NYC to Take Over Brooklyn Marine Terminal to Give Mixed-Use Facelift
The plan calls for renovating the piers and add retail and housing to the 122-acre site
By Mark Hallum May 14, 2024 1:53 pm
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The Brooklyn Marine Terminal and Howland Hook Marine Terminal on Staten Island will both be redeveloped into modern shipping facilities, with the city planning to add housing and retail on the Brooklyn site.
The city will take over control of the Brooklyn Marine Terminal in Red Hook from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to renovate the piers and other infrastructure, but also to build housing on 122 acres of land. Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams announced Tuesday an initial $95 million investment to partner with the Port Authority and the New York City Economic Development Corporation (EDC) for the work on the Brooklyn site.
“By assuming control of the Brooklyn Marine Terminal in Red Hook, in our city government’s largest real estate transaction in recent memory, our administration is demonstrating that we will continue to deliver big wins for New Yorkers, day after day,” Adams said in a statement. “The potential for this area is limitless, and we’re excited to work with the local community, our fellow elected officials, and key stakeholders to come up with a plan.”
It’s unclear how much housing and community amenities will be built on the 122-acre section of land in Red Hook and the Columbia Street Waterfront District, but Piers 7, 8 and 10 will be repaired and a $15 million electric container crane will be built for the facility, according to the Adams administration.
Under an amended lease between New York City and the Port Authority, the Port Authority now will have full control over 225-acre Howland Hook Marine Terminal on Staten Island. The operator of the facility — CMA CGM — will invest $200 million in new facilities, expanding capacity by 50 percent over the next seven years and make sustainability upgrades, according to the city.
The upgrades will allow up to 750,000 container lifts each year at Howland Hook, on the northwest corner of Staten Island.
Howland Hook and the Brooklyn Marine Terminal aren’t the city’s only ports set for increased financing from the city and state.
While the city recently signed a five-year extension for the Red Hook Container Terminal’s operating agreement, the EDC will assume control of the facility, which will focus on micro-mobility of containers to keep trucks off city streets, something Red Hook residents have longed complained about.
Hochul’s administration has committed about $15 million to build a cold-storage facility at the terminal that will reduce the need to get perishable goods off site pronto. Instead, by allowing temporary cold storage, goods can be transported during off-peak times and in a way that reduces the traffic impacts on surrounding communities, according to the administration, which referred to these as “blue highways.”
The Adams administration is also applying for up to $350 million from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Transportation to cover the additional costs of the cold-storage project, for which the estimated total cost was not made immediately clear.
“This deal represents an exciting opportunity to define what the waterfront of the future looks like in New York — from delivering our ‘blue highways’ and taking truck traffic that snarls our streets and chokes our communities off the road, to a mixed-use waterfront that provides respite for New Yorkers and environmental infrastructure for a changing climate,” Deputy Mayor for Operations Meera Joshi said in a statement.
Mark Hallum can be reached at mhallum@commercialobserver.com.
