Red Hook Residents Want Say in Development of 'Red Hoek Point' Site

RED HOOK, BROOKLYN — Red Hook residents were given their first public presentation Thursday on a major development proposal that would bring hundreds of thousands of feet of new office and retail space to the peninsula's waterfront.

Their reaction, in brief: it's pretty, but will it work for Red Hook?

Red Hoek Point is being bankrolled by Thor Equities, which purchased the 280 Richards St. property in 2005 for $40 million, as reported by Curbed.

The developer envisions two four story timber office structures with retail on the first floor and a public promenade around them.

An October press release sent out by the company said the buildings would hold "795,000 square feet of creative office space on three levels, and 23,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space."

But at Thursday's presentation, given before the land use committee of Community Board 6, Ethan Goodman, a project manager with Fox Rothschild who is working with Thor, provided different numbers: 620,000 square feet of office space, with 25,000 square feet of retail.

The buildings would be set back from Beard Street by between 60 and 75 feet, Goodman said.

The public waterfront esplanade around the structures, totaling 1.6 acres and stretching for 2,000 feet, would be open during daylight hours and maintained by the Parks Department, he said. The developments's Ikea-facing side would be for "eco-recreational" activities, such as kayaking (Thor plans to build a dock where the boats can be rented), while the area's western side would have a more industrial feel and be used for other maritime activities.

A central pathway between the buildings would provide both pedestrian and vehicular access, he said, with a design that would calm vehicle traffic and gradually yield to more pedestrian-exclusive areas.

Project manager Catherine Dannenbring said the buildings are being designed to be energy efficient and to collect storm water that falls on them, limiting their impact on the local sewers. To that end, they would each have an absorptive green roof, she said, with would also provide some space for solar panels and areas that could be leased by tenets, though their occupancy would be limited.

Thor's design falls within the site's zoning, with two exceptions: the company wants to build about 50 percent of the parking currently required, and is seeking adjustments to waterfront regulations to make its plans a reality. It needs waivers from the city on both accounts, and will be back before CB 6 on Dec. 22 in an attempt to get the board's backing for the parking change.

While the residents and board members assembled Thursday wanted to know more about the design, they had few criticisms of the renderings of Red Hoek Point itself. One even described the effort as "an incredibly impressive project."

However, during a question-and-answer period, the conversation quickly turned to the matter of community inclusiveness, and whether locals would have any meaningful input on the site's development or usage going forward.

"This is our first time seeing you," Red Hook community activist Karen Blondel said to the Thor representatives. "We're still looking to you to be a good neighbor and include us in [the] conversation."

Charlene Nimmons, another activist, said she had previously reached out to Thor about the project, but had been directed to a public relations firm, rather than to company officials.

"The only info that was being received was through the media," Nimmons said. "You only speak of your neighbors as Ikea and Fairway, not 38,000 residents in the area."

Blondel and Nimmons are helping to lead a group of concerned citizens known as the Red Hook Community Collaboration, which aims to get Thor's signature on a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) to ensure the project would benefit locals in tangible ways.

Residents currently wonder, for example, what companies and retailers would fill the buildings.

Goodman said that between 2,500 and 2,700 people would work there, while Dannenbring said the retailers would provide "amenities," rather than being destination-oriented, high-end stores.

But plans Thor has already filed with the city confirm that it sees the development as the home of "technical, media and communications professionals," in the words of one of its consulting firms.

That's not good enough for the Collaboration, which on Thursday delivered a draft CBA (embedded below) calling for 10 percent of any office space built to be dedicated to "Red Hoek Community Collaboration Initiatives," including a business incubator, a job training facility, a childcare program and space for arts and community events.

RHCC proposed CBA by JVS Patch on Scribd

While Goodman and Dannenbring didn't comment on the CBA itself, they said the company was, in Dannenbring's words, "eager to engage with all members of the community."

"We completely appreciate what you have to say," Dannenbring said to Blondel and Nimmons. "This is the beginning of a process. We're just getting started. We want to be good neighbors."

But David Estrada, chief of staff to Red Hook Councilman Carlos Menchaca, offered a stark assessment of what real engagement would look like.

Speaking on Menchaca's behalf, Estrada noted that Thor had met with Menchaca previous to Thursday's presentation. Even so, and by way of contextualizing his remarks, he first took a direct swipe at the city's engagement process concerning the Brooklyn Queens Connector, a proposed 17-mile light rail system that, if built, would run through both Sunset Park and Red Hook on its way to Astoria, Queens.

While the Economic Development Corporation and the Department of Transportation have been conducting public hearings for months on the project, Estrada said the city was still effectively telling residents they would get a tram "if you want it or not" while asking them to comment on inconsequential system details — as Estrada put it, whether they want a blue or green sticker on the train's side.

"Community engagement means nothing if the input of the community cannot" be built into the project, Estrada said to the Thor representatives.

Residents should be able to put forward ideas that produce "real changes" at the site, he continued, changes "set in terms [which are] sustainable, resilient [and] verifiable," and which would hold up over time.

Thor's representatives had said the right things on Thursday, Estrada said. But the company, he reminded them, is "also becoming a constituent and a neighbor" in the community.

Pictured at top: a rendering of the proposed Red Hoek Point. Rendering courtesy of Thor Equities.