Upcoming Meeting #3 Valentino Park Comfort Station Issue 10/9/14 7pm PS15

2025 upate

The toilet was finally installed! This took TEN YEARS!

November 24, 2024 update

The Valentino Park planning uses start with other topics covered at 9/5/14, and then the focus becomes the huge, expensive “comfort station” proposed by the Parks Department covered in blogposts 9/24/14, 9/25/14, and this one.

PortSide stayed on this matter for 10 years!

PortSide’s involvement with this issue started at the request of then Councilman Carlos Menchace in 2014. We brought up the toilet issue with the staff of Councilmember Alexa Aviles after she was elected, emailed and called Parks and DOT (the toilet was moved to be a the sidewalk one, making it a DOT space and project, not a Parks one). We pushed when Valentino got crowded during the start of pandemic, when a NYC #toiletequity campaign started, and again when other parks were selected for pilot toilet projects.

November 24, 2024 update

During the Barnacle Parade, we spot that a sidewalk toilet is being installed on Ferris Street opposite Hoek Pizza in early November. We have been emailing with the DOT and will share info about toilet opening date. We pushed for this toilet for years after the public planning process ended.

February 27, 2023 update

At the 4/20/22 ballfields re-opening, we were told by a reliable City agency source that there was a lawsuit between Cemusa (the toilet vendor) and NYC; and until that was resolved, no such toilet was going anywhere in NYC. On 2/27/23, we learn from an article in THE CITY that NYC will do a test program with Portland Loo toilets of the kind that Anne Griepenberg of Red Hook proposed in 2014 during the early stages of the Valentino Park toilet saga; but Red Hook will not be getting one of those test program Portland Loos, even though use of Valentino Park surged during the pandemic. No #parkequity for Red Hook.

April 2, 2021 update

Still no toilet despite one being approved in 2018 (see history below). On a regular basis over the years, PortSide asks multiple government about the approved toilet. We ask since we advocate for our local waterfront park spaces, AND because we propose replacing the exterior advertising on the toilet with educational and safety info such as we planned for our BoatBox proposal that fizzled into delays by changing elected officials, Parks commissioners and more. Our last round on the toilet was July 2019, when we forwarded a thread of emails to the DOT, copying supportive staff from Councilman Carlos Menchaca’s office. We got the following response:

From: Frumin, Rachel [mailto:rfrumin@dot.nyc.gov]
Sent: Monday, July 01, 2019 11:31 AM
To: Budelman, Brandon; Carolina Salguero
Cc: Branch, Leroy; Widdison, Renae; Craven, Michelle
Subject: RE: PortSide NewYork request to put info on Valentino Park Street toilet

 Hi all, 

The approved project is delayed due to DEP issues that requested an agreement letter between DOT and Parks on the site plan. That is in process. Also, the existing fence is not a standard one that we can easily procure. Instead, the fence is custom that was commissioned by EDC. To move the fence to accommodate an APT require reconfiguration of the fence work to maintain the flow of the curvy lines in the middle as well as to find a fabricator to build and install the fence. I’m working on this and it is taking some time. 

Rachel 

Rachel Frumin
Director of Concessions and Franchises
NYC Department of Transportation
55 Water Street, 9th Floor
New York, NY 10041
rfrumin@dot.nyc.gov
646-586-5787

We followed up and said that we could introduce them to lots of local metal fabricators who could replicate the fence, or make new. Resounding silence since. We are sure users of the park care more about getting a toilet than having the fence section match - though surely the amazing artisans of Red Hook could match the original fence.

January 2018 update

DOT has approved a sidewalk toilet.   Red Hook, we have been heard! Remember all those meetings about a big, expensive "comfort station" proposed for our charming waterfront park Valentino Park? That concept was defeated, and a small, sidewalk toilet is coming via the DOT. Thanks to everyone for participating in public meetings, on-line discussions with us, and other modes. Community action worked! A special shout out to Anne Griepenburgwho researched the Portland Loo which presented an alternative that appealed to many and may have swung government decision around to that kind of solution.

Toilet Party any one? It has the great acronym of TP.

We hear that there is a spring installation expected, but we are still waiting on confirmation.

THURSDAY 10/9, 7:00pm at PS 15

Next Red Hook meeting about Valentino Park Comfort Station:  Note, this is a change from the originally announced date of 10/8!

People for Red Hook Public Parks (PRHPP) set up this meeting. Here is their REVISED announcement PDF

Here is Parks Department proposed comfort station

For background, see our prior blogposts:

Report on Meeting #1:  9/4/14 Meeting with Carlos Menchaca & Parks at Red Hook library

Background info: Parks Dept. proposed comfort station & the process

Report on Meeting #2:  9/24/14 PRHPP meeting at 351 Van Brunt for community members only.

Info on upcoming meeting for Thurs 10/9 from PRHPP

People for Red Hook Public Parks and City Councilman Carlos Menchaca will be holding a community meeting on Wed. October 8th at 7pm at P.S. 15, The Daly School on Sullivan Street, between Van Brunt and Richards St. in Red Hook. The meeting is the latest in a series of meetings regarding the proposed NYC New York City Department of Parks & Recreation comfort station for Valentino Park.

The Red Hook community has expressed serious concerns about this project: cost, its size location and necessity.

At a cost of $2.5 million dollars, the cost to taxpayers for this project will be over $4000 per square foot. Construction costs for a luxury condominium in Manhattan are $500 per square foot.

The proposed location, Valentino Pier Park, is a quiet community gem, treasured by the neighborhood. The proposed building will cut the park in half and occupy a large portion of open green space.

With a change in city administration, the Red Hook community is counting on a reversal of the top--‐down management style of previous administrations. In order to protect our parks and our neighborhood, we need to bring the people who make decisions together with the people those decisions impact.

So please come to the meeting and bring a friend. We wish to avoid acrimony and work towards a positive relationship between community and administration, so bring your ideas and yourself!

Help PortSide continue this kind of community reporting and grow our programs

Support our fundraiser on Tuesday 10/28/14 “Resiliency is our HOOK.” Buy a ticket. Become a sponsor. Join the Host Committee and help sell tickets before the event. It will be a fun event with the rollicking Dixieland jazz of the Red Hook Ramblers and the great food and casual ambiance of Hometown Bar-B-Que restaurant.  We greatly appreciate your support!   As do the people and businesses who benefit from our resiliency work!

View fullsize

Red Hook's Valentino Park - Comfort Station 9-24-14 community meeting

The Valentino Park planning uses start with other topics covered at 9/5/14, and then the focus becomes the huge, expensive “comfort station” proposed by the Parks Department covered in blogposts 9/24/14, 9/25/14, 10/3/14.

2025 upate

The toilet was finally installed! This took TEN YEARS!

November 24, 2024 update

During the Barnacle Parade, we spot that a sidewalk toilet is being installed on Ferris Street opposite Hoek Pizza in early November. We have been emailing with the DOT and will share info about toilet opening date. We pushed for this toilet for years after the public planning process ended.

February 27, 2023 update

At the 4/20/22 ballfields re-opening, we were told by a reliable City agency source that there was a lawsuit between Cemusa (the toilet vendor) and NYC; and until that was resolved, no such toilet was going anywhere in NYC. On 2/27/23, we learn from an article in THE CITY that NYC will do a test program with Portland Loo toilets of the kind that Anne Griepenberg of Red Hook proposed in 2014 during the early stages of the Valentino Park toilet saga; but Red Hook will not be getting one of those test program Portland Loos, even though use of Valentino Park surged during the pandemic. No #parkequity for Red Hook.

April 2, 2021 update

Still no toilet despite one being approved in 2018 (see history below). On a regular basis over the years, PortSide asks multiple government about the approved toilet. We ask since we advocate for our local waterfront park spaces, AND because we propose replacing the exterior advertising on the toilet with educational and safety info such as we planned for our BoatBox proposal that fizzled into delays by changing elected officials, Parks commissioners and more. Our last round on the toilet was July 2019, when we forwarded a thread of emails to the DOT, copying supportive staff from Councilman Carlos Menchaca’s office. We got the following response:

From: Frumin, Rachel [mailto:rfrumin@dot.nyc.gov]
Sent: Monday, July 01, 2019 11:31 AM
To: Budelman, Brandon; Carolina Salguero
Cc: Branch, Leroy; Widdison, Renae; Craven, Michelle
Subject: RE: PortSide NewYork request to put info on Valentino Park Street toilet

 Hi all, 

The approved project is delayed due to DEP issues that requested an agreement letter between DOT and Parks on the site plan. That is in process. Also, the existing fence is not a standard one that we can easily procure. Instead, the fence is custom that was commissioned by EDC. To move the fence to accommodate an APT require reconfiguration of the fence work to maintain the flow of the curvy lines in the middle as well as to find a fabricator to build and install the fence. I’m working on this and it is taking some time. 

