Where’s Robert Moses When You Need Him?

Will anyone ever be able to figure out Red Hook? Unlikely; it seems to be a case of the blue-collar businesses against the box stores against the artists against the developers against the factory owners — did we mention that everyone hates the box stores? — except for the residents of the housing projects, who want the jobs in the box stores! — yet then there are the musicians who aren’t like artists but who need cheap rent (and seem to be unaware of any other borough) and . . . and everybody hates the Jews* . . . !

No, seriously, it sounds like that:

Red Hook is poised to receive stores like Ikea and Fairway, million-dollar condominiums, humming factories and bustling docks, and even a pier for the 1,132-foot Queen Mary 2 and other cruise ships. Yet, its future is caught up in a battle royal.

Developers want to convert waterfront warehouses and factories into apartments, even though the areas are zoned for manufacturing. But factory owners and cargo haulers fear that well-heeled apartment dwellers would not take kindly to their trucks barreling through Red Hook’s narrow cobblestone streets or their middle-of-the-night foghorns and bright lights.

“You’re going to be doing something they don’t like, even if it’s interfering with a guy barbecuing on the block,” said Michael DiMarino, owner of Linda Tool and Die Corporation, a precision metal fabricator with clients like NASA and Boeing. “I don’t blame him, but we were here first.”

Many factions dread the prospect of big-box stores like Ikea, which plans to build a waterfront furniture emporium with 1,500 parking spaces by 2007. Blue-collar businesses fear that Ikea’s shoppers would clog Red Hook, stalling their trucks. Homeowners worry that Ikea would shatter the quiet.

Yet residents of the housing projects, whose 8,000 tenants represent three-quarters of Red Hook’s population, are eager for the 500 jobs Ikea is dangling. Dorothy Shields, 74, the president of the Red Hook Houses East Tenants Association, who has taken a liking to Ikea’s Swedish meatballs, supports the store because one of every four of the projects’ tenants is unemployed.

“It’s the jobs,” she said. “I have so many people who needs jobs.”

Artists and craftsmen trickling in from Dumbo and Williamsburg fear any change because they suspect they will end up priced out of another blossoming neighborhood. Madigan Shive, a 29-year-old cellist, moved from San Francisco into a rental house with three other artists.

“There’s a good chance we could lose our house in the next year,” she said. “If I lose this space, I don’t know that I can stay in New York.”

*As per Tom Lehrer’s “National Brotherhood Week”.