What’s Being Built in Red Hook? Development, Resiliency & Public Projects to Watch
Updated August 29, 2026.
Hush Street is tracking what’s changing in Red Hook — the low-lying Brooklyn peninsula where a working container port, a Depression-era public housing campus, and some of the city’s most flood-exposed streets all sit within a few blocks of each other. The single biggest story here isn’t a tower. It’s a $3.5 billion plan to remake the 122-acre Brooklyn Marine Terminal, approved in September 2025 after five failed votes and a housing count cut in half to get there.
That plan will eventually bring up to 6,000 new apartments to the waterfront. It’s nowhere near breaking ground — the state’s formal environmental review and General Project Plan aren’t finished yet. What’s actually underway right now is less glamorous, and arguably more urgent.
The city broke ground last September on a $218 million flood-wall system. New York’s housing authority is moving a Red Hook campus toward private management. A public pool has flooded and closed for two summers running while its real fix remains just 5% designed. Red Hook is one of the city’s lowest-lying, most flood-exposed neighborhoods, and that shows in what’s actually being built here right now.
We cover the marine terminal plan and the new housing below, but we’re giving equal space to the resiliency work, the public housing, and the parks and schools trying to catch up to a neighborhood that’s already changed around them.
| Project | Location | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 1Brooklyn Marine Terminal Vision Plan | Red Hook waterfront | Approved / Pre-Environmental Review |
| 2Columbia Street Commons | 498 Columbia St. | Completed / Leasing |
| 3145 Wolcott Street & the Small-Scale Build-Out | Wolcott, Dikeman & Garnet Sts. | Under Construction |
| 4Red Hook Coastal Resiliency Project | Beard St. & Atlantic Basin | Under Construction |
| 5Red Hook Houses West (PACT) | RFEI Issued | |
| 6Red Hook’s Pool, Ballfields & Coffey Park | Bay & Henry Sts. | Unresolved |
| 7Red Hook Public Library | 7 Wolcott St. | Under Renovation |
| 8Harbor Middle School (P.S. 676) | 155 Delavan St. | Under Construction |
The Projects Reshaping Red Hook
What’s actually moving, from the waterfront plan down to the neighborhood pool.
A $3.5 Billion Plan to Rebuild the Port and Build a New Neighborhood Around It
A Plan That Got Cut in Half to Pass
The Brooklyn Marine Terminal Vision Plan cleared its task force on a 17-8 vote in September 2025, after five earlier postponements over congestion concerns, transparency complaints, and unresolved questions about port jobs and governance. Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, an early opponent, ultimately backed it — but only after negotiators cut the plan’s housing count from roughly 12,000 units down to 6,000 and added more space for industry and independent oversight.
Like Atlantic Yards two decades earlier, the project bypasses the city’s standard ULURP land-use review in favor of a state General Project Plan overseen by Empire State Development, even though NYCEDC is the lead agency on the ground. That process, not a City Council vote, is what will ultimately approve or reject the plan’s final form.
Two New Boards, and a Port Search Already Underway
Since the Vision Plan’s approval, the city has stood up two new bodies to manage what comes next. Mayor Adams appointed seven members to a 23-person Brooklyn Marine Terminal Development Corporation board in December 2025, chaired by Fifth Avenue Committee executive director Michelle de la Uz; it has since met in April and June 2026, drawing a “lackluster” review of its first session from the Red Hook Star-Revue.
A separate Brooklyn Marine Terminal Advisory Task Force, made up of community, labor, and maritime-industry representatives, has been meeting on the same timeline to refine site-plan, urban-design, and open-space details ahead of the environmental review — it’s expected to convert into a permanent BMT Oversight Task Force once the General Project Plan is approved.
NYCEDC also opened the port-operator search that the earlier version of this section anticipated: a Request for Expressions of Interest issued in December 2025 drew 25 responses on how to run the site’s maritime operations, with a formal request for proposals for a long-term operator still targeted by the end of 2026.
Community pushback shaped the process along the way — after Brooklyn officials including Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon warned it would be “outrageous” to give residents only a few days to weigh in, the city extended the public comment period on the project’s Draft Scope of Work to May 8, 2026.
The Working Port Underneath the Plan
None of this starts from scratch. The 65-acre Red Hook Container Terminal already runs four ship-to-shore gantry cranes and more than 2,000 feet of deep-water berth under an operator, Red Hook Terminals, that got a five-year lease extension in May 2024 when operational control of the broader site moved from the Port Authority to NYCEDC. That handoff came with $95 million in interim investment — pier repairs, a new electrified container crane, and early resiliency work — years before the larger Vision Plan existed in its current form.