Rachel 

Rachel Frumin
Director of Concessions and Franchises
NYC Department of Transportation
55 Water Street, 9th Floor
New York, NY 10041
rfrumin@dot.nyc.gov
646-586-5787

We followed up and said that we could introduce them to lots of local metal fabricators who could replicate the fence, or make new. Resounding silence since. We are sure users of the park care more about getting a toilet than having the fence section match - though surely the amazing artisans of Red Hook could match the original fence.

January 2018 update

DOT has approved a sidewalk toilet.   Red Hook, we have been heard! Remember all those meetings about a big, expensive "comfort station" proposed for our charming waterfront park Valentino Park? That concept was defeated, and a small, sidewalk toilet is coming via the DOT. Thanks to everyone for participating in public meetings, on-line discussions with us, and other modes. Community action worked! A special shout out to Anne Griepenburg who researched the Portland Loo which presented an alternative that appealed to many and may have swung government decision around to that kind of solution. Toilet Party any one? It has the great acronym of TP. We hear that there is a spring installation expected, but we are still waiting on confirmation.

September 25, 2014

Our Director Carolina Salguero attended the following meeting last night and wrote the following summary. Notes were taken by others, and we will make them available as we get them

From Parks Department PDF. See link at left for full PDF.

PEOPLE FOR RED HOOK PUBLIC PARKS MEETING
Wed 9/24 7:30pm, 351 Van Brunt St.
Carolina Salguero notes

Here is a PDF with Parks proposal for the comfort station

Overview

A meeting of about 40 people was held over about two hours. The meeting was designed as a community conversation meaning Community Board 6, Parks, elected officials or media were not invited. The Red Hook Star Revue was asked to leave.  However, Peterson Napoleon, a staffer from NYS Assemblyman Felix Ortiz office was there which was only made clear after he spoke up midway through the meeting. He stayed.  Given the request for the media to leave and some of the passions in the room,  we do not mention names of speakers below when describing proposals, questions or statements people made.

There was little interest in the meeting in the idea that one would be able to see the Statue of Liberty from the proposed Comfort Station as shown in this rendering. Saving the lawn was a far greater priority.

A significant portion of the beginning of the meeting was spent venting frustration with Parks, CB6, the City, etc for not being sensitive to Red Hook.  This was intertwined with discussion about how do we discuss this? Who moderates? Passions ran high.

Things settled down and discussion got into various aspects of the Parks planning and outreach process, the status and amount of the whopping $2.4MM for the comfort station, who wants toilets and not, who is represented at the meeting and not, etc.

Towards the end of meeting, there was a lot of discussion about how to capture the points in the meeting, share the info about the meeting and the Parks proposal with the community, whether to have another prep meeting before a meeting with Carlos Menchaca on 10/8 or 10/9; and discussion, pro and con, about the way Red Hook tackles planning issues and when to use anger or not.

(correction added 9/27/14. It was decided to write a press release. Once we get that, we will post it here.)

Toilets yes or no

There was a lot of concern that the Parks plan took up alot of popular lawn space with the building, the access ramps and with the landscaping

Early in the meeting there was a show of hands vote which showed that about half the room, maybe a tad more, was for no toilets at all, the other half for some toilet but not this version in this location.  (correction, first draft here omitted that there was a later vote that came out in  favor of a smaller toilet in a different location so there was some evolution in the course of the meeting.)

Criticism of the toilet form (as opposed to its planning process):

Too big, too expensive, in the wrong place in the park, bad for taking away green space, ugly, not sensitive to 19th Century buildings.

Specific Points for Follow Up:

Questions about Parks Process

View from the ADA ramp or Ferris Street side

What are the stages of this process? Meaning what happens moving forward so RH community can understand how we can or how much we can influence?  “Can CB6 rubber stamp this without RH involvement?” was asked in various ways.

There were many questions about how did this come about? Is there a documented request? What metrics does Parks use to prove need for toilets? (Comparisons were made to Red Hook Ballfields and Central Park that are much larger and have more visitors and would have a lower toilet-tovisitor ratio than Valentino would have if this 4-stall comfort station were built.)

There was some discussion about whether it was locals or visitors who needed toilets. Some people were of the “who cares about the visitors” persuasion, others not.

Can a survey be conducted of the park users to see how many want toilets? This was a popular question.

Finance questions

How locked in is the $1.4MM? Is it locked into that park? That project?

View from the stair side or western side.

$50,000 to use for Valentino Park is paid annually by Hughes Marine (a give back for the Police evidence lot on the Erie Basin breakwater).  We were told this is supposed to be for Valentino Park but has been put in Parks general fund. It was suggested, too much agreement, that we need to get that pulled out of general and applied to Valentino.

There was general, strong agreement that the price tag for this thing was too high.

Planning parameters

Design criteria: what are they for this design (from FEMA, to DEC, zoning, building code, etc) so we can propose informed alternates.

Portapotties: Can seasonal portapotties be used rather than anything permanent?

Property lines:

• There needs to be more clarity about where street end and private property lines are on the Van Dyke Street side.

• Is there anything that can be used in that asphalt area or is that all private property?

• [Note: the DOT, at least under Bloomberg, had a Street End program that supports public uses; and if the street end abuts the park, there might be some way to use DOT space as public open space.]

Love the lawn: The room was strongly for protecting the green and either wanted an absolute “don’t build on the green” or had a strong primary interest in avoiding building on the green. Those two points covered just about everyone there.

There was strong appreciation for “natural” plantings and style of the park.

Heavily used site wiped out by toilets There was a strong sense that Parks did not understand how heavily used the section where they’ve placed the comfort station is.  It was referred to as a children’s play area, BBQ area, area heavily used by “poor people who are not represented here.”

DEC Do they have jurisdiction here or not? One speaker said that DEC has signed off,  and that they did not.

Wish list:

There was considerable discussion covering “If we could spend this money on what we want, or get money for what we want.”  This was held partly in the hope that some of the $2.4MM could be directed elsewhere but also to be able to make Parks better understand the community use and needs relative to this park:

Garbage cans.  More of them and cans for recyclables. One person said could those be bundled with toilets under category “waste” as a way to use the allocated funds for things other than bathrooms.

Hose: Some way to wash down the fish guts etc on end of the pier left by fisherman. A hand-pump was proposed that used salt water to cut down cost (and disruption to park) of installing a line connected to City water mains.

Beach: A way to make the beach more suitable for toddlers/small children. How was not clearly defined; the comment was that it seemed iffy for little ones.

BoatBox  PortSide’s BoatBox plans to turn the container used by the Red Hook Boaters into a better amenity for all park users, visiting kayakers, and the Boaters themselves. The current container came to service the park via work done by PortSide and the Red Hook Boaters; and the agreement was that Boaters had use of the inside and that PortSide’s program space was the outside of the container and that PortSide would take the lead there, consulting with the Boaters during the process.

ALTERNATIVE TOILET SCENARIOS

Bush Terminal Piers Park in Sunset Park toilets were mentioned a few times at tonight's meeting.The architects site for them is here

Est4te Four – there was a proposal to approach them and ask them to build the comfort station solution. There was a variation whereby someone proposed that, when Est4te Fou asked for their variance to build, that the community demand that they build bathrooms as their give back in the way that O'Connell had to provide public access to the waterfront and an esplanade.

Brooklyn Bridge Park toilets by Jane’s Carousel  These photos were requested but for some reason Benjamin Peikes photos posted on the Facebook page for Mary A. Whalen  were not visible on the iPad or a phone.  They are in this two-photo slide show.

That concludes our notes from the meeting

With the goal of informing the discussion, here are some links from comments on our Facebook page about existing small-footprint, lower-cost toilets

The City of Portland, Oregon has had a public toilet design process. Here are several links. Thank you Anne Griepenberg for the info about Portland's work posted to our Mary A. Whalen Facebook page.

City of Portland Parks & Recreation public loo webpage

A blogpost describes the design and reveals that there is a public restroom competition in Canada, a source of more info, though the Portland unit won, they say.  The Portland Loo

Tech specs for Portland Loo

Tips for making Loos that Last - Blogpost
 Article revealing that they cost $60,000 each

More on FEMA Given some discussion about whether the comfort station could be wetproofed rather than raised Here is FEMA ino on wet floodproofing

Other groups discussing public toilet design

PHLUSH is also out of Portland. "PHLUSH believes that toilet availability is a human right and that well-designed sanitation facilities restore health to our cities, our waters and our soils."

The Poop Project

American Restroom Association

NYC's own public toilet design

Red Hook's Valentino Park - Comfort Station yes, no or how?

From the Red Hook Star Revue

2025 update

The toilet was finally installed! This took TEN YEARS!

November 24, 2024 update

The Valentino Park planning uses start with other topics covered at 9/5/14, and then the focus becomes the huge, expensive “comfort station” proposed by the Parks Department covered in blogposts 9/24/14, 9/25/14, 10/3/14.

During the Barnacle Parade, we spot that a sidewalk toilet is being installed on Ferris Street opposite Hoek Pizza in early November. We have been emailing with the DOT and will share info about toilet opening date. We pushed for this toilet for years after the public planning process ended.

