#RethinkEDC
It’s time to #rethinkEDC for a better PortSide, a better Red Hook, a better NYC!
Lightships warn sailors of hazards, and PortSide has temporarily converted its historic oil tanker MARY A. WHALEN into a lightship by painting #rethinkEDC along her side. The hazards of the EDC include chronic mismanagement (did you know that the fire suppression system in the vast Pier 11 Shed has not worked for many years?), failed infrastructure; unfulfilled promises about job counts, indirect economic benefits, and community give-backs; wasting money and cooking the books, damaging businesses and nonprofits – and years of battering this award-winning, nonprofit with arbitrary and capricious behavior while not fulfilling their promise of a PortSide home with building space, space ashore, and more pier space. Latest updates to this page are 9/9/23.
rethinkEDC core documents
Our critique of the EDC is in two parts, what we submitted to the Department of City Planning Comprehensive Waterfront Plan (CWP) process in 2021, called “Appendix EDC” because it was the appendix to our letter about the waterfront in general, and a November 2022 update document, with the rest of this webpage consitutes ongoing updates.
Appendix EDC, 41 pages, submitted to the CWP. A table of contents and executive summary were added in this version; the rest is unchanged. The final 8 pages cover PortSide’s saga with the EDC, our on-again, off-again landlord in Atlantic Basin, Red Hook, Brooklyn.
2022 Update to Appendix EDC, 3 pages
The rest of PortSide submission to the CWP (a 15-page letter) covers mostly non-EDC matters.
PortSide’s press release about #rethinkEDC is here.
The Port Authority press contact for comments about PortSide’s critique of EDC mismanagement in Atlantic Basin in Appendix EDC document and the EDC lease with the Port Authority below is Amanda Kwan at akwan@panynj.gov.
Summary of EDC planning for Atlantic Basin
The history of EDC planning processes for Atlantic Basin shows how many EDC planning efforts lead to no action, and how they have decided that they can sole-source in this location because it is Port Authority property, not City land where City procurement rules apply.
2023 updates:
2023 Blogpost about EDC management of the cruise terminal is here. More details below.
7/14/23, following up to item directly below, the dockmaster now says they will accept our insurance but would limit us to 50 visitors at a time. That’s unreasonable; our insurance covers us for unlimited visitors and a ship our size can handle way more than 50. We see this as another EDC effort to execute death by a thousand cuts.
6/28/23, we received the EDC’s lease with the Port Authority for Atlantic Basin. It is here. Every claim the EDC has made about it to PortSide is false.
6/16/23, the EDC revoked permission for PortSide summer events using a concocted situation. Here’s our statement on that. What happened: We supplied our renewed insurance but did not sign the berth permit (a lease), as we were waiting to hear from the Port Authority about one clause. A few hours after the EDC cancelled our events on 6/16, the Port Authority emailed everyone a Shipkeeper Policy which answered what we had been waiting for - but the EDC did not then re-approve our events. We then demanded that the EDC revise the berth permit so that it finally reflects the actual insurance levels we carry. Since the start, we’d been told verbally by the dockmaster, and in some emails, that they (DockNYC) provide an additional layer of insurance coverage. We requested some other tweaks. See 7/14 update to this above. Note that we did not get the berth permit before the last one expired at the end of 2022; we got it 2/17/23, so EDC claims that the berth permit needs to be signed for reasons of public safety does not reflect how the EDC and their dockmaster actually work.
Late April 2023, the EDC released an RFP for Atlantic Basin Anchor Tenant for all the space not dedicated to cruise terminal or NYC Ferry Homeport 2 the EDC is building. The RFP would displace PortSide. We think this is one motive for the EDC’s shutting down our programs in June; they’d like PortSide dead so they can have our space without the public blowback they’d get by evicting us.
The RFP looks targeted at a last mile facility, but one using the waterways, most likely UPS because UPS has not built on the large Red Hook property where they demolised the Lidgerwood complex; and UPS got a lease on a large facility in Bayonne from which they can put freight to NYC on the water; and UPS has been studying using the waterways to move freight hyperlocally, including test runs with the Red Hook Container Terminal next to Atlantic Basin. There’s no available warehouse space in that terminal, but there’s a big warehouse in Atlantic Basin, the Pier 11 Shed, next to our ship, the same shed where the EDC promised PortSide building space years ago.
