So long, "light" industrial
Neither light beers nor dark ones are affordable to produce in the waterfront boroughs -- Brooklyn or Queens. See the famous and successful Brooklyn creaking under the cost of residential competition (from the NYT):
“We are the Brooklyn Brewery, and we want to be in Brooklyn,” said Mr. Hindy, who often bicycles to work from his home in Park Slope. “If we can’t find a place, then who can? We’re about as perfect an example of light manufacturing as you can get.”
Mr. Hindy has plenty of company in the hunt for affordable industrial land. Manufacturing space has become scarcer and more expensive as city officials have encouraged developers to replace crumbling factories and warehouses with amenity-laden condominiums.
“The scarcity of manufacturing land becomes a problem for manufacturers that are otherwise thriving in New York City,” said Leah Archibald, executive director of the East Williamsburg Valley Industrial Development Corporation, a Brooklyn business coalition.
And for the LIC angle:
A few years ago, Mr. Hindy and his partners hatched a plan to team up with the company that distributes its beers, Phoenix/Beehive Beverages of Long Island City, Queens, and move to Pier 7 in the Red Hook container port. Once there, Phoenix, which is the exclusive distributor of Heineken beer in the city, would have been able to receive its imports by water, skipping the expensive step of having them trucked in from Port Newark in New Jersey and ensuring a steady flow of work for longshoremen on the Brooklyn waterfront.
Under the plan, the new, bigger Brooklyn Brewery would have occupied a building at the foot of the pier, with a beer garden to attract local residents and tourists. The brewery would have served as a buffer between Brooklyn Bridge Park and the industrial piers.
Mr. Hindy and executives of Phoenix convinced officials of the city’s Economic Development Corporation that the city should acquire the pier from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and lease it to them. But the Port Authority got tangled in a legal battle with American Stevedoring, the operator of the Red Hook container port. Several elected officials, including Representative Jerrold Nadler, opposed the city’s effort to replace American Stevedoring, which renewed its lease for 10 years in April.
Mr. Hindy said he was “completely baffled” by the rejection of the Pier 7 plan and felt as though his need for an alternative location had lost the attention of city officials.
| Link |
Save to
|
|
Email this