January 2018 update

DOT has approved a sidewalk toilet.   Red Hook, we have been heard! Remember all those meetings about a big, expensive "comfort station" proposed for our charming waterfront park Valentino Park? That concept was defeated, and a small, sidewalk toilet is coming via the DOT. Thanks to everyone for participating in public meetings, on-line discussions with us, and other modes. Community action worked! A special shout out to Anne Griepenburg who researched the Portland Loo which presented an alternative that appealed to many and may have swung government decision around to that kind of solution.

Toilet Party any one? It has the great acronym of TP.

We hear that there is a spring installation expected, but we are still waiting on confirmation.

Original blogpost

The Parks Department has proposed a large comfort station (bathroom) for Red Hook's small jewel of a waterfront park, the Louis J. Valentino Park  & Pier.

PDF of the Comfort Station plan

We will update this blogpost as we get new information (and time allows). You can also get updates on our Facebook page for Mary A. Whalen

See our prior post about the Fall 2014 repair work Parks planned which caused the first round of consternation.

Below we copy a post we made to Facebook on Tuesday 9/23/14. There were great comments and photos submitted in response and we'll try to get those over here when we can. Not everyone is on Facebook, and a blog post makes a one-stop link that can be shared widely, but the flurry of discussion on this topic, is quite a bit of work to follow!

People for Red Hook Public Parks MEETING Wed 9/24 7:30-8:30p, 351 Van Brunt St. There are rising concerns over New York City Department of Parks & Recreation plan for a comfort station in ‪#‎ValentinoPark‬. Concerns focus on large size of the comfort station which wipes out a whole side of park that is heavily used, and the high cost (4 stalls = $2.4 million according to The Red Hook Star-Revue). The size seems to result, at least in part, from FEMA requirements that the building be raised, leading to the creation of a hillock, and then the required ADA ramp to reach that height also becomes huge. The landscaping plan prevents uses that currently occur in that section of the park.

RECOMMENDATION Let's all approach this by asking questions and negotiating. Red Hook has the tendency to launch into angry accusations in public meetings - at the outset. That is not the best way to tease out alternatives (be they of design or of process). Anger blocks creative thinking (affecting community members trying to improve things), and the people in power are people too and it can be hard for them to be receptive to working with a community that is screaming at them. Anger should be the last resort.

ALTERNATIVES? Could something smaller in size and cost be built-to-flood or "wet-proofed" as Andrea Sansom has proposed? Would incinolets solve the space/cost problem? If it is solar and wind powered by the designs that Baldev Duggal has created for the Brooklyn Navy Yard does it become more resilient or cost less? Someone said if the money is not used it is lost, well then, could money from resulting savings be used for other improvements to the park such as the BoatBox that PortSide designed as a better boathouse and outdoor living room for park users?

The scale of the proposed comfort station does remind us of that Vietnam era slogan "we had to destroy the village in order to save it" by which me mean that an improvement to the park is wiping out a lot of the park.

Carlos Menchaca got involved to clear up some misunderstandings about the Parks repair project which prompted the fences to go up, and we expect that he has already rolled his sleeves up to tackle the Comfort Station Matter.

http://www.star-revue.com/controversial-plan-valentino-pier-comfort-station-george-fiala/ 

PortSide interview: Don Horton's WWII memories of Red Hook, recollections of a child in the merchant marine

Yesterday, Don Horton visited PortSide NewYork to give us some oral history.  PortSide has been corresponding with Don Horton since October 2013, and the last time Don Horton visited Red Hook was 1950.  

Starting in the 1940s, through the WWII period,  he was working as a child in the merchant marine - a paid worker - so the company knew what was going on.

Yes, such a class of merchant mariner existed, and Don has dedicated his retirement years to getting their service recognized by the federal government, along with the women, elderly and disabled who worked in the wartime merchant marine. All of that being a startling case of "who knew?" 

We wrote about his dogged efforts to reveal this hidden history in a prior blogpost.

Don knows conventional military service, what it is to be a vet.

He served in the Korean War, and he believes that the hundreds of thousands of merchant mariners who served during WWII deserve our nation’s acknowledgement of their service whether they were towing supplies to the European theater or moving cargo along our eastern shore where German U-boats came in close to sink their kind of vessels.

From age 10-18, Don Horton worked on barges, along with his two brothers, his sister, and his mother, all of them joining the father of the family throughout the summer.  

One of their main jobs was hauling coal from Norfolk, Virginia up north. The two boys learned fast how to repair a steam boiler, and they painted the barge. Mama (Sadie Horton) was the cook. The sister married early in the story and got off the boats. Papa seems to have liked drink too much, and brother Billy got off the barges to get away from that and went to work on a tug. The third day on the tug, at age 17, Billy was killed when Germans shelled and sank his boat.

In comparison, Don’s memories of Red Hook are more associated with fun. A stop in New York meant good times. Don recalled a trip to 42nd Street and the treat of a hot dog.  A trip to Coney Island netted a very big hot dog.

Yesterday, Don was in town to see some Senators on behalf of his cause which you can follow on Facebook and to contribute some oral history to PortSide's WaterStories cultural tourism effort.  Here is a preliminary glimpse of some gems we got from Don today.

Carolina Salguero, John Weaver and Peter Rothenberg spent several hours interviewing Don and recording video and sound files.  Don's tack-sharp memory and vivid story telling made for a great afternoon.

We started out talking over lunch in the galley of our Mary A. Whalen with Don and his darling wife Norita.

Ralston's WWII grocery, now the site of hip Baked

After lunch, we visited the site of Ralston's, a grocery store during WWII Red Hook: fruit under an awning out front, narrow aisles and a place where they preferred you give them a list of what you wanted instead of getting it from the shelf yourself, little shopping carts with wooden wheels.  

Don said boats liked to provision at Ralston’s and explained the allure: the captain's were given free liquor in the back in a private bar which ensured they would frequent the joint and then spend grub money in the store.

Ralston’s address was 294 Van Brunt Street, now BAKED.

Don said that the soda Spur was their favorite and that he and his siblings fought over the precious bottles on the barge trip to the next port, the ice blocks from Ralston's being their only refrigeration until they got there.

Here is a 1943 ad for Spur, "a cola with a walnut taste," he remembered with a smile.

Next, we took Don Horton past two once-twin tenements, one of which is at 415 Van Brunt, to see if those were the kind of buildings that matched his "never would happen now" WWII memories of a Van Brunt Street where women on hands and knees scrubbed little porches with buckets of water, a scrub brush and a big bar of Octagon soap.

YES, those were the kinds of buildings he remembered!

Don then explained that "doing laundry" on the barge was scrubbing dungarees on the wide rail of the barge and leaving them to dry there.

Sunny's Bar

From there, over to Sunny's Bar where we were thrilled to find Sunny himself lounging in bathrobe with friends at the end of lunch.

At age 80, Sunny is but 2 years younger than Don, and they shared many memories including swimming in the filthy water of the time which both cited as having lots of turds and Coney Island whitefish as Sunny called them, or rubbers in Don’s version.

Sunny cheekily got an old load off his conscience when he confessed that he'd "borrowed' someone's rowboat at one point, and on top of that lied to his Papa saying that he had not taken it, and apologized to Don who said they'd come back from Ralston's Grocery at times to find their boat gone.

Sunny Balzano, Carolina Salguero of PortSide NewYork and Don Horton

The rowboats always came back, Don said, but delays were a big concern; because if they missed the tide, the current would be too strong to row against it in their little boat loaded with groceries.

Sunny shared memories of how, when he heard wartime air raid siren drills and knew that the war was being fought "overseas," thought that Staten Island (which was overseas for a little Red Hook boy) was under attack.

Don Horton gave us several copies of this book.

Here is what Don told us about shelling during the interview in the galley:  When he first started on the barges and saw flashes of light when they were offshore and asked Papa what they were, Papa fibbed and didn’t say it was German’s shelling the American merchant marine, he said it was lighting.

Later on, “I knew what those lights were,” said Don, “and something I don’t often say, I wet myself with fear.” The barges were old boats, unarmored with no weapons, three miles behind the tug, he clarified.

"Barge" of the sort Don Horton and his family work, dismasted wood schooner hulls.

We need to clarify what "barges" means here. These were the old, creaky hulls of wooden schooners,  dismasted to turn them into barges.

Don said the vessels' intended life span was some 25 years and these were 50-60 years old and so frail that after being beat up in a storm, the caulk might be battered out. Then, they'd have to go to a shipyard for repairs.

The Red Hook Flats & Erie Basin

We walked out to the end of the Beard Street Pier so Don Horton could see the Red Hook flats and the entrance to Erie Basin. This prompted more memories.

Don had emailed us some great memories of the Red Hook flats last year which paint a picture of a harbor jammed with ships, tugs, barges, row boats and the "bum boat" or "speculator" a sort of scrap dealer and rag picker afloat who went from vessel to vessel buying what he could.

