Feedback Here

fbook  tweeter  linkin YouTube
Global contents also translated in Chinese

Garment District’s anti-zoning initiative could make a comeback

Eight years after New York City pulled the plug on a plan to do away with antiquated Garment District zoning, city hall recently came up with a new proposal that’s barely more palatable to activists who killed off the first plan.

The Economic Development would wish to drop a 1987 rule that requires landlords of larger cross street buildings in the West 30s and lower West 40s between Broadway and Ninth Avenue to earmark 50 percent of above-ground floor space for apparel manufacturing.

The EDC, property owners, the Garment Center Alliance (a business improvement district) and the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) endorse the change, which would also offer manufacturers generous incentives to move to a new, modern complex in city-owned space in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.Rezoning advocates note that a mere 5,100 apparel-making jobs survive in the district, compared with 30,000 in 1987 and hundreds of thousands in the 1950s.

Scores of street-level, wholesale storefronts still display colorful dresses, sportswear and fabrics. They suggest a thriving “Seventh Avenue” apparel scene, but its deceptive most of what’s on display is made in China and South and Central America.

President Gale Brewer and Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen announced a “steering committee” made up of “major stakeholders” to weigh all the issues and make recommendations in time for an Aug. 21 Department of City Planning hearing.

If an agreement can be sewn up, DCP would enter the rezoning pitch into the city’s seven-month uniform land use review procedure.

Major area landlord Eric Gural, who owns four buildings, notes that rezoning wouldn’t require any manufacturing tenant to leave the neighborhood but purelywill offer the option of moving to Sunset Park with the help of city incentives.

A lot of the media make it sound like moving trucks are going to show up and every manufacturing company is being moved to Brooklyn but rezoning doesn’t require anyone to move says Gural.

 
LATEST TOP NEWS
 


 
MOST POPULAR NEWS
VF Logo