Industrial and manufacturing jobs provide good wages and career growth, especially for residents without postsecondary degrees. While the number of production-oriented positions has declined
for decades due to automation, off-shoring, and competing uses for land, industrial jobs remain crucial to a 21st century economy — and the industry continues to grow and evolve here in New
York City. Many of the City’s industrial businesses are connected to the City’s major industries such as fashion, television, and theater, while others are on the cutting edge of technology and product development. The City is continuing to invest in programs and leverage land use regulation to stabilize and grow these sectors, as laid out in its 2015 Industrial Action Plan.
Since then, the City has been investing in affordable industrial spaces and more strategically activating its own properties for this purpose. Futureworks NYC consists of partnerships, services, and spaces dedicated to supporting advanced manufacturing. Initiatives include an incubator to support hardware start-ups, a network of fabrication and prototyping facilities, training programs to help established manufacturers adopt new technologies, and the Futureworks Makerspace at the
Brooklyn Army Terminal for advanced manufacturing. The space offers affordable access to advanced manufacturing equipment, workspace, classes, storage, and design services. Bridge programs provide both career services and formal educational training in areas such as reading, writing, and computer skills with occupation-specific training. Brooklyn Army Terminal is a key
industrial hub that opened up more than 500,000 square feet of new industrial space last year, creating space for 1,000 new jobs; and it continues to support growth-stage industrial businesses
through three new micromanufacturing hubs in buildings A and B, and the continued tenanting of the food manufacturing hub in the Annex building. The Brooklyn Navy Yard is on target to house 17,000 more jobs by 2020, and its 2018 master plan includes an additional 5.1 million square feet of new development that will bring the number of jobs at the yard to 30,000 in the coming decades.
The City continues to strengthen the Hunts Point Food Distribution Center, a critical element of the City’s food distribution network. Future initiatives include renovating the wholesale markets to meet market needs and improve their sustainability, remediation of legacy environmental assets, and strengthening the connections to the nearby community. Additionally, a regional food hub for locally produced foods is scheduled to open in 2021 on City-owned land.
