NEW YORK CITY-Local stakeholders gave a final push to Brooklyn’s creative and high-tech community to participate in an economic impact survey that will help define their commercial real estate needs in DUMBO, the Navy Yard and Downtown Brooklyn. At a media briefing at Two Metrotech Center on Wednesday afternoon, officials from the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership and the DUMBO Improvement District urged the borough’s new technology firms, digital companies and creative start-ups to provide feedback about what they’d like to see in the area’s newly-defined “Tech Triangle” district – especially as affordable space and vacancy rates continue to shrink.
“We’ve got companies looking to grow, double in size and really expand over the next couple of years, and what we are coming up against is real estate constraints, as well as some talent constraints,” said Alexandria Sica, executive director of the DUMBO Improvement District, at the meeting. “But when you have a population and entrepreneurs who want to start their businesses in DUMBO and the Navy Yard, you want to provide them opportunities to do that.”
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The popularity of the three neighborhoods comes at a time when the city, the private sector and nonprofits are aligning to help the district grow as an incubator-type setting for emerging businesses, which in turn, has boosted occupancy rates in class A buildings as well as class B-style lofts.
According to data from Brooklyn Tech Triangle Partners, DUMBO has the lowest vacancy rate out of the cluster (2%), and is comprised of more than 100 technology and digital companies across 1.6 million square feet of leasable space in nine buildings.
Downtown Brooklyn, in comparison, has 17 million square feet of commercial space and a 3.4% vacancy rate for class B buildings and a slightly higher rate (10%) for A properties in the CBD.
But competition for space is beginning to rise. At the 4.5-million-square-foot, 40-building Navy Yard complex, the property is 98% occupied by 27 clean and green-tech manufacturers and content creation firms, but more than 100 firms are on a waiting list to lease commercial condominiums or warehouse facilities at the site.
To address this issue, Tucker Reed, president of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, said the partners are taking a four-pronged approach to ensure the availability of well-situated and affordable commercial space throughout the clusters. Over the next three years, the yard will add an additional 1.5 million square feet as well as a 20-acre hospital. New blocks of space at the MTA’s former headquarters at 370 Jay St. will be coming on-line, as well as 1.5 million square feet at MetroTech and 325,000 square feet at Empire Stores.
The partnership is also addressing mass transit issues, improving training of the local workforce and evaluating other place-making needs after the City Council provided $100,000 in funding for the 10-month area-wide study in October 2011, which was commissioned by Speaker Christine Quinn.
A source close to the deal tells GlobeSt.com that approximately 100 companies have responded to the Tech Triangle survey thus far. After the survey officially closes on Friday, March 23, the task force will complete its economic impact data by April 2012 and will issue an RFP for a strategic planning study shortly after. Full implementation of the district is expected by 2013.
Tom Montvel-Cohen, chairman of the DUMBO Improvement District, said that more than 300 jobs are available at 17 DUMBO-based tech firms, including popular sites like Wireless Generation, HUGE and Etsy. And more are expected to come.
“These are companies that want to be here,” he said, at the meeting. “They are not here because they are on an incentive program, they are on a separate power grid, they are not here as a result of any other thing other than the fact that they find Brooklyn to be a good place to both live and work.”
The survey can be accessed by clicking here.
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