They could do worse than Ikea. At least they seem to (from what I read) take a measured approach to where they consider building (more hearings, more planning for parking/traffic whereas, say, a Wal-Mart would just steamroll its way in) I also hear that a crappy Ikea job has better benefits, etc. than a crappy retail/restaurant job, which are the other plans for the area.

It's a more realistic plan to develop the area than the guy (I saw on the news this morning) who thinks the area would be better served as a "waterfront attraction" with restaurants, hotels, and park, creating a tourist attraction. Unless inroads were made for transport, and even then, I doubt tourists would schlepp all the way over there. Hell, I never go over there and I live in Brooklyn.

Although I am still a bit hazy as to its exact location, I think it is a good idea. Not all rehabilitation is along the lines of Battery Park City. Sometimes, especially in neighborhoods as damaged and run down as Red Hook, you need to start with jobs and traffic and work towards the better things. Not all neighborhoods can be (nor should be) turned into yuppie friendly spots "that people want to spend time in" (people already live there btw) with "restaurants, hotels and parks" (they have parks) etc.(Not flaming the posters above - they are just voicing many arguements I have heard before). This mindset is very dangerous and smacks of some less than attractive mindsets. This is a good first step in putting cold hard cash, activity, jobs, and all the associated social activity that can start to turn a neighborhood and the lives of the people who live in that neighborhood around. Ikea wants to spend a boat load of money and wil spend more in the future to make sure they get a return, that will mean fixing the roads (with their own cash or asking the city top pony up due to increases in traffic), installing lighting, etc. The most important aspect (other than allowing me to avoid New Jersey) will be jobs. And a retail job with an international company is certainly better than no job at all.

I agree with Max and scuds, but I'll probably still go to the one in NJ (if the shuttle continues to run) for major purchases. If you're spending a couple hundred bucks, the sales tax makes a difference.

Have you been to an Ikea before? Yuppies scoff at Ikea because they can afford more expensive furniture at "real" furniture stores.

The rest of us take who take field trips to Ikea are outcasts--we have to escape from the city's expensive furniture stores.

Take a good look at the demographics of the shoppers--nearly equal parts white, black, hispanic and asian. A good amount of blue-collar and middle class. And babies. A TON of babies. The whole damned store is filled with crying babies. What rich person goes to Ikea? How many yuppies really go to Ikea?

I actually worked on this project all summer for the lead transportation planning consultant. Having gone through IKEA's EIS and studying the alternative proposal, I felt pretty good about it... Before I had become involved, I had my doubts. But IKEA is certainly better than blitzkreig gentrification, and the alternative proposal seemed pretty iffy to me in terms of preparation. Bear in mind that there's also office space planned for the outlot. I'm no fan of big parking lots, but hey, aren't those blue and yellow gantry cranes cute?

Last time I checked, Ikea's delivery change was $89.

I will repeat: $89. That was 5 years ago, the last time I went to their Hicksville location.

That's why I switched to Gothic Cabinet Craft for cheap stuff.

www.forgotten-ny.com

There's is only one reason Ikea doesn't belong in Red Hook - they cannot handle the traffic. Let's not forget that Red Hook is a narrow peninsula of mostly one way streets. Traffic is already bottlenecked at Hamilton, betweeen the BQE the Battery Tunnel and the Gowanus Expressway. Let's add 20,000-30,000 cars estimated on a weekend and see how long it takes for those arteries to back up into the sacred grounds of Manhattan, Park Slope and Carroll Gardens. Ikea has proposed no real traffic mitigation for a good reason - there is none. They know that. You can talk about other stores but everyone knows Ikea traffic is head and shoulders in density above any other. How unfortunate that the illusion that Red Hook is an isolated area will be shattered once that swamp of cars descends and stops the Battery Tunnel, Court Street and 9th Street dead. This is not about whether Ikea or their products are necessary or worthy - it's about pretending they will help a neighborhood they will only decimate. And by the way, property and interest in Red Hook is intense. We have been growing at a wonderful, NATURAL rate. It wouldn't be long until other, more sensible options came along. What a shame that after fighting for 20 years to keep garbage tranfer stations and sludge plants out, our politicians give it away to these creeps. But there is still time to stop them. The site has a wetland - and the rumor is the Army Corp of engineers has already stepped in. There are serious pollution issues. They may be stopped at the state or federal environmental review level by the EPA. Waterfront sites are notoriously problematic. And now even our charming mayor has said that he wouldn't want them in his neighborhood! No shit, Sherlock! The worst thing about this mess has been to see the poor residents of the Red Hook Houses side with Ikea. After all, a multi-national billion dollar corporation really does care about them more than their neighbors! It will be quite amusing to see them not get jobs, not get benefits (which only go to 20 hour workers) and then have their building and parks and streets cut off by traffic, destroying the little quality of life they now have.

Well, if by "historic", you must surely be thinking of the days when Red Hook was a bare-bones bustling shipyard and working-class neighborhood, before it became a mecca for the drug trade. Historic is a great word people use when attempting to take a poor neighborhood and revamp it for their own usage. The longtime residents of Red Hook Houses and surrounding community have worked hard in the past ten years to create the atmosphere of low crime that its new residents enjoy in all their gentrification. I can't point fingers, I live in Carroll Gardens, and I don't think Ikea is good for anyone in the long run, but its the best thing they've got. Since deindustrialization, longtime residents (re: poor minorities) of Red Hook have few choices--Lowe's or something similar is a (poor) option, but they can't all work there! For a community with one murder every two years (compare THAT to the upper east side), and an unemployment rate twice the city's average, these people deserve much better. A great idea would be to create more unionized shipping companies which would create decent jobs, rather than the low-paid service sector jobs Ikea would bring in--demeaning and dehumanizing to its employees. The government can't do this, apparently, so Ikea stays, and employees--the ones they do hire--just have to make sure the free lingonberry juice doesn't run out. As far as the traffic: watch your kids, bike to work, and be thankful you have a job.

I'm sorry, but not every poor neighborhood can lay claims to being historic and be taken advantage of by the Upper East side crowd. We're talking Civil war buildings and early Dutch settlers in the case of Red Hook. And what's remotely historic about a blue and yellow box which houses a mass produced furniture store? I do not understand why IKEA seems like the ONLY option for Red Hook and that even though it is so problematic, without it Red Hook would return to its days of crime and continue to suffer prolonged unemployment. Does nobody think of the longterm effects? And I thought the rewards of living above the law were much greater than working at IKEA.