#PortSideNeedsaHome

We are launching this campaign because we are not seeing a home for us in presentations by the NYC Economic Development Corporation (EDC), in their plans for the Brooklyn Marine Terminal (BMT) where we are located. More about the BMT planning process here. Please download flyers at the bottom and share on your social media!

The month of May 2025 will mark 20 years since PortSide’s first business plan. Since then, we’ve been trying to create a PortSide Campus bigger than our our beloved historic ship MARY A. WHALEN. Back in 2005, PortSide was ahead of the curve in NYC by proposing to serve the working waterfront AND the general public in the same place. This BMT process reflects an EDC effort to try such things with maritime, and we are ready! We know how to bring the community afloat and community ashore closer together for the benefit of both!

See what such a PortSide Campus would offer at this link and in the slide show below.

In fact, the EDC promised PortSide such space from 2008 into early 2011 - right here - as a community give-back to Red Hook. Since our long-standing plans mesh with the EDC’s maritime goals for the new BMT, let’s do it already!

To riff on the Walt Whitman poem “I Hear America Singing,” PortSide work and plans sing the song of Atlantic Basin and Red Hook.

PortSide Park

The community would like the EDC to allow the return of PortSide Park. This park and other PortSide endeavors attest to our talent executing what urban planners call “site activation” and “placemaking.” We created, maintained and programed this park from June 2020 to late September 2022. We also hosted many events that used the adjacent larger parking lot. PortSide Park provided:

  • table and chairs, shade umbrellas, string lights at night

  • flowering and fragrant plants in pots, educational signs on the fence

  • a free library

  • toys, bikes and scooters for kids

  • many concerts

  • book readings for kids

  • holiday events

  • December holiday installations (Penguin Park)

PortSide Park won a “Covid Everyday Heroes” award in 2021 from Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams!

The park was concentrated in just 5 parking spaces along the Pier 11 fence. Concerts and the kids riding our bikes and scooters used the larger adjacent parking lot. Since the reopening after the COVID, the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal uses this parking lot on the mornings that ships are in; most of the time, this parking lot sits empty.

A testament to the power of our park design and programming was that this little parklet was a destination for people from Red Hook and well beyond, attracting visitors from Brooklyn Heights by ferry even though they have Brooklyn Bridge Park in their area. As one mother from the Heights said “they have nothing like this.” Our kids playspace was a version of what is called a kids “adventure playground,” a space fostering imaginative play where there are varied things that kids can move around (as opposed to all playground furniture being bolted in place).

PortSide Park was also heavily used by riders of the new ferry service to Governors Island: 33,000 of them in 2020, 45,000 in 2021. It was a pre and post park to the island. Many kids did not want to leave our park to go to the island and wanted to stay here once they got off the ferry on the way back.

Flyers to download for your social media

PortSide Mission

PortSide NewYork’s mission is to create a model for NYC’s waterfront future via advocacy and direct service. We demonstrate how the harbor can provide jobs, green freight movement, education, culture, and recreation — and how to center maritime in NYC waterfront development. Our long-standing goal is to create a maritime campus that serves the public and the working waterfront, a place larger than our historic ship MARY A. WHALEN.