Award-winning PortSide NewYork connects New Yorkers to the potential of our waterfront, advocating for increase in maritime uses, with a special focus on the underserved (maritime with equity and inclusion)!
Our work includes economic, community, and workforce development; education, culture and resiliency in terms of preparing for floods. Our advocacy work says NYC needs more #Piers4Boats, and we work to change NYC policy so maritime activity of all kinds—commercial, educational, recreational—is a greater part of redevelopment plans for the waterfront. Our programs walk the talk.
Our goal is to create a PortSide NewYork that is a new model of waterfront development for NYC: an exciting maritime gateway to Red Hook, an indoor/outdoor maritime center with B-to-B services to workboats; a landing for boats the public can visit/ride; a pipeline to marine careers; education, culture and job-training programs for youth and adults; plus attractions for tourists, connected to the whole neighborhood by our cultural tourism e-museum RedHookWaterStories. This fully-realized PortSide will show how to retain and grow the working waterfront while providing public access (instead of displacing the former to get the latter). The twain can meet!
PortSide’s physical footprint is currently limited to our beloved historic ship, the MARY A. WHALEN. She is a retired oil tanker, hence the “tanker” branding our programs TankerTime, TankerFlicks, TankerTunes, TankerTours. We seek building space and permission for more activities, as we have since our first 2005 business plan, as we struggle with the boat-unfriendly public sector we were founded to change.
On 11/7/22, we launched a campaign #rethinkEDC to prompt reform of the NYC Economic Development Corporation (EDC), our landlord and NYC’s largest landlord, a nonprofit, quasi-governmental organization. Goals of #rethinkEDC expand concentrically from getting what’s needed by PortSide, then Red Hook, and then NYC as a whole relating to EDC work.
Visit Us
Permission to Come Aboard
Atlantic Basin offers a different waterfront experience than NYC waterfront parks because this is a public-access, maritime industrial park, so you get to see a dynamic, working waterfront with authentic maritime action. Visit our retired oil tanker MARY A. WHALEN to see and feel the current action and the history! In this era of virtual programming, please see the deep collection of eWaterStories we curated, and follow our social media; it’s educational!
Digital Maritime Museum
Explore the Past. Explore Today.
Red Hook WaterStories, your guide to Red Hook past and present, tells New York City’s maritime story in microcosm, including 400+ years of forgotten, overlooked and erased histories and supports a community-sensitive revitalization of Red Hook. To facilitate your visit to Red Hook, the site includes info about shopping, dining, art, and transit. For locals, it includes information on resiliency, Red Hook nonprofits, schools, and community services. Explore
Education & Youth
Programming For All Ages
The harbor can teach so many lessons. Our educational programs serve many members of the community, from elementary schools to PhD candidates, from low-income New Yorkers to overseas private school students. Our vocational (CTE) internships provide training in job and life skills, while our e-museum Red Hook WaterStories provides 400+ years of coastal history, as well as a guide to today’s Red Hook.
Youth Education | African American Maritime Heritage | Red Hook WaterStories
A Plan to Expand
Our Vision. Your Support.
Building space has been part of our plans since we were founded in 2005. We were promised building space where we are now from 2008 into 2011 by the NYC Economic Development Corporation (EDC); but they never delivered it. At the EDC’s request, we did another business plan to get that building space and presented it in 2019; but the EDC did not deliver the space. Learn More. In 2021, two thirds of all comments to NYC’s new Comprehensive Waterfront Plan, over 200, called for PortSide to get this space. In 2022, with a new Mayor and new President of the EDC, we resumed trying with the new team to get this space but have been ignored. In April 2023, the EDC released an RFP for Atlantic Basin that would displace us. We responded. The EDC cancelled that RFP the day after it was announced on 5/14/24 that the City would take over the Port Authority Brooklyn port via a land swap and some funding. The waterfront south of Brooklyn Bridge Park almost to Valentino Park is about to be re-planned! PortSide is a perfect fit for this new vision. Follow the planning process on our blog here and get involved!
Recovery & Resiliency
Hurricane Sandy’s Legacy
PortSide was founded to connect New Yorkers to the benefits of the harbor, the waterways. The devastation of hurricane Sandy in 2012 made us alter our programs to add resiliency education (growing awareness about floods and how to prepare.) The trigger was both seeing the devastation in our neighborhood AND learning how few people knew to prepare or knew what to do even if they thought of preparing. We prepped for Sandy for days and then ran a Sandy recovery center for a month, and then ran a virtual aid center for months more. This led to our being honored for our Sandy prep and recovery work by the Obama White House and the NYS Senate. Appointments to multiple government resiliency committees then followed. Our own Sandy recovery project is not yet completed. Please support that work and help us as we helped so many others. Learn More. We got a weather station (below) as part of our community education about marine weather.
Here is the current weather on our ship MARY A. WHALEN, on Pier 11, Atlantic Basin, Brooklyn, New York.
Instagram posts
From Our Blog
As of 5/14/24, this blogpost covers dramatic changes. The Port Authority and the City are doing a property swap, and all the port waterfront property south of Brooklyn Bridge Park to Red Hook’s Wolcott Street is going to be planned and controlled by the NYC EDC.