November 11, 2006: Vol. 29, No. 44

The Queen Mary 2 has set sail from Red Hook for the last time this season — and already Brooklyn longshoremen are calling for the one-summer-old terminal to operate year-round.

“We hope that next year the boats will keep coming through the winter, ” said Lou Pernice, vice president of the International Longshoremen Association.

An expansion is part of the city’s long-term vision for the Red Hook piers — a plan that would replace the city’s last large-scale container shipping port with a second cruise terminal and a smaller industrial port as well as a “maritime-themed” education center, a hotel and a tourist-friendly manufacturing facility for Brooklyn Brewery.

But even with that expansion already well into its public planning phase, city officials aren’t ready to say if winter-cruising is in Red Hook’s cards for 2007, although one official did mention that ice-cruising was “big in Europe.”

“[The first terminal has already] brought international media attention to Brooklyn and Red Hook … and creat[ed] over 300 jobs,” said Janel Patterson, a spokeswoman for the city Economic Development Corporation.

Cunard, which brought the Queen Mary 2 to Brooklyn, did not return phone calls about making Red Hook a year-round port of call. But a spokeswoman said the company was very pleased so far with its Brooklyn homeport.

Sunday’s QM2 departure was the 38th and last of the season — and unlike the first one, it went quite smoothly, with no traffic jams or lost taxi-cabs.

“We’re operating like clockwork now,” said John Marrone, a baggage and cargo handler who also divides his time between the cruise terminal and the American Stevedoring Container Terminal, which operates year-round next door.

The ship made its maiden Brooklyn voyage in April, dropping anchor to a crowd of view-hungry Brooklynites who rallied outside of the terminal’s fences, eagerly aiming cell-phone cameras at the Colgate-white 1,132-foot Queen.

Frenzy for the luxury liner soon dropped off, yet some in Red Hook said they saw the neighborhood’s cachet rise like the mast of the ship.

“We are seeing more tourists just visiting Red Hook,” said Florence Neal, who runs the Kentler International Drawing Space art gallery on Van Brunt Street.

Ironically, most of the new tourists are locals. Business owners in the neighborhood say they have yet to experience the expected flood of Bermuda-shorts-wearing cruisers.

Even if the terminal hasn’t transformed Red Hook into a gleaming tourist attraction, there have been some small victories, local say.

“We got a crowd of crazy Welsh engineers every nine days when the Crown Princess [another ship that calls Brooklyn home] came in,” said Audrey Reynolds, a bartender at the Bait and Tackle bar, one block from the terminal.

“They drink a lot and get super-messed up, but it’s good for the bar.”

©2006 The Brooklyn Paper