future Trends” prepared by Peters and his colleagues for a waterfront conference in October, the ships coming into Brooklyn today are 600 feet long and the ships in the future will be 1300 feet long. Right now, ships servicing Brooklyn carry 300 to1300 40 foot boxes of cargo, but soon, the number will increase to 7500 per ship. The container terminals will eventually need to undergo renovations in order to handle the scale of these new ships.

“You want to prepare Brooklyn for the next 20 years. You want to look forward and adapt the port,” says Peters. “Even if you were going to keep Red Hook, you would have to refit it.”

If the Red Hook Container Terminal is not equipped to handle these changes in the shipping industry, Peters, along with community activists and developers are suggesting alternative ideas for the piers.

Peters is skeptical that containerization is the best use for the Red Hook waterfront and recommends focusing on ship repair and maintenance instead, with some residential and commercial development.

“It [development] has to fit with natural character of community. I don’t think you have to definitively go to commercial or residential. I think you should try to think about the maritime commerce that fits in that area,” says Peters. “Maybe it is not large commercial freight, but maybe it moves from being a freight facility to supporting construction materials with some area for housing and some for maritime use.”

After shipping company, American Stevedoring, cancelled its lease, a new operation one year lease was signed with Phoenix Beverage Inc. (Nicole Anderson / The Brooklyn Ink)

Even as the containers remain stationed along Columbia Waterfront, residential development and parks are sprouting up in the areas adjacent to the piers—an indication that developers are anticipating that the Red Hook Container Terminal will be gone sooner rather than later.

The Brooklyn Greenway Initiative, a non-profit organization working to plan and implement a 14-mile greenway along the Brooklyn waterfront, just created a bike path along the Columbia Street waterfront. The organization also is pushing to turn a 1.7 acre parcel of land that sits abandoned next to the containers into what they call “an open space node” or public access resembling a park.

Across the street the Red Hook Container Terminal, developer, Louis V. Greco, has started construction on an 11-unit luxury condo development that he says “will have harbor views until someone builds on the piers.”

And this might not be the only residential development taking shape right now. Two weeks after news spread about the abrupt departure of American Stevedoring, the owners of 160 Imlay Street, the crumbling warehouse once in line for condo development, were issued a permit for a sidewalk shed, a structure designed to protect pedestrians from any rubble while construction is underway.

This is the first permit filed in the last two years since the plan to convert the property into luxury condos was abandoned in 2008. The developer Bruce Federman first faced resistance from the community when he won a variance to change the use of the building from manufacturing to residential in 2003. The Red Hook-Gowanus Chamber of Commerce took him to court and delayed the renovations until 2008. By the time Federman was able to move forward, the recession had set in and the housing market was in bad shape.

“There are plans,” says Federman. “Now we’re reexamining it and doing what we need to do to make it safe and make a proper decision of whether to make it a residential property again. It would probably be rentals if it would go in the near future.”

Federman is also a partner at Industry City Associates, the group that owns Bush Terminal, which happens to be located in Sunset Part directly next to the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal.

“Imlay Street going residential would be a good thing for Red Hook,” says Lou Sones, member of Brooklyn Community Board 6. “We need more housing in Red Hook in general.”

The potential end of containerization elicits different reactions from residents in Red Hook.

“If anything were to happen, I would want retail stores—more infrastructure for Red Hook,” says Dhrubo Mazumdar, a resident and employee at the restaurant, Fort Defiance.

Barry O’Meara, the owner of the bar, Red Hook Bait and Tackle, who has lived in Red Hook since the mid 90’s, is ambivalent about the possible shift to commercial and residential.

“It would be great to keep the history as it is—what this part of the world was at one point in time, but money is money.”

“There is no doubt that housing is a sexy thing, especially when you’re looking for waterfront, but there needs to be a balance,” says real estate developer, Greg O’Connell, who has played an integral role in Red Hook’s revitalization. “What makes Red Hook unique is that you do have a good balance of working class people, small businesses, and you have artist people moving into the area. It is a constant revaluation of what the needs are and how to balance them.”

No one can say with certainty what is in store for the piers where the Red Hook Container Terminal currently sits, but most would agree that change is on its way.

“I do say that you really have to take a hard and fast look at the Red Hook container port or any [area] that has a working waterfront because once you lose it, you’re never going to get it back,” says Greg O’Connell.

Read more at BrooklynPaper.com.

Yaritza. By Andy Vernon-Jones.

“I’d never considered that documenting a single neighborhood would make a compelling body of work, or would sustain my interest for multiple years. So falling in love with Red Hook and coming to feel at home there and photographing the place all sort of went together. I started carrying my camera when I decided I might be able to make some interesting photographs [in Red Hook]. It was never an arbitrary thing,” says Vernon-Jones.

