Free screening of Emergent City at CB7 on March 4

Filmmaker Kelly Anderson moved to Sunset Park fifteen years ago, having just completed her documentary, My Brooklyn, about the 2004 Downtown Brooklyn rezoning. She had no thought of making another film dealing with gentrification, but when Industry City opened its doors with its “innovator economy” and plans to rezone and create a massive shopping area with luxury hotels, Anderson was drawn to the story.

“I felt really struck by the disconnect between what this neighborhood feels like and the culture that was being promoted there,” Anderson said when the Sunset Post sat down with her recently at Liebre Cafe.

As a white, professional creative, the complex’s target demographic, Anderson also felt a sense of responsibility. Teaming up with local filmmaker Jay Arthur Sterrenberg “to lend what we knew how to do to the struggle,” Anderson co-directed Emergent City, a documentary that chronicles the seven-year community battle over Industry City’s rezoning bid. The film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival to critical acclaim in 2024, and is playing for free at the Community Board 7 meeting on March 4 (details below).

While films of this kind often center around a particular character’s fight for justice, Emergent City takes another approach, following different characters and letting the story unfold through a variety of voices and perspectives. Among the many players in this civic drama are then City Council member Carlos Menchaca; Elizabeth Yeampierre of climate justice group UPROSE; State Assembly member Marcela Mitaynes and City Council member Alexa Avilés when they were activists and not yet in office; and then CEO of Industry City, Andrew Kimball, who despite the film’s evenhanded style can’t help but read as the antagonist. Most of the action takes place in meeting rooms of one kind or another, but interspersed images of neighborhood life remind viewers of the people whose everyday existence is at stake. The result is a complex story of community empowerment, and a compelling inside look at democracy at work.

Anderson was first attracted to Sunset Park because of its affordability — she had been priced out of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill — and the easy subway access to her son’s school in Gowanus. Though she didn’t know much about the neighborhood when she arrived, she soon fell in love with its family vibe, its diversity, and its thriving small business community. “It’s been a great place to raise a kid,” she said.

A film professor at Hunter College, Anderson soon connected with local activists and was invited to show her film at a Community Board meeting. As she began to learn about what was happening with Industry City, she was interested to find that the issue wasn’t only gentrification and the rising rents and displacement that go with it. The development also potentially threatened a neighborhood vision, developed by UPROSE and the Community Board in consultation with various stakeholders, for a revitalized working waterfront that would bring good jobs in the green economy to Sunset Park residents. “This community has been advocating for a really long time to protect and promote industrial uses on that waterfront,” Anderson said, “and to convert them to less polluting, less toxic, and even climate justice-related uses.”

According to local advocates, Industry City’s plan would have set the neighborhood on a completely different course, catering to outside interests and, by changing the zoning, limiting green industrial uses. And while it would have created jobs, there were concerns that many would be lower paying retail positions, and that any tech or media companies that moved in might not even hire locally. Even so, as Emergent City shows, many Sunset Park residents wanted to work with the developers to make the best of the situation. Anderson says, “One thing I learned making this film is it’s not something you can take quick ideologically driven positions on, because it's just really complicated.”

Ultimately, the owners withdrew their rezoning bid in the face of opposition, and today Industry City continues to operate under its original zoning. At the same time, the community vision for a green reindustrialized waterfront is becoming increasingly real.

Despite two stop-work orders from President Trump, both overridden by the courts, the Empire Wind Farm project, which includes a wind turbine assembly and maintenance plant at Sunset Park’s South Brooklyn Marine Terminal, is moving forward and nearly complete.

With other reindustrialization projects in the works, the example of Sunset Park is shaping national conversations about how communities approach climate change. Anderson attributes that in large part to the leadership of Yeampierre, who is a major force in the environmental justice movement nationally, but Anderson also credits the character of the neighborhood itself.

“The level of engagement here is off the charts. I mean, it's such hard work, this community planning. But people really are active and turn out,” she says. “I've never lived in a community that's so committed.”

Emergent City screens March 4 at 6:30 pm at 4201 Fourth Avenue. It is a bilingual English and Spanish event and is free and open to all.