The decision by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to prevent the Belgian ship Freeway from unloading its cargo could be the death knell for Brooklyn’s container port. A major chocolate company is close to pulling $25 million worth of cocoa beans out of New York harbor as it ponders a proposal from the authority and the city that would keep its tasty cargo at bay for yet another week.

The Freeway has been idled for 11 days at the Red Hook Container Terminal. It had arrived from the Ivory Coast only to find that the warehouse administered by the Port Authority had run out of space. American Stevedoring, which has a contract to unload ships at the pier, claims the lack of space is part of the authority’s plan to drive the company out of the port.

Negotiations with the city and the Port Authority to lease a vacant pier nearby had led to an agreement earlier this week, but the city reversed a deal at the last minute.

Now, while the city says it can have a pier at 39th Street near Sunset Park ready within a week, the shipping and chocolate companies may strike a deal with another East Coast port as early as tonight.

“The ship owner and I are actively pursuing other ports,” the head of Blommer Chocolate, Karl Walk, said last night. Mr. Walk said he is waiting to hear from officials at the four other nearby ports capable of containing cocoa – Philadelphia, Camden, N.J., Baltimore, and Albany. He said he has already rerouted a ship slated for New York to Baltimore and that the Freeway could leave the East River by tomorrow morning.

The negotiations with city and Port Authority officials had centered on two vacant piers in Red Hook. The city said one of them, Pier 11, was not available because it would be used for a planned cruise ship terminal. The sides then reached an agreement for Pier 6 to the north, and $1.2 million changed hands before city officials squashed the deal, saying the pier was tied to the development of Brooklyn Bridge Park, sources close to the negotiations said yesterday.

“We spent a week and a half negotiating for a pier that was never an option,” Mr. Walk said.

A spokeswoman for the city’s Economic Development Corporation, Janel Patterson, yesterday touted the offer of the pier at 39th Street, but Mr. Walk said the chances that the cocoa would stay in New York are “very small.”

Mr. Walk also expressed uncertainty that the facility could accommodate the more than 12,000 tons of cocoa that needs to be unloaded from the Freeway. “We haven’t seen the facility in years,” he said.

Ms. Patterson blamed the current situation on American Stevedoring’s “mismanagement of its facilities in Red Hook.” A spokesman for the company, Matt Yates, called the charges “unfounded,” citing the shrinking of the ports in recent years as the city focuses on residential development and building up the cruise ship industry on the Brooklyn waterfront.

“This situation is comparable to cutting Port Authority Bus Terminal down to one platform to make way for condos, and then when Christmastime comes, blaming the folks that work at the bus station for the rush of people who visit New York to shop,” Mr. Yates said.

Elected officials also criticized the city and the Port Authority, citing the 623 jobs that would be lost if American Stevedoring shut down its operations in Red Hook. “I do not understand it,” a City Council member of Brooklyn, David Yassky, said. “The Port Authority and the city are letting very good jobs leave New York.”

A consultant and a former ports director at the Economic Development Corporation, Roberta Weisbrod, said the city is being “idiotic” by not taking advantage of the economic potential of the Brooklyn ports. “This is just one symptom of not understanding the opportunity for wealth,” she said.