Red Hook is a neighborhood of sharp contrasts: the stark division between the block of public housing in the  “front” and the low-slung homes along Van Brunt in the “back”; the piers jetting out towards the Statue of Liberty; the mix of homes and warehouses; and a generation of young people sprouting up on streets that still resemble a sea-faring past.

Vernon-Jones snapped hundreds of pictures of the neighborhood, and at a reception on November 17 hosted by Lucky Gallery, he celebrated the release of 64 of them in his self-published book of photography, Here in Red Hook.

“It was a working title for the body of work for a while. I wanted something to connote a little bit of intimacy. Because what I love about Red Hook is the enclosure and the fact that it is closed off by the BQE and has this feeling like the outback of Brooklyn,” says Vernon-Jones. “Just the feeling that it [photography] was coming from here and not ‘I went to Red Hook to take these pictures.’”

And his photographs do indeed convey a side of Red Hook that outsiders don’t know.

“I think that people see Red Hook as a bad area. The photographs put the neighborhood in a different light and show that it is changing for the better,” says Jacob Dixon who has lived in Red Hook for the last 13 years.

Vernon-Jones has existed on both side of the lens. His job as an advocate counselor at the high school made him part of the community, while his time roaming the neighborhood with his camera in hand put him in the position of an onlooker observing the people and landscape of Red Hook.

A few of his students made it onto the pages of the book. One of his subjects, Malcom, whom he photographed at a bus stop happened to walk into Vernon-Jones’ office at school a year or two later. Malcom has since graduated from South Brooklyn Community High School, but he did return to DJ at the book release party.

Other young people living in Red Hook play a prominent role throughout the book.

“I think that there are not a lot of nuanced representations of black and Puerto Rican young people, and I believe in the possibility of showing a little bit of what I got to learn about the complexity, goodness, and integrity of young people in this neighborhood in my job and in my photographs,” says Vernon-Jones.

For the book cover, Vernon-Jones chose a photograph of two teenagers in over-sized jackets staring directly at the camera. 

“I see these guys as almost gatekeepers standing guard but in a very welcoming way,” says Vernon-Jones.

In a neighborhood where the history is palpable, and in many ways, still untouched, many outsiders become enamored with the panoramic views of the water, the cobble stone streets, and the 19^th century grain warehouses, and fail to see the people who inhabit this space.

The young people, in many ways, represent the present-day Red Hook. Brian Zimbler, a friend and former colleague of Vernon-Jones, touches upon this idea in the very beginning of the introduction when he writes, “the young people in these images seem to get it intuitively.”

They have grown up in the neighborhood and know the sound of the foghorn and the familiar faces waiting for the B61 bus to arrive. They have experienced both the rapid change and the inertia.

Vernon-Jones opted to use a medium format camera instead of a digital SLR. And he says that shooting with an old fashioned camera slowed down the process and allowed him to converse more with his subjects.

“It was a very different experience from a digital SLR where you put a lens in somebody’s face if you’re trying to photograph a person. Instead, you’re focusing down here and talking to the person,” says Vernon-Jones.

“Andy has the special gift of being receptive and present,” adds Zimbler.

Much of what Vernon-Jones was compelled to shoot was inspired by the beauty of a moment in time unfolding in front of him whether it was weeds springing up through cracks of concrete or a blue balloon caught on a metal fence in the snow. His eye hones in on the brilliance of the ordinary object or the every day scene.

“The light in Red Hook because it is surrounded by the water is really unique. Sometimes it can just be the early morning light hitting a person,” says Vernon-Jones.

On the street, the photos resonate with people in the neighborhood.

“It shows a lot of character and that people love the community,” says Dixon.

Change comes at a snail’s pace to Red Hook. Its geographic location and shortage of transportation make it feel more like a remote village than a neighborhood in Brooklyn. But, some see these photographs as a fleeting reality.

“It almost seems like it is a documentary of what the neighborhood will be like before it is really gentrified,” says Anthony Cioe.

But, Vernon-Jones recalls a discussion he had with Zimbler about the introduction, and they both decided that “this isn’t just a document of contemporary Red Hook, but asking what is the deeper meaning and how can we be affected emotionally by what we see in these pictures.”

You may also be interested in reading a story about Dumbo’s theater scene or a controversial art exhibit at Brooklyn Museum.

One of the vehicles in the Brooklyn Van Lines service that has gained popularity in the last year due to MTA bus cancellations. (Photo: Cristabelle Tumola / The Brooklyn Ink)

Weekday mornings Osmond Thorne takes commuters and children to school, but he is not driving a bus or subway train. He is behind the wheel of a 15-person commuter van.

The vans are a cheap and convenient way to get around Brooklyn, but they also skirt city regulations by regularly straying outside of their licensed routes to get more passengers.

A round of MTA bus cancellations last year led more passengers to depend on commuter vans such as Thorne’s Brooklyn Van Lines service. After the bus cancellations, many Brooklyn residents endured longer travel time to work and were stuck taking several subway lines to visit the Prospect Park area.

