NEW YORK CITY-Retail brokers gathered in the Fashion Center yesterday and were told to get the word out about the availability and potential of buildings throughout the city's Garment District. The reoccurring theme was what is currently being said about this area was once used to describe Manhattan's now hip and trendy areas that this area now mimics.
"There is mid-block loft potential in this area like no others left in Manhattan," David Picket, president of Gotham Organization, Inc., and a speaker at the Luncheon. "This area is what SoHo and Tribecca were 20 years ago."
According to Gerald Scupp, deputy director of The Fashion Center Business Improvement District, the area, roughly between Seventh Ave. and Ninth Ave. stretching from 36th St. to 39th St., is zoned for about 9 million sf of manufacturing space, but needs roughly only 1.5 million sf of space to accommodate what's left of garment manufacturing. That poses a quandary for developing the area because of special Garment District zoning laws.
"The retail is dead in the area because of this," Scupp tells GlobeSt.com. He relates that in order to have healthy retail, you need residents to support that retail trade. And according toe the area's laws, you can't re-zone to residential space unless you set aside space for manufacturing—which most likely will never be used.
Gotham's Picket said the area needs to go "24/7" in order to support retail in the area. The Garment District zoning regulations were called "ridiculous" and "antiquated" throughout the afternoon, and until they are changed by the city the area will not support a residential population that will in turn support a retail base.
"If you approach the city and explain this to them, they'd say, 'it makes sense,' says Picket. "But there are a number of items on the board's agenda before (re-zoning here), like the Hudson Yards and the Brooklyn project. Slowly and quietly it's going to change. What we are telling retail people now is to get in while you can. It's going to happen."
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