Yesterday, Don described how he and his brother scavenged whatever they could, lengths of tired rope, bits of metal they found or “liberated” from cargo on the occasions they were hauling metal.

"There's the cut," Don Horton said as soon as he saw the entrance to Erie Basin.

Standing on the end of Greg O’Connell’s Beard Street Pier enabled Don to pin point geography in a way that looking at the map while seated in our galley had not, and he explained that the dinghy dock location was around the Erie Basin side of that pier.  During WWII, tugboats were jammed into the place where the New York Water Taxi homeport dock is today.

PortSide recently acquired this page from an old magazine showing a view of the Erie Basin during the era described in this interview.

Don said there were often up to 50 barges at anchor "on the Red Hook flats" as he called them, and that Erie Basin was so chock full of ships and barges that his family had to find channels underneath the bow and stern rakes of the barges to row their way through the fleet.

During the interview in the Mary A Whalen galley, Don described how his father bought a lot of whiskey when he was ashore, and his mother would dump it over the side once they got back to the barge on the Red Hook flats, to the point that she said the flats must be full of whiskey bottles. Hello, bottle collecting divers!

We were all surprised to learn that Don's mother did not know how to swim and was afraid of the water but still spent every summer working the coastwise barges with her husband and children during the war.

The whole endeavor required a lot of courage by everyone in the family, and PortSide NewYork is helping to get this aspect of history, that's national history and local history, better known. 

[This and many other stories are also told in redhookwaterstories.org PortSide NewYork's  e-museum and neighborhood website. ]

Report on Red Hook meeting about Valentino Park hosted by Carlos Menchaca with the Parks Department

Valentino Park, Red Hook, Brooklyn. The little park with the big view. 

Red Hook, Brooklyn has a small jewel with a big view in the Louis J. Valentino Park and Pier.  The place inspired an August uproar due to unannounced renovation project by the Parks Department.

To set the scene, this park is heavily used by old-timers and newbies, dog walkers, fishermen, sunbathers, kids, seniors, an occasional croquet game, the outdoor movie series Red Hook Flicks and the Red Hook Boaters who offer free kayaking and conduct beach clean ups. 

The use of the park has ramped up due to a great food and activity scene which sprang up post hurricane Sandy on the Van Dyke Street end on the parks southeast side with the Steve's Key Lime Pie and Hometown BBQ setting up outdoor eating areas. Brooklyn Motor Works is running a cool motorcycle biz next door, and there is a forge across the street at She-Weld and Pier 44 Antiques auction house (they also sell retail) next to that. In short, a Red Hook scene.

2005 renovation of Valentino Park

So.... not surprisingly, when fences went up around Valentino Park recently without any prior notice from the Parks department, there was community concern - concerns heightened by the fact that Red Hook's Coffey Park was shut down for renovations without notice this year, and Valentino Park underwent a similar surprise lockdown for renovations in 2005. 

Last night, Councilman Carlos Menchaca convened and ran a great meeting with the Parks Department and the community, and THE COMMUNITY WAS HEARD

Hats off to Carlos Menchaca for organizing this meeting and running it so well. Thank you, Brooklyn Parks Commissioner Jeffrey for coming out, for apologizing for lack of notice to the community about the project, for committing to do better and change the process, and for being willing to take input on some design issues regarding proposed repair near a bulkhead.

The community and CM Carlos Menchaca conveyed that there needs to be more communication from Parks in the future and more opportunity for community input. People expressed concerns about process and design. Great comments by Victoria Hagman, Dan Daniel Wiley, Lillie Marshall, Danella Johnson, Tony Schloss, and many others.

In sum, the Parks work plan is the following

• This is, in Parks' terms, a small $118,000 project that should be completed within a month.

• Most of the park will stay open during the work.

• Access to the pier and the beach will remain open during the work.

• Work needs to finish well before winter weather because asphalt plants close when temperatures drop below 45 degrees.

Red Hook Boaters in action!

The work is occurring because Parks wanted to fix the broken water fountain over near Coffey Street and in order to make that project large enough for a capital project, they bundled that work with some other repairs, - all of this happening because they have some discretionary money in the budget.

Those "other repairs" are fixing the walkways parallel to the water (NOT the central walkway to the pier) through the park in the following ways: The smaller walks near the water are "aggregate" (gravel in plain English) bounded by low steel rails; the problem with this design is that the aggregate has "migrated" (or spread in plain English) far from the walkways. This means that the walkways are now lower than the steel rails, and those rails are now a tripping hazard.

Another walkway issue is the 8-9" step from walkway up to the pier on the SE (or Steve's Key Lime Pie) side of the pier walkway, and that's tough on seniors and the disabled and a trip-n-fall hazard to all us distracted folks.

Short term band aid vs long term resiliency

Lastly, and this is were the big focus and passion of the discussion about the renovation design centered, was how and why Parks proposed to deal with a zone on that same SE side of the pier where salt water comes over the bulkhead, puddles, and then drains back out to sea - in the process, killing vegetation and taking the soil with it, eg leading to a situation that at some point will create sinkholes and a collapsed bulkhead.

The difference of opinion here was that Parks wanted to do a quick repair to prevent a big future job and the hazard of sinkholes by raising the land so that it was level with the bulkhead and putting an asphalt cap (with sand and cement below) over PART of the area there so that water would drain from the asphalt back to sea.

Parks could have brought a better rendering showing what would become asphalt and what would be planting in this new domed better-drained hump of park - there was a lot of confusion about what was staying green and not.

At the meeting last night, many community members asked the Parks department for more green and less asphalt. There is heavy use of the small green space in Valentino Park.

Many community members did not want more asphalt in the park. Victoria Hagman suggested that Parks seek input on more green and resilient design practices, citing Gita Nandan as one possible contributor.  Dan Wiley from Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez office mentioned that the $200MM integrated flood protection plan coming to Red Hook might replace or better what Parks is proposing. (In the after-meeting chatter, some questioned whether the $200MM plan would be built long after that spot has a major sinkhole.)

Parks pointed out that they don't have budget now to re-design or use more costly materials.

Landscape architects vs BLUEspace architects

As waterfront advocates, we want to interject, supporting what Commissioner Jeffrey admitted last night,  that this salt-spray, sinkhole-prone section of the park was NOT well designed from the outset. (PS, its surface treatment of plantings etc was installed during the 2005 renovation.)

Somewhere in our files is a photo of salt spray heavily dousing newly planted "beach roses" which soon died in that spot.

In our opinion, it was typical of how NYC waterfront park design is dominated by landscape architects and not water people. Where are the BLUEspace architects? Piers designed for boats?

PortSide offering line throwing activity at Red Hook Fest in Valentino Park 2011

Breaking down the silos

PortSide Director Carolina Salguero picked up on Dan Wiley's comment about NY Rising resiliency work. She was on the NY Rising committee, and PortSide has done a lot of recovery and resiliency planning work since Hurricane Sandy.  Salguero asked if the collapsed water line under Coffey Street to the drinking fountain was related to the frequent HUGE puddle that sits on the west end of Coffey Street after a rain.

Storm drain problems were a big focus of the NY Rising effort. Parks could not answer that on the spot, and said they would ask their engineer for info.

At PortSide, we always try and break down silos and develop cross talk, so the hope with this question is that a Parks project could lead to info that would inform a DEP project the Red Hook NY Rising committee hopes to see. Sounds simple, but NYC agency cross-talk and info-share is harder than one would expect.

Next steps

As design-by-community could not solve the "how to cap and drain the proposed dome," it was agreed that the community would do some homework and get ideas to Parks.

Everyone needs to bear in mind that there is not a lot of budget here, so AFFORDABLE concepts need to be submitted. As to whether or how design changes could be made due to city process on how to bid and let a job, over to Carlos and Parks for answer.

Est4te Four, who is developing all the property across Coffey Street from Valentino, will want the Coffey Street Lake resolved, so Red Hook may see a solution due to private development.

NEXT ISSUE for Valentino Park" Parks proposal to install a "comfort station" eg bathrooms over by the Coffey Street side near Ferris. Come to a Brooklyn Community Board 6 meeting on Wed 9/17 6:30pm at the Miccio Center for discussion of that (and Coffey Park) as well as the Columbus Day weekend concert on Pier 9 in the Red Hook Container Terminal.

We covered what became the Valentino Park Toilet Saga in these blogposts 9/24/14, 9/25/14, 10/3/14.

FEMA needs input to Region 2 Coastal website - due 8-16-14

ALERT! Get info to FEMA by Wed 8/6/14.

FEMA realized that they need to revise the region2.coastal website and are looking for input and feedback. Send info directly to Heidi Carlin below.

