The other side of the illegal loft story / conflicts with industrial policy
As a follow-up to my July 19 blog about the potential benefits from living illegally in non-residential space (such as living rent-free), there was a terrific item last week on Brownstoner.com about the tension between the City’s industrial development policy and encroaching residential-ism, and a related ironic piece in the Post about the Business Improvement District headquarters for the Fashion District being unable (so far) to move into new space because the BID is not a qualifying manufacturing use.
Remember those 3 guys living rent-free?
My blog piece focused on the peculiar only-in-New-York-kids aspect to the three guys who stopped paying rent for the space they lived in, then the landlord being unable to easily evict them because he had knowingly rented it out illegally as residential space. There was some discussion in the underlying Village Voice piece about the reasons some areas and some buildings are not suitable as legal residences, but that was a footnote to their main point.
But the Brownstoner.com blog and the Post article highlight the direct issue of the conflict between competing residential and other uses of land in the city. Brownstoner lays out the issues in Brooklyn, which are the same as for anywhere in Manhattan, although some of the sources he links to won’t apply to Manhattan.
How to preserve some manufacturing or industrial sites?
On the one hand, there is a continuing need for *some* manufacturing / industrial space – even in Manhattan — and the City has a legitimate interest in preserving facilities to retain those jobs and firms, rather than permitting zoning changes or variances to permit residential development.
The jobs and firms that could survive have their natural habitats shrunk or eliminated when (especially luxury) residential development is created nearby. Consider the Meatpacking District, and the reaction of new condo owners who have paid $x,000,000 to live in a neighborhood in which 18 wheel trailers block streets and sidewalks, and in which guys in long coats (formerly white, now stained red) hose down the sidewalks under carcass conveyors. (Or consider the poor souls at 44 Laight Street in Tribeca, who moved into a historic district without sidewalks but with cobblestones, who now find it hard to walk safely, let alone push strollers or shovel snow.)
Some folks prefer their grit quiet and tame
Although part of the “charm” of some loft neighborhoods includes the elements of authentic urban industrial ‘grit’, when commercial trash haulers blare back-up sounds and their hydraulics lift and bang trash bins at 4 AM in an area that includes high end apartments, there is bound to be conflict. Lately, the residential market is so strong that it has been pushing aggressively into formerly off-limits areas.
In contrast, much of the residential loft development in the 1970s and 1980s in Soho and Tribeca was more ‘bottom-up’ encroachment, as the residential buildings filled in where industry had already vacated, where blocks were nearly deserted.
Lafayette Street is probably an example of both trends – ten years ago some businesses vacated, and residential usage filled in the gap. More recently, residential developers have bought usable industrial buildings out from under commercial tenants.
Bless the Mayor
The Mayor, bless his corporate heart and business head (really), sees this issue for the complex one that it is — and probably more fraught in Brooklyn than in Manhattan. I recommend the Brownstoner piece, and his blog generally.
The irony of the Post article is that the West 30s have stringent zoning and usage requirements to ‘preserve’ space for needle trades. In this case, the regs are an obstacle to a Business Improvement District – formed to assist the Fashion Industry in that neighborhood – cannot move its offices because the desired space is in a building reserved for industrial use. I gather that many people feel that the amount of reserved space vastly exceeds even a hopeful renaissance of needle trade firms, so the BID (and its allies) argue that the Preserve The Needle Trades regs should be revised in their case.
Gotta love the irony!
© Sandy Mattingly 2006
Tagged with: 44 Laight Street, Development, Fashion District, Industrial Policy, Meatpacking District
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