ashore, PortSide plans programs to help folks develop coastal living and flood prep skills, such as educational events with actual mariners, exhibits, and creating a children’s book with our shipcat Chiclet as a resiliency narrator talking about riding out Sandy on the tanker.
Portside’s story (continued from previous page)
Andrea Sansom, who founded a Red Hook flood mitigation Google group, sees the need, “We all love living at the water, and PortSide is here to help bring understanding to living with the water.” Our ship is a great tool for this. Our tanker MARY A. WHALEN is now a maritime symbol of resiliency, in contrast to the tanker JOHN B. CADDELL, Staten Island’s symbol of Sandy, which went aground and had to be scrapped.
PortSide’s own Sandy damages
damage to their offices and shops. PortSide feels the gap between inland resident and mariner is acute when we heard residents say “They told us to evacuate for Irene but nothing happened” and “I didn’t know there were two high tides a day.” We concluded that people ashore poorly understand marine weather reports and don’t know where to get them.
In comparison, mariners understand how to live with water, and how to prepare for hurricanes. They do the postflood work of pumping tunnels, building ferry terminals and running emergency ferries, fixing bulkheads, clearing the harbor of debris so ships can import products as diverse as fuel, orange juice, new cars, bananas. To bring maritime voices to people
A hidden Sandy story PortSide feels acutely is that of our own Sandy damages. An electrical short left us facing thirty-five nights of relying on flashlights and one 15-amp extension cord attached to a little gas generator. Sandy damaged the Sheepshead Bay house of our staffer John Weaver keeping him home for many months. Everything PortSide had off the ship (antique crane, 60’ dock, electrical transformer, restoration engine parts, historic artifacts and documents, special event equipment and furniture) was flood-damaged or floated away. Our FEMA worksheet totals some $340,000, and we are still deep in that paper chase, starting six months late because we were misinformed that
Fairway was emptied out of bread the nigiht before Sandy. It was the last shopping to take place their until their March reopening.
we didn’t qualify. A massive Sandy effect on PortSide was the stalling of our urgent search for a homeport. We need a place to fulfill our mission, earn revenue, and run programs. Resumption of real estate negotiations took many, many more months than we expected, and remains a major strain on PortSide.
A map that circulated during the first days of the storm identifies help centers.
Red Hook eyesore finally put to ill use by George Fiala
I
n our last issue we published an editorial about the Revere Sugar Factory site that has been owned by Thor Equities since 2006. At times plans were floated for its use, including box stores and college dorms. Nothing materialized. After demolishing all the historical buildings that might have been interesting to preserve, the lot has remained barren and unused, except for a few dump trucks. A few weeks ago we noticed a steadily increasing number of trucks coming out of the park in the morning and parking their overnight. These included film trucks from Haddad, as well as large semi tractor trailers, container trucks and cement trucks. It turns out that the lot has been rented by Thor Equities to a commercial truck leasing agent. A simple sign was
put up identifying a company called OneStopLIC. OneStopLIC are property managers specializing in renting out large spaces to commercial vehicles. There website reveals that they are the company that Phoenix Beverages, operators of Red Hook Containerport, LLC, use to rent space there. They must be responsible for the garbage trucks and all manner of other vehicles that are now helping pay the Containerport rent.
two major bulk-handling yards, and approximately 186,000 square feet of divisible warehouse space.” Evidently a similar scenario will take place on the 400,000 square foot Beard Street lot. The lot is in the process of being paved, which is an environmental requirement for a truck parking lot.
On the website they write: “The Red Hook Container Terminal is located in Brooklyn, New York. Sitting on 65.6 acres, it handles bulk & break bulk cargos in addition to containers. This facility can accommodate all your operational needs including:six active container cranes, 2,080 feet of berthing space, 3,140 feet of break bulk space,
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November 2014, Page 5