Clare Newman, chief of staff and executive vice president of the development corporation, pointed to the yard’s track record.
“We’ve reached a point where we have really finished rehabbing all of the existing buildings at the yard, and we’ve been over 99 percent leased for the past decade,” Newman said. “So there’s clearly demand out there, and we want to make sure we’re continuing to add space to support these manufacturing businesses and, most importantly, to support the kinds of jobs they create.”
Rather than bring in private developers -- as was done with the waterfront office project known as Dock 72 being built by Rudin Management Co. and Boston Properties Inc. -- the plan is to self-fund the development from the revenue the corporation raises from tenants. It will also seek government and philanthropic subsidies and tax credits, based on “quality projects that will create good social policy outcomes,” Ehrenberg said.
The plan focuses on three sites encompassing 24.5 acres (10 hectares) of the 300-acre complex. The one likeliest to come first is a 2.7 million-square-foot complex to be built around what is now a barge basin with oyster traps, Ehrenberg said. It would be about three parts manufacturing space to one part creative offices, designed to appeal to the sort of tech companies that have flocked to Brooklyn. The area is now mostly truck and car parking.
A second site, with about the same mix of manufacturing and creative space, is at present mostly a tow pound used by the New York Police Department. A third is home to what Ehrenberg called the yard’s last federal occupant, a Bureau of Prisons supply depot.
There have been other changes since the Navy Yard launched the Arizona, when Brooklyn had taken in waves of poor immigrants. More recently, the yard’s development corporation has turned to the federal EB-5 program. The program ties permission to enter the country to a requirement that immigrants provide at least $500,000 for projects that create jobs in the U.S.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.