The Streets Nobody Will See Change for Years
DOT floated a “car-lite” concept in August 2026 for Van Brunt and Columbia Streets: a bus- and truck-priority corridor with forced turns at Commerce, Bowne and Congress Streets, and a car-free plaza where Columbia Street meets Hamilton Avenue. A second NYC Ferry facility at Atlantic Basin, meant to serve a projected 6,000 new residents, is separately due to open in 2027. Both are explicitly downstream of construction actually starting on the marine terminal plan, which the city says is still years off — worth watching, not worth expecting soon.
For the fuller story — how the plan got cut in half, what happens to the working port and its jobs, and exactly where state approval stands — see Hush Street’s Brooklyn Marine Terminal Spotlight.
Sources: NY1; Crain’s New York Business; Time Out New York; Gothamist; NYCEDC; Streetsblog NYC; Red Hook Terminals; Hoodline; Red Hook Star-Revue; Brooklyn Eagle
Brooklyn’s Newest All-Affordable Tower Just Finished Leasing Up
A Master Plan Bigger Than Any Single Building
498 Columbia Street is the first of three planned buildings under the Columbia Street Commons master plan, which is slated to eventually total 661 affordable apartments. This first phase alone holds 371 units — 134 studios, 121 one-bedrooms, and 114 two-bedrooms — reserved for households earning up to 80% of area median income, along with 69,409 square feet of community facility space and a small ten-vehicle parking garage.
Rents scale with income: $777 a month for a studio at 40% AMI, up to $1,864 for a two-bedroom at 60% AMI. Not everyone is convinced the project serves the neighborhood as advertised — a Hoodline report captured local skepticism about who ultimately qualifies for units at these income bands in a neighborhood where market rents have climbed for years. Public reporting isn’t fully consistent on how many of the building’s 371 total units are in the current lottery specifically — one report cites 239 rent-stabilized units in this round — and we’re not reconciling that discrepancy here.
Sources: Brownstoner; New York YIMBY; New York YIMBY; Brick Underground; Hoodline
A $34 Million Bet That Brooklyn Needs More Soundstages
Four Soundstages and a Harbor View
Bain Capital and Bungalow Projects paid $34 million for the industrial site in 2024 and are building an 80-foot-tall production facility with four soundstages averaging roughly 18,000 square feet each and clear heights near 40 feet — built to studio spec, not converted warehouse space. Outdoor terraces are designed to double as shoot locations, with views across the harbor to Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty, and the Verrazzano Narrows.
A Quiet Wave of Smaller Infill
145 Wolcott Street isn’t happening in isolation. A short walk away, a five-story building at 37 Garnet Street is wrapping up construction with just two units and a $6 million combined sellout, and permits were filed in April 2026 for a nine-unit building at 73 Dikeman Street near the Smith–9th Streets subway station. None of these individually rival the neighborhood’s bigger projects, but together they’re a real, ongoing pattern of small-scale infill filling in Red Hook’s low-rise blocks west of Dwight Street, within walking distance of the ferry landing.
Sources: Bain Capital; Crain’s New York Business; PincusCo; New York YIMBY; New York YIMBY
The City Broke Ground on Red Hook’s $218 Million Sea Wall
Passive Walls, Plus Gates That Deploy on Demand
The finished system will combine permanent measures — floodwalls and raised streets — with eight flip-up gates and two roller gates that deploy only during storms, creating a continuous line of protection to 10 feet above sea level. The project also folds in public-space work: a full renovation of Todd Triangle into a plaza, a 1.2-mile extension of the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway, ADA upgrades to the IKEA waterfront park, and close to 200 new trees for stormwater absorption.
A Decade in the Making, Already Behind Its Own Old Schedule
This didn’t move quickly to get here. Design was only 30% complete as of late 2021, when the city’s own working target was to finalize design in 2023, start construction in early 2024, and finish by late 2026. None of that held — construction didn’t actually break ground until September 2025, and the current completion target, summer 2028, is roughly two years later than the project’s own pre-construction estimate. That’s a real, sourced slip worth naming plainly, not something we’re smoothing over.
