"Pier 41 may be their home but it is not a house. It is a 'set' in a commercial warehouse. This space hosted the Will Smith movie 'Hitch' in 2004." ["Details on The Real World Red Hook!"]

Recently, we water-taxied to Brooklyn to follow up on reports of The Real World in Red Hook.

Cast members are staying in a newly renovated house on Pier 41. Their entrance is the long driveway that leads to Liberty Sunset Nursery and Steve's Key Lime Pie (famous for his key lime Pie on a stick).

Before The Real World (or Ikea), fallen concrete slabs behind Liberty Sunset were open to the public as a sort of make-shift garden. As it was, the nursery seemed to spill out into the East River, and shoppers could sit with key lime pie, on a stick or otherwise, and fraternize.  read more »

BJ's Wholesale Club is poised to join Ikea as the newest big-box store in Red Hook, according to the Brooklyn Paper, confirming predictions that the quaint neighborhood is fast becoming popular with unbecoming mega-retailers.

Here's the paper's scoop:

"BJ’s Wholesale Club, the members-only retail chain, is close to finalizing a deal to open a big box store on the Red Hook waterfront, The Brooklyn Paper has learned.

The retailer that sells everything from pet food to flat screen televisions is on the verge of announcing plans to move into the former site of the Revere Sugar factory, next door to the recently opened Ikea on Beard Street.

 read more »

Michael O'Connell, scion of Red Hook real estate mogul Greg O'Connell, is taking charge of a project to move the recently closed Cheyenne diner from its Chelsea location to a seaside spot in Brooklyn.

Mr. O'Connell, 37, has worked on developments with his father since he was 7. "It's hard to do anything on my own, my dad and I do pretty much everything hand and hand," he said. "But, yeah, this was definitely more my idea, and I'm taking the lead on this."

The Cheyenne was forced to close this April to make way for a nine-story apartment building being erected by the diner's landlord, George Papas, at 33rd Street and Ninth Avenue.  read more »

On a recent warm summer evening, two young professional couples sat idly chatting before a performance of Hamlet at Central Park's Delacorte Theater.

"Have you been to the new Ikea in Red Hook?" one of the young men asked his companions, receiving a chorus of "no, not yet!" in response.

On came a list of household items wanted, but not necessarily needed. "I was a bit worried about getting everything home on the ferry," one young lady said.

"I can help you," said her male companion.

With the opening of Ikea Brooklyn on June 18, no longer is a trip to Elizabeth, N.  read more »

Ikea Red Hook has survived its first weekend in Brooklyn. To commemorate, we dedicated several hours to the Ikea experience, starting with their free (for now) water taxi, which departs every 10 minutes from Wall Street’s Pier 11.

The water taxi itself was surprisingly empty and prompt, and filled with happy customers carrying houseplants. I met one woman (holding a houseplant) who was traveling from Wall Street to take her lunch hour in Ikea.

“It’s a beautiful day and a beautiful ride,” she said, “and I want to try the meatballs.”

This kind of short visit is absolutely the reason for the water taxi, store manager Mike Baker told me inside.  read more »

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz and City Planning Director Amanda Burden, among others, sawed a log to open the new Red Hook Ikea today.

In this week's print Observer, Benjamin Popper profiles Greg O'Connell, Red Hook's biggest landlord and the de facto godfather of the new big-box.

With the opening of a massive 346,000-square-foot Ikea in Red Hook on June 18, New Yorkers’ attention turns again to this tiny corner of Brooklyn waterfront. What they see is largely the legacy of one man, Greg O’Connell, the beat cop turned real estate baron.

At times, Mr. O’Connell can seem like a caricature of the down-to-earth developer. He has appeared in dozens of articles on the area, always in his trademark denim overalls, usually in his silver pickup truck, which he calls his office, and more recently with a copy of Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities in one hand, like some patron saint of urban renewal.  read more »

We don't want to tumble into too much Ikea-related hype, but the below release dropped into our inbox this morning. (In tomorrow's Observer, we'll have a profile of the Godfather of the Red Hook Ikea. Hint: he's in real estate.)  read more »

It opens June 18. More photos after the jump.  read more »