We Have Seen the Future and It is Jersey

Thanks to Curbed for ruining Gowanus Lounge's day by bringing the hideous Red Hook Ikea animation to our attenion. Truth be told, we were already in a dark place because of the Greenpoint Terminal Market conflagration. GL had been planning to write something today about how Red Hook was enjoying national publicity with a widely printed Washington Post story linked to the new cruise terminal and hoped to pen a few words about the Sitt development on the Revere Sugar site, and how buyers of expensive Sitt apartments there would look out upon Ikea's parking lot on one side and listen to New York Water Taxi boats revving their engines on the other.

Well, now, thanks to Ikea's newly revived website for the project, we know exactly what residents would gaze upon. And, it ain't pretty, except in an Elizabeth or Paramus, New Jersey, kind of way.

The Ikea animation goes to lengths to show the waterfront access behind the blue-and-yellow big box store and seems to show that Ikea will be preserving some of the equipment that was part of the Todd Shipyards operation. (A little post-industrial chic like Long Island City's gantries.)

Meanwhile, Gary Lee of the Washington Post waxed rhapsodic about Red Hook's charms and conjured a disturbing vision of the future. "Its raw, Bohemian edge is reminiscent of Manhattan's Meatpacking District or Brooklyn's Dumbo neighborhood, before white-tablecloth restaurants and trendy clubs arrived," Lee wrote. "Squint and it's not hard to picture Van Brunt Street, Red Hook's main boulevard, lined with souvenir shops and wine bars."

As a realist, Gowanus Lounge understands that the Red Hook of roaming packs of wild dogs and ship hands afraid to leave their boats was a little too post-industrially decayed even for his taste. Still, Red Hook V.2.0--the Meat Packing District meets Old Town Alexandria meets Paramus shopping mall--leaves GL wondering if wild dogs maybe aren't such a bad thing.

Shouldn't we be hearing about revived plans for a Red Hook trolley soon? Surely, Mr. Sitt and others realize that heavy duty development is going to be hard to pull off in a neighborhood served only by the B61 bus?