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The Times took Red Hook's temperature this weekend, almost two months after the dreaded IKEA -- the first in New York City -- reared its ugly blue head on the Brooklyn waterfront. And contrary to all the hand-wringing, the paper finds that the big box "turned out to be less annoying than people thought." A worker at the Van Brunt Street cafe Baked says, "Everyone was talking about it before. But now, no one talks about it anymore, which is nice. It’s not that big of a deal. It’s just a furniture store.”
Sure, a few dead-enders like John McGettrick, leader of the Red Hook Civic Association, are still in the last throes of outrage, going on about “the environmental and economic costs" outweighing the benefits, but even the haters can't resist that free Water Taxi service! And don't forget that waterfront esplanade that IKEA built, where children frolic barefoot and feast on IKEA's fifty cent hot dogs and unlimited beverages. Even the fears about the traffic have turned to be unfounded; the Times reports that "traffic is so light on some days that a rumor started among locals that IKEA was actually turning out to be a customer-starved failure."
Of course, it's not all Swedish meatballs and roses; the Times notes that the public buses have been overcrowded since IKEA's opening, and nobody really knows how many locals have been hired because the company won't release that data. And get the women and children inside because a new fear is spreading among the locals: Another big box is rumored to be eying the lot right next to the Swedish retailer!
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The people who hate big box stores most are the unions, since they don't like any company powerful enough to threaten their stranglehold on this city. Poor and middle class generally like the big box stores, which bring entry level jobs and affordable merchandise.
The rich and elite don't do their own shopping anyway; being against Walmart or other big stores is mostly NIMBY, coupled with other agendas that want to impose their values upon/shake down these merchants. They disguise their agenda by pretending to care about the community and the harm to "mom and pop" shops that were driven out of business 20 years ago.
So anybody who doesn't want New York City to turn into the suburbs is "NIMBY" or a "dead-ender"?
Hate to break it to you, but not all New Yorkers want to see every block turned into a repeating strip of the same 20 chain stores in slightly varying patterns. And not everyone believes that the best use of our waterfront is to turn it into gigantic parking lots for big-box retailing.
As for your characterization of anyone opposed to your economic agenda as "elitist" -- please. Mom and pop stores in New York City are owned and operated largely by immigrants instead of multi-national corporations. How is that elitist?
I love the IKEA site and amenities. They opened up the waterfront with a gorgeous, quiet park and the ferry service is awesome (a fast, unique and beautiful way to get to downtown). Heading to the Red Hook ball fields for some food, lounging around in the park, and taking a ride on the free ferry is turning into a weekend ritual for me (I've done it three times).
I didn't say that the only people opposed to the stores is NIMBY or elitist. I said that the group most opposed were unions, followed by wealthy NIMBY groups.
You talk about mom and pop stores largely owned and operated by immigrants. Which of those are in the market filled by Walmart, Banana Republic, Circuit City, Ikea?
These days, mom and pop stores are generally (i) magazine and cigarette shops where you get your weekly lottery ticket or overpay for a six-pack of beer, (ii) dollar stores, (iii) corner groceries where locals who don't use freshdirect can overpay for groceries; and/or (iv) flower shops.
Mom and pop stores selling electronics, clothing, furniture that the box stores sell are pretty much extinct.
My point about the waterfront stands. It needn't have been a big box store of any kind, but could have been a mixed development with shops, restaurants and pedestrian scale development. A gigantic box and parking lot is not appropriate for an urban setting.
Drchadwick1, your point is well-received. How New Yorkers became so powerless is a mystery to me. Even the Upper West Side, once a beacon of culture and a haven for conscientious urbanists has become just another blip in the bankscape that is now NYC. Where there was once diversity (or at least tolerance for it) there is now Tory Burch, Brooks Brothers and the attendant US Weekly magazine as the must-read. While Ikea offers entry-level jobs to a population in desperate need of opportunities (nothing to sneeze at), its arrival portends something more ominous for that very population. They'll soon be unable to afford to live in their neighborhoods, and will have no recourse. No amount of entrepreneurial spirit or hard work will change that.