‘A layer cake of environmental pollution’: Greenpoint struggles with rezoning 18 years on
12 photos
The newest section of Bushwick Inlet Park, which opened in 2022, is next to the former site of the Bayside Fuel Oil Depot.
This section of Bushwick Inlet Park, at 50 Kent Avenue, opened in 2022, after a lengthy state-desginated Superfund remediation process cleaned up coal tar and other pollutants in the soil.
In 2008, 50 Kent Avenue was home to a NYC Sanitation Department garage and, prior to that, the Williamsburg Works Manufactured Gas Plant. After the sanitation garage was demolished, the site was used for several years as a location for the Brooklyn Flea Market and outdoor music shows.
The park space at 50 Kent Avenue looks out onto the former site of the Bayside Fuel Oil Depot, whose oil storage tanks were demolished in 2019. The depot site has not yet been remediated.
The waterfront of the Greenpoint Terminal Market, photographed in 2018. A large portion of this historic manufacturing complex was burned down in an enormous fire in 2006, after the rezoning passed.
Today, the footprint of the burned buildings has yet to be redeveloped and opened to the public. Instead, it is home to the Skyline Drive In movie theater and NYC Glamping, where visitors can camp on the waterfront, inside a shipping container.
The Huxley Envelope warehouse at the foot of Huron and India Street, photographed in 2013. The abandoned waterfront piers here were a popular destination for local residents.
Today the same site is home to a public esplanade and playground built as part of The Greenpoint, a 40-story apartment tower erected after a brownfield remediation project removed the site’s hazardous waste and oil tanks.
Huron Street, photographed in 2013, when it was still lined with one story warehouses. The Huxley Envelope site was located at the dead end of this street.
Huron Street today is nearly unrecognizable. The 40-story tower of The Greenpoint is on the left, and a new tower is under construction on the right, as part of a luxury condominium development called The Huron.
The fenced off waterfront at the northern end of Greenpoint, photographed in 2013. Much of the shoreline here was used for truck parking lots and construction equipment storage yards.
The same stretch of waterfront at the northern end of Greenpoint is now home to Greenpoint Landing, where several residential towers have now been completed