At stake: A proposed Ikea will bring jobs and an influx of shoppers, but threatens the local shipping industry and, some say, the way of life in these parts.

The combatants: Ingvar Kamprad, the Swedish founder of Ikea and one of the world’s richest men, along with the Red Hook Houses tenants associations and the mayor’s office vs. the Red Hook Civic Association and Save the Graving Dock, a coalition of maritime and preservation groups

Most New York neighborhoods are already too well established to have room for major change. (Nobody is threatening to plunk a new stadium in the middle of the West Village or on the Upper East Side.) But Red Hook is different. With its vacant lots, empty warehouses and gorgeous harbor views, it offers loads of opportunities for drastic reshaping, and its 12,000 residents lack the political clout to put up much resistance.

As a result, the neighborhood has attracted all sorts of visionaries championing radically different Red Hooks of tomorrow. Some see an ideal site for swank condos; others hope for affordable housing. Some picture a mecca for shopping; others a chance to revive Brooklyn’s legendary working waterfront. The visions tend to clash, turning this into one of the most hotly contested square miles of property in the entire city.

For the past several years, the projected Ikea superstore on the Erie Basin waterfront has called out most of the battling Red Hook contingents. Longtime local activist John McGettrick opposes the Ikea and argues for a mixed-use zone that includes affordable housing: “In other ports, you have maritime activity cheek by jowl with restaurants and where people live. Why can’t we do that here?”

The city maintains that the Ikea is a private development on private property, and touts a vision of waterfront revitalization. “We’re bringing public and private investment—more than $330 million of it—to Red Hook,” says Joshua Sirefman, interim president of the city’s economic development corporation. Leaders in the Red Hook Houses, the largest public-housing project in Brooklyn, favor the 346,000-square-foot Ikea development because they hope it will provide jobs for local residents.

Some activists aren’t opposed to Ikea per se, but have focused on a historic ship-repair dock on the site; Ikea plans to turn it into a parking lot, a move contested by the Save the Graving Dock coalition. “If only the mayor would understand: This is almost like selling Central Park,” says Roberta Weisbrod, director of the Partnership for Sustainable Ports. “In the short term, you can get more bucks from housing and big-box stores, but you lose the long-term value from the maritime freight activity.” The city says maritime uses are major priorities in Red Hook; it is conducting a study that will address the issue and is encouraging a plan by the private company Hughes Marine to construct a dry dock elsewhere in the neighborhood.

It would be easy to conclude that the fight for the Red Hook waterfront is over. A new Fairway opened in mid-May. The city and the Port Authority hope to evict American Stevedoring, Red Hook’s last remaining container port. And a huge swath of old shipyard warehouses has already been leveled in preparation for the new Ikea. But McGettrick remains energized. “This is a community that was told during the Giuliani administration that we were going to have the largest waste-processing facility on the waterfront, and that we couldn’t fight City Hall,” he says. “Years later, there’s no waste-processing facility here.”—Gabriel Cohen