Asked whether he wanted to move forward with the plan to hand over the Red Hook piers to the city Economic Development Corporation, the new executive director of the Port Authority, Anthony Shorris, said, in essence, he wants to think about it:
Right now, we are having conversations and are doing a lot of looking at what should happen at each of the piers. The thing that is most important is to make sure that they remain active, job generating, supporting the economic growth of the city and the port. That is a complicated set of decisions that we are in discussions that I am just catching up on.
This sounds like bureaucratic blather, but it also gives Shorris enough breathing space in case he wants to upset the EDC’s plan to replace the container port with another cruise-ship terminal, of which The Observer wrote last week.
It also distinctly sends a message that the Port Authority, which has perennially toggled between being an economic development agency and a transportation agency, wants to be the former.
– Matthew Schuerman
