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The New York Times
By SUZANNE HAMLIN
Published: February 27, 2005
ERIC DEUTSCH, president and chief executive of the Brooklyn Navy Yard
Development Corporation, said his children, Adam, 8, and Emily, 6, who
beg to visit his workplace, call the Navy Yard "gigungus,"
probably as dead-on accurate as one descriptive could be. Now a virtual
theme park of 21st-century commerce housed in 19th- and 20th-century
shipyard buildings, the Navy Yard is experiencing the same real estate
demand taking place in most of the rest of the city.
The complex on the East River, today the largest commercial leasing
space in the city, covering 300 acres, has been in continuous operation
since 1801, when the federal government bought it for $40,000 from a
local landowner and commissioned it the New York Naval Shipyard. It
may also be one of the city's most beautiful industrial spots, a mishmash
of old warehouses filled with natural light, offering unobstructed views
of the Manhattan skyline directly across the East River.
During the 19th century, it was the builder of Navy vessels that fended
off Barbary pirates and fought in the War of 1812, the Civil War and
the Spanish-American War. During World War II, it was the largest naval
construction facility in the United States. But in 1966, when increasingly
large ships were blocked by the Brooklyn Bridge, the Navy moved its
shipbuilding to warmer climes. The Navy Yard was sold to the City of
New York for $22 million, and the historic shipyard gradually became
a desolate site, emblematic of the city's economic decline.
Today, this seems a very distant memory. The Navy Yard has become
a virtual boomtown, a walled mall of 3.5 million square feet of commercial
space. Its 40 warehouses and old shipyard buildings are almost fully
leased by 230 industrial and manufacturing enterprises, from food and
book distributors to small manufacturing companies, and a substantial
number of artists and craftsmen.
The leasing program, in effect since the late 1960's, has expanded
significantly in the last two years, since the Navy Yard became part
of the city's capital budget, gaining $71 million for infrastructure
improvements. Because the Navy Yard is nonprofit, tenants pay rents
that do not include real estate taxes.
Annual rents are $6 to $16 a square foot, depending on the space (smaller
spaces pay the higher rates). With ample parking for trucks and cars,
the Navy Yard has none of the loading and unloading hassles of many
other New York City locations. It is strategically located between the
Brooklyn and Williamsburg Bridges, with easy access to the Brooklyn-Queens
Expressway and two major airports.
Parking doesn't appear to be a problem. Loading and unloading are
a comparative breeze compared with Lower Manhattan, where many sculptors
and architectural fabricators have traditionally had their workshops.
The huge freight elevators in the old commercial buildings once used
for shipbuilding are still commodious heavy load lifters.
The central location makes the appeal of the yard obvious for warehouses
and distribution centers. For artists and craftsmen, the quick access
to Manhattan is ideal. And then there are the space, light and views.
The vast windowed warehouse spaces, the most precious commodity for
many artists and sculptors, are suffused with clear light from the East
River. The unobstructed views of Lower Manhattan seem to belong to another
era.
Midway between the Brooklyn Bridge and the Williamsburg Bridge, the
Navy Yard takes up all of Wallabout Bay, with a clear view across the
East River to Corlears Hook, a projecting point of land on the Lower
East Side.
For Robert Ferraroni, co-owner with Jeff Kahn of Ferra Designs Inc.,
a metal fabrication company, parking in Manhattan when he delivers his
work is still a problem. He has, however, eliminated the parking tickets
he amassed in Williamsburg, where his shop was located until three years
ago. At the Navy Yard, the huge cranes once used by shipbuilders and
still in place have proved invaluable for hoisting a recent project,
a glass and stainless steel catwalk that will span open space in a Manhattan
town house.
Owned by the city and managed by the not-for-profit Brooklyn Navy
Yard Development Corporation, the yard has annual rent revenues that
are approaching $18 million, according to Thomas Maiorano, vice president
of the corporation and the leasing manager. "I've got stick-it
notes all over my computer right now from people looking for space,"
he said.
The largest space, one million square feet, is now leased by S&F
Warehousing, a commodities warehouse, although smaller spaces, from
1,200 to 1,800 square feet, are particularly sought after.
Susan Woods, an artist who owns Susan Woods Studios, moved to the
Navy Yard from nearby Dumbo in 1998, when the rents went up. "I
couldn't afford to live there anymore, much less work there," she
said. Her only quibble with the Navy Yard is not being allowed to have
an on-site retail studio. It is not open to the public, and there are
five 24-hour security gates. That security, though, is part of the yard's
appeal to its commercial tenants. "Sometimes I work here late at
night, and I feel absolutely safe, even when I'm working by myself,"
Ms. Woods said.
For Scott Jordan, the owner of Scott Jordan furniture, the Navy Yard,
where he has been a tenant since 1988, is a complete package of amenities.
His 15,000 square feet of warehouse, inventory and workshop space, filled
with computers, woodworking tools and high-tech machinery, is secure.
He bikes to work from his home in Brooklyn Heights and except in truly
inclement weather, across the Brooklyn Bridge to his retail shop on
Varick Street. And his large open workshop, flooded with natural light,
is like a woodworking shop of 100 years ago. Although each of his seven
furniture makers is responsible for a different aspect of each piece
of hand-assembled furniture, "we can all see what the other is
doing - it's a complete flow operation."
Both gorgeous and gritty, the Navy Yard is an irresistible photographic
journey; Henri Cartier-Bresson, Richard Avedon and Annie Leibovitz have
all shot there. Episodes of "Law and Order," "Criminal
Intent" and "CSI New York" have been filmed here.
And almost completed on 15 leased acres of Navy Yard land, the newly
built Steiner Studios, a $118 million film and television studio complex,
the largest on the East Coast, already has one production under way:
"The Producers," starring the Brooklyn-born Mel Brooks, is
being filmed now in and around a custom-designed set, including a five-story
replica of 42nd Street.
For Douglas C. Steiner and his father, David S. Steiner, partners
in Steiner Equities Group, the 280,000-square-foot studio is a first.
It was designed after a year of consultation with West Coast filmmakers
and producers. The resulting studio is a state-of-the-art space, including
sound stages with a towering 45-foot grid height. Created for start-to-finish
production of major movies, television shows, videos and commercials,
Steiner Studios is a movie lot within a space that could be a movie
lot.
With the East River on one side, the entire complex is surrounded
on its land side by a serpentine stretch of high walls and fences, enclosing
it completely, much like a medieval walled city. Even to many longtime
New Yorkers, the Navy Yard remains an enigma, open to romantic interpretation,
although the yard's new incarnation has had a decided impact on its
surrounding neighborhoods, where real estate, both old and newly developed,
is getting more expensive by the week.
Vinegar Hill, to the west of the Navy Yard, is experiencing increased
condo development, as is Williamsburg to the north. Along Flushing Avenue,
which runs parallel to the Navy Yard and where condominium developments
are already rising, construction is to begin on 60,000 square feet of
commercial space, with much of it planned for neighborhood-oriented
stores.
Members of the present Navy Yard community must hope fervently that
some of those stores will be food-related. As of now, the 7,000 workers
in the Navy Yard either brown-bag it or order takeout from Myrtle Avenue,
a good 15-minute walk away. "We tried having a food service facility
here, but the menu planning got complicated, trying to accommodate all
the ethnic groups who work here," Mr. Deutsch said hurriedly one
afternoon recently as he jumped into his van, heading up to Brooklyn
Heights, a couple of miles away, for a pizza.
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