Please see this one-pager about what PortSide does and our impact.

Select Awards, Honors & Appointments

  • 2023 NKG Service award to Carolina Salguero for “your unwavering commitment in educating the Red Hook community in maritime sciences, safety and sustainability.” This is named for Nancy Kearse Gooding, a powerhouse advocate for Red Hook decades ago. Her granddaughter Dashana Gooding-Gladney got a street co-named for Nancy and gave NKG service awards to a cohort of Red Hook leaders. See the moving event here.

  • 2022 | “Women of Distinction” award from NYS Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon, honoring Carolina Salguero.

  • 2021 | “Covid Everyday Heroes” award for PortSide Park from Brooklyn Borough President (now Mayor) Eric Adams.

  • 2019 | “Spirit of McAnaney” award for efforts supporting preservation and public spaces in New York City by the Friends of George McAnaney, honoring Carolina Salguero

  • 2019 | City Lore “People's Hall of Fame” “Waterfront Hero” for “contributing creatively to the folk culture of NYC,” presented to Carolina Salguero

  • 2017 | Congressional Record by US Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez citing the importance of the ship MARY A. WHALEN and PortSide programs

  • 2014 | Appointed by District 38 Councilman Carlos Menchaca to the Sunset Park Task Force to advise the NYC EDC about development plans for the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal (SBMT)

  • 2013 | White House “Champions of Change” award for protecting our historic ship from hurricane Sandy and recovery work that helped our neighborhood of Red Hook, Brooklyn.

  • 2013 | Honored for our Hurricane Sandy recovery work by the NYS Senate, sponsored by Senator Velmanette Montgomery, co-sponsor Senator Daniel Squadron

  • 2013 | Appointed by Governor Cuomo's office to Red Hook's NY Rising committee, a statewide program to make communities more resilient after hurricanes Sandy, Irene and Lee.

  • 2013 | "New York Harbor Historic Ship Steward Award of Excellence” from The National Maritime Historical Society

Select accomplishments

  • Education: Spring of 2019, after just over a semester of PortSide programs with Red Hook’s PS 676, that elementary school decided to become Brooklyn’s first public maritime elementary school! April 2021, the DOE decided to evolve PS 676 into NYC’s first maritime middle school. More

  • Heritage: Our African American Maritime Heritage program is the only one in the region to our knowledge. Our virtual museum Red Hook WaterStories tells NYC’s maritime story in microcosm in a more inclusive and interdisciplinary way.

  • Historic Preservation: We saved a last-of-her-kind historic ship, the coastal oil tanker MARY A. WHALEN. She was built in 1938 for a Red Hook company. PortSide has made her one of NYC’s favorite historic ships and a platform for education, culture, job training, disaster response, and resiliency programs. As of late 2022, we have secured most of the parts need to put her cannibalized engine room back together. Please help #makeMARYrunagain!

  • Resiliency: We protected our historic ship from Sandy and ran a physical and virtual Sandy aid station for Red Hook. We helped inspire a national program, FEMA’s Sandy High Water Mark signs; we recommended such signs when we were on a panel at the White House to recieve our Champions of Change award above. This signage program was adopted in NYC by NY Emergency Management. Our founder and Executive Director has been appointed to several government resiliency committees, most notably the NYS NY Rising program.

  • Workforce: Our ship is the only Brooklyn training site for the union District Council 9. Adults enter the maritime workforce after volunteering for us. We have offered youth internships to a CTE high school. We have identified partners to launch maritime training programs and seek the building space to do that.

  • Opening waterfront spaces to the public: Starting in 2006, we created the first public programs in a Port Authority port, including an opera aboard our ship, and helped make that historically remote agency more open to community programs; in 2020, the Billion Oyster Project expanded to the same pier where we had been located. We offered the first public programs at GMD Shipyard in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and also in Atlantic Basin, Red Hook. Our 2008, 2009, and 2010 programs helped make Atlantic Basin the public-access industrial park it is today. In 2020, we created PortSide Park in response to the pandemic-era need for more open space. It served locals, visitors and riders of the Governors Island ferries that began running here in 2020, serving 33,000 riders the first year and 45,000 in 2021. We also provided the wifi for their ticketing kiosk. PortSide Park was abruptly evicted by the NYC EDC on 9/23/22 with bogus claims that it was unsafe due to its proximity to trucking.

  • Recreational Boating: We invented kayak valet, a practice comparable to bike valet now used around the harbor which facilitates people visiting locations by kayak.

To further our progress, please donate, volunteer and/or join our board, and share this link. Thanks!

Thank You to Our Sponsors and Major Partners. Some of those include: