Team Racked traveled back to the Red Hook Ikea for an updated look at the store and the grounds as it moves toward a June 18 opening. A refresher on the operation: the public esplanade covers 6.5 acres. The store itself clocks in at 346,000-square feet store on 22 acres along Red Hook's Erie Basin waterfront. Water Taxi services from Manhattan is slated to start when the store opens. More coverage, including a sneak preview of the Ikea rooms inside the new storer, coming on Racked today.
· Progress Report: Ikea Preps for June Reveal [Curbed]
That Red Hook design competition to turn the neighborhood into "the most bicycle friendly neighborhood in all of New York" that got some press a couple of weeks ago, is now offering up more details. The competition includes creating a bike loft at the Smith-9th Street station, creating dedicated bike lanes and finding ways to fund the whole thing. It's all couched in planning speaking about making "Red Hook more accessible for local commuters and safer for local recreational cyclists." The "bike loft" would have to hold at least 100 bikes and there would be a network of lanes. The competition is open through July 31 and five finalists will be announced on September 2.
· Red Hook: the Bicycle Master Plan Design Competition [Forum for Urban Design]
· Red Hook Bicycle Dream: Dedicated Lanes & Power Bars [Curbed]
The long battle of the Red Hook piers was actually over a while ago, after many twists and turns, but the formal triumph of the stevedores over waterfront cafes, hotels, a cruise port and other "attractions" came yesterday. American Stevedoring,which operates the Red Hook Container Port, signed a new 10-year lease on its waterfront property, formally ending the Bloomberg Administration's Red Hook Piers Remake Dream. The plan died an agonizingly slow death as individual pieces were nibbled away rather than receiving one short, sharp shock. First, the housing went. Then, the cruise terminal was chewed off. And, finally, the entire thing fell apart. The stevedores ultimately hung remarkably tough, mustering a long list of political supporters who threw wrench after wrench in the works. If there's any consolation for the planner of the remade waterfront, the plan might have collapsed of its own volition at the point, anyway.
· Lease Ends Uncertainty for Red Hook Cargo Docks [NYT]
· City OKs Red Hook port pact [NYDN]
The Moondance Diner may have gone off to Wyoming, but Ninth Avenue's Cheyenne Diner is going to be carted across the river and set up in....Red Hook. The news broke yesterday that Mike O'Connell, who is the son of preeminent Red Hook developer Greg O'Connell (own of the warehouses on Van Brunt Street, among other things, including the one in which Fairway is located), has bought the diner for a token sum and will make it a Brooklynite. There's no word on the timetable or where in Red Hook it will land. Preservationist Micheal Pearlman said he's glad the diner, which is being replaced by a nine-story building, is going to "an up and coming neighborhood." The diner dates to 1940, and the group trying to save it says it was holding out for a New York City buyer. They found one.
· Cheyenne Saved & Moving to Red Hook [Urbanite]
· Cheyenne Diner Bound for Brooklyn [NYDN]
The Pope didn't do Brooklyn over the weekend, but the Popemobile did and it turns out that Amy's New York Notebook / Newyorkology were right there and able to memorialize its visit to Red Hook as it headed for the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. There's a whole Popemobile series, in fact, and New Yorkology has the video.
· Popemobile in Red Hook [Amy's New York Notebook]
· Popemobile in Red Hook Video [Newyorklogy]
Don't have a convenient subway station? Only have a couple of widely disliked bus lines? About to experience the opening of a huge new store that will draw tens of thousands of cars to local streets ever week? Then, perhaps a neighborhood like Red Hook might look to a plan make it "the city's most bike-friendly neighborhood." Today's Post notes that the Forum for Urban Design in Manhattan is running a competition to create "a bicycle-centered commuter system" that would involve a series of dedicated bike lanes and a bike garage at the Smith-9th Street station. The Forum's executive director Lisa Chamberlain says, "We envision bike stations where you would lock up your bike, get a flat fixed, fill up your water bottle and even buy a Power Bar." You know, for walking around Ikea.
· Bicycle Built for Red Hook [NYP]
Comments
The long battle of the Red Hook piers was actually over 
Don't have a convenient 
