City officials shocked waterfront activists this week, announcing that
a nearly half-million-dollar, taxpayer-funded plan for the future of Piers
6-12 — completed just last month — was “outdated.”
The study, for which the city Economic Development Corporation and the
Port Authority of New York and New Jersey jointly paid a consulting firm
more than $400,000, was originally scheduled for completion in January.
Last week, after months of stonewalling, EDC officials acknowledged that
the study had been completed, but said it would not release it to the
public.
On Monday, confronted with The Brooklyn Papers’ exclusive report
on their agency’s refusal to release the pier study — and with
a Freedom of Information request pending — an EDC official said the
agency would release the analysis, but then called it all but worthless.
“We changed our mind,” said EDC Vice President Andrew Genn,
pressed by a Community Board 6 waterfront committee member to explain
the discrepancy between his statement and The
Papers’ May 22 article, which quoted an EDC spokesman as saying
the agency would not release the study.
And while that news came as something of a relief to Red Hook residents
and merchants at the May 24 committee meeting, most of them were fuming
when Genn went on to call the study “outdated,” “more food
for thought than anything else” and merely “an education process.”
The community had been led to believe that the study, performed by Hamilton
Rabinowitz & Alschuler, the same consulting firm that prepared a master
plan for Brooklyn Bridge Park, would be used by the city as a blueprint
for the future of the piers.
John Alschuler, a principal of the firm, held several contentious meetings
with residents who were largely concerned with maintaining the piers for
active maritime uses. The public was told that their input at those meetings
would be taken into consideration by the consultants.
American Stevedoring owner Sabato “Sal” Catucci, whose company
operates a containerport out of all but one of those piers, had several
heated exchanges with Alschuler at those meetings and even went so far
as to host his own public meeting on the city’s plans for the piers.
Catucci estimates that his company lost half its business since the study
was first announced 17 months ago, saying word of the initiative cast
doubt as to whether American Stevedoring had a long-term future on the
Brooklyn waterfront. The company’s lease on the piers expired at
the end of April and as this went to press the company was negotiating
with the city for a lease renewal for some of the piers.
“Do you know how many shipping lines have left?” CB6 member
Celia Cacace asked Genn on Monday.
Waterfront committee member Matt Yates, who is director of operations
for American Stevedoring, said after the meeting, “We’re shocked
and appalled that a city agency in charge of ports would need to waste
half a million dollars on a study that almost closed the port, in order
to educate themselves.
“For a fraction of that cost and at no harm to the port some of EDC’s
staff could have attended maritime school,” he chided.
Carolina Salguero, a CB6 waterfront committee member who maintains waterfrontmatters.org
— a CB6 Web site dedicated to keeping the public informed on the
study — also criticized EDC on Monday night.
“Since we’ve given you all such a really terrific education,
how about we get paid?” Salguero asked Genn derisively.
“I have not been paid a whiff for waterfrontmatters,” she said,
referring to the Web site. “John Alschuler, and his firm walked off
with half a million dollars. As a taxpayer and an overworked citizen,
this is not funny,” Salguero said.
At Monday’s meeting, Genn said the EDC had provided a copy of the
study to the CB6 office.
Craig Hammerman, district manager of CB6, said there had been some confusion,
and that the board received information on the cruise ship study, but
not the pier study.
Sherman said a copy would be available to The Papers by Monday.
“If they were not going to include the community after this long
delay, all they’ve done is waste time and money,” said Evan
Thies, a spokesman for City Councilman David Yassky, who is chairman of
the council’s waterfront committee.
Even a Port Authority spokesman expressed shock that the city wanted to
shelve what was intended as a master plan for the piers.
“Our intention is to use this study as a planning document as we
work with the city to determine the future of these piers,” Port
Authority spokesman Steve Coleman told The Papers.
As to the EDC’s claim that the study was outdated, Coleman said,
“Most of the data was just collected last summer and early fall.
I can’t believe something would be that outdated if it just occurred
a few months ago.”
“We were looking for a joint release of the study,” the Port
Authority spokesman said. “It was always our intent to get the information
to the pubic.”
Not everyone was displeased with the city’s withholding of the pier
study.
A spokesman for Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a staunch proponent of maintaining
the working waterfront in Red Hook, said, “A lot of the conclusions
that John Alschuler made were wrong and the study seemed biased from the
beginning.
“And the failure to release a biased study maybe shows the city has
reconsidered its view on it, which is a positive step.”
Spokesman Robert Gottheim went on to say, “It seemed like the assumption
was that the container port must go and we need housing or a continuation
of Brooklyn Bridge Park. And what you heard from the community is, ‘We
like the container port.’”
The congressman, who represents most of the western Brooklyn waterfront,
supports eventually moving the container port to the South Brooklyn Marine
Terminal, in Sunset Park, because of rail access at that site.
He is a major proponent of developing a cross-harbor freight tunnel between
Brooklyn and either Staten Island or New Jersey using rail lines.
An announcement on the Red Hook Piers and South Brooklyn Marine Terminal
is expected sometime in mid-summer, Genn said on Monday.
Called by The Papers repeatedly this week, EDC spokesmen were evasive,
and then offered either vague or contradictory replies when asked to clarify
the confusion over the agency’s stance both on releasing the study
and its worth in planning the future of the piers.
Spokesman Michael Sherman, who agreed to answer only e-mailed questions,
sent back a list of mostly vague answers at deadline on Thursday.
Asked why Genn — who later on in the May 24 meeting revealed that
the withheld pier study called for cargo-related uses on piers 7, 8 and
9 and for cruise ship docks on piers 11 and 12 — called the study
“outdated,” Sherman e-mailed, “During the course of the
study, the introduction of cruise activity in Brooklyn emerged as a feasible
and attractive use.
“The pursuit of such options broadened the scope of analysis that
we subsequently engaged in.”
But as early as December 2002, officials acknowledged that a pier study
was on the horizon while at the same time the city was in negotiations
to bring cruise lines to at least one of those piers.