Ferry Foul Play?

IKEA’s new store on the Brooklyn waterfront offers free ferry service (courtesy of New York Water Taxi) between its store in Red Hook and Pier 11 in lower Manhattan. However, some Red Hook residents claim IKEA customers are being "hand-stamped" for priority boarding while local residents are denied service or forced to miss rides. As IKEA originally announced that ferry service would be complimentary and made no mention of purchase requirements, hand-stamping stories seem a bit odd. Let’s hope IKEA is being a good neighbor and isn’t caught red-handed, red-handing customer/ferry riders.

IKEA Maybe Not Such A Great IDEA

Everyone loves IKEA stores and the products they sell. I've purchased items from them myself. That is not the problem here. The issue is that four years ago, the city sold an historic Red Hook "dry dock" to be used as a parking lot for IKEA’s newest store. Now, a study conducted by SUNY’s Maritime College has determined that New York City badly needs seven new graving docks to accommodate larger ships … docks just like the one it carelessly included in the land deal. It will cost NYC taxpayers an estimated $1 billion to build what we already had. The city defends itself by saying it used data from a 1991 study to make their 2004 decision. That’s a defense? Did IKEA really need waterfront property to open in Brooklyn? The Port of New York currently has 18 dry docks; four being the larger graving docks. With better city planning and common sense, we should have had one more dock on that list.