Farias asks about economic impact and vacant commercial corridors

Do you folks know how many folks are leaving City Island by car to drive to Ferry Point to take the ferry?

I don't have any information with me, but we can take a look and see if we have anything.

Yeah, I would say, I mean, anecdotally, I mean, I've never taken a tally myself in Ferry Point Park, but anecdotally, a lot of the responses that

I have had in conversations I've had with residents have been that they're excited about, you know, we're excited about the Ferry Point landing, are utilizing the Ferry Point Park landing.

Because there's a huge parking lot there, have the ability to park there.

So I just want to raise in that response of like the potentiality of congestion.

I think we all know from seeing ferry landings appear throughout the city of New York, there's always about a quarter of excitement.

And then it kind of swells out.

We experienced that in Soundview where we had some parking mishaps and things like that because we don't have a parking lot.

I think what's afforded at the ferry point landing is that there is a parking lot.

People that need to drive to a ferry landing have typically already evaded going to Soundview and go right there to leave their vehicle.

And I personally do not think that that would be something that would happen.

On City Island too frequently.

Have you folks thought through in the optimization plan, just to what Councilmember De La Rosa was saying, looking at the landing not just for the

best case scenario in ridership, but also looking at the economic impacts that

that could be the best case scenario for communities that would result in getting a ferry landing.

Absolutely.

As part of the vision study, we're trying to bring an economic justice lens to this, which looks beyond just, you know, are there places with the highest ridership and, you know, how do we build more of those?

If that were the lens, the only things that would get built are places, you know, Dumbo has some of our highest ridership, but that's not what we're trying to do.

We're trying to build out, or we're trying to consider whether or not we should grow, and if we are, how to do that in the most impactful ways.

Impact to us means taking a look at where people live, what the demographics are, what their economic opportunities are, and whether ferry could help improve those.

So those are some of the ways that we're looking at it.

Would you folks consider a high percentage of commercial corridor that's vacant a place to look at boosting the local economy?

I think that, you know, it is certainly an opportunity.

It also creates risk, you know, at the same time.

You know, is this a place that people are coming to?

I think that very often does create ways for people to enter into communities and can really support them.

A good example that we've seen recently in Red Hook, and there's been some good coverage over the summer of people who are coming in and exploring and finding places.

To the extent you like seeing lots of people coming into a community to shop and do business there on weekends, we see a lot of that.

And so, you know, we see the power of NYC Ferry, and I want to explore that more.