Note that a company does NOT have to respond to the RFP to become the Anchor Tenant; it says that in the RFP. Also, the EDC told us in 2009 that they had determined that, since Atlantic Basin is not City property (it is owned by the Port Authority), the EDC did not have to adhere to City procurement rules, eg the EDC could “sole source,” but they had been advised against using that term.April 2023, the MSC cruise ship MERAVIGLIA started docking in Red Hook’s Brooklyn Cruise Terminal. This led to massive traffic gridlock on the western side of Red Hook and a torrent of community complaints. The effects of EDC inaction are clear; the EDC had not upgraded site signage nor corrected directions on travel apps as PortSide had suggested in Appendix EDC, nor had the EDC created any traffic management plan in advance for how to fit traffic from the world’s 5th largest cruise into tiny Red Hook. Our Councilmember Alexa Aviles set up a weekly Zoom call with the EDC, the Red Hook Business Alliance (RHBA), of which we are a member, and community members. In this forum, the EDC has been very responsive. However, it is indicative of what PortSide calls the “colonial and extractive” way the EDC manages Atlantic Basin, that any benefits of cruise activity occur somewhere else; the arrival of MSC was announced by the Mayor on 12/7/22 as bringing great benefits, but there are no signs of ANY efforts to have Red Hook benefit:
MSC donated $236,000, and the Mayor claimed 7 Red Hook GreenThumb parks would beneift, along with the Junior Ambassador program. The parks are not in Red Hook, they are over the highway in the Columbia Waterfront District, and the EDC evicted PortSide Park that was on the cruise terminal leasehold itself. The Junior Ambassador program is citywide, no guarantee that Red Hook youth are in it.
The Mayor announced “The year-round cruises from the Brooklyn terminal will create a huge boost to our tourism and create up to 10,000 full-time jobs in the city, an equivalent to 10,000 full-time jobs, ”but there is no sign of any effort for those benefits to be in Red Hook. There is no promotion of Red Hook inside the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal (BCT) or in Atlantic Basin, despite PortSide asking permission for years to install this and the EDC having promised that BCT would benefit Red Hook when they first proposed, in 2005, having a cruise terminal here.
The EDC lease with the Port Authority
The lease is here. We sent a FOI request to the Port Authority for their lease with the EDC; because, starting Spring 2022, the EDC began saying (often) that they could not satisfy PortSide request X, Y or Z “because of our lease with the Port Authority.” Every time we checked with the Port Authority, we were told the EDC claim was incorrect, and senior staff at the Port Authority finally told us to submit a FOI request to get that lease. We did in October 2022 and got the lease on 6/28/23. Note that Atlantic Basin is owned by the Port Authority and rented to the EDC which manages it.
Why has PortSide launched #rethinkEDC?
To improve things! PortSide is an economic and community development change-agent organization - see our webpage Advocacy - but one stunted in physical size and capacity by the EDC.
With rethinkEDC, we aim for an expanding circle of benefits starting with getting what PortSide needs (finally), improving the management of Atlantic Basin so that it benefits Red Hook (finally), and improving the EDC situation for NYC as a whole.
We came to learn that what PortSide and Red Hook suffer at the hands of the EDC is not unique to us and here. When behaving badly, the EDC has a pattern of unfulfilled promises; and then ignoring, deflecting, denying and misprepresenting including cooking the books.
The EDC subjects PortSide to a stultifying combination of over-control and ignoring reasonable requests. The EDC management style does not reflect real world operations.
Trying to negotiate with them does not work and is a massive time suck for us and elected officials.
Over the years, many elected officials and our community board have pressured the EDC to resolve the issues, but the EDC ignores all suggestions and recommendations. The EDC tends to have a self-justifying attitude; a break in this was their receptiveness during summer 2023 weekly Zoom meetings about MSC cruise ship traffic run by Councilmember Alexa Aviles.
Our critique of the the EDC submitted to the Comprehensive Waterfront Plan (CWP) process in 2021 had no effect, more in rethinkEDC core documents above, so we created the rethinkEDC campaign.
Beloved, respected, award-winning PortSide has been strung along by the EDC since they promised us a home (2008 into 2011) as a community give-back to Red Hook. Note that the EDC admired PortSide’s plans so much that the EDC proposed in their 2008 Maritime Support Services Location Study that such a maritime hub should exist in each of the five boroughs. But the EDC did not let us create our maritime hug and did not not make any of those five hubs themselves, and left our ship stuck in the Red Hook container port for the better part of a decade until we got out summer 2015 and back to Atlantic Basin. Over the years, the EDC has obliged us to complete make-work projects such as the 2018 business plan to get the building space they promised us from 2008 into 2011, and so much more.
EDC retribution
The EDC is known to dislike any criticism. As PortSide began publishing our critique of the EDC, retribution started. First, was the change to our berth permit that no longer allows our ED to live on the ship, an abrupt change which made her homeless as of March 2022 and negatively our safety/security plan.* Next, was the EDC’s abrupt eviction of PortSide Park in late September 2022 using bogus claims of danger to children in proximity to trucks. Next, questions were raised about our insurance and about the message #rethinkEDC we painted on the side of the ship. The EDC shut down our public event schedule on 6/16/23; see update section above. We see a theme of trying to paint PortSide as a roque, non-compliant and unsafe organization. We think it would be better for the EDC to constructively engage with criticism and suggestions - and recognize the value of PortSide what PortSide provides as everyone else does. * Shipkeeper issues seems resolved as of June 2023. We say “seems” since our berth permit has not been finalized as of 9/9/23.