“By not having the service they are cut off not just to the rest of Brooklyn, but to the rest of the city and that’s very unfortunate,” says Jeffrey Zupan of the Regional Plan Association, an independent urban research and advocacy group for the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut metropolitan region.

Whenever the MTA has to cut costs, it’s the riders who suffer the most, particularly those who lose service in areas where there are few transportation options, Zupan says.

One solution was the Group Ride Vehicle program. In September 2010 the city’s Taxi & Limousine Commission gave private commuter van companies a special license to pick up passengers along five cancelled bus routes in Brooklyn and Queens. Thorne’s Brooklyn Van Lines was licensed to stop along the old B71 route, which served parts of Red Hook, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Gowanus, Park Slope, Prospect Heights and Crown Heights.

The program led to an increase in people using Thorne’s vans as an alternative to public transportation.

Dave Abraham, chair of Transportation Alternatives’ Brooklyn Committee, says before the Group Van Ride program many former MTA customers may have not trusted less official-looking van services.

Sarah Collins uses Brooklyn Van Lines to take her children to and from school. Collins lives in Red Hook and has been riding with Thorne since the beginning of last school year. During the ride to school, she chats with other parents among the sounds of their noisy children. “For day to day commuting it has been perfect,” she says.

Ty Jones also uses Brooklyn Van Lines to take her child from her home in Crown Heights to her babysitter in Park Slope. From there Jones can easily hop on the subway to her job in Manhattan.

This May, however, the TLC cancelled the last remaining van line because of “sporadic service they had been providing along the B71 route,” according to TLC spokesman Allan Fromberg.

The action didn’t diminish Brooklyn Van Lines’ business, however. The company still had its standard TLC license and continued picking up passengers along that route, despite rules, that according to Fromberg of the TLC, do not permit the vans to pick up passengers in much of the area of the former B71 route.

Brooklyn Van Lines still charges the $2 pickup and drop off fee that it did with the TLC program, with passengers negotiating what to pay if they want to go outside of the old B71 route.

Jones feels lucky that she was able to find a cheap mode of transportation when the B71 line was cancelled: “Without this service I would have to pay $10 each way for a cab.”

Andrea Vaughn, who has been taking commuter vans since December, also feels fortunate for their existence. When the B71 was cancelled her commute went from 20 minutes to up to an hour. She had to take two buses to her job at the Brooklyn Public Library’s central branch. Now it takes her only 15 minutes and she also has “some good conversation” along with her commute.

Vaughn has been telling people in her area about the commuter vans on the neighborhood blog she writes for, The Word on Columbia Street. “Word of mouth has been very strong,” she says.

Another commuter van rider who is also helping spread the word is Marta Heilborn. She takes a Brooklyn Van Lines van to her job in the Grand Army Plaza area. She recalled how she recently met a woman on the street who was complaining about having to take three subway lines to work. Heilborn told her about the van service she uses.

Word of mouth has helped Brooklyn Van Lines’ business grow. Thorne attributes some of this increase to the beginning of the school year. The parents who have been using his service since the last school year have been telling others about it.

As a result, Thorne hopes to soon add more vans to serve the old B71 bus passengers. In the meantime, with the cold weather quickly approaching, he is sure that more people will call him for a ride.

More Stories on The Brooklyn Ink:

Job Hunting Hard for Long-Time Hospital Worker

Bensonhurst Native Optimistic Despite Unemployment

Meet Lance: Unemployed in Bensonhurst

Last month, responsibility of the Red Hook Container Terminal was shifted from the American Stevedoring to the Port Authority, signalling possible changes in the neighbourhood’s shipping activity. The American Stevedoring was the last local shipping company in Brooklyn.

For more on this story, click here.

Josefina Sanfeliu stands before Engine 279 in Red Hook. (Photo: Regan Penaluna/The Brooklyn Ink)

In the summer of 2009, Josie Sanfeliu filled her bike basket with petition papers, strapped on her bike helmet, and rode from her home in Park Slope, past the Gowanus Canal and under the Brooklyn Queens Expressway to a series of firehouses in Red Hook. It was a 15-minute trip that she had made many times since September 11, 2001, and would make a hundred more times over the next two years.

Sanfeliu did not personally know any firefighters who died on 9/11 in the World Trade Center towers. In fact, she had never been to a firehouse or spoken with a firefighter, but that all changed after the terrorist attacks. In the following years, she devoted herself to renaming three streets in Red Hook after local firefighters who had died in the Twin Towers.

“I wanted to get the streets named by the 10^th year anniversary of 9/11,” Sanfeliu said. “On 9/12 we all said ‘Never forget,’ and this is how you do it.”

