There were once more than 60,000 longshoremen in New York, with “blue-collar” waterfront jobs scattered across all five boroughs.
In the 1960s and ’70s, several factors, including larger ships, the beginnings of containerization, and the general trend of white flight and suburbanization, pushed those jobs to New Jersey and Staten Island.
The Bloomberg administration made a major blunder last decade by refusing to meet with the shipping conglomerate Hanjin, after the company expressed interest in bringing maritime industries back to Sunset Park and Red Hook.
The de Blasio administration plans to redevelop maritime facilities and revive rail service at the terminal, which has been inactive for more than 20 years.
One area of unanimous agreement is that the Red Hook Container Terminal should be kept open until (and ideally after) a new facility in Sunset Park is up and running. Nobody wants to be the one who let’s more money escape to New Jersey.