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For proposals on how to Proposals to fix the EDC’s relationship to Red Hook see this document. Red Hook, we’d like your feedback and involvement! Our suggestions include ways to address the problems described in our critique of the EDC’s performance in “Appendix EDC” above. In short:
1. PortSide finally gets adequate space. The EDC funds us to renovate building space they give us.
2. Red Hook gets a share of the revenue from the site.
3. A Red Hook stakeholder group is established to work with the EDC to plan how that revenue is used.
4. Red Hook entities are paid to execute the proposed fixes and those proposed by the stakeholder group if locals have the skill set.
5. All prior EDC promises are fulfilled, and Atlantic Basin is run better so that it delivers indirect economic benefits, fosters community development, is more integrated into the fabric of Red Hook, and is more hospitable to tenants and passengers of NYC and cruise ships. Everyone wins.
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It’s the biggest influence on the NYC economy most people have never heard of. It is NYC’s largest landlord managing over 66 million square feet of property. It is a nonprofit, a quasi-governmental organization with a contract renewed each year to do projects and manage real estate for the city. It is NOT a City agency.
As described in a 2020 City Council report, “NYCEDC is a self-sustaining non-profit organization that was created to drive and shape New York’s economic growth. It uses City resources to create a bridge between City agencies, private businesses and local communities.” The EDC was formed in 1991 and grew dramatically in size and power under the last two Mayors.
The City Council does not vote on the EDC’s budget, though revenue the EDC generates from managing City properties goes into the City budget. That means the Council has little control over the EDC’s performance. Former City Comptroller John Liu (now a NYS Senator) called the EDC “a slush fund of power for the Mayor.” The EDC has a master contract with the City of New York via the Department of Small Business Services (SBS) which is reviewed for approval annually by the City Comptroller. Multiple City Comptrollers have issued highly critical audits of the EDC.
Over time, the EDC has taken over more and more functions of City agencies, such as City Planning, Design and Construction, and Parks. As of March 11, 2020, it was managing 470 capital projects of its own, and 560 for other agencies.
Manages around 200 City-owned properties, space as diverse as Times Square properties and the Brooklyn Army Terminal industrial park.
Manages hundreds of capital projects for City agencies including building facilities for the Department of Cultural Affairs, the Brooklyn Public Library, Parks.
Plans big economic development projects like the rejected Amazon HQ2 in Queens.
Planned much of NYC’s response to the pandemic.
Does rezonings (which used to be only done by the Department of City Planning).
Plans resiliency (flood protection) projects.
Has major impact on NYC’s food supply because it runs the Hunts Point Market where perishable food (fruit, vegetables, seafood) arrives, the Brooklyn Wholesale Meat Market and 6 food markets such as the Essex Market.
Manages the NYC Ferry system (the private company Hornblower runs the boats, the EDC controls the plans for the system and the docks) and the cruise ship terminals in Manhattan and Brooklyn.
Manages a large portfolio of maritime locations via Dock NYC.
And more…
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Incompetence. This compromises all they do. They build things that don’t work. They install the wrong thing. They move slowly and are hard on contractors and vendors. They lack vision. With high staff turnover, the EDC lacks deep institutional knowledge and doesn’t learn from their mistakes because they don’t listen. All that makes it hard to do capital projects well, and a major capital project tasked to the EDC is planning NYC’s resiliency/flood protection infrastructure.
Destructive planning and contracting method. EDC staff don’t create the plans; they seek others to do the work with EDC staff managing the contracts. This is done by putting out Requests for Proposals (RFPs), Requests for Expressions of Interest (RFEIs ), and Requests for Quotes (RFQs) which oblige companies to prepare proposals in order to get the contract. The EDC terms are difficult and hyper-detailed which drives away respondents and favors huge firms that can handle the high friction in the EDC system. Respondents have to do the work of imagining the solutions and writing the proposals for free, to face the known risk that the EDC uses this process to plunder ideas from a respondent and give them to other, favored applicants. The EDC staff which has high turnover, can lack the expertise to asses the responses; and the turnover makes it hard to offer the continuity needed for long-term capital projects such as planning the City’s flood protection. The EDC also takes a long time to finalize contracts resulting from this approach, and time is money spent. All this reduces the applicant pool over time, reducing the source of ideas/solutions. It’s a perverse system with high barriers for entry that produces many RFPs and studies that go nowhere, all of which exhausts respondents, wastes money, drives out small innovative firms, and is a poor way to find good solutions. As evidence, see the history of EDC planning processes for Atlantic Basin, with many unfulfilled promises along the way.
Selfish developer – Where the EDC manages property, they relate to the neighboring community like a remote, extractive, colonial power, taking all the revenue and benefits, and ignoring needs, requests and complaints. The EDC generally does not re-invest in the local community or collaborate to create community benefits and synergies. On 11/7/22, we heard that the EDC has offered to redirect 50% of Coney Island boardwalk lease revenue into the Coney community; there should be more of this. The EDC totally fails to understand how to create indirect economic benefits (using the activity on the EDC site to trigger positive effects off the site). They regularly promise jobs and community give-backs they never deliver. Frustration and rage are standard community responses to the EDC’s presence in a neighborhood.