From: coat-bounces@marine.rutgers.edu On Behalf Of Carlin, Heidi
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2014 2:51 PM
To: coat@marine.rutgers.edu
Cc: Song Thomas
Subject: [Coat] We need your input on the Region 2 Coastal website by August 6, 2014

Dear COAT Members,

You are a valued member of a large team of professionals along the New Jersey and New York coast interested in promoting flood risk communication. We would really appreciate you taking a few minutes to review the www.region2coastal.com website, then fill out the attached questionnaire, and send back to Heidi.carlin@urs.com by Wednesday, August 6, 2014.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

Heidi M. Carlin, CFM
Senior Strategic Communications Specialist
URS Corporation
Office/Mobile: 410-725-7414
Email: Heidi.Carlin@urs.com

*** here is the questionnaire ***

This questionnaire is intended for local community officials and other key stakeholders to determine usability of the www.region2coastal.com website. Your feedback is greatly appreciated!

1. What is your primary function? (Please circle)
a. Floodplain Manager
b. Building Official
c. Elected Official
d. Emergency Manager
e. Academic
f. Non-Profit Organization
g. Private Sector
h. Federal/State Government
i. Other, please describe: ____________________

For the following questions, please write your answer in the space provided. Use the back of this sheet if
you need more space and indicate which question you are writing about.

2. Which parts of the website are most useful to you?




3. What do you need the most from this website in terms of content now or in the future?




4. What would you like the website to do for you? How can the website assist with your job needs?




5. Is there information you need that you cannot find, or have difficulty finding, related to the coastal flood study, the NFIP, or related topics? If so, please list the specific topics.




6. What do you think the public needs the most from this website?




7. What do you think about the overall look and feel of the website? Do you have any suggestions for improving overall usability?

PortSide NewYork "Heavy Metal" Fundraising Sale! New Items Added!

“Funds raised help PortSide continue our mission to bring life to the BLUEspace of NYC’s WATERfront and our hurricane Sandy recovery. ”

Sunday 7/27/14, 11am to 4pm

3 tractor trailers of marine hardware for sale! Cash (or credit card) on the bollard -- this is not an auction!

Great deco items for home, loft, restaurant.  Get your souvenir red hooks here! 4-foot tall turnbuckles! Shackles of all sizes up to multi-ton lift capacity!  Blocks (pulleys), weld-on cleats, pad eyes, wire clips, 4 large bollards. Tension testing machine.  Vintage scale and wire rope measuring device. Barrels of chain.  1,400 Unislings for bagged cargo, 90 Portabulk bags.    Jet Portable folding hydraulic 2-ton hoist.  (3) jet 1-ton trolley, (1) each of Jet 1/2-ton hoist w/20 ft, Jet 2-ton pallet puller, Jet 2-ton trolley, and more! EVERYTHING MUST GO!

Riggers, this is real working hardware of industrial scale. 

New items added!

WWII Armory gun rack
Viking 10-person liferaft (distinctive kiddy pool!)
Pilots ladder
Antique Potbelly stove
Large wood crate
2-wheel welder’s trolley
vintage hand truck for moving barrels
modern Wheel barrow
Elliptical hatch frame with bolts (industrial photo frame)
Storage:

• HUGE steel shelves
• steel crane basket
• Large wood bin-shelf system painted grey

***Inventory in Word or Excel (approximate. minus a few things we culled for our ship MARY A. WHALEN) does not include the New Items above***

Sale Location: Pier 11 loading dock, south end, Atlantic Basin, Red Hook, Brooklyn

Vehicles enter at Bowne & Imlay (follow signs for Brooklyn Cruise Terminal entrance). Pedestrians and bikes can also enter from the south at a pedestrian gate at the corner of Pioneer & Conover Streets.

Funds raised help PortSide continue our mission to bring life to the BLUEspace of NYC's WATERfront and our hurricane Sandy recovery.  As of last count, our Sandy damages run about $300,000.  We protected the MARY A. WHALEN, with our offices aboard, from the storm; but Sandy got to everything off the ship on the pier. Many historic items were damaged. Some things floated away forever.  We suffer strong indirect Sandy effects. Sandy stalled the urgent search for a home we declared in 2012, since all waterfront sites with which we were negotiating were damaged and dropped negotiations for a while or for good; and we have been unable to earn money with the ship where is it now for about three years.

For scale, in photos below, yellow tape measure is extended to 12"

New Items Added!

Trailer #3

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

Trailer #2

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

Trailer #1

Hooks and links

Sparkling renovation of tanker Mary A. Whalen galley

The transformation of the galley will knock your socks off! Decades of paint were removed from steel, bronze and Monel surfaces.  The bulkhead was painted one of its early colors, a light, bright green typical in the 1930's when the ship was launched.

What made this project so challenging (beyond the scope of work) is that we are limited, since February 2012, to just 5 visitors at a time who do not have Homeland Security TWIC cards, and 5 such visitors can only be escorted in and out by our Director Carolina Salguero who has to stay aboard (eg,  not leave for meetings) while they are aboard.

These rules have so impeded access to the ship that they have largely stopped volunteer shipwork (and programs) on the tanker.   What inspired us to take on this big project is that Erika Stetson donated her entire month of December to us (as training for her entry to SUNY Maritime Academy) which broke the back on this work (and fortunately not on her!).

Related Posts

Start of renovation

Renovation midway

Paint removal and painting volunteers included Carol Salguero (Carolina's mother), Carla and Andrea Oviedo (visiting from Spain), Max Powell (driving 3 hours each way from Waterford for a few weekends), and our advisor Paul Amico.  As this project went along, we also got assistance from The Red Hook Volunteers, FEMA Americorps members, and various individuals.  Peter Guaracci, an actor and teacher, is our latest regular volunteer.

Putting Humpty Dumpty Back Together Again

Putting the space back together was a project unto itself!  Shipcat Chiclet was most engaged during the unpacking of the boxes.  She did not like the noise of the paint chipping portion of this project. Needleguns are not for her!

Metal polishing work

We all delight in the gleam!

The Porthole Challenge

Dear Workboat crew,

Never paint the polished bronze!  SO many layers of paint are on Mary Whalen's portholes and Monel porthole surrounds. 

At first, we hoped to take the portholes entirely out, but getting them separated from the ship's steel proved too much. We are sending the swing plates, nuts, hinge pins and deadlights out for dip and strip polishing. The dogs will be another tedious matter.

Getting the hinge pins separated from the cast iron deadlights, which have corroded and swollen around the pins, has been a project requiring Zen patience, regular application of PB Blaster lubricant, heat, tapping, and prayer.

You can still help! Here is what we still need:

Tile restoration: Replace missing tile. Clean and restore existing tile. The white tiles are very discolored.

Repair of the wood paneled fridge and freezer: glue down some veneer bubbles, some re-varnishing. Change of freon, gaskets and compressors from DC to AC motors (or installation of a rectifier)

7 vintage cabinet latches. We can provide dimensions and details.

Furniture restoration and upholstery work: Restoration of the table stools.  They should have backs. Some of the seats are not original. All should be reupholstered. New back and side cushion for the banquette, and re-upholstery of the banquette seat cushion to match.

Wood refinishing. Some sanding and varnishing of wood shelves and trim and parts of the fridge.

Two vintage fans. One was mounted on a wooden shelf, the other a "wall-mounted" model was on a bulkhead under the skylight. (We can provide dimensions).

Donations as ever!

Thanks!

From 1934 to our 2013 White House award: PortSide board member John Weaver's trips to DC

A year ago today, some of the PortSide NewYork crew and colleagues traveled to Washington, DC to receive a White House "Champions of Change" award for our Sandy Recovery work in Red Hook, Brooklyn. 

Much is made of youth culture these days, but at PortSide we have developed a deep appreciation for senior culture thanks to the wisdom and long perspective offered to us by people such as John Weaver, one of our board members. John's connection to PortSide is through the tanker MARY A. WHALEN. John's father in law Alf Dyrland was captain of the MARY from her rechristening in 1962 to 1978. 

John has had many careers in his life. On his first acting gig after graduating from Columbia he shared the stage with Katherine Hepburn.  He was in Greenwich Village when it was The Village and met Ed Koch when he was just a real estate lawyer.  John went to Woodstock, drove Diane Arbus to her photo shoots because she didn’t have a car, and traveled the country as actor and stage manager.  John’s work as a director in live TV was notable for his creative approach to the use of multiple cameras, and he was the Producer/Director of the first season of "Like It Is" a public affairs show focusing on issues relevant to the African-American community that ran from 1968 to 2011 until its host died. Here is what he wrote about PortSide's trip to DC in 2013:

It’s April 23rd, 2013 and Carolina Salguero, Peter Rothenberg and I have just arrived in Washington DC after four hours on the BOLT Bus. Union Station is Grand Central large but not Grand Central dirty. We all remark on how clean it looks feels and smells.

We wend our way to the street and the line for a taxi. No pushing, shoving, bumping. It’s all so very civilized and pleasant. As we exit out into the fresh air Carolina asks me:

“When was the last time you were in Washington, John?”

