Ahead of key Brooklyn Marine Terminal redevelopment vote, Reynoso voices opposition

A vote that could transform a segment of Brooklyn's waterfront is scheduled for Thursday after several delays.

The Brooklyn Marine Terminal Task Force will decide on a proposal from the city's Economic Development Corporation after multiple delays to redevelop the outdated port complex and build thousands of new housing units.

But it’s faced opposition from some Red Hook locals over its large scale and the fact that it's going around the city's typical land use process.

Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso is a member of the task force that will vote on the project. He's opposed to the current proposal, and he joined WNYC’s Sean Carlson to discuss his vision for the facility and why he feels the redevelopment process has gone awry.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Sean Carlson: Can you describe the current state of the marine terminal and why redevelopment of the site is necessary?

Antonio Reynoso: After decades of neglect by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the piers in the Brooklyn Marine Terminal have fallen to significant disrepair and have made it so that the amount of work that can happen on our ports — it's inconsequential to the greater transportation of goods in the City of New York. We have a significant amount of square footage that is completely useless. It's just a port that at this point is working maybe to 10% of its capacity.

Can you briefly describe your opposition to the project in its current state?

This is supposed to be a once-in-a-generation opportunity to really do something big here. And the City of New York hasn't put forth a process that speaks to a once-in-a-generation opportunity. And an example of that is, we've seen the rezoning in Gowanus. We've seen the rezoning that happened in the Atlantic Yards a while back and now Atlantic Avenue with the AAMUP rezoning.

We have these opportunities that come up that people spend six, seven [years], even a decade worth of work to get right. In this one, we've spent 10 months on it. And we can tell that the process has been a mess. We can tell that there's huge issues with what I call taking a port project and turning it into a housing project. And in order to make it work in 10 months, the City of New York has had to make it so that some task force members are getting side deals that are not necessarily a part of a port-only project on the [Brooklyn Marine Terminal]. And now we just have this monstrosity of a plan that really doesn't speak to this port-only economic development.

You say that this is a port project, not a housing project. Do you mean that the whole site should stay a port?

Originally, the presentation to us was that it is a port-first project and that any housing that would be built would be built specifically to offset the cost of the construction and maintenance of the port. Quickly into this process, we found out that that was not [the Economic Development Corporation's] plan.

EDC wanted housing first, and the port has now become second fiddle to the housing that they want to build here. And you can tell by the more than 50% of the port square footage [that] has been taken specifically for housing. So because of that, we've gotten into a little bit of a mess where we have some manufacturing and industrial advocates that thought they were going in to assist a plan that was going to allow for port operation, [but] instead have been brought into a plan that is largely a housing project.

One of your criticisms of the EDC's proposal is that you say it prioritizes market-rate housing, but 40% of the units pegged for this development are affordable. Is that better than zero affordable housing units being built in such a coveted neighborhood in Brooklyn?

I just want to be clear. I do not object to the housing on this project at all, and I do not object to the market-rate housing. I don't have any contention with the housing portion of this or the affordability of it.

You have opposed housing projects near the Botanic Garden in Brooklyn, and this one on the Red Hook waterfront, saying both present unique concerns. In your estimation, where is it OK for housing to be built in Brooklyn and what other areas are off limits?

We have an abundance of areas or spaces in Brooklyn to build housing. It's an infinite number of space. Where I don't want to build is on parks and manufacturing. Those are the two exclusions that I think are completely reasonable.

I've approved every single project in the borough, or supported every single housing project in the borough, except those two. One of them was going to threaten the growth of plants and foliage and the work of the botanic garden and its mission. And this one is, right now, going to encroach significantly into the little manufacturing we have in the city of New York.

So again, I just think that we have a scarcity mindset here, where we have an unlimited amount of space to build in Brooklyn. And we have to be careful about thinking that building in a park or building on manufacturing is going to be the only way we get out of this hole.

Now again, the task force is going to vote on this proposal [Thursday]. If it doesn't survive the vote, what is next for the future of the marine terminal and then also the Columbia Street Waterfront neighborhood right next to it?

I think the city of New York needs to take a step back. They keep postponing the vote when they don't have it for a week or two weeks. In that time, no significant changes can happen to the project. What they need to do is take a step back, have a conversation with anybody that is opposed to it, and see if we can structurally modify the plan to a place or a way where we can get to a yes.

It doesn't need to be dead. We don't need to vote no, and it'd be no forever. I think that EDC and the task force leadership need to give us some time to have real conversations about the changes that we would need to get to a yes, instead of what they're doing now, which is taking two weeks to try to get one person or two people to agree to a yes through non-port-related non-[marine terminal]-related items. And it seems like the people that are opposed to it are holding the line and saying that they just don't like the plan that's being presented to us by EDC and the leadership of the task force.

Can you speak more specifically about what you're talking about in terms of people on the task force being swayed by EDC?

This was a port-only project. If it was an economic development project, for example, in Queens, and they're redoing LaGuardia Airport, they don't go and have a conversation about building housing on LaGuardia Airport. It's an airport.

This port should speak to the same issues. We should be moving goods. And instead, the city opened up Pandora's box and allowed for individual task members to negotiate individual items that have nothing to do with the movement of goods or the port itself, or its port operations.

What I think we need to do is take a step back, refocus and start talking about a port-first project that would have housing in it, should it support the sustainability and the construction of a port operation. And it doesn't seem like EDC is open to that, or they've allowed too many hands to come into the pile.