Lack of equity – The EDC by choice and by the MO described above favors mega real estate developments, developers, and corporations. The EDC fosters gentrification by design and/or without any concern for the effects of the gentrification caused by their plans. The EDC version of development continually displaces the community. The EDC has historically favored luxury residential development over manufacturing and been disdainful of blue collar work.
A difficult landlord – By turns unresponsive and micromanaging and sometimes bullying, the EDC has leases with punishing terms such as a business can be displaced on 30 days notice without explanation (as in the berth permit for all the ships in Atlantic Basin most of which were evicted on 4 days notice in late September 2022).
Uncontrollable. There are few ways to control them because they are NOT part of City government, so the City Council does not vote on their budget. They are unresponsive to elected officials, the community, and the media. Multiple audits by multiple Comptrollers have cited problems to little effect. The Mayor controls the EDC, and if the Mayor likes the that kind of power, we get this result.
Fakers. They do astro-turfing (running fake grassroots groups) and pretend to use government fairness rules when, in fact, they award contracts to whoever and however they like. They have engaged in illegal lobbying. They hire PR firms to manipulate public opinion and media reporting.
Evasive. They avoid media FOIL requests for information.
Wasting our money. They cover up by paying for their inefficiency and errors with revenue from the City property they manage, in effect sucking up money that should go to the City budget (which the City Council does vote on) by paying for their mistakes and pet projects. A recent and glaring example is during the pandemic how they used revenue from Times Square properties to subsidize the NYC Ferry.
Way too big. The EDC’s power, and range of activities grew a lot under Mayor Bloomberg and also under de Blasio. Item description
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If you have a tip about EDC activity in your community or workplace, send an email to chiclet@portsidenewyork.org. If you want your contribution anonymous, let us know, and we will not reveal the source.
• Amplify this campaign by using the hashtag #rethinkEDC.
• If you want to support this effort more actively, send an email to chiclet@portsidenewyork.org. We could use the help of a PR firm. We can use thoughtful creatives to help with social media messaging, making graphics for #rethinkEDC, etc.
• If your preferred media have not been reporting on the EDC, contact them to suggest that they do so.
• NYC is represented by a lot of new elected officials. Ask them how they think to fix the dysfunction that is the EDC. Reform it? Shrink it? Give much of its work to existing City agencies? After the ravages of the pandemic, NYC cannot allow the failure rate of the bloated EDC to be the norm.
• You can also support by donating, as time is money; and we have spent a lot of time on this. Also, what the EDC has done to PortSide has negatively impacted our budget. Click the yellow DONATE tab on this page. Thanks!
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EDC issues are not a bug but a feature! PortSide’s advocacy work and research has us in contact with businesses, nonprofits and community groups around the City. We read extensively on economic development since a goal of our planned innovative maritime center (thus far largely blocked by the EDC) is using maritime for community and economic development. As a maritime organization, most of the following relates to waterfront issues; but we include some links about inland matters to demonstrate that PortSide’s experience with the EDC and the EDC’s mismanagement of Atlantic Basin are not one-offs or just about the waterfront; they are symptomatic of the EDC in general. If you have suggestions, please email chiclet@portsidenewyork.org.
NYC COMPTROLLER AUDITS OF THE EDC
See the collection here.
Several NYC Comptrollers in a row have issued critical audits of the EDC. The most recent one by Brad Lander’s team, the audit of 7/6/22, focused on the EDC management of NYC Ferry and was highly critical. The audit found that the EDC hid over $224 million in expenditures and hid real ridership numbers and demographics, and the EDC’s financial decisions resulted in over $66 million in unnecessary expenditures, plus other problems.
IN 2012, NYS AG FINDS EDC GUILTY OF ILLEGAL LOBBYING
The NYS Attorney General (NYS AG) found that the EDC had participated in illegal lobbying working with local development corporation (LDC) groups in Willlets Point and Coney Island. “These local development corporations flouted the law by lobbying elected officials, both directly and through third parties, to win approval of their favored projects. As a result of today’s agreement, these organizations will reform their practices to comply with the law and end lobbying through proxies in the communities they serve,” said Attorney General Schneiderman. Press release
In a 12-page agreement, the EDC was ordered and agreed to restructure: “WHEREAS, after OAG commenced its investigation, the City caused to be formed two new Type C not-for-profit corporations: (l) New York City Economic Growth Corporation ("EGC") and (2) New York City Land Development Corporation ("NYCLDC"). NYCLDC was incorporated pursuant to Section l4l1 of the N-PCL. Subject to satisf,zing the statutory requirements for merger, EDC intends to merge into EGC. It is anticipated that NYCLDC will enter into a contract with EGC for the performance of administrative support services by EGC for NYCLDC. Upon the merger the name of EGC will change to New York City Economic Development Corporation”
Among the terms of the agreement are:
• A ban on lobbying the City Council in connection with development projects;
• A ban on employing lobbyists or government relations consultants, participating in the development of third-party communications with the City Council, using others LDCs to lobby, or otherwise lobbying indirectly;
• Mandatory compliance training for directors, officers and employees; and
• Public disclosure by EDC of any funding provided to other LDCs or personnel overlap with other LDCs.