I replied: “I believe it was maybe 1934. My parents brought us down here for the traditional Easter Egg rolling on the White House lawn”

This did get a laugh along with a few strangers turning their heads to see the relic who had just said that. Then it was our turn to climb into a cab and head for our lodgings. I recalled that I actually had been to Washington more recently, on two separate trips. One was on the occasion of Dr. Martin Luther King’s address, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. “I have a dream” resonates for me today as if I am hearing it again, for the first time. I traveled that day on a bus with a delegation from Actors’ Equity Association to support the Civil Rights movement that Dr. King was leading. I sat on the steps a few feet behind and to the left of Dr. King.

Some years later, 1968, I was once again on a bus. This time it was with a group from the 15th St Meeting of the Friends, Quakers, from Manhattan. We had traveled to Washington to protest the Vietnam War. Highlights of that trip: sleeping on the floor of the Smithsonian, We had left New York at 6am and all of us found someplace, indoors, to take a nap. Next getting to experience tear gas on an open field…Mr. Nixon did not want us to feel that he welcomed our presence. And last, when we returned to the location where our bus was meant to be, there was no bus. Earlier arrivals from our group told us that, when they got there, the driver told them he wasn’t going to drive any “Commies” back to New York and he drove off. We found our way to Union Station in tears, literally, and got a train home.

This time around, Union Station welcomed me and I was here, In Washington DC, as the most very proud member of the PortSide delegation on the occasion of PortSide being honored as a Champion of Change for the work done on behalf Hurricane Sandy relief.

We were invited to the White House where our President resides as one step, one giant step forward toward the realization of Dr. King’s dream for us all.

Red Hook flood assessment info: our watershed, sewers, buried creeks, prior shoreline & more

Amended 11/12/14 to include the following link and background about Eymund Diegel:

For related info, see our blogpost that includes Jim McMahon's Sandy flood map of Red Hook and info on how to assess your flood risk in future storms." 

More info about Eymund Diegel:

• Eymund Diegel LinkedIn profile
• Eymund Diegel website
• Eymund Diegel profile in New York Times
• Eymund Diegel TEDx Talk

Original post:

To further support flood prevention planning in Red Hook, we offer the following information.

The data and points of view in the following bullet points are courtesy of Eymund Diegel:

• General imagery of the Sandy Flood impacts available here
• Base map data showing where flood waters are likely to come from next time Blue lines show general direction of drainage flows, and in reverse, the likely path of rising flood waters. Green shows the original tidal marshes. Sandy essentially flooded anyone who built on the former tidal marshes.
• 1844 Coastal Survey showing original sand and mud banks off Red Hook whose alteration from harbor dredging is affecting how storm surges impact Red Hook
• The reconstruction of the historic bay bottom, in particular it's now damaged and altered offshore banks, should be studied to see how reconstructing some of these protective features may help reduce Red Hook flood damage the next time.
• I am attaching some ideas from the excellent work being done by SCAPE landscape architects, (slide show above) exploring how we remove soil from some areas (eg Red Hook Park) to recreate a better flood holding basin, and use those soils to create surge breakers further offshore. All expensive and controversial, but we need to start this dialogue as we are only going to get more flood events, and the next one will be worse than Sandy. We got off lucky because we didn't have heavy rains.
• I did a 2013 Sandy Flood saline impacted tree survey for the Parks Department
• The most impacted trees (London Planes and Dawn Redwoods) were typically on "topographic sinks" where salt water sat for longer, affecting soil quality and damaging non salt tolerant trees.  These "sinks" generally correspond with the location of the historic mill ponds that were landfilled and subsided.
• The planning recommendation I made to the City is that street grading needs to be improved to allow flood waters to recede more rapidly. This recommendation will contradict some of the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenways Green Infrastructure work (eg on Columbia Street) where storm water is being diverted to pond swales and holding tanks to reduce combined sewer overflows. Both (flood management and green infrastructure sewer overflow reduction are good goals and should be supported. One compromise strategy may be sluice gates, like those used by the original millers of Red Hook to better manage tide waters.

Historical perspective -1766 Ratzer Map with 2008 Building overlays

New York City Department of Environmental Protection Waterbody/Watershed Facility Plan Gowanus Canal

Salt Water Flooding

2014 Street Creeks Study Map

2014 Street Creeks Study Map simplified

1975 Red Hook Sewer Maps (NYCDEP)

Brooklyn Greenway Stormwater Study for West Street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn includes ideas to consider

Activating Atlantic Basin & Brooklyn Cruise Terminal - Red Hook NY Rising CRP discussion

Brooklyn Cruise Terminal in Red Hook. Photo Courtesy of Adam Armstrong, A View From The Hook blog

PortSide Director Carolina Salguero is on the Red Hook committee of the NY Rising "Community Reconstruction Program" (CRP) resiliency planning process. She has encouraged the committee and consultants to consider several aspects of Red Hook's waterfront in terms of emergency preparedness/recovery and economic resiliency (the latter being close to what used to be called community revitalization around here).

Lately, the Red Hook committee of the NYS long-term resiliency planning process “NY Rising Community Reconstruction Program” or CRP has been discussing Red Hook’s waterfront a lot via email, conference call and committee meeting.

Below we present some information Salguero and PortSide crew pulled together pertaining to "activating Atlantic Basin & Brooklyn Cruise terminal."  Also, see prior related blogposts:

• Enhancing Red Hook ferry service
• Red Hook Waterfront Assets

Sydney, Australai Cruise Terminal. Photo Courtesy of Adam Armstrong, A View From The Hook blog

Committee member Adam Armstrong, a Pioneer Street homeowner and blogger of View From The Hook, shared his 2009 blogpost comparing Sydney Australia cruise terminal and waterfront to Red Hook’s.

Adam Armstrong’s email prompted Carolina Salguero her to share some thoughts. Below, we cull from some of her emails to the committee:

"Sydney is surely great.

There is also a good comparison in Portland, ME, a place closer to use (we can visit to understand) and more likely to share regulatory and funding similarities with us.

My mother, brother, his 2 tweens and I sailed into Portland in August 2012 on a 45’ sailboat my uncle built and brother designed.  Here are my impressions of a brief stay from 6pm to 11am.

In that short time, we used 2 moorings, got permission over the marine radio to tie up at the shipyard next to the travel lift to get breakfast at the diner, and spent 2 hours on the free town dock to buy groceries and ice. There were no permits involved, no vetting of our insurance by anyone. This is how coastal New England works.

The cruise terminal is in an old part of town which has a few things in common with Red Hook: a main street of Victorian, low rise buildings, some legacies of prior urban blight which in their case had their voids be big parking lots a block or so inland of a Victorian commercial main street.

Their working waterfront was very active with workboats of many sorts, ship repair with a large travel lift, fishboats unloading, chandleries supplying workboats and was a just a half block behind the main drag (and not fenced off). There was a high end marina in the strip and a bunch of condos nested in that.

There was a government-run pier with fire boat, ferries (including the mail boat to small islands), a homeport for historic vessels providing day sails (“headboats”), and a town dock with free dockage.

Btw, There were no fences around their finger piers despite their very high tides and a some 20’ drop to the water at low tide. 

Maritime activities, diners for the blue collar locals and destination retail catering to cruise tourists were cheek by jowl.

The cruise terminal anchored one end of the main drag and the historic main street was clearly an attraction for it.

Yes, that section of Portland had more grand commercial buildings than does Red Hook (we lost our Carnegie library), but the key thing to me is how integrated all the components were in a very small space (essentially a ribbon along the water) and how similar some of the retail nodes were (the fruit and veg place with it’s link to local farmers comes to mind) and that there were similar whiffs of the hip, the alternative, and the artist."

Here is some info culled from the web about Portland, Maine.

“The Ocean Gateway terminal in Portland, Maine was built primarily to accommodate the increasing number of cruise ships that are coming to Portland each year. It is owned by the City of Portland and the facility is also available to be rented for occasions such as weddings, auctions and other events that people may want to have take place. The view from the facility offers a one-of-a-kind look at the Portland waterfront and the eastern prom.”

From a 2013 Boston Globe article:

"It’s the biggest city in Maine, a bustling urban center with a historic core. Old Port is chock-full of 19th-century brick buildings that now house chic boutiques, local shops, taverns, cafes, and trendy restaurants. Yet the former shipping and trading center, set on a peninsula poking into Casco Bay, still maintains its hardworking, unpretentious soul.

“Greater Portland Convention & Visitors Bureau. Old Port historic center in Portland, Maine, has brick alleys, cobblestone streets, and 19th-century buildings, all on the foundation of the city’s success as a seaport.”

Enhancing Red Hook ferry service - Red Hook NY Rising CRP discussion

PortSide Director Carolina Salguero is on the Red Hook committee of the NY Rising "Community Reconstruction Program" (CRP) resiliency planning process. She has encouraged the committee and consultants to consider several aspects of Red Hook's waterfront in terms of emergency preparedness/recovery and economic resiliency (the latter being close to what used to be called community revitalization around here).

