Pump Brakes On Red Hook E-Commerce Shipping Facilities, CB6 Says

NEW YORK Metropolis — E-commerce companies this kind of as Amazon should not be allowed to open more “final mile” facilities in Purple Hook simply because the neighborhood’s streets and air are now dangerously choked by shipping and delivery trucks, a regional board contends.

A letter to Mayor Eric Adams from Brooklyn’s Local community Board 6 sent Thursday asks town officers to position a moratorium on the new shipping amenities in Crimson Hook.

The letter signed by Chair Eric McClure and District Manager Michael Racioppo arrives immediately after a damning recent report that located much more than 1,200 shipping trucks and vans driving on the neighborhood’s streets on many days.

Those delivery cars are main contributors to inadequate air high-quality and website traffic congestion in Crimson Hook, which not only has a single of the city’s best concentrations of NYCHA inhabitants, but also historic cobblestone streets, the letter states.

“It’s unconscionable that this environmental justice local community should bear the brunt of other Brooklynites’ predilection for swift household delivery of on line purchases,” the letter states.

Amazon spokesperson Simone Griffin explained to Patch the firm will work to be a good neighbor and usually takes the effects on the group into account.

The business does so by bringing far more superior work opportunities, a lot more opportunities for area little corporations and community applications with long lasting influence into neighborhoods, she said.

“We also know that there can be some challenges with things like website traffic based on the infrastructure, and we get the job done with the local community and community policymakers to consider and mitigate fears,” she mentioned in a assertion. “We keep on being dedicated to getting to be a a lot more sustainable corporation, and that consists of how we demonstrate up in neighborhoods the place our customers live, and employees work—we will keep on to rollout electrical delivery motor vehicles, cargo bikes, and other forms of transportation, in addition to powering area properties with wind and photo voltaic vitality in which we can.”

But the modern report by Customer Stories and the Guardian adds assist to several prolonged-standing regional complaints and fears that e-commerce distribution facilities will overwhelm the waterfront neighborhood’s streets.

Community Board 6 customers have sent a torrent of letters to city officers given that 2020 contacting for targeted traffic scientific studies on the effect of delivery facilities, delisting of certain streets as truck routes and alterations to zoning regulations that enable very last-mile distribution centers to sprout up with simplicity.

The city’s governing administration wants to step in or else the neighborhood — which was developed with horse-drawn automobiles in brain — is “screwed,” Racioppo wrote in a 2020 op-ed, quoting a local paper.

“Only the governing administration is positioned to balance and assess all the competing pursuits and figure out the very best route forward,” he wrote.

Racioppo’s and McClure’s latest letter states the Shopper Reports and Guardian investigation “only confirms our fears” about the impacts of thousands of delivery vehicles on the neighborhood’s streets.

“At this stage, we think a moratorium on the opening of previous-mile services in Crimson Hook is vital to address these problems,” it states.