Hello, Columbia Street Waterfront! This will be a short issue, but it's an urgently important one.

As readers of our March 20 issue will remember, the deadline for written comments on the Draft State of Work (DSOW) which documents the scope of the City Environmental Quality Review (CEQR) is tomorrow, Tuesday, March 31. That issue also announced that the EDC (Economic Development Corporation) would hold two sessions (Tuesday, March 24 and Wednesday, March 25), covering the responses to the Brooklyn Marine Terminal Port Operations and Maritime Industrial Uses Request for Expressions of Interest (RFEI). That left all of us who had either already sent in our comments or who were working on them with less than a week to incorporate what we learned about the RFEI before the March 31 deadline!

Before EDC even held the first session, Assemblymembers Simon and Mitaynes and Council Members Hanif and Avilés sent this letter to Julie Su, Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice, to whom the EDC reports, as well as EDC leadership. Our electeds requested these actions:

1. EDC convenes the DC [BMT Development Corporation] and the ATF [Advisory Task Force], briefs them on the status of the project and shares the RFEI submissions along with their assessments of them;
2. EDC hosts two community meetings: one in Red Hook and one in the Columbia Street Waterfront District–to complement the two virtual meetings–to share the RFEI submissions along with their assessments of them; and
3. Extend the comment period on the DSOW until 30 days after the community has been briefed on the RFEI submissions, thus allowing their testimony to be comprehensive, and to address all aspects of the Vision Plan or other approaches they would like to see incorporated into the Final Scope of Work and DEIS.

CSWA board members attended both RFEI review sessions, and Thursday we sent our own letter supporting the Joint Electeds Letter to City on BMT. What we learned (and did not learn) at the sessions strengthened our resolve that our community needs EDC to take the actions above. Our letter elaborates on these points:

1. More residents and businesses will want to learn about the RFEI results as they prepare their DSOW scoping comments, beyond those who could attend the two sessions this week.
2. EDC's summaries of the RFEI responses were cursory and left out key details that the community needs to understand and respond to them.
3. Several of the RFEI respondents presented new ideas that could trigger environmental impact - but absent details from the RFEI, the community cannot provide meaningful DSOW comments on them.
4. An extended DSOW comment period and more public meetings would provide an opportunity to identify and assess potential alternatives to the BMT Vision Plan - an important part of the EIS.

In addition to Deputy Mayor Su and EDC membership, we've sent our letter to U.S. Representative Dan Goldman, NY State Senator Andrew Gounardes, and Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso asking them to support these requests.

John Leyva, our Vice President as well as a steering committee member of Voices of the Waterfront and a 31-year neighborhood resident, expands on the need for more time in his own letter sent to the EDC and BMTDC.

Brooklyn Eagle's Mary Frost's excellent article "Officials: Public needs more time to evaluate maritime uses for BMT" covers the RFEI sessions and our electeds' response. It's required reading.

As of Sunday night, we have not heard from the EDC on a deadline extension. If you are like us, you are scrambling to understand what little information we have about the RFEI while racing to complete comments by end of day tomorrow. This is an unreasonable situation. We need everyone to join us in calling for more time and details.

What you can do:

1. Call or email Representative Goldman's, Senator Gounardes', and Brooklyn Borough President Reynoso's offices and ask them to contact Deputy Mayor Su and EDC and request a deadline extension.
   ​Representative Dan Goldman: (718) 312-7575, dan.goldman@mail.house.gov
   ​State Senator Andrew Gounardes: (718) 238-6044, gounardes@nysenate.gov
   ​Brooklyn Borough President Reynoso: (718) 802-3700, antonio.reynoso@brooklynbp.nyc.gov
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2. Email Deputy Mayor Julie Su (JSu@cityhall.nyc.gov); Jeanny Pak, EDC Interim President & CEO (jpak@edc.nyc); and Betty Cao (bcao@edc.nyc), emphasizing our requests and asking to extend the deadline for written comments.

Please feel free to copy in admin@columbiastreetwaterfront.org.

We covered the RFEI in detail and provided resources to use for written comments to the DSOW in our March 20 issue: CSWA Breaking News! EDC schedules virtual reviews of BMT Port Operations and Maritime Industrial Uses RFEI! (Wait, what's an RFEI?).

As of now, written comments can be sent up to end of day March 31, 2026, to Emily Spokowski, espokowski@moec.nyc.gov.

Upcoming Dates!

• Tomorrow, Tuesday, March 31: Deadline (at least for now) for BMT CEQR Scoping written commentary
• Saturday, April 18, 10 AM to 12 PM: CSWA Clean-up Day with Scavenger Hunt! (rain date Sunday, April 19) - starting at Human Compass Garden, corner of Sackett St and Columbia St. Click here to register.
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Questions? Email us at admin@columbiastreetwaterfront.org. Also, please share our mailing list sign-up page with your friends and neighbors: Columbia Street Waterfront Association Email List.

Media Contact:​
Randy Gordon, President
Columbia Street Waterfront Association, Inc.
Phone: 917-593-2674
Email: admin@columbiastreetwaterfront.org​