Below we present some information Salguero and PortSide crew pulled together pertaining to "enhancing Red Hook ferry service" and "activating Atlantic Basin."  Also, see prior related blogposts:

• Activating Atlantic Basin & Brooklyn Cruise Terminal

• Red Hook Waterfront Assets

Comparison of Walk Times - ferry vs subway

During a committee conference call there were questions about walking distances to proposed ferry landings.

PortSide's CUNY Service Corp crew researched walk times to transportation and compared Smith & 9th St subway to ferry landings, existing and proposed.  Walk times were provided by Google Maps.

Conclusion:  The Atlantic Basin ferry stop which is currently the focus of discussion by the NY Rising CRP committee is closer than the subway for much of Red Hook. Times for the proposed ferry stops in Valentino Park and Wolcott Street by the new Est4te Four development are also included in the document.

See the full data set here.

Carolina Salguero did some research, spoke to various ferry professionals and emailed info to the committee. Below is an edit of information sent via several emails.

Use of Atlantic Basin "as is" for ferries

It is possible for ferries to use Atlantic Basin “as is” for special events.

The Brooklyn Cruise terminal in Red Hook was the site of The Taste of the NFL, a big fundraising event the Saturday of Super Bowl weekend.  Boats were used for this event both as floating commissaries and to move guests back and forth.

If this event came as as a surprise, look to Marty Markowitz’ office.  They were involved, and Brooklyn was announced as the location at a press event on 6/19/13 on steps of Brooklyn Borough Hall

Here is what I observed about the Taste of the NFL vessel plan.

The HORNBLOWER INFINITY arrived a day or two before the event and docked on Pier 12 where cruise ships tie up.

Saturday, from the MARY WHALEN, I saw ferries going in and out of Atlantic Basin and checked www.marinetraffic.com to see what was going on.  See the screenshots below for graphic representation.

• The east side of Pier 12 was a ferry landing for the ferry GARDEN STATE.  

• The HORNBLOWER HYBRID stayed in a static position on the east side of Pier 12.

• The HORNBLOWER INFINITY stayed in a static position on the west side of Pier 12.

BillyBey/NY Waterways said that the Hornblower vessel in the Buttermilk brought in some top tier guests from Pier 15 (near South Street Seaport) and then stayed and served as a commissary before taking passengers out. The Atlantic Basin Hornblower delivered passengers in, stayed, and then brought passengers out.  The NY Waterway ferry GARDEN STATE made several trips in and out of Atlantic Basin. They moved about 500 out and they figure Hornblower did about the same for about 1,000 people.

In terms of docking, the tide (a particularly low low tide) did present some complications, but essentially the piers can serve as ferry landings “as is” for special events.

Ferry company freeboards (freeboard is height from the waterline to the deck):

• NYWT small and large bowload at 6’

• NY Waterways bowload 7’  except for their boats the Bravest & the Finest, used on the Belford,  NJ ru which bowload at 9’6”

• SeaStreak bowload 9’ and side load 7’

Without a spud barge, the ferry freeboard has to closely match the pier freeboard for the ferry to use the spot. As the tide drops, that pier freeboard grows.  My guess is that the smaller NYWT boats are too small to use Atlantic Basin “as is” save close to a very high tide. That can be answered with a tape measure.

Fyi, in 1999, NY Waterways working for the EDC installed a temporary ferry terminal in Atlantic Basin the event of an MTA strike.

Red Hook Maritime conditions affecting choice of ferry landing sites

• Valentino Pier – a little tougher operationally due to shape of the pier, the shoaling (shallow water) making for rough water sometimes. T-boning (docking perpendicular) against the current is a bit harder. As the water space is small, there is limited turning space for boats, and all of the above adds up to several conditions to handle in a tight space.

• Wolcott Street – no issues

• Atlantic Basin - no issues

SeaStreak would be interested in looking into a Red Hook stop and suggested that, rather than adding Red Hook to the current Rockaways-Sunset Park-Manhattan run, it would be better to break the current run into a Rockaways-Manhattan and a Sunset Park-Red Hook-Manhattan.  According to Rockaways ferry advocate Joe Hartigan, the Sunset Park stop added 11 minutes to the Rockaways run, and the Rockaways people want no more delays.

East River Ferry people and EDC and Est4te Four people are all in discussions about Red Hook (as we have heard).  Some feel “Red Hook is not ripe yet.”

Costs

A ferry landing for front-loading ferries these days usually involves a spud barge and has been costing $750,000 - $1MM for a 30x90’ spud barge with 50-60’ of ramp.  Given with new federal ADA requirements for vessels and other factors, cost may change.

All East River ferries are subsidized. Right now subsidies for ferries are similar ( $.02 difference) to the per passenger subsidy for buses (see EDC ferry study that Adam Armstrong referenced in a meeting.)

• Subsidy requirements for ferry routes are on page 6

• Transit Fares and Subsidy per Passenger Trip, see Figure 3.1 on page 12

PortSide team feels that it would help to have additional info:

• information on ability to activate BCT.

• info on what kind of retail will be on the lower two floors of 160 Imlay.

• what kind of visitation numbers and type Est4te Four expects for their Coffey Street art center and what is going into their building at the end of Wolcott.

• what kind of jobs and B-to-B opportunities are there on Governors Island with the new hotel and spa.

Regarding cruise passengers taking ferries, BillyBey/NY Waterway said that they have low numbers from Port Imperial to the Manhattan Passenger Ship Terminal and the ferry option has to be embraced by the cruise operator to work.

Introduction to New York City Council and the waterfront

4/25/12 Waterfronts Committee Meeting. Photo courtesy of www.JimmyVanBramer.com

On January 22, 2014, the City Council announced its committee and committee members.  This is PortSide NewYork’s guide to the City Council and the waterfront.

The Council has a committee dedicated to the waterfront; and, at times, waterfront matters may be taken up in hearings jointly run by committees such as Land Use,  Transportation or Sanitation and Solid Waste.  There is a new committee Recovery & Resiliency which will surely deal with waterfront matters.

The size of the committees says something about NYC priorities.  Waterfronts has only five members; Land Use has twenty-one members and three subcommittees. 

• City Council Committee on Waterfronts webpage
• Committee on Waterfronts Minutes and Agendas Archive
• Waterfronts member bios collected from their official webpages
• All City Council committees with member names
• City Council committees ranked by size

The Committee on Waterfronts consists of five members, headed by Deborah Rose. Her district includes this port’s vital stretch of working waterfront along Staten Island’s Richmond Terrace, including Mariners Harbor and the Howland Hook Marine Terminal.

The four other committee members are Chaim M. Deutsch representing the waterfront of Sheepshead Bay/Manhattan Beach/Brighton Beach, Daniel R. Garodnick representing the waterfront of Manhattan’s East Side, Corey Johnson representing the waterfront of Canal Street to West 59th Street Manhattan, and Paul Vallone representing the waterfront of North East Queens.  

According to their official Council biographies, Chaim Deutsch is the only one listing some waterfront experience which was hurricane Sandy.  He mobilized community-based volunteers and coordinated with the Flatbush Shomrim to help evacuate residents, he helped in actual evacuations; coordinating with government and aid organizations, and helped distribute aid.

The City Council has a Progressive Caucus of which the Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito is a member.  The Progressive Caucus released a 13 point plan for change. We were pleased to see “Waterfront” listed in point # 3 "Smart Economic Development- Reduce inequality through smart and accountable economic development."  Click on that to find:

“Strengthen the city’s core blue-collar and middle-income sectors by focusing subsidies in diversified economic clusters. Invest in more balanced, innovative, mixed-use development to meet a broader range of goals developed with community stakeholders, such as preserving and strengthening manufacturing and small businesses, creative use of waterfronts, and the community infrastructure needed to sustain growth and share its benefits (e.g. schools, child care, open space, etc.)”

Their "creative use of waterfronts"  certainly describes PortSide NewYork!  We hope this means that the Progressive Caucus will embrace the PortSide cause and help us speedily find a home, and we hope that we can work with the Progressive Caucus and the Waterfronts committee and share our waterfront expertise and further our goal of bringing NYC's Sixth Borough BlueSpace to life!

Gotham Gazette's article on City Council committee appointments includes links at the bottom with summaries of the major activities of each committee last session, predictions about its upcoming role, and stipends paid to the councilmembers.

The first "hearing" of the Waterfronts committee is a tour of Brooklyn Bridge Park Friday, 2/28/14 at 10am.  These meetings are open to the public.

Great strides on the galley renovation! Update on "This Old-Ship-Kitchen" project

In between bouts of snow shoveling (will it ever end?!) we have been beavering away on the galley renovation.

Carolina Salguero & Paul Amico getting ready for sanding.

As happens with renovating old things, the project got bigger as our work uncovered hidden problems which we will then fix. Thanks to this project, the MARY A. WHALEN will be stronger as well as better looking! 

As also happens with an educational institution like PortSide, renovation has strong components of historical research and becomes a program, an opportunity to teach you the reader, our December volunteer, and even us!