The devastating events of September 11 prodded individuals who had no personal ties to the victims of the attacks to rethink their roles as citizens and to ask themselves what they could do to help. Some people dusted off their American flags, and others, such as Sanfeliu, did more. She wanted to preserve the memories of the firefighters who gave their lives to save others.

“She is the ideal citizen,” said Sally Regenhard, whose son was memorialized by Sanfeliu’s efforts, “She is concerned about things that a citizen should be.”

By June 2011, three streets in Red Hook received new names, because of Sanfeliu. Across the street from Engine 279/Ladder 131, located on Lorraine Street, was “Red Hook Heroes Run,” which honored all five firefighters from the company who died on 9/11. Sanfeliu and other firefighters came up with the name together. A “run” refers to pre-automobile days when firefighters would literally run to fires.

On the opposite corner, the street was named “FF Ronnie L. Henderson Way,” in honor of one of those five firefighters, who did not have another memorial devoted to him in another part of the city.

At nearby Engine 202/Ladder 101 on Richards Street was “Seven in Heaven Way,” which honored all seven of the firefighters from Ladder 101 who died on 9/11.

The last name drew controversy from some atheists who threatened to sue the city, because they believed that the street sign violated the First Amendment’s separation of church and state. Nothing, however, has transpired. Sanfeliu and Captain Mike Kendall of Ladder 101 insist the phrase is one that other firefighters and the families used to refer to the seven victims.

Harry Gillan, a retired firefighter at Engine 279, knew the firefighters who died on 9/11. He had talked about naming a street in honor of those who died, but was daunted by the time it required. “No one took the bull by the horns,” he said, “Thank God, Josie did it. We were very grateful she did.” Regenhard, whose son started at Ladder 131 six weeks before he died in the attacks, said, “Josie’s efforts to honor them are wonderful, because no one was really doing anything.”

Sanfeliu, 62, emigrated from pre-Castro Cuba when she was six years old, and grew up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side in its pre-gentrified era as the daughter of an auto mechanic and a seamstress. As a young girl living on Amsterdam Avenue, Sanfeliu heard sirens from a local firehouse. “I always felt when I heard them that help is on the way,” she said. In 1992 she moved to Brooklyn with her then-husband. She remembers a fire a few blocks away, where a firefighter pulled a couple of husky Rottweiler dogs from a burning house. One was dead. At that time, she was too timid to talk to the firefighter.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Sanfeliu was tuned into a radio show that implored listeners to turn on their televisions. She saw a plane crash into one of the Twin Towers, and like many others she thought it was a horrendous accident. She continued with her day, which was to vote for the city’s primary elections. She went to the subway, but while on the open-air platform at Smith Street in Brooklyn, people gasped at the view of Lower Manhattan: now both towers emitted huge clouds of dark smoke. “It’s concrete!” someone cried. Ash started to fall around them. A man next to her caught a charred sheet of paper from the sky, which read “Federal Trust.” It came from one of the Twin Towers.

The death toll increased by the hour, and ultimately among the dead were 343 fire fighters. Sanfeliu remembered Mayor Giuliani’s request for New Yorkers to attend firefighter funerals so the ceremonies would not be barren. Immediately after 9/11, Gillan remembers that many civilians came to the firehouses to help, but he said, “Three to four weeks after 9/11 people dropped off, but Josie still made her presence.”

There were many local firehouses, but Sanfeliu chose to attend the memorials of firefighters at Engine 279/Ladder 131 and Engine 202/Ladder 101 in Red Hook, because they were in industrial areas with few residents. She took this as an opportunity to give them the appreciation she imagined other firehouses in more residential areas enjoyed.

Getting to know firefighters is not easy, because they are reluctant to speak about their work. “She is a remarkable woman,” said Holly Fuchs, an activist for New York City firefighters. “In order to do anything with firefighters is hard because they have to know and respect you. She does have that rapport.” Connie Lesold, another activist, said of Sanfeliu, “They are always glad to see her. They invited her in like she’s one of their own. One of their family.” Sometimes it took months for firefighters to open up to Sanfeliu, but once they did she began to understand their grief on a deeper level, and with each story, she said, “I cried for weeks.”

As the firefighters eventually warmed up to her, Sanfeliu found ways to offer her support. At first, she brought them homemade scones with pine nuts and turbinado sugar. “There was no neighborhood association to bring them cake,” she said. Eventually, she got more involved with politics and started to protest the closing of fire houses. She collected photos from local fires, and brought them to Community Board meetings as evidence that firehouses need to remain open.

While an undergraduate at City College, Sanfeliu had studied cultural anthropology, which she credits with helping her appreciate the complexity of firefighter society. She came to understand their ranks, activities, and gear as few outsiders do. She felt in awe of their ability to put their lives on the line for citizens no matter their race, ethnicity, or socio-economic background. “They don’t ask any questions from us,” she said. “They don’t ask for an ID. They value everybody where other agencies or groups might not.”

