A Port for the 21st Century

By Carter Craft and Neal Kronley

The Port of New York and New Jersey has encouraged and sustained the growth of the metropolitan region as an economic superpower. Residents across the region should be proud of our harbor heritage but should also acknowledge that shifts in the industrial economy during the last 50 years have changed our relationship with the harbor. With increasingly cleaner waters, more accessible waterfront launches and parkland, the waterfront is now more than a location—it’s a popular destination. Balancing the needs of a burgeoning recreational and residential community with a viable commercial industry is a necessary goal. As the Port Authority matures into the 21st century, MWA offers a few observations and suggestions to promote the development of a responsible and sustainable port for the New York and New Jersey region.

The New York and New Jersey metro area has always been a port, and as long as we are consumers, we will always be a port. With a population base of 17 million in our region, we are the largest customer base on the East Coast of North America. Add to this the fact that New York is synonymous with consumerism means that our propensity to eat, drink, and shop is higher than other port cities. We need a productive and efficient port to support our quality of life.

Countless reports point out that we need more port space in order to remain competitive; however, we also need better efficiency of existing port facilities. All one needs to see are the acres of parked cars in Sunset Park or Jersey City, or the mountains of empty containers along the Passaic River (left), to know that existing lands dedicated to port uses are often being used more for idle storage than for transportation.

New York City’s relationship with the Port Authority has never been as productive or positive as it should be—and to a large degree it’s New York City’s fault. When the Port Authority was founded 81 years ago, the City of New York basically kicked and screamed; we did not want to cede our control over to the Port of New York. A proposed solution at the time was for the Governor of New York to select two of the three appointees to the Board from a list of five nominees that would be drawn up by the Mayor. New York City continued to reject the proposed bi-state Authority, despite the fact that civic and business organizations supported its creation. Still, the City refused to accept what was a political as well as a geographic reality, in that the islands required bridges or tunnels to connect to the continent of North America and it was only a matter of time before the Port migrated to the mainland. On April 30, 1921, when the compact was signed in the Great Hall of the New York Chamber of Commerce just a few blocks south of City Hall on Liberty Street, no representative of New York City even showed up. That building is now the headquarters of the International Commerce Bank of China. That speaks volumes about World Trade.

The Port itself is a tremendous economic engine and we should harness it to do more good in more waterfront communities. What many of us have forgotten is that in addition to consumers, a port can serve whole communities. We applaud the Port Authority for affecting the transfer of some of the Brooklyn Piers back to the community so that Brooklyn Bridge Park can be created, and we hope this transfer happens in time to give David Sharps’ Waterfront Museum a place to tie up while its bulkhead is rebuilt in Red Hook. But we should not for a moment think that the waterfront is either a port or recreation proposition.

The effort of the New York City Economic Development Corporation to create public access in Sunset Park in tandem with the redevelopment of the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal is encouraging, and we hope the City applies this broad thinking to the planned expansion at Howland Hook.

To do this, we should look at the Port of Oakland, which has adopted a “Good Neighbor” policy. The Port of Oakland is publicly committed to “helping make the neighborhood a better and safer place in which to live and work.” Oakland is implementing a port-community redevelopment strategy that includes construction of a new container facility, creation of new public access, restored open space and habitat areas, and the deepening of harbor channels including a new turning basin. It’s as close to a win-win-win-win situation as we could hope to achieve.

What we believe should happen is that the Howland Hook expansion instead be reconceived and reframed not just as a port expansion, but as a waterfront revitalization effort for Port Richmond, Mariners Harbor, Arlington, and Port Ivory. The project should seek to accomplish three things: (1) Howland Hook Container Port improvement; (2) some protection of Arlington Marsh; and (3) a North Shore Waterfront Park.