Media reporting of this matter, while John Liu was Comptroller:
New York Times article from 4/28/10 “In examining one of New York’s most powerful agencies, which is involved in projects in places like Coney Island in Brooklyn and Willets Point in Queens, Mr. Liu said he found a lack of transparency and loose internal controls. “It has become a powerhouse agency, but we have very little understanding of what comes in and out of it,” he said. “You cannot see anything that is going on.” The audit represents a stinging critique of an agency that under Mr. Bloomberg has swelled in the size of its budget and in its importance as the primary vehicle for an aggressive development agenda.”
DNAInfo 7/3/12 after the EDC found guilty of illegal lobbying and astroturfing “City Comptroller John Liu praised the ruling and said that the city’s economic development process "is in dire need of greater transparency, accountability, and inclusiveness." "While these revelations of illegal lobbying are alarming, we cannot say that they come as a surprise. For some time, this mayor has been using the Economic Development Corporation to create ‘Astroturf’ groups to support his agenda, reward allies and dole out welfare to wealthy corporations," he said. "While New Yorkers fund the EDC to create jobs — those jobs seldom materialize," he said.
July 13, 2023, new EDC problems with their Willets Point plans came to light via a Carpenters Union protest. The EDC is violating terms of the agreement and not using union labor on their Willets Point project.
MEDIA COVERAGE OF OTHER EDC PROJECTS
Citywide
This June 2014 Alex Ulam article in Dissent Magazine about NYC economic development policies overall focuses on EDC work during the Bloomberg era and shows that the pattern of EDC issues we cover on this webpage goes back at least that far.
Amazon HQ2 and other flops
3/28/19 Crain’s EDC's recent challenges extend well beyond Amazon debacle. The article starts with a roster of EDC bellyflops.
THE CITY, 8/28/19, despite the NYS Attorney General finding the EDC guilty of illegal lobbying in 2012 as above, the EDC continues to use lobbying techniques to push their agenda. After failing to push the Amazon HQ2 deal through past local opposition in Queens, the EDC paid a consultant $80,000 for a ‘“reputational rescue” make-over and new PR plan instead of investing money in how to do better economic development or work better with communities. Quotes in the article show how community voices and elected officials resent the EDC’s focus on lobbying and PR rather than focusing on community needs.
Coney Island: planning for NYC Ferry and boardwalk leases
The NYC Ferry was started by the de Blasio administration as a project tasked to the EDC. Note that NYC does have an agency tasked with ferries, that is the DOT; it runs the Staten Island ferry. As much as PortSide is a passionate advocate for maritime transportation, there is much about how the EDC runs NYC Ferry that concerns us. Despite NYC’s economy having been ravaged by the pandemic, de Blasio was eager to grow the NYC Ferry network in what looked like an effort to cement a legacy project of his. The EDC’s urgency to expand the ferry into Coney Island shows classic EDCitis: astro-turfing, falsifying data, ignoring community input and concerns.
11/12/22 Hell Gate EDC stops creation of Coney Island ferry though they installed the dock and spent millions of dollars and years planning. This article covers many issues cited in earlier media stories below.
8/1/19 Brooklyn Paper, the EDC claims the ferry site has not been chosen. In fact, that site was chosen, dredging started, and then the community spotted pollution being created by the job.
12/13/21 New York Times, environmental data about toxic risks of dredging from Park’s Department scientists was suppressed by the Parks Department. Community advocates believe this was done due to pressure from the EDC and a conflict of interest within Parks. The Kaiser Park fishing pier needed repair, the EDC fixed it; but then wanted to use it for the ferry landing.
Brownstoner 6/2/22 Coney NYC Ferry project on pause after extensive community pushback, a DEC fine for violating dredging standards, and more.
11/17/20 Coneyologist (Charles Denson) Environmental Racism and the Coney Island Ferry
10/5/22 Brooklyn Paper about Coney board walk leases, an editorial by Kouichi Shirayanagi & Craig Hammerman. Many Coney voices have been frustrated with how the EDC runs the boardwalk, and that they even manage the boardwalk leases at all. Some Coney voices demanded that EDC share revenue from the boardwalk leases with the community, instead of the EDC taking it all. One of those, Craig Hammerman was District Manager of our local community board CB6 for years and brought his knowledge of the EDC saga with PortSide/Red Hook to Coney when he moved there. In a CB13 meeting on 9/28/22, Coney scored a win when the EDC offered to share revenue by redirecting 50% of the boardwalk lease revenue to local parks. See the meeting video link here queued up to the start of the EDC presentation. The same Coney voices want to have a say in how and where the revenue is redirected and don’t necessarily want it going to the Parks Department.
East New York
City Limits 11/15/21 De Blasio Said East New York’s Rezoning Would Spur Industrial Jobs Boom. That Hasn’t Happened.