Sanfeliu said the firefighters’ ethos of self-sacrifice inspired her to memorialize those who gave their lives on 9/11. “Street naming is important,” she said, “because firehouses close, and all of the visible plaques and memorials are taken down.”

In 2008, Sanfeliu got the go-ahead from firefighters and their families to begin the arduous process of street-naming. But Sanfeliu said that the prospect of the bureaucracy did not stop her, explaining, “My family does not understand not doing something.”

The following summer of 2009 on weekend afternoons, she collected signatures from local residents approving the street names. On weekdays after work as a database manager at a settlement house in the Lower East Side, she put together paperwork for the street name applications, each of which required an essay justifying the new name, biographies of the fallen, endorsements from firefighters, and signatures from locals.

She spent most of 2010 watching her petition work its way from the local Transportation Committee, through the Community Board and then the City Council, all the way to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s desk. Although she did not need to, she showed up at each meeting with a group of activists and firefighters whom she had organized in advance. She thought their presence would increase her odds. On December 20, 2010, Sanfeliu, four firefighters and two activists attended the formal City Hall ceremony.

Those who know Sanfeliu are not surprised she saw it through. “She’s very determined,” said Lesold, “She doesn’t let anyone or anything stop her.” Captain Kendall said about her willpower, “The lady is a bulldog.” Regenhard, who has dealt with public committees for years for other projects said, “I know how arduous is the process of trying to get something done. It’s just amazing that she devoted so much of her personal time to it.”

Now that Sanfeliu successfully co-named the three streets, she is not sure precisely what her next step will be, but she said she will continue with her activism. “I am bilingual,” she said, “and I don’t understand ‘no’ in either language.”

Glass blown by Kevin Kutch at Pier Glass in Red Hook. (Lea Khayata/The Brooklyn Ink)

By Joe Deaux

When Kevin Kutch removes glass from the furnace it is actually in liquid form and measures at 2,150 degrees Fahrenheit – a temperature that is approximately equivalent to what the underbelly of the space shuttle endures when reentering Earth’s atmosphere. The egg-shaped blob of molten glass sticks to the end of Kutch’s five-foot pole, glowing deep orange. Wearing Kevlar gloves to withstand the heat, Kutch clutches the pole at the opposite end and runs water across the middle of it to cool it down, being careful not to let the water touch the glass.

“What’s magic about glass is the hotter it is, the softer it is. The cooler it is, the harder it is, right?” he says. He clenches the muscles in his throat when he speaks, which gives his voice a soft quality reminiscent of Kermit the Frog. A tall, slender man, Kutch, 59, has sandy-white hair, rectangular wire-rimmed glasses, a bushy mustache and broad shoulders that slump slightly forward. His white, v-neck shirt is tucked into relaxed-fit jeans that bunch up at the sneakers. As the pole begins to cool, he grasps it with his bare hands and blows into the end of it. The egg-shaped liquid begins to expand. Five minutes later he displays a finished drinking glass.

Kutch, who is originally from the Rolling Meadows suburb of the west side of Chicago, has blown glass for 30 years. He received a B.F.A. in sculpting at Metropolitan State College of Denver in Colorado, where he met his wife, Mary Ellen Buxton. Buxton and Kutch share ownership of their glass-blowing shop, Pier Glass, located at the southern piers of Red Hook, Brooklyn.

Kutch says he and Baxton are partners in every sense of the word, which quickly becomes obvious in their banter. Kutch answers a question, and Buxton adds to it. They talk about the challenge of glass restorations:

“I guess it comes down to how much time and money has one got to experiment for making formulas,” Buxton says.

“To find that perfect match,” Kutch adds.

“To make a perfect match, exactly,” Buxton says.

Kutch speaks about the many uses of glass:

“We only touch on a few percent of what’s possible,” he says.

Buxton hums in agreement. “Unless you have a school where it’s trying to hit such a broad…” she says and stops.

“Machine glass production,” says Kutch. About glass pieces in museums: “I’ve held a blown piece before the birth of Christ,” he says about an antique piece of glass. “It’s amazing,” Buxton says while looking at him and smiling.

Kutch’s first job was straight out of college, doing glass grinding and polishing at a Denver studio called Blake St. Glass. He became a manager at the studio, and used his sculpting skills to shape cold glass. It was here that he learned how to blow glass.

With his background in sculpting, he eventually realized that glass was wonderful to shape. “Glass was just a wonderful material to make three-dimensional art out of,” Kutch says. “And what they do with glass, you know, I mean the sides of buildings are covered in this stuff. You drive down the road at 70 miles an hour, a piece of glass keeps that rock from hitting you in the teeth,” he chuckles. “You drink out of your glass, you know, I mean there’s so much glass out there and it’s used in so many different ways. Right?” In college he imagined he would end up sculpting steel, that desire changed when he became a glass artisan.

