Sweaters to Artisans
By Matt Sollars
Mitchell Schwartz believes his apparel business straddles both sides of the rezoning issue taking place in the Gowanus these days.
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“I’m a poster boy for people saying that domestic manufacturers can’t survive,” Schwartz said, “But I’m also a posterboy for how they can.”
Schwartz’s sweater business began to hit the skids in the 1990’s when a flood of cheaper imports from Asia began to take market share. Always a seasonal business, Schwartz found his production times shrinking from six months to three. Now it is almost all gone and Schwartz has decided to divide up and rent out two floors of his 50,000 square foot factory. He will use the rental income to subsidize what remains of his sweater business.
Schwartz’s business – and his struggles – are at the heart of the debate over a proposed rezoning of the Gowanus Canal area in Brooklyn. Just two years after releasing its Industrial Business Zone plan that promised to preserve much of the Gowanus area – along with sections of Sunset Park and Red Hook - for industrial and manufacturing uses, the City Planning Department is contemplating a rezoning that would pave the way for residential development.
Of course, this is nothing new - warehouses in New York’s beaten up industrial sectors have attracted artists for decades. But, it is rare to see the landlord continue to subsidize his old business with new rental income.
To be fair, the proposed rezoning framework, released over the summer, would rezone only a portion of the Gowanus Canal area, leaving the southern-most areas zoned for manufacturing. The planning department also intends to create mixed zoning, to encourage some light manufacturers to stay in the Gowanus area and maintain the gritty, urban mixture of manufacturing, warehousing, and artists that many residents find so appealing.
Map of the Proposed Framework for the Gowanus Rezoning. Courtesy of the New York City Department of City Planning.
Industrial retention advocates and business owners worry that the rezoning will encourage property owner’s dreams of huge residential profits and lead to a domino effect further down the canal. They have formed a broad coalition of community development organizations, unions, industry groups and neighborhood associations into a group called the Gowanus Summit, hoping to influence the rezoning plan. Specifically, they hope the city will consider a new zoning measure that would require some light manufacturing or industrial use in any new development in some of the rezoned areas.
The City Planning Department said this week that the rezoning framework was meant to give residents, business and developers “a sense of what kind of development could take place along the canal.”
However, a spokeswoman said in an email that the department has not yet “determined what public or private actions will follow.”
Some developers with property in the area, have recently released plans to push forward with non-residential development that would be allowed without rezoning. The Toll Brothers, the national construction company that bought property along the canal, announced its own plans for a residential development in early November.
At Schwartz’s sweater factory, though, conversion to residential is not on the table. The first of his tenants - Gowanus Studio Space, a non-profit providing low-cost workspace to artists and artisans - is set to move in. With a rental rate of $16 per square foot and half of his available spots spoken for, Schwartz is hopeful that he has found a formula for staying in the area as a manufacturer and landlord.
February 9th, 2011 at 1:34 pm
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