The Red Hook waterfront that some residents complain is already starting to resemble a strip mall – with Ikea and Fairway now firmly rooted – is gonna get another big-box retail tenant.
Sources said today that they expect developer Joe Sitt to convert the former Revere Sugar Factory site he owns into a big national chain store.
The now-vacant Beard Street site is next door to a the IKEA that opened earlier this summer against the wishes of many locals and a block away from the giant Fairway supermarket, which opened two years ago at the harbor end of Van Brunt Street.
Sitt had previously talked about bringing luxury housing to the demolished sugar factory but hit a brick wall with City Hall as he did in his push to bring high-rise condos a few years back to the Coney Island amusement district.
BJ’s Wholesale Club is among the many suitors for Sitt’s Red Hook property, sources said.
John McGettrick, co-chair of the Red Hook Civic Alliance, said the neighborhood just can’t handle more traffic. He said that besides lacking subway service, Red Hook doesn’t have adequate roads and parking to handle IKEA – let alone another big retail chain next to it.
“It’s just another inappropriate use of waterfront property,” he said.
The Revere site is currently being used for IKEA parking.
The Brooklyn Paper yesterday posted a story online saying Sitt and BJ’s were finalizing a deal, but sources said no deal was close to done.
However Sitt and BJ’s do have a business relationship.
The Post reported in April that Sitt locked up BJ’s as an anchor tenant for a shopping mall he is planning at Shore Parkway in Bensonhurst. BJ’s already has a location at the other end of Brooklyn near Starrett City.
Sitt spokesman Stefan Friedman said yesterday that the developer “is talking to numerous potential tenants for [the Revere] site, and no decision has yet been made about who we will partner with.”
Sitt would need to get a zoning change through the city’s land use review process because the retail business he plans to bring would take up more than 10,000 square feet in space.
“Red Hook – and Brooklyn – are open for business, but while welcoming major retailers to our borough could bring economic vitality and much-needed jobs to previously under-served and underutilized areas, we must also be sure to ‘grow smart’ and preserve a neighborhood’s character,” Borough President Marty Markowitz said.
Besides IKEA and Fairway, Red Hook’s neighborhood has seen other drastic changes in the past couple of years, including the arrival of a cruise terminal. Meanwhile, other businesses are eyeing Red Hook.
Across the street from Fairway, developer Michael O’Connell is soon planning to relocate one of the city’s last rail-car diners, the Cheyenne Diner from Manhattan, to vacant land his family owns on Reed Street.