In 1991 Kutch and Buxton moved from Colorado to New York because Kutch was offered a position as the new studio director at a place now known as Urban Glass. By 1994, he and his wife were ready to open their own glass studio in Red Hook. They have worked at various locations in Red Hook, settling into their current, larger location in 2007. Customers typically are people who buy the few vases and cups they have on display, individuals who want specially crafted pieces, and museum curators who want the couple to restore their glass artwork or create pieces that mimic historical glassworks.

Kutch does most of the actual glass blowing and Buxton assists. The process is complicated, even for a simple water glass. First Kutch draws an image of the glass on the floor of his workspace with a piece of chalk to envision what the finished product will look like. Then Kutch grasps a steel pole and inserts it into a massive furnace that contains melted glass; the glass sticks to the pole, which Kutch begins to rotate to even out the liquid. He pulls the pole from the furnace and rests it over a barrel of water to cool, being careful not let the water get near to the glass, which would make it cool and harden. Next, he blows into the pole, which is hollow, like a pipe, to form an air bubble inside the liquid glass. The air bubble forcibly expands the glass and gives it its initial shape.

At a second work station, Kutch rests the pole on two vertical metal slats and it rolls left to right so that gravity does not force the liquid to droop downwards and lose its even shape. If he needed to make the glass hotter to better mold it, Kutch would put the liquid into another oven called the “glory hole” that is slightly cooler than the furnace. Instead, Kutch uses a “block” (a wooden handle attached to a cherry-wood cup) and a damp pad of old newspapers to form the glass evenly, and, with a “pair-of-jacks” tool shaped like a large pair of tweezers, fashions a thin neck and the base of the cup.

Suddenly, he abandons the glass for no more than a moment and returns with another pole that has the slightest bit of melted glass on the end. He then takes the new pole and sticks it on the bottom center of the drinking cup that still clings to the original pole. Two polls bookend the glass. He pulls out a large pair of tweezers and strikes the area near the thin neck that he created on the original pole. The cup breaks away and forms an open hole on the glass where the pole was connected. He sticks the pair-of-jacks into the new hole on the glass and slowly widens the hole while evenly rotating the glass. The hole’s diameter grows from half an inch to 4. Finally, he breaks the bottom of the cup off the new pole. The drinking glass is finished. Kutch puts it into a storing unit so that the glass can cool and harden.

The cup took Kutch only five minutes, half the time he said it would probably take. Speed is essential to success in this craft, he says, because one must finish molding before glass cools and hardens. Suddenly Kutch grabs another pole, dips it into the furnace, extracts the liquid glass and quickly cools it over the bucket of water. He grabs the pair-of-jacks, clenches the end of the glass and begins stretching it out. He continues to stretch the glass, flapping his arms slowly, like a bird. The glass is long and thin and growing, until it measures eight-feet in length and only a few centimeters in diameter. It looks like a whip.

He pinches the glass to prove that it is completely cooled, bends it into a “U”-shape – and it shatters.

He smiles. “With glass, you could build a building out of nothing but glass, taller than the Empire State Building. It has the compression strength, it has the tensile strength. Everything. Right? The only problem is if somebody tapped the cornerstone,” Kutch smacks the pair-of-jacks against some nearby steel, “it would all explode,” he says. “Glass does bend, it bends an amazing amount. But when it fails, it fails catastrophically. Steel, when it fails, bends. When glass fails, it disintegrates,” he chuckles.

Before he begins to close the shop, he goes over to the furnace and dips in one last pole. He takes it out and blows the glass into a balloon. The only difference between an actual balloon and this one is that when Kutch lets go of the glass balloon it does not float. It crashes to the ground and shatters at his sneakers. He looks up and grins through his mustache.

Amato’s struggle is one of many identical fights over zoning in the neighborhood, a battle that has been going on for years. In 1961, the city zoned the five boroughs for the first time and designated almost all of Red Hook for manufacturing.

Historically, it had always been a mixed-use neighborhood with factories and houses standing side by side. Coffey Street, for example, is zoned manufacturing even though one side of the block between Ferris and Conover streets is lined with 19^th century brick houses.

Department of City Planning zoning of Red Hook. (Credit: The Manhattan Institute)

But manufacturing has been on the decline in the area for decades and the demand for housing is growing in the city, leading to a growing movement to revitalize Red Hook around a core of new housing. The advocates in the community and allies like the conservative Manhattan Institute for Policy Research are pushing for rezoning to convert the M zones to residential or MX (mixed-use).

Part of the community has been advocating for decades for more housing as the key to redevelopment of the neighborhood and their voices are getting stronger. The Red Hook Civic Association paired with local businesses and proposed a plan with guidelines for developing the area around the creating of 2,600 housing units.

During the first half of the twentieth century, maritime industry was thriving in Red Hook. The Erie Basin was a major shipping hub and the Atlantic Dock Company was the most important employer in the neighborhood. Longshoremen would live in Red Hook and walk to work every day.

