A City Council subcommittee voted unanimously yesterday to endorse construction of an Ikea big-box store in Red Hook, Brooklyn, paving the way for a vote next week by the full council, which is expected to approve the project.

The 346,000-square-foot store would be built on a 22-acre parcel along the Red Hook waterfront.

Proponents say it will create up to 600 jobs – with a hiring preference for local residents – and account for spending of more than $100 million in investments and environmental cleanup. Critics of the project say that the job estimate is bloated and that traffic and pollution in the neighborhood will become unbearable.

The zoning and franchise subcommittee, whose chairman is a council member from Queens, Tony Avella, passed the Ikea proposal on a 5-0 vote. The land-use committee is to ratify the project today, and the vote by the full council is expected next Wednesday.

“This is a great project, and Ikea and their consultants have bent over backwards to address the concerns of the community,” Mr. Avella told The New York Sun, adding that the proposal “is definitely going to pass.”

At the council’s only public hearing on the project, which took place yesterday morning before the subcommittee voted on the proposal, a handful of residents testified in opposition to the plan, focusing on the traffic jams and pollution the popular furniture store could cause.

“I have a 3-month-old daughter and I don’t want 50,000 cars a week to invade the streets where she’ll play,” a local musician and homeowner, Finn Moore Gerety, said. “…The children of my neighborhood don’t need 370,000 square feet of retail space and a 1,400-car parking lot as their new neighbor on the waterfront.”

The project coordinator for the Downtown Brooklyn Council told the council that the retailer has indeed made commitments to improvements. “Ikea will introduce a number of bus and ferry connections to its store to help reduce traffic impacts, and has included a green roof and solar panels to its store to minimize environmental impacts,” Carlecia Taylor said.

Mr. Avella said: “I’ve never heard of a developer, in this case Ikea, privately funding traffic improvements that are not directly in front of their store, and helping solve traffic problems that exist a few blocks away.”

Supporters of the project have said the largest impact the Ikea project will have on the community is the creation of jobs.