From "Save the Red Hook Graving Dock"

NEW YORK, NY June 30, 2006 —The Brooklyn waterfront neighborhood of Red Hook is the talk of the town right now. Time Out New York featured its new restaurants, shops and art galleries in a recent issue. Fairway is doing brisk business in its brand new gourmet grocery store. And there’s IKEA, which is slated to open next year, after much controversy over traffic, and whether big box stores belong in New York. As the new Red Hook emerges, the old Red Hook disappears.

I’m on a boat, heading to the old New York Shipyard. IKEA bought 22 acres of the site for its store, and is already tearing down some buildings. It also plans to destroy a ship repair facility, known as a graving dock, that’s been around since the 1860s.

DULONG: It’s basically a bathtub with a door at the end, that’s the best way to describe it.

REPORTER: Jessica DuLong is the engineer of the boat we’re on, the John J. Harvey. She peers into this huge “bathtub,” which is two football fields long. IKEA plans on paving it over, and using it as a parking lot for 1,400 cars. But waterfront advocates are making a last-ditch effort to save the Erie Basin graving dock.

DULONG: it just makes more sense to use things for what they were designed to be used for? Than to disregard that use and to just assume that it will never be useful again.

REPORTER: The graving dock was not considered very useful at the time of its sale. Joe Murphy, one of the principals of U-S Dredging Corporation, which sold the shipyard to IKEA, says he wanted out because he wasn’t making money. In its final environmental impact statement, in 2004, IKEA found it would displace 85 jobs….only 11 of which, it said, were directly related to marine repair. It called the dry dock “underutilized.” Besides, it said, ships had other places to go in the harbor if Erie Basin’s graving dock shut down.

But Kent Barwick says the shipping industry may be losing those places, too, and that the graving dock should be saved.

BARWICK: You can’t have a port without working facilities anymore than you can have a highway system without gas stations.

REPORTER: Barwick is president of the Municipal Arts Society, a preservation group. He says the Civil War-era structure is part of the city’s maritime history. And what if its services are needed in the next few years?

BARWICK: We’re in a time, when the port’s growing, when vessels become distressed here, we want to be able to take care of them. /So, the loss of this at this time is just without any logic.

The maritime industry IS thriving. A record amount of cargo came to the Ports of New York and New Jersey last year. The New York Shipping Association says the number of full time jobs involved in distributing that cargo jumped 20 percent between 2000 and 2004. The Queen Mary Two now docks in Brooklyn, and the entire cruise ship industry is growing. So is the number of private ferries. Just ask Tom Fox, president and founder of New York Water Taxi.

FOX: in 1986, there were no ferries, except Staten Island ferries. REPORTER: no New York Waterway, no New York Water Taxi… FOX: no sea streak, nothing. Now there are 56 high speed ferries carrying 45,000 people a day. If someone would have told you that 20 years ago, they would have told you you were out of your mind.

REPORTER: But do more boats mean more graving docks are needed? Russ Byington says no.

BYINGTON: we explain it as “market by inference.”

REPORTER: He’s the chief economist with the U-S Maritime Administration, in Washington, D.C.

BYINGTON: Because you have a lot of ships in the port does not necessarily mean that the operators of that ship, even though it may be convenient, will choose to have their ship repaired there.

REPORTER: Byington says cost, not convenience, is the driving factor in ship repair. Most of the huge cargo ships coming here are under foreign flags, he says, and they get repaired at home. U-S Naval vessels, and other big American ships are going to Southern ports, where labor costs are cheaper.

Even now, almost a year and a half into its mothballed status, the Erie Basin graving dock is not much missed. Other local shipyards are doing a brisk business – so much so that some small fleet owners are finding it hard to get dry dock time – but those shipyards say they haven’t noticed a surge in business since Erie Basin shut down. Prices are rising, yes, but that could be as much a result of higher steel and fuel costs as of one less graving dock to choose from. And one of Erie Basin’s former clients, the city’s Department of Environmental Protection, says it actually got a cheaper contract for its sludge boats at the shipyard in Bayonne.

REDEVELOPMENT OFFICIAL: You can see, all the way out on the end of the peninsula, we’re actually building a public park, which is under construction, you can see out there..

REPORTER: But that shipyard is also in the cross-hairs of plans to revitalize the waterfront. An executive with the Bayonne Local Redevelopment Authority explains to a tour group that Bayonne’s old Army base is becoming The Peninsula at Bayonne Harbor…with shops, housing and parks --

REDEVELOPMENT OFFICIAL: And from this point, you have a panoramic view of all the sites we’ve been talking about in the harbor….

REPORTER: -- and the graving dock is not in Bayonne’s long range development plans. The Brooklyn Navy Yard’s graving docks are also threatened. The nonprofit agency that runs the Yard says the docks only make up one percent of its revenues, and it would like to shut them down. Perth Amboy seized its dry dock through eminent domain, to put condos there. In Hoboken, Union Dry Dock appears to be waiting for the right offer; a deal with a real estate developer fell through last winter.

Waterfront advocates worry that if government officials don’t start paying attention to the big picture, the harbor may find itself with a shortage of shipyards.

At a recent conference on the waterfront, Kate Asher, with the city’s Economic Development Corporation, announced it will do a six month study of the needs of the maritime industry in the harbor, to update a 1991 survey. She told a room full of skeptics the Bloomberg Administration IS concerned about keeping a working waterfront.

ASHER: I wouldn’t portray what’s happening in the city as all housing and a money grab. While there may be some emphasis on housing, because there are people in the city who very much need affordable housing, there’s also emphasis on other industries, including a growing maritime industry and what it requires. It’s an important issue.

REPORTER: The Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance, part of the Municipal Arts Society, has called for a moratorium on any graving dock closures until the survey is complete, but that’s not happening.

IKEA is moving forward with its plans to pave over the Erie Basin graving dock….despite two proposals by the Society that it says would allow the store and the graving dock to co-exist. IKEA has dismissed them, saying they’re not economically and strategically feasible. The Society says it may sue to save the graving dock.

Tom Fox, of New York Water Taxi, says saving Erie Basin’s graving dock is a stretch…but he holds out hope for the others.

FOX: Could IKEA be redesigned to allow for retention of the graving dock? Probably. Would it make sense to sandblast a ship in the middle of a parking lot next to IKEA? Maybe not. The problem has always been in New York and New Jersey, we’re two states. If we wanna save two graving docks, which ones are there? Who’s gonna bite the bullet and say that one thousand feet long by 80 feet wide is not going to be changed? Well, put that in writing, buddy, because I’ve seen a lot of promises in my life.

REPORTER: There’s currently no big, master plan for the waterfront for the states, cities, and various folks who play and work and live near the harbor. And in the absence of a big plan, little plans are made…like the one for IKEA. The city’s upcoming survey of the maritime industry could determine whether its remaining graving docks are vestiges of an old waterfront…or key components of a rapidly emerging new one. But it will be a plan for only one side of a very large, watery street. This is WNYC.