Containerization in the 1950’s ended Red Hook’s status as a major harbor. Big shipping companies preferred to move their business to New Jersey’s larger harbor. The land on the waterfront was abandoned and seized by the city, which undertook major reconstruction projects, demolishing some warehouses and renovating others. Maritime workers left the neighborhood, unable to find a job.

The neighborhood then went through a dark period plagued with crime and drug. New Yorkers didn’t go there, it was considered too dangerous.

In the last twenty years, Red Hook has undergone a revitalization process. Local businesses have flourished on Van Brunt Street, from restaurants to clothing shops, and the number of people moving to Red Hook is increasing every day. People come to the waterfront during the weekend, whether by car, by bike or by ferry. They go to the Ikea and the Fairway supermarket, which both opened in 2004, visit the farmer’s market and enjoy the sun on Valentino Pier, watching the fishermen set their lines on the dock facing the Statue of Liberty.

Despite this renewed interest, Red Hook’s population is still only half of the 20,000 people who lived there in the 60s.

“It means that Red Hook has the infrastructure to accommodate a much more bigger population.” says Mitchell Korbey, an urban planner and land use attorney in New York City and a former director of the Department of City Planning’s Brooklyn office.

The movement to redevelop Red Hook around the twin pillars of rezoning and new housing began in 1994 with Plan Red Hook.

Red Hook, a Plan for Revitalization, identified guidelines to turn Red Hook into a dynamic neighborhood where light industry and mixed-income housing could cohabit harmoniously.

In addition to the extra 2,600 housing units, the plan identified thirteen blocks on Van Brunt Street down to the waterfront to be rezoned from manufacture to mixed-use, precisely to reach this balance between housing and industry. The plan only enunciates recommendations in the hope that they will be followed when decisions concerning the neighborhood will have to be taken by the City or the Community Board. The City approved a lighter version of the plan in 1996, but it isn’t binding in any way.

For example, only a portion of those thirteen blocks was rezoned in 2004 as a private zone change. It belonged to Greg O’Connell, Red Hook’s biggest landowner. He was consequently able to turn the Civil War era warehouse he bought into a Fairway supermarket, adding rental housing units on top of the building. A member of the Community Board, O’Connell first opposed the plan advocating for this area to be rezoned.

One of the main arguments in favor of keeping zoning as it is in Red Hook is that there is still some unused land in the residential zone and that no change should be made before this space is occupied. Tom Angotti, an urban planning professor at Hunter’s college who worked on the plan, refutes that idea: “It’s strictly a market approach. It’s logical from a short planned point of view but if the Department of City Planning were real planners, they would see beyond that to what is needed for Red Hook’s future.”

For John McGettrick, a member of the Red Hook Civic Association, the math is simple: “More housing means more workers for the area, and more customers for local businesses.” It also means replacing industry with houses, and raising the value of the land, if one takes the other point of view on the question.

Officially, the Department of City Planning keeps an “open door policy” to any zone change request. But Red Hook’s waterfront has been identified as an Industrial Business Zone (IBZ). According to the mayor’s office website, “the IBZs represent areas in which the City provides expanded assistance services to industrial firms in partnership with local development groups.  In addition, IBZs reflect a commitment by the City not to support the re-zoning of industrial land for residential use within these areas.”

Manufacture is not dead in Red Hook. “It is certainly changing, and niche manufacturing, particularly in the food industry and design, is still on the rise. “ says Southwest Brooklyn Industrial Development Corporation (SBIDC) executive director, Josh Keller. Those activities are compatible with M zonings, and even protected by them, because the zoning designation ensures low rents. If it was to be switched to MX zoning, the price of rent would rise and small manufacturing businesses might get pushed out by commerce or housing.

Jay Amato, the unlucky owner of the corner of Van Brunt and Conover Streets, thinks his construction permit was rejected to avoid “setting an example” in the neighborhood. According to him, a lot of people expressed interest in his project and in reproducing it in Red Hook.

Amato didn’t want to build just one more building in Red Hook. He wanted to build a house that wouldn’t consume any energy, a project he labeled “Red Hook Green”. Renewable technologies were to provide the house with the energy it needed, making it completely independent from the traditional energy suppliers.

Amato has been blogging about it for a little more than a year, and now considers attracting too much attention on the project might have been a mistake after all. He is considering going for a variance – an appeal that would take between one and two years and cost him as much as $100,000 in various fees, with no guarantee of succeeding. It would allow him to build his house despite the zoning, a process many people decide to go through in the neighborhood to get around the zoning issue.

But some disagree with this strategy. Greg O’Connell, who built the Fairway and owns more than 80 properties in Red Hook considers zoning in Red Hook as the chance to keep it as a balanced neighborhood. “People want to live here. I can understand why and there’s nothing wrong with that. But the small business owners are happy here and it’s productive for them. If you lose the working waterfront, if you give it up to residential development, you never get it back.” said O’Connell to the Center for an Urban Future in 2005.

