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RED HOOK’S BRIGHT IKEA

The days of calling Red Hook “Dead Hook” are done.

Locals anticipate IKEA bringing more than Swedish meatballs and furniture to the isolated Brooklyn neighborhood when it opens a much-hyped superstore there June 18. Many are banking on it so flooding the sleepy streets with hordes of shoppers that it rejuvenates developers’ interest in Red Hook’s scores of long-vacant sites.

The signs are already there: Michael O’Connell, son of Red Hook real estate mogul Greg O’Connell, confirmed he’s planning to fully restore and move the city’s last rail-car diner from Manhattan to vacant land the family owns on Reed Street.

The 16,000-square-foot lot that will house Cheyenne Diner is strategically located off the main Van Brunt Street corridor across the street from a wildly popular Fairway supermarket the O’Connells brought in two years ago. And it’s a couple of blocks from where IKEA is coming on Beard Street.

Greg O’Connell says he expects the IKEA invasion will have its biggest effect on Van Brunt Street. He said developers like him might begin scooping up vacant sites and filling them with first-floor retail storefronts and upper-level apartments.

“There is a lot of interest in bringing more restaurants here,” he said.

The Post Monday counted at least 16 vacant lots and another 20 buildings with vacant storefronts or with “for rent” signs in its windows along the main drag, which runs 22 blocks from DeGraw Street south to the Erie Basin.

Meanwhile, more start-up businesses are coming to Red Hook’s warehouses, including a winery featuring New York-grown grapes. And Van Brunt Street’s current business owners also expect to profit from IKEA – even one who runs a competing, small furniture store.

“The more people heading into Red Hook, the more customers we will get,” said Beatrice Giovanniello, who operates the furniture store Atlantis.

Borough President Marty Markowitz said he’s confident that IKEA- which is bringing 600 new jobs to the area – will also “serve as a catalyst for future growth without taking away any of the character that has made Red Hook one of Brooklyn’s most unique places to live and work.”

But some longtime residents, like John McGettrick, co-chair of the Red Hook Civic Alliance, maintain IKEA will ruin the neighborhoods unique maritime character and that the neighborhood isn’t ready to handle a massive increase in traffic.

There’s also been speculation that IKEA’s arrival will pave the way for much of Red Hook’s industrial waterfront becoming Big Box retail or condos.

Developer Joe Sitt, who owns the former Revere Sugar Factory next to IKEA, has been trying to convince the city for a few years to rezone the waterfront so he could fill his 6-acre site with apartments and retail stores.

But O’Connell, who owns a bulk of the industrial waterfront property – about 1 million square feet – and has the greatest political influence in the neighborhood, doesn’t want this “working waterfront” rezoned. He says he’d rather pass on the quick buck to ensure Red Hook doesn’t lose its blue-collar persona.

O’Connell rents space in warehouses to 150 businesses that employ 1,200 workers. He praised the Bloomberg administration for not caving in to pressure to rezone the area, adding he hopes the next mayor takes the same approach because “small business space has to be maintained.”

rcalder@nypost.com