nearby waterways. Crooke sold the former mill to Florence C. Smith in January 1906. The day after the sale, Smith deeded it to the real estate company Flatbush East, who transferred the land's ownership to Flatbush Improvement Company at the end of the year. The Flatbush Improvement Company brought marshland and engaged the firm of Atlantic, Gulf and Pacific to dredge creeks and fill in meadows. After the filling project was completed, the parcel had an area of and was fit for industrial development. As compensation, Atlantic, Gulf and Pacific acquired ownership of the eastern portion of Mill Island, which comprised about of land. Atlantic, Gulf and Pacific built factories and worker housing on its half of the island, and in 1916, began laying sidewalks and utilities. The expanded island attracted companies such as National Lead, Gulf Refining, and other leading firms engaged in heavy industry, which were operating plants along the Mill Island shoreline. Additionally, construction of an extension of Flatbush Avenue to the Rockaway Inlet started in 1913. In 1910, developers began dredging ports within Jamaica Bay in an effort to develop a seaport district there. Work on dredging a , main ship channel started in 1912 and was completed the next year, but lawsuits delayed progress until the 1920s. The channel ran along the western and northern shores of Jamaica Bay. The first improvements to Mill Island itself started in 1915, when a wooden pier was installed along Flatbush Avenue. In 1916, of shoreline along Mill Island was incorporated into the proposed port. At the time, a , channel was to be excavated within Mill Basin, the waterway. This new channel would allow a proposed extension of the Flatbush Avenue Streetcar from Avenue N to the Mill Basin shoreline. In 1917 the New York City Department of Docks awarded a contract to dredge the Mill Basin channel, along the southern and western sides of the island, to the federal government. Mill Basin was eventually wide and deep. Work on the main ship channel restarted in 1923. After the entire main channel was dredged to 500 feet wide by 18 feet deep, it was re-dredged to 1,000 feet wide by deep. The project was completed by the late 1930s, eliminating many small islands in the bay and causing the expansion of another island, Canarsie Pol. The eastern branch of Mill Basin was created by the 1930s. In 1918,