The zoning issue is at the heart of Red Hook’s future. Keeping the dominant M zoning on the waterfront would preserve and supposedly bring back industries to the neighborhood, a prospect about which there is much skepticism among developers like Amato.

“It’s like waiting for Santa Claus to come,” he says.

On the other hand, allowing for more residential zoning has its own risks. It would bring more people to Red Hook, but some fear the threat of high-rise building being erected on the waterfront and pushing away manufactures.

For Mitchell Korbey, Red Hook is a very complicated area, with a lot of history and undergoing changes. “It is hard to strike the right balance.”

Andrew Coté, president of the New York City Beekeepers Association, and Vivian Wang, from the Natural Resources Defense Council, went to the cherry factory in Red Hook to pinpoint where the bees were pollinating and how they could stop it, reports The Consumerist.

It looks like the bees are dipping in the syrup while vats of it are being transported. “It doesn’t take much,” Wang said. “Once one forager finds a source like that, they’re back at the hive waggling to let all of their fellow workers know about it.”

Parents walking toward Valentino Pier on a Sunday afternoon, at the corner of Ferris and Coffee street in Red Hook, Brooklyn. (Lea Khayata/The Brooklyn Ink)

By Lea Khayata

On a late weekday afternoon, Valentino Pier Park, in the south west end of Red Hook, looks like any neighborhood park. Kids on their scooters and bikes are playing around the pier while their parents watch over them, enjoying a breathtaking view of the Statue of Liberty, before walking home on cobblestoned Coffey street. Ten years ago, a scene like this would have been impossible in this part of Red Hook.

Coffey street, the epicenter of Red Hook’s gentrification, was practically devoid of children in the past. Now, as more middle-class couples in their late thirties start families, the area is bustling with the shouts of young kids. One block away, the playground of the Red Hook Houses is even noisier, crowded with mostly older, African American or Hispanic children, living in the public housing project that accounts for two-thirds of the neighborhood population. The two crowds of children hardly ever play together.

Rachel Shapiro, a real-estate agent in Red Hook, says the gentrification process goes back 10 years, but she has noticed a change in demographics in the last two or three years, which she describes as a “kid boom”. In ten years, the proportion of white children at the Patrick F. Daly public school more than doubled, to 7 percent from 3 percent.

The block on Coffey street situated between Ferris and Conover street, with its old trees looking down on red brick houses built in 1865, has preserved the charm of Brooklyn’s old neighborhoods while undergoing some massive changes. John McGettrick, easily recognizable by his impressive white handlebar moustache, moved here 22 years ago with his wife, Rosemary, and their 5-year-old son. “He was the first kid on the block in a long time,” he says.

At the time, mostly old people lived on Coffey. “They all died or moved to Florida” says McGettrick. Of the 19 houses, four are still inhabited by the same people today. All the others have seen new owners coming in gradually, attracted by the affordable prices and the nearby waterfront. Today, there are seven children on the block, aged between one and eleven years old, according to McGettrick.

Stacie Merrol, 37, moved on Coffey street a year ago when she was pregnant with her first child. She takes advantage of the relative calm of the late afternoon, when older kids have left, to walk down the pier with her baby sleeping in a stroller. She used to live in Williamsburg. She says this part of Red Hook is “a hidden gem,” a paradise not many people know about. “We met a lot of people with young kids, we didn’t know that before moving in.” she says.

Another mother, Sophie Frey, anticipates a less idyllic experience with her daughter, who just turned one year old. “We’re really happy here, but as she’s going to grow up, here is not the best place to give her values” Frey says. She mentions the foul language children from the houses use in the park, and how their parents talk to them.

McGettrick has heard similar complaints. “Some concerns are legitimate, like petty crime and drug use,” he said, “[It’s] a phenomenon that is not unique to people in public houses, and some [complaints] are excessive.”

Red Hook is in a “holding pattern,” but he remains optimistic: “Children are a sign of hope; it means people consider the neighborhood as safe and nurturing.” But the separation between the children of Coffey street and the ones of the public houses is a reality. “It is not so much racial as economic” McGettrick says, “and they do mingle on some limited occasions”.

The public school, PS15, is common ground for both groups. This year, Stephanie Batcholder made the decision to take the plunge and put 5-year-old Margot in the school.

“I thought Margot would be a private school kid. [But now] she’s a PS15 one.” She says she consulted with some of her friends whose children went to the school two or three years ago and are doing great, but she still feels conflicted: “We all wish we could give back to the community and change things a little bit, but the reality is that a lot of people are scared.”

]]> http://thebrooklynink.com/2010/11/18/19612-the-%e2%80%9ckid-boom%e2%80%9d-in-gentrified-red-hook/feed/ 0