The NYC Economic Development Corp. (EDC) has done a poor job with our city’s marine infrastructure and maritime industries. Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani should end EDC’s control of our waterfront and re-establish a professional maritime planning and management entity as our city has had for most of its history.
In 1991, EDC was created and given a maritime contract to manage and develop the city’s waterfront. EDC is a real estate development entity, and its oversight has resulted in deteriorating marine infrastructure and a diminished maritime industry, which are critical for the city’s future economy, environment, and emergency preparedness.
- Manhattan Cruise Terminal
By 1998, the Manhattan Cruise Terminal’s (MCT) four piers were removed from Hudson River Park and transferred to EDC. In 2008, EDC leased two piers to Vornado Realty for a convention center complex. They operated on Pier 94 but seldom used Pier 92 which a city inspection found unusable in 2019. Vornado claimed EDC was responsible for pier maintenance and stopped paying rent, yet in 2023 was allowed to build a movie studio on Pier 94, despite local community and elected official opposition.
In 2023, EDC committed to improve and electrify Pier 90. However, has delayed electrification and announced a multi-billion dollar rebuild of MCT which will remove Pier 90 and extend Piers 88 and 92 to accommodate vessels carrying 7,000 passengers while cities like Amsterdam and Venice have banned mega cruise ships. EDC’s failure to apply for the required congressional authorization to lengthen the piers could delay the project two years.
- Staten Island’s North Shore
EDC’s redevelopment of Staten Island’s North Shore was a fiasco. In 2005, they announced plans to redevelop maritime sites adjacent to the Staten Island Ferry Terminal with a shopping mall and the largest observation wheel in the world. The $590 million wheel was abandoned, and EDC has stated that the mall is only 50% occupied.
Rezoning stimulated high-rise residential development on working waterfronts in Greenpoint, Williamsburg and Long Island City, which private ferry operators were encouraged to service. In 2015, EDC established NYC Ferry, copying local operators service models and vessels, but chose a California company to operate 19 newly built city-owned vessels with public operating subsidies.
A city comptroller’s audit reported that EDC failed to account for $224 million spent to initiate the service, and by 2019 their proposed $6.60/passenger subsidy became $10.73. EDC maintained regular ferry schedules during COVID-19 and subsidies rose to $14.57/passenger by 2022. The private company operating NYC Ferry declared bankruptcy in 2024.
EDC recently announced a $15 two-day unlimited NYC Ferry pass competing with private maritime tour operators who pay living wages, lease public property, and generate payroll and sales taxes. Why should city taxpayers subsidize tourists?
For 20 years, EDC talked about moving freight on our waterways to reduce the truck traffic clogging our city streets, deteriorating infrastructure, and fouling our air.
This September, EDC announced a $3.4 billion plan to redevelop the Brooklyn Marine Terminal (BMT) as a Blue Highway hub to transport produce and packages by water. However, they traded “as is” the 187-acre, state-of-the-art, city-owned container port at Howland Hook in Staten Island, for the Port Authority’s 122-acre BMT with millions in deferred maintenance.
The Port Authority was required to keep BMT in working order. Yet EDC failed to recover deferred funding and used BMT’s deterioration as rationale to employ a state General Project Plan (GPP) to sidestep public review and approvals. EDC’s BMT redevelopment budget includes hundreds of millions in unrelated expenses, yet major commitments in Atlantic Terminal’s GPP never materialized.
The Mamdani administration should establish a professional maritime development, management, and construction entity that assumes EDC’s maritime contract, but with greater public accountability. A not-for-profit Maritime Development Corp. (MDC) led by experienced professionals who understand operations, the challenges of in-water construction and opportunities to grow our maritime industry.
MDC would celebrate our maritime heritage, redevelop maritime industrial areas, streamline public waterfront construction and maintenance, improve workforce development, contribute to resiliency and emergency preparedness, and grow commercial maritime industries through public/private partnerships.
The Harbor and the Erie Canal made New York City an economic powerhouse. Our waterways can once again stimulate economic growth by moving packages, produce, building material and people in a cost-effective, energy-efficient, and environmentally beneficial manner.
Fox is a Worldwide Ferry Safety Association board member. He was a founding partner of New York Water Taxi and president of Interferry, an international trade association.
