Ikea's Right Hand Digs While Left Hand Fills

If you didn't know anything about Ikea's massive construction project on Beard Street in Red Hook and saw the sign that was posted on the big blue construction fence, you would think that the Swedish retailer was doing some excellent archeological and historic preservation on the site. The sign pictured above, with the excellent "you are here" arrows, appeared sometime during the last week near the former site of Graving Dock No. 2, which was filled in 1976. (Click here to see a larger version of the photo, which will allow you to easily read what it says.) Ikea's construction of a vast parking lot might unearth some relics from Graving Dock No. 2, so "professional archeologists" are monitoring the work. What the sign doesn't mention, of course, is that Graving Dock No. 1 is being filled in by Ikea, also for its parking lot. Or that the filling of Graving Dock No. 1 has created an outcry among preservationists, some residents and those who would like to see it remain as a working facility.

No word on whether anyone is monitoring or creating a record of the process of turning the graving dock into a parking lot for a future generation of "professional archeologists."