Brooklyn — Including Our Own Navy Yard — Celebrates National Manufacturing Day
Did you know spacesuits are manufactured at the Brooklyn Navy Yard?
Today is National Manufacturing Day — and it is being marked in Brooklyn, including at the Navy Yard, home to scores of manufacturing firms. One such company is Final Frontier Design — “purveyors of commercial space suits and other fine aerospace safety garments.”
National Manufacturing Day celebrates the companies and workers across the U.S. that produce physical products and help to stimulate the overall economy. The day has special resonance in Brooklyn, which in the early and mid-20th century was one of the leading urban manufacturing centers in the U.S., and is now experiencing a manufacturing renaissance of sorts.
You can check out some of that renaissance first hand. The Brooklyn Navy Yard recently launched a Fall 2016 “Inside Industry” tour series, which visits a number of its industrial tenants, “from woodworking shops to spacesuit makers to the groundbreaking new technology center, New Lab.”
New Chapter In Brooklyn’s Industrial History
Brooklyn has an amazing industrial heritage, as described by Channel 13/PBS:
“By 1880, Brooklyn had evolved into one of the leading producers of manufactured goods in the nation. Brooklyn’s largest industry, sugar refining, produced more than half the sugar consumed in the United States.
There were also dockyards, gas refineries, ironworks, slaughterhouses, book publishers, sweatshops, and factories producing everything from clocks, pencils, and glue, to cakes, beer, and cigars. Work, though not always safe or healthy, was widely available.”
Manufacturing in Brooklyn declined precipitously in the second half of the 20th century but, interestingly, is now seen as a contributor to the borough’s booming local economy.
As reported by Crain’s New York, a 2014 study by the State Comptroller’s office found that “manufacturing jobs, while steadily declining across the state and country, edged up in Brooklyn.”
The Numbers
There are currently almost 80,000 manufacturing jobs in New York City, according to an exhaustive study by the Center for an Urban Future. Manufacturing employment has remained stable and even shown modest growth since 2010 across the five boroughs, CUF notes.
Brooklyn has an estimated 20,000 manufacturing jobs. The largest share of those, the State Comptroller found, are related to food production — around 5,400 in 2012.
Incredibly — apparel manufacturing, with 3,580 jobs in 2012, accounted for almost one-fifth of the borough’s manufacturing jobs and was the fastest-growing segment between 2010 and 2012, the Comptroller reported.
Navy Yard To Double Employment By 2020
That growth is on view in the Fort Greene area at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. After serving as a naval shipbuilding facility for over 150 years, the Yard is now a city-owned industrial park housing over 300 industrial and creative sector businesses.
Despite recent losses, such as the departure of Sweet’N Low and 320 blue collar jobs, the Navy Yard says that it is undergoing its biggest expansion — $700 million in new development — since World War II.
Projects in the pipeline include a 60,000 square foot food manufacturing hub, a green manufacturing center, a 675,000 square foot building housing shared workspaces and other services for startups and small businesses, and a Wegmans supermarket.
Employment at the Yard — while not all in manufacturing — will more than double by 2020, the Navy Yard projects, increasing from 7,000 to 16,000.
“The industrial sector offers one of the clearest pathways to the middle class for many New Yorkers,” the Navy Yard Development Corp states on its website. “BNYDC believes that the industrial sector can and will flourish in New York, employing a diverse cross-section of New Yorkers.”
In addition to growing and developing the city’s industrial sector, the Navy Yard sees part of its mission as simultaneously becoming more sustainable and reducing environmental impact.” Just last month, the Yard installed a new 3,152-panel rooftop solar array — one of the largest in New York City.