Essex Street Market
The Lo-Down 9/29/15 “Anne Saxelby says “enough is enough.” After years of frustration dealing with New York City’s Economic Development Corp. (EDC), operator of the Essex Street Market, she has run out of patience. Saxelby, head of the vendor association, told The Lo-Down recently “The EDC continues to demonstrate ineptitude in managing this market… They are masters of inaction and bumbling. We want alternative management now, if it’s not already too late.” Anne Saxelby is unavailable for follow up; she died 10/9/21.
Hunters Point, Queens and NYC Ferry
This 12/6/22 Sunnyside Post article describes common community frustrations with the EDC, eg a lack of transparency, outreach and communication to the point of presenting a plan once the public comment period is over. As an advocate for growing maritime activity, PortSide is concerned that growth of a ferry system is negatively impacted by the EDC’s approach to communities as it so often creates distrust and then opposition.
South Street Seaport area
The EDC plays a large role in developing and managing property on the waterfront and inland in this area of Manhattan as well as making the resiliency plans for the area. For decades, staff and volunteers of the South Street Seaport Museum have privately lamented the recurrent challanges to the museum presented by the EDC; however, the museum stays officially quiet, putting them in what we call “the Commiseration Society.” The organization Save our Seaport raises issues publicly as does Manhattan Community Board 1.
Undated statement by The City Club of New York on their a webpage about the South Street Seaport, “The City, through the Economic Development Corporation has for two decades been selling off its birthplace, the South Street Seaport, piece by piece. This great Historic District and its cultural center and interpreter, the South Street Seaport Museum, has been treated by the EDC as a checking account”
Sunset Park
The EDC runs multiple sites in Sunset Park including Bush Terminal which was rebranded as Made in NY, Brooklyn Wholesale Meat Market, Brookyn Army Terminal, South Brooklyn Marine Terminal (SBMT). The EDC has also run several many planning endeavors on the Sunset Park waterfront including the Sunset Park Vision Plan of 2009. We will populate this section more soon.
Readers need to understand that local maritime businesses have been straining to grow for years. They are eager for waterfront/pier/dock space. The EDC’s inability to “activate” maritime sites is thus noteworthy. The EDC floundered for years trying to activate one major site, the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal (SBMT). One EDC plan would have had Axis importing cars on barges crossing the harbor. PortSide had been told by a rail expert that the plan would never work, and it never did get off the ground. SBMT then lay dormant for a while. Next, the EDC proposed that SBMT be a staging area for the New York Wheel, a huge ferris wheel they planned for the north shore of Staten Island. A shipment of parts arrived in 2016, but that Staten Island project sputtered, stalled, and then failed (see below).
When the EDC sought a long-term lease for SBMT while Carlos Menchaca was Councilman, he refused to rubber stamp this request; and in the push back, the President/CEO of the EDC Kyle Kimball left. Menchaca got the EDC to sign an LOI that required the EDC to take community input into their forthcoming SBMT RFP, to have the resulting plan for the site benefit the community (the usual EDC model is that they take all the revenue and give back nothing), and that the EDC complete some unfinished promises in his district. All of those were in Sunset Park except providing space for PortSide in Red Hook. That is how our ship got out of the Red Hook Container Terminal on 5/29/15, but we did not get all the space the EDC had promised us from Spring 2008 into Spring 2011. We’ve been trying to get the building space portion of that ever since.
Staten Island
The EDC has several projects and sites on the north shore with a strong track record of inaction and/or failure. When the New York Wheel project tanked in 2018, that also represented an EDC failure in Sunset Park at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal (SBMT), the second EDC failure there (see above). The nonprofit National Lighthouse Museum has had a particularly difficult time with the EDC. The difficulties prompted the board to disband at one point. One of their board members contacted PortSide around this time; we had no solutions to offer, we were facing the same uphill battle with the EDC.
10/24/18 Staten Island Advance Exclusive: New York Wheel project is dead
9/1/20 THE CITY Staten Island Outlet Mall Struggles to Pay Back $8.5M City Debt. The Empire Outlets mall never flourished. This EDC project opened May 2019 with only half its stores filled and struggled to pay its loan from the EDC. It cost $350 million to build. Nearly $100 million came from state and city subsidies.
2/14/22 The Real Deal BFC’s Empire Outlets on Staten Island enters foreclosure.
4/12/22 North Shore residents to NYC: ‘We want our waterfront back’ The New York Wheel project destroyed a park that had been at that location; and years after that project failed and the site was left fenced off, the community wants access to the waterfront again. The community is frustrated by the process as well, “I really would like to see us begin to have a conversation that changes the whole dynamic of this waterfront and gives it a plan. ... We need you to work with the community work, with our council members’ office and begin to talk about how do we change the dynamic of this ridiculous waterfront. Every single project on the waterfront, whether it was NYCEDC supported or not, has failed,” the Staten Island Urban Center CEO added.”