If you are joining the story here, this galley project kicked off when someone got in touch out of the blue to volunteer 40+ hours a week throughout December. That hero was Erika Stetson, an Air Force vet who was going to benefit by getting a crash course in ship maintenance to better prepare her for entering SUNY Maritime College in January. 

Working with Erika had a double benefit for PortSide NewYork: it enabled us to fulfill our mission to use the MARY A. WHALEN for maritime training AND get a lot of renovation done.

According to Erika her stint with us helped her!  In early January she emailed to say “I was named the honor cadet (top cadet) in my section. I also got chosen for a program with only 18 spots. It allows me to live aboard the ship full time as well as work aboard for about 20 hours per week. This gives me the chance to get a lot more shipwork experience on my resume over the next three years, a lot more mentorship from the mates, and eliminates my housing costs.”  She feels that getting familiar with air tools and the like aboard Mary Whalen probably helped her application for the berthing.

Painting is about to start. We could use volunteers! Get in touch if you want to help.

Renovation update

Erika Stetson was a December powerhouse of paint removal with HEAVY of work on chipping hammer and needlegun. She was joined over the Christmas holidays by Steve Swift, the ex-Engineer of ERNESTINA who helped us stabilize the Sandy damage to our replacement engine parts over Christmas 2012. Thank you, Steve, two years running!

Peter Rothenberg and others followed up with grinders. All paint has come off the rudder post, the exterior of the cabinets and the steel bulkhead by the stove, the skylight area, overhead beams and other spots.

The plate rack and two shelves were removed for stripping at East End Wood Strippers (recently of Union Street in Gowanus) who are donating their labor to this project.

As paint layers came off, we are tryig to suss out the original color scheme. Amidst many layers of paint, we find a soft apple green (a 1930s hue revived by Martha Stewart) on the bulkheads wrapping around the curve of the space.  The color matches a vintage teapot (at right) donated to us by John Weaver, son-in-law of MARY A. WHALEN Captain Alf Dryland.  The cabinets under sink and counter were always white, as was the rudder post and the overhead.  The forward bulkhead near the stove went through many colors, and we find the green by the stove. It was always white underneath the skylight, with the white there helping to bounce the sunlight into the space.

After Erika, Peter Rothenberg and the CUNY crew went after the detail work

We gave ourselves a lull in dust-production between the needle gunning and the sanding.  Three of our four CUNY Service Corps students Joshua Washington, Trevor Colliton and Chris  Zoupanitiotis stepped in to handle the delicate job of stripping paint off the Monel metal and the tiles on the floor with chemical stripper. They never worked in the dust. The fourth "CUNY" Renee Fayzimatova was off during January break.

The "CUNYs" were reversing the work of someone crazy for painting back in the day – some black floor tile was painted black and much of the decorative metal was painted-- the Monel porthole surrounds, plate rack and stove hood.  Getting the paint off the bronze portholes is very hard by hand, so the plan is to remove them completely and take them to the Paint Strippers Company along with the shelves.

Needle gunning inside the cabinets exposed a weakness related to MARY’s good looks.

The sides of the MARY’s house lean slightly inward which gives her lines greater grace; but that means that if portholes are not closed perfectly tight, the water running down the outside of the ship will run right into the boat.

What that means is rust from the inside.  As someone said “these old boats rot from the inside out.” Add to that sink leaks (but not our watch!) which evaporated near the hot galley stove and condensed over by the rudder post.  The galley cabinets had no air holes, so the space became a humid terrarium with cycles of evaporation and condensation.  (We will be installing cabinet vents on the sides where they will not change the look of the space.)

As a result of 75 years of the "terrarium effect," we found wasted steel: Carolina Salguero holed the exterior steel while needle gunning (though well above the waterline!), and Erika went through some of the cabinet steel near the sink.

Thanks to the wonders of the wonders of pricey Splash Zone epoxy, metal screen and self tapping screws and Paul Amico cramming himself into the small cabinet, small patches were screwed to fill the holes, with the patches to be finished off with Marine Tex epoxy.  Corroseal or Ospho (more pricey stuff, time to donate, Dear Reader) rust converter stops the rust dead before we repaint.

At one point, Paul couldn’t back out from under the sink and had to pull himself around through most of the cabinets!  That show (below) really fascinated Chiclet who comes in to inspect whenever power tools are not running.

We also learned are that the cabinet drawers are probably not original, thanks to Paul Amico who explains,

"The existing galley drawers are fabricated from electrogalvanized sheet metal. This process was in its commercial infancy in the 1930's and wasn't truly perfected until the 1960's. It is commonly used in duct work and rarely used where it would have abrasive contact of any sort, such as where drawers rub on the rails. This contact would wear out the thin protective film of zinc which would nullify its true intention.  That, along with the fact that I haven't witnessed any other electrogalvanized metal on board, leads me to believe these are not original."

We now believe a large fan was bolted to this shelf.  Once we did some heavy sanding of this shelf, we found the outlines of two circular items which had been bolted on it over the years.

We presume the first drawers rusted out (leaks from the counter and portholes), and we're sure the current cabinet hardware is not original.  Once the cabinet paint was removed, we found the holes and marks of earlier hardware and are looking for 1930s latches that resemble the pattern of the holes. 

Conferring with the helpful folks on the tugboatinformation group of Facebook, which includes several former crew members of the MARY WHALEN or their sons, we think we have determined that one wood shelf held a large fan, and that another fan was bolted to the forward bulkhead right underneath the skylight. 

We’ll be looking for vintage fans to fit those footprints left behind in decades of paint.  We have also acquired some 1930 kitchen implements, appliances and housewares ads to give a sense of shipboard cooking at the time the MARY was launched. 

A fun and easy way to support the educational end of this project

A fun way to get involved is to buy original 1930s ads for food, appliances, housewares and kitchens on eBay for us.  Plenty of them only cost around $10!  Search "1930s kitchen"' for starters.  To give you an idea, we have ads for Brillo, Land-O-Lakes butter and a few more.  We would display the collection of ads in a binder during tours of the ship.  We have found that the galley is of great interest to people; and the fact that we have the original cast iron stove (and use it) and a wood paneled fridge and freezer, make the galley a good place for explaining food, dietary and domestic history.  We would also welcome more 1930s kitchenware and appliances, but please get in touch before you get any of those so we don't have redundancies!

Note: This blogpost lags about two weeks behind the work accomplished. Stay tuned for more!

Red Hook NY Rising CRP Resiliency Open House Sat 2/22 & Sun 2/23 11am – 6pm

Red Hook NY Rising Community Reconstruction Program
Open House
Realty Collective, 351 Van Brunt St
Sat 2/22 & Sun 2/23 11am – 6pm

Where you are going:  351 Van Brunt while it was PortSide's Sandy aid center November 2012

Only a few months of planning remain in the Red Hook NY Rising Community Reconstruction Program and the Committee is excited to engage the Red Hook community in the critical final phase of the program. The upcoming public meeting will be an important opportunity to gather community input on the top Priority Projects that may be recommended for funding with Red Hook’s $3M CDBG-DR allocation. We encourage everyone to attend this event and have your voice heard. At this event the Red Hook Committee will share ideas that its members have heard from you to date and answer questions you may have about the program and possible resiliency projects. Details for the event are on the attached flyer and as follows:
 
Experts will be on hand to discuss specific topics on Saturday and Sunday at the following times:
12pm-1pm: Infrastructure & Coastal Resiliency
1pm-2pm: Social Resiliency & Economic Development
 
Red Hook Resiliency Innovations event Sat 2/22, 3-6pm

Guest speakers to include: HUD Rebuild by Design, Brooklyn Greenway Initiative, Fifth Avenue Committee (FAC) and Architecture for Humanity, and others.

We also have a few newsworthy pieces from the past few months to share:

• The Committee held its 11th meeting on Monday, February 10th in which we discussed benefits, feasibility, and considerations of possible priority resiliency projects.
• Youth from the Red Hook Initiative/South Brooklyn Community High School film production program completed a video documenting the November 19th Public Engagement at the Miccio Center. This will be featured at the public meeting as well.
• On December 18th, the Red Hook Planning Committee partnered with Good Shepherd’s Services at the Beacon Center to engage teens in the NY Rising program. At this event, teens brainstormed with planners and Committee representatives about resiliency challenges and solutions for Red Hook.
• The Committee applauds the incredible news from Governor Cuomo’s Office of a $200M New York City & New York State combined commitment for the development of an integrated flood protection system in Red Hook. This announcement provides great momentum to our work and is proof that Red Hook can and will become a more resilient community.  

We hope to see everyone at the upcoming public event.
 
As always, thank you for your continued engagement in the Red Hook NY Rising Community Reconstruction Program.
 
Sincerely,
 
NY Rising Red Hook Planning Committee & Committee Co-Chairs
Gita Nandan
Ian Marvy

Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nystormrecovery

Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NYStormRecovery

www.stormrecovery.ny.gov