Sources: NYC DEP; New York YIMBY; Brooklyn Paper; Brooklyn Paper; Brooklyn Eagle
New York’s Housing Authority Is Moving a Red Hook Campus Toward Private Management
What PACT Actually Changes
PACT converts public housing to Section 8 under a 99-year lease to a private or nonprofit manager, a structure meant to unlock financing for repairs NYCHA itself can’t afford. Sourcing this pass specifically covers Red Hook Houses West, the campus’s western section — it’s not clear from available reporting whether the rest of the Red Hook Houses complex is on the same track, and we’re not assuming it is.
Skepticism From Residents Who’ve Watched This Before
Tenant Association leader Karen Blondel has said she hopes to use the PACT process to lock in guarantees and even expand the campus with new construction — a genuinely optimistic read from inside the building. But residents at Manhattanville Houses in Manhattan, which completed its own PACT conversion in December 2024, have reported a rockier first year: miscommunication, conflicting information, and maintenance issues that a private manager hasn’t fully resolved.
Red Hook West’s own RFEI is now out, but partner selection and the recent precedent above are both still part of the conversation NYCHA is walking into.
Sources: The NYCHA Journal; City Limits; Red Hook Star-Revue; Red Hook Star-Revue; Red Hook Star-Revue
Red Hook’s Pool Keeps Flooding Faster Than Its $122 Million Fix Is Getting Designed
Three Separate Capital Projects, One Recreation Area
Three distinct Parks Department capital projects are moving at once across the same few blocks. The $82.2 million reconstruction of Red Hook Recreation Area’s track, three soccer fields and four ballfields has been underway since 2021 and carries an adjusted completion date of June 2026.
The Coffey Park multipurpose play area’s own rebuild started construction in May 2025, targeting May 2026. Both are real, funded, moving projects — neither is the pool.
A Building That Keeps Breaking Faster Than It’s Being Fixed
The actual pool and recreation center reconstruction — repairing Sandy-era damage, electrifying building systems, bringing the structure up to current code — is the big one, at $122 million, and it’s moving on a much slower clock: design was still only about 5% complete as of mid-2026, with the department reviewing stakeholder feedback rather than finalizing plans. In the meantime, the existing pool has now flooded and closed mid-summer in back-to-back years from basic mechanical failures, reopening in July 2026 only after emergency repairs.
The gap between “here’s a $122 million plan” and “the pool currently works” is the actual story here — that’s why we’re marking this section unresolved rather than simply under construction.
Sources: NYC Parks Capital Project Tracker; Brooklyn Paper; Brooklyn Paper; The City Reporter; NYC Parks Capital Project Tracker; NYC Parks Capital Project Tracker
Three Years Later, the Red Hook Library Is Finally Close to Reopening
Built to Flood-Proof Itself
The renovation isn’t just cosmetic. The rebuilt branch is designed as a net-zero building with rooftop solar, mechanical and electrical equipment relocated to the roof, flood-resistant walls and windows forming a dry floodwall roughly 3.5 feet high around the structure, and permeable landscaping with a garden bioswale to absorb stormwater on site. It’s a smaller-scale version of the same climate logic behind the coastal resiliency project above — protecting one building instead of two miles of waterfront, but built on the same premise that Red Hook floods and has to be designed for it.
Sources: Brooklyn Public Library; Brownstoner; Brooklyn Paper
A Decade-Long Push for a Red Hook Middle School Is About to Get a Real Building
A Decade in the Making, Literally
The idea for a dedicated Red Hook middle school traces back to 2016, championed by then-State Senator Velmanette Montgomery. P.S. 676 has been phasing from an elementary school into Harbor Middle School one grade at a time since 2022, currently incubated at 27 Huntington Street with a STEAM lab, aquarium, robotics program and multimedia center, and won’t reach a full 6th-through-8th-grade enrollment until 2027.
The new Delavan Street building is the payoff for that decade-long process — an Olympic-sized indoor pool, an auditorium, a hydroponics lab and a student-run podcast studio, purpose-built rather than retrofitted.
Sources: Red Hook Star-Revue; InsideSchools; Brooklyn Bridge Parents
Have a tip on a Red Hook project we should be tracking? Let us know.
Hush Street Editorial researches and reports on the projects, permits, and physical changes reshaping Brooklyn — and, more broadly, New York City. Reporting draws on primary-source city records — Department of Buildings filings, land-use and planning applications, agency and community-board documents — verified and cross-checked against independent reporting where it exists. Coverage is continuously updated as new filings and decisions are recorded, and confirmed facts are distinguished from open questions.