10/16/22 Staten Island Advance: Languishing Staten Island waterfront projects will be addressed in ‘coming months.’ Here is the opening paragraph: “A host of failed economic development projects cover the Staten Island waterfront, and most point back to one agency — the New York City Economic Development Corporation (EDC).”
9/11/22 Staten Island Advance Editorial “We’ve waited long enough: City must fix Pier 1 on the North Shore” about Pier 1
National Lighthouse Museum
• 11/19/09 The board of the National Lighthouse Museum, Staten Island, New York, disbands. The EDC figures prominently in the struggle that led the board to do this. We know because they called us seeking advice; you can also read about it at that link.
• 1/28/14 Staten Island Advance Staten Island's National Lighthouse Museum in limbo. The EDC would not grant a lease until they raised more money; the assurance of a lease would help the museum raise funds. The EDC has trapped PortSide in similar chicken or the egg dilemmas, wanting us to have a bigger budget after their behavior made budget growth impossible.
Willets Point
IN 2012, the NYS AG found the EDC guilty of illegal lobbying in Willets Point (and Coney Island). More in a section near the top above.
July 13, 2023, new EDC problems with their Willets Point plans came to light via a Carpenters Union protest. The EDC is violating terms of the agreement and not using union labor on their Willets Point project.
ACADEMIC AND THINK TANK REPORTS ABOUT THE EDC
2/7/22 Social Justice Commission Report, Pages 63 through 67, the section “Economic Development,” expresses concerns about the EDC and proposes solutions. This report was created by a commission impaneled by civil rights lawyer Norman Siegel and presented to Mayor Eric Adams on 2/7/22. A year before, in January 2021, PortSide reached out to Siegel to discuss concerns about the EDC, and we had several lengthy conversations.
6/28/21 Abolish the EDC by Avi Garelick and Andrew Schustek. An excerpt says “The EDC uses its immense powers and subsidies in the name of job creation—but it’s unclear how many jobs it actually creates. At a 2019 City Council hearing, then-Councilmember Ritchie Torres skewered then EDC CEO James Patchett for the corporation’s anemic progress on the de Blasio administration’s marquee jobs program. “Anyone who heard the mayor’s [2017] State of the City would believe there are actual jobs…but anyone who believes that is operating under a false assumption,” Torres said. While promising 100,000 good-paying jobs, EDC could only claim credit for 3,000 — which took $300 million in public spending to create.”
12/23/21 NYCEDC Function in Regard to NYC Gentrification Projects, by Marlon Bailey. In this big picture criticism of the EDC, NYS Senator Julia Salazar is quoted saying, “The city and state can sustain projects that can support a healthy local economy without supporting bad economic development projects and enormous tax subsidies for corporations, as the EDC does.”
EMPLOYEE REVIEWS ABOUT WORKING AT THE EDC
glassdoor reviews reflect some of the issues we cover in our critique of the EDC, especially in the section “Institutional Culture” in Appendix EDC.
News & Updates
NEWS 12/1/22: PortSide is subjected to censorship energy. After posting the press release here, we began getting emails from the EDC, our dockmaster, and then the Port Authority saying the #rethinkEDC slogan on the side of our ship was not in compliance with the EDC-Port Authority lease (eg, advance written permission for signs/advertising is required - who knew? And this is considered “expressive activity” which we are told needs a permit.) The EDC has not constructively engaged with our criticisms or proposals.
12/14/22: One week ago, the Mayor and EDC announced that MSC Cruise ships would come to Red Hook next year. We congratulate our friends at Ports America for the increased business, but must point out after checking withe the Parks Department that the offical announcement includes 1) false info and 2) possibly false info and 3) missing info.
MSC Cruse is donating $236,000, and the City is claiming that seven Red Hook GreenThumb parks are benefitting. Thre are no such parks. There is $71,000 going to seven community gardens across the BQE in the Columbia Waterfront District. The Red Hook park that should have benefitted would be to return our pandemic popup PortSide Park that the EDC evicted in September, making several misrepresentations (that it was dangerous for kids due to trucks, and trucking near it would increase with the construction of NYC Ferry Homeport 2.) The balance of MSC’s donation of $236,000 is going to the City Junior Ambassadors program for 7th graders. No idea if any Red Hook kids are in that, but we all know there are lots of Red Hook youth programs for whom that would have been a very impactful amount of money, including PortSide. Red Hook should directly benefit from the MSC generosity, not programs elsewhere; and proper economic development would have the EDC share Atlantic Basin revenue with Red Hook, not have the City lean on foreign companies to donate to City agencies.
The City is claiming that 10,000 NYC jobs and 150 jobs in the Red Hook terminal will be created due to the MSC ships coming. The EDC has a history of inflating job counts here and elsewhere. Back when the EDC promised benefits from the cruise terminal to Red Hook before it opened, the EDC said it would create 290 permanent, full time jobs in Red Hook. A year later, the Observer said 8-10 jobs had been created. See page 15 of our critique of the EDC here for more on that. These MSC ships will not be “port of call” ships when passengers visit the location. That being the case, how will 10,000 NYC jobs be created by these ship calls? It is possible that passengers will spend time in NYC before and/or after their cruise; but the City should show the math for how they came up with a job count this high.
