Red Hook is overrun with trucks and delivery vans, residents say

RED HOOK — Thousands of trucks and delivery vans that service giant e-commerce warehouses are clogging Red Hook’s narrow streets and sidewalks, residents and business owners told NYC Department of Transportation officials at a meeting on Dec. 7 at the Joseph Miccio Cornerstone Community Center.

It was the second meeting held by DOT to share the progress of its ongoing, two-year Red Hook Traffic and Truck Study. 

Attendees said they were grateful that DOT is conducting the study — but they worry that the city is moving slower than developers, who have been buying up millions of square feet of Red Hook’s waterfront to build even more “last-mile” warehouses to feed the city’s voracious e-commerce appetite.

Three gigantic Amazon warehouses are currently in operation in Red Hook, and five more developments are in the works, including a 1.1 million-square-foot UPS distribution center that will take up five street addresses on the Red Hook waterfront all by itself. (Two of the planned sites are just on the other side of the neighborhood dividing line, putting them in Sunset Park.) 

Because the Red Hook/Sunset Park waterfront is zoned for manufacturing, the warehouses are being constructed “as of right” — without any environmental studies, public input or infrastructure improvements.

DOT Brooklyn Borough Commissioner Keith Bray said he understood the community’s concerns.

Though the study must continue to the end, it doesn’t mean that DOT can’t step in to take some short-term action on specific traffic problems before its completion, he said. He asked to meet with some of the participants after the meeting to get more details about their concerns.