Navy Yard High-Tech Manufacturing Hub Opens Today

This morning a new kind of manufacturing center will open at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The space, called New Lab, is designed to bring together creative people who will be able to share equipment like three dimensional printers and laser cutters that would be too expensive for them to access otherwise. The project’s developer told the New York Times that New Lab should do for manufacturers what MIT’s Media Lab has done for technology. Already the lab is home to people designing furniture, projects for the MOMA Design Store and a motorcycle chassis. The small beta space that is opening today already has a waiting list. In mid 2014 the entire 84,000 square foot facility is expected to open and provide a space for up to 350 jobs. Work on the buildings is expected to cost about $60 million with another $20 million to outfit them. Manufacturing jobs have been disappearing in Brooklyn for decades but now that is starting to change. In the last three years 39 manufacturing jobs were added here, the only borough where such jobs were not lost.

Amid Navy Yard’s Ruins, Space for Comeback in Manufacturing [NY Times]

Photo by MACRO-SEA