As high-end residential development moves beyond Manhattan, New Yorkers are taking a fresh, even covetous, look at the waterfront, which has been inaccessible to the public for most of the city’s history.

Working harbors have generally been dangerous, polluted places that protect themselves by keeping the public out. Yet as traditional maritime businesses have declined, New York’s underused waterfront has become increasingly attractive for housing and parks. Are industrial retention advocates right to raise the alarm that the pressures of residential demand will drive out other uses, such as industry, manufacturing, and even necessary public services, like marine transfer stations?

One of the most spectacular views in all of New York Harbor is now seen only by a handful of city employees at the NYPD’s impoundment garage in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Council Member David Yassky recently singled out the hulking evidence facility as no. 1 on his list of the city’s “Top 10 Waterfront Wastes.” Mr. Yassky wants the site to be turned into a public park.

However, the evidence facility is actually on private property that is owned by Erie Basin Marine Associates, a partnership of the Reinhauer and Hughes families, who have operated tugboats and barges in the harbor since the mid-19th century.

Principal Robert J. Hughes has no intention of pushing out the NYPD, which he calls a perfect tenant – one that pays rent on time, goes about its business, and doesn’t complain about the 24-hour operations of the Bargeport. What Mr. Hughes definitely doesn’t want is upscale residential development, because that often brings people who sue. One of his other tenants, a barge company that has also been in business since the 19th century, was forced to move to Erie Basin after its property in Jersey City was condemned by the city government. Residents of the upscale Port Liberte complex had complained about noise and huge lights shining in the middle of the night.

All New Yorkers, of course, have an interest in the barge industry’s continued operation in the region’s waterways. Barges are by far the most efficient, cheapest, and cleanest method of moving heavy construction materials around the city – not to mention removing tons of trash daily.

City residents often have a romantic attachment to waterfront activity, said Mr. Hughes. Yet while they like watching heavily laden barges in the distance, “if people move in next to me, they’ll end up suing me,” he said. He opposes residential development on or adjacent to his property, fearing that the first thing new residents will do is try to drive him out of business.

Today’s real estate market is a far cry from the situation in 1992, when his firm bought the 56 acres (above and below the waterline) for $2.5 million from the Port Authority, which had been operating a failed fish processing plant, the Fishport, in Erie Basin since 1987.There were few competing bidders. “Nobody could get a loan in those days,” said Mr. Hughes. “But you could mortgage your fleets, which is what we did.”

In contrast, when the New York Shipyards site immediately to the north of the Bargeport came on the market in the late 1990s, he knew he couldn’t touch the price, said to be upward of $35 million. This is where Ikea plans to build its huge, controversial furniture store. But Mr. Hughes has no objection: “Those customers aren’t going to sue me.”

However, no matter how hard the industries there resist, it is clear that upscale residential development is coming to the south Brooklyn waterfront, particularly now that the north Brooklyn waterfront has just been rezoned, allowing the development of housing, shops, and parks where only manufacturing had been allowed for decades. Knowing that residential development was inevitable in north Brooklyn, some industrial-retention advocates have tried to keep it out of south Brooklyn through suits and political maneuvering. The jockeying has been ugly and costly.

Construction on the residential conversion of a 225,000-square-foot warehouse at 160 Imlay St., right behind the Port Authority’s container port, for example, has been blocked for six months by a suit by the Red Hook Chamber of Commerce, which contends that a residential project so close to the working waterfront would impede industrial uses – in part by driving up property values. The suit contended that the Board of Standards and Appeals should not have granted a variance allowing residential development in a manufacturing zone.

The developers – who included the principals of Industry City Associates, the city’s premier industrial landlord – responded that they had bought the property in 2000 for industrial purposes, to lease to the telecommunications industry. (They had paid over $20 million for both 160 Imlay and its equally massive twin to the north.) When the dot-com bubble burst, so did their market.

“The market fell apart. We had no takers,” developer Bruce Batkin said. “The only other economic use was residential – high-end condominium apartments.” Without addressing the merits of either set of arguments, an appellate court judge last week dismissed the case on procedural grounds, permitting the conversion to resume.

The 160 Imlay site has been particularly contentious because it is immediately upland from Brooklyn’s last working container terminal. But “working” is itself a disputed concept, since the container terminal has long been far from busy and has often fallen behind on its rent. The container terminal’s landlord, the Port Authority, as well as the Bloomberg administration, have been trying to ease it out from its occupancy of Piers 7 through 10 in order to allow what they regard as more productive uses. The city plans to build a cruise-ship terminal on Pier 10 to replace the decaying terminals on Manhattan’s West Side. And, as the New York Sun reported last week, the city is also trying to move a beer distributor, Phoenix Beverage, from Queens to Pier 7. It is also negotiating with the Brooklyn Brewery, which is now in Williamsburg, to move to Red Hook.

Scarce waterfront property in Brooklyn has many suitors – industrial, residential, and commercial. Must they be at war, as the zoning code presumes by trying to keep them separate?

Surprisingly, many small manufacturers in the area say they moved to Brooklyn for its mixed-use character, which they hope will be maintained.

Furniture maker Ethan Intrater moved to Red Hook in 1983 from basement space in a Soho co-op. “People blamed us for noise even when we weren’t working. We wanted to buy in Williamsburg, but prices were already escalating. We agreed on an asking price for manufacturing space, and two days later, the guy said he wanted another $25,000. So we came down here and bought our own 2,500-square-foot building and a lot to the corner, figuring we were protected in the boondocks. No one could bother us.” He and his partner paid $130,000 for property that is surely worth over a million now. They rent out the lot to a bus company.

“I’m not against residential,” Mr. Intrater said. “But I don’t want to get forced out again. People live in Manhattan and pay huge amounts of money to look at Red Hook. The smarter thing is to pay not so much money, live in Red Hook, and look at Manhattan. Buttermilk Channel, with its boats and barges, is like a children’s book.”

A small row house in Red Hook just sold for over $1 million, perhaps signaling a new round of price increases, which puts pressure on all property uses.

Some manufacturers have gotten double value for their real estate by living and working in the same place, a traditional Brooklyn development pattern.

The CEO and lead engineer of Atair Aerospace, Daniel Preston, who also moved to Brooklyn after being forced out of downtown Manhattan, lives on the top floor of a handsome three-story building on Coffey and Conover streets. His company’s parachutes are designed and fabricated in the lower floors. He said he’s fully committed to Red Hook and is erecting a 4,000-square-foot building on two neighboring lots to manufacture the parachutes. His 20 employees (12 full-time, eight part-time) all live in Brooklyn, making a move elsewhere almost unthinkable. Still, he’s worried about the Ikea and its effect on the single-lane route that his suppliers and customers must take in and out of the neighborhood.

“Why are the rules bent for them but not for small companies?”

He would like eventually to get a variance to make his factory a little taller, and believes he will have the support of his neighbors, whom he calls appreciative.

A neighborhood activist and ferocious Ikea opponent, John McGettrick, sums up Red Hook’s structural problems: “The streets are too narrow, the trucks are too big, the buildings are too old, and the landfill on which the entire neighborhood is built is too soft.” But the views are among the most extraordinary in New York, and upscale residential development is coming to Red Hook as surely as the sun will rise every morning over Buttermilk Channel.