NEW YORK CITY-Elected officials gathered at the Brooklyn Navy Yard’s Admirals Row site Friday afternoon to mark the official transfer of the site from the Federal government to the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corp. Along with the Yard’s owner, the City of New York, the BNYDC will redevelop and preserve portions of Admirals Row.

The RFP issued in conjunction with Friday’s announcement calls for bids for the construction of a supermarket on Admirals Row that will be no less than 74,000 square feet in size. New industrial space is also planned. Additionally, the site’s historic timber shed and a residential home, known as Building B, will also be preserved and slated for retail or office use.

A disposition for the site—and the supermarket expected by 2014—was a long time in the making, a fact not lost on US Senator Charles Schumer.

“Under the leadership of the development corporation, the Navy Yard has reinvented itself,” Schumer said. “One vital piece—Admirals Row—has been left to literally rot. With these historic buildings behind us crumbling and land that could benefit the community, land that creates amenities for nearby families and seniors, land that could create jobs sitting fallow.”

Schumer chalked up the delay in developing the site, some 40 years, to bureaucratic red tape and “considerable Federal foot dragging.”

Deputy Mayor for Economic Development Robert Steel called the impending development “the newest and the latest milestone” in the continuing success of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. “It’s really a story that we can’t tell enough because it sets so many examples for other things we want to be doing in New York.”

Steel and others emphasized the jobs the project will create. Andrew Kimball, president and CEO of the BNYDC, estimated that hundreds of construction jobs will results, as well as roughly 500 permanent retail and industrial jobs. About 125,000 square feet of industrial space is anticipated.

“Ingersoll, Whitman and Farragut… you’re getting the love,” Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz said. He added that he thinks the jobs created by the supermarket would be taken by people who live within walking distance of it.