The world’s largest passenger ship, the Queen Mary 2, is coming to
Red Hook in April — and local businesses can’t wait to get a
piece of the action. But the real money won’t be spent by the folks
in the Bermuda shorts and velour jumpsuits.
Because Brooklyn will not be a “port of call” for the QM2 and
other cruise ships, Red Hook businesses are instead focussing their attention
on the 800-1,000 galley cooks, porters, butlers, housekeepers, waiters
and other service personnel that work aboard the colossal crafts that
will soon make Brooklyn their homeport.
“The passengers will be carted in and out. We won’t get much
[business] from that,” said Arnaud Earhart, a co-owner of 360, a
popular French restaurant on Van Brunt Street.
Most passengers will experience Red Hook from the window of a cab or bus
taking them to or from the gangplank, but hundreds of workers will spill
out of the hold looking for toothpaste, CDs, long-distance call centers,
and other staples that are six times the price on board.
And it’ll happen 40 times a year, starting with the Queen Mary on
April 15, according to port officials.
“The ships could make or break these businesses,” said Michael
Skolimowski, a chef at the Pioneer Inn, who was chatting with neighbors
on Van Brunt Street on a recent Friday evening.
Looking around at the fairly empty street, he added, “They need all
the help they can get.”
Business owners say they are struggling mainly because there are just
not enough people around to shop. Even if there were destination stores
in the neighborhood — like the forthcoming Ikea and Fairway —
there is no subway to get people there, meaning most customers will drive
in and out.
Worse, unemployment in Red Hook is higher than the city average, so residents
don’t have the kind of disposable income to support more than just
the bare basics.
“We need an infusion of jobs,” said John Cleary, a resident
who was chatting with friends at the VFW Hall on Van Brunt Street. “The
manufacturing jobs are all gone.”
The cruise ships will change that — a little.
The ship terminal will generate 290 zjobs, ranging from management to
customer service to stevedoring. Economic Development Corporation Vice
President Andrew Genn said the jobs will be posted within three weeks.
And of course, not everyone has written off the cruise ship passengers
themselves.
Borough President Markowitz told The Brooklyn Papers that his office will
ensure that Brooklyn travel brochures are in every stateroom as ships
pull into the homeport.
“The idea is to capture whatever business we can,” Markowitz
said. “If someone has six hours before their flight, we want to keep
them in Brooklyn.”
Whether passengers spend much time in the neighborhood or not, the rising
cruise ship terminal, which is being constructed at the foot of Pioneer
Street, has launched a new round of soul-searching in the hardscrabble
’hood. Many believe this is Red Hook’s last, best hope to seize
its future by reclaiming its past.
“We need to make our neighborhood look like an historic waterfront
community, capitalizing on its deep maritime history,” said Dave
Lutz, executive director of the Neighborhood Open Space Coalition.
At a minimum, he said he’d like to see benches, trees and decorative
lighting — and a plan to handle all the new traffic headed to the
pier, Ikea and Fairway.
“So far, all they’ve done is paint a stripe,” he said referring
to a newly paved road around the piers. Traffic to the terminal will
enter on Bowne St. a block and a half south of Hamilton Avenue from Van
Brunt, the neighborhood’s main commercial strip.
Ikea and Fairway will sit on the south side of the neighborhood.
“We are getting squeezed on both ends,” said John McGettrick,
co-chair of the Red Hook Civic Association.
Genn said that the city has improved the streets and sidewalks immediately
near the terminal, and it is interested in reviving an entire neighborhood
that has suffered from so many disastrous development, economic and transportation
decisions over the years.
But further work will have to wait for now, as every available dime is
being spent building the terminal on old docks that cost a fortune to
overhaul, Genn said.
That makes some Red Hook residents fearful that the real work of repairing
the neighborhood will never get done. For now, at least, the city has
shown little interest in the neighborhood beyond the pier.
In September, for example, the first cruise ship, the Oriana, made a special
one-day landing at the pier — but when Red Hook residents ran down
to the water to gawk, they were not allowed to join the fun.
“We were standing at the fence looking in,” said Earhart, motioning
how he shook the fence helplessly. “We were not thrilled with that.”
Similar festivities are planned for the Queen Mary on April 15, and McGettrick,
said he and others are working with the city to see this doesn’t
happen again.
“I was so excited when the whistle woke me up,” said lifetime
Red Hook resident Sue Amendola, whose father was a longshoreman. “It
was just like when we were kids. I said to my sister, ‘Get up, get
up, the ships are in!’”
Almost any effort to revive the neighborhood would please Amendola, who
shows visitors the lifeless buildings where once there were homes and
business. It all changed in the early 1960s, when a container ship port
moved in and the city condemned the land in hopes of one day expanding
it.
As a result, McGettrick said, people could no longer get mortgages, expand
their homes or even replace one if it burned down. The population is half
of what is was, he said.
