NYC to Be the Next Tech Mecca
NEW YORK — New York City is already the second leading tech hub in the nation after Silicon Valley, but the Brooklyn Tech Triangle coalition released a strategic plan on June 18 that could help the city surpass its California counterpart. A majority of the plan requires commercial building space.
The plan, authored by a team led by New York-based WXY Architecture + Urban Design, calls for enhancing workforce development, increasing the availability of affordable real estate and improving transportation and public environs. The plan includes creating a Special Innovation District — including new transportation corridors, bike paths, footbridges and several new green spaces — that would attract high-tech businesses. Perhaps the quirkiest part of the concept is the observation platform made to look like a hot-air balloon called Brooklyn Rising.
“Brooklyn’s synergy between living and working in a creative environment will benefit from initiatives like the Special Innovation District, bolstered by relocation incentives tweaked for startups and incentives for landowners to upgrade their buildings,” said WXY’s Managing Principal Adam Lubinsky in a statement.
The Brooklyn Tech Triangle coalition — led by the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, DUMBO Improvement District and the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation — conducted an economic impact study of the Brooklyn area in 2012, which found that it hosts 520 tech companies, employing over 9,600 people and generating $3.1 billion.
Apart from areas in Manhattan, the Brooklyn Tech Triangle is the city’s largest cluster of tech activity, projected to support 18,000 tech-related jobs and 43,000 indirect jobs by 2015. That will only be possible, however, if the appropriate commercial and light industrial space — an additional 2.2 million square feet of office space — is available to support them.
The strategic plan outlines five challenges that must be addressed for the Brooklyn Tech Triangle to achieve its goal — the largest of which is finding the appropriate commercial space for the industry. The strategic plan would mean up to 4 million square feet of space in the area would be occupied by tech and creative businesses in 2015. Two of the major solutions highlighted in the strategy are:
• Activating key buildings including 700,000-plus square feet of property owned by the Watchtower at Sands Street; 200,000 square feet of office space at the Empire Stores in DUMBO; 1.2 million square feet of commercial space surrounding Cadman Plaza and government-owned and occupied buildings
• Starting a commercial modernization incentive program to encourage building owners to refurbish their buildings to meet tech needs such as creating open plan spaces by providing dollar-for-dollar matching amortization over five years.
Funding and other support for the initiative has come from several city agencies and universities, including the Empire State Development Corporation, New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, New York University and the Polytechnic Institute of New York University, to name a few.