The news of the MSC ships should have included an update on the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal shorepower situation – way overdue to be fixed as Eric Adams, while Brooklyn Borough President, committed $750,000 April 2021 to fixing it.
Late April 2023: The EDC released an RFP for Pier 11, Atlantic Basin - Anchor Tenant Sub-Lease. The space occupied by our flagship, the tanker MARY A. WHALEN is available in the lease, meaning no home for PortSide is guaranteed, and we clarified during the EDC’s site visit that no home is guaranteed. The RFP expresses interest in a last-mile facility, though unlike the other ones currently built or being built in Red Hook calls, for use of the waterways (waterborne freight). This aligns with the freight plan announced by Mayor de Blasio in the last days of his term called Delivering Green which proposed that NYC Ferries “moonlight” and move last mile freight at night, after the hours of passenger service. Note that the EDC is currently building a large homeport for NYC Ferry in Atlantic Basin so a part of their ferry fleet would be here on site, next to a mostly empty warehouse, next to the Red Hook Container Terminal that has already done a tets run with UPS for moving tractor trailers across the harbor by barge. We also note that UPS has not built on the former site of the Lidgerwood complex that occupies two blocks of space north of Valentino Park and abuts the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal Wolcott Street entrance. The EDC also received a $5.16MM grant from the federal DOT Maritime Administration (MARAD) to build landings to receive freight being distributed locally. Many things thus suggest that the RFP seeks a maritime-focused last-mile facility.
PortSide has advocated for waterborne freight (also called “marine highway”) since we were founded in 2005 (see pages 3 and 4 of this 2006 testimony), and we have done extensive research into how the current last-mile facilities built and planned for Red Hook and Sunset Park could use the marine highway. See our 2023 blogpost here. However, we do not think that the execution of the marine highway idea should cost PortSide a home. A better plan would enable the growth of this maritime nonprofit, which consistently comes up good ideas and delivers impactful and award-winning programs. The EDC has for years cherrypicked from PortSide plans and recommendations and put those ideas in their RFPs and work without enabling PortSide, the source of such good ideas, to thrive. The EDC should finally fulfill promises to Red Hook and PortSide going back to 2008 for a right-sized PortSide. Those plans we recap in our blogpost about the 2018 business plan for building space here that we did at the EDC’s request.
PortSide comments on the Comprehensive Waterfront Plan
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TWO THIRDS of all comments, over 200, were submitted to the CWP process referencing PortSide, all of them in favor of our demand to have the EDC finally “right-size PortSide” and give us the space and permissions we need and merit. See our list of requests on the webpage about our 2018 business plan here.
Here is the list of all comments to CWP supporting PortSide. We have edited the list to remove email addresses so bots don’t harvest email addresses and spam them. For media who would like contact these people, please send an email to chiclet@portsidenewyork.org. We will then forward your request to them.
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We note that the final Comprehensive Waterfront Plan ignores its own mandates.
The CWP repeatedly calls for community stewardship, input, and engagement of NYC’s waterfront and serving low-income communities of color, communities lacking waterfront access and amenities. PortSide is an award-winning example of waterfront stewardship! The 200+ comments above are massive community input. PortSide went from visible and embraced in the prior CWP “Vision 2020” to erased in the latest plan — even though TWO THIRDS of all comments submitted were about us.
Note that “Vision 2020” mentioned PortSide or our ship Mary Whalen by name 3 times. “Vision 2020” also affirmed PortSide plans without using our name in the goals of the following sections:
REACH Neighborhood Strategies 14 S.-BROOKLYN UPPER BAY SOUTH, Pg. 142
“Piers 7-12
Build a multi-use path to connect Atlantic Basin to the Brooklyn waterfront greenway.
Explore preservation of historic properties and creation of waterfront interpretive center focused on history of working waterfront. Pursue development of a “hub” for maritime support services in Atlantic Basin. Study opportunities for active water-related public uses in Atlantic Basin, such as recreation and educational programming. “
“Sunset Park
Explore locations for a maritime support services “hub,” where workboats can receive services such as provisioning, crew changes, wastewater removal, and fuel. “
How can DCP not mention PortSide in a plan touting the importance of community input when the community input overwhelmingly supports PortSide? Was someone’s thumb on the scale to erase that much community input, or is the CWP just an exercise in virtue signaling?
We also note that all terms relating to maritime appeared much less often in the new plan. DCP produced a waterfront plan with little focus on maritime!
To see the shift in values from the CWP of 2010 (“Vision 2020”) and the one from 2021, see our word analysis comparing terms used in the two plans here.
The mismatch between DCP words and City action was starkly clear fall of 2022. In early October, Mayor Eric Adams was promoting the need to grow shoreline parks in neighborhoods like ours in this DCP video, released just a week after the EDC evicted PortSide Park, a pandemic popup that provided a beloved, heavily-used minipark in the kind of neighborhood the video says needs such a park.