Brooklyn Brewery Chief Bemoans Lack of Industrial Space
The lack of affordable industrial space in some sections of Brooklyn is impeding one local business’s expansion. Brooklyn Brewery owner Steve Hindy, who started leasing a property on North 11th Street in Williamsburg 12 years ago, tells the Times that his quest to find a bigger space for the brewery in places like Red Hook…
The lack of affordable industrial space in some sections of Brooklyn is impeding one local business’s expansion. Brooklyn Brewery owner Steve Hindy, who started leasing a property on North 11th Street in Williamsburg 12 years ago, tells the Times that his quest to find a bigger space for the brewery in places like Red Hook and Gowanus has been fruitless, and he feels burned by the current administration. Hindy supported the 2005 rezoning of Williamsburg and Greenpoint but now thinks the city didn’t retain enough manufacturing space in the neighborhoods; Hindy’s plan to move the brewery to a pier in the Red Hook container port, meanwhile, fell through after the Port Authority decided to renew American Stevedoring’s lease for the pier. We are the Brooklyn Brewery, and we want to be in Brooklyn, says Hindy. If we can’t find a place, then who can? We’re about as perfect an example of light manufacturing as you can get. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, fewer than 100,000 manufacturing jobs remain in the city.
Double Edge to Brooklyn’s Success [NY Times]
Photo by wallyg.
Sounds like Hindy wants to have his beer and drink it too.
Since the suds are brewed in Utica, they might as well move to Sunset Park, keep a beer garden space somewhere more accessible (like Williamsburg), and stop whining about “If we can’t find a place, then who can?”.
I’m prone to thinking this Times article is Hindy’s Opera, with the hopes a politico will step in and save them.
BB has created a cool “brand” by keeping one toe in Brooklyn, but Sixpoint Craft Ales is brewed here completely and trounces them across the board – and no I don’t work for them. 🙂
I’m still confused why a business which is probably raking in a few million (more?) dollars a year for many years didn’t have the foresight to buy an old warehouse in Williamsburg or Gowanus or wherever when they were practically giving them away…
Too late now, I guess, but it makes no sense to me, especially in this particular instance. You know you are going to be in Brooklyn for the life of the business if it’s in the name. Seems like poor planning to me.
For all the BB bashing, Hindy has a very good point – industry is getting priced out of Brooklyn, and that has some important implications for the City. Some industries have to be nearby, and some just want to be. When we price these folks out, we lose good paying jobs (and replace them with service jobs, if they are replaced at all) and just make housing affordability worse (ironically, we’re fighting to put affordable housing in former industrial sites, but no one is fighting to keep the industries and the jobs in the first place).
Whether or not BB made (or helped to make) the problem, it is very real. As someone else said earlier, all the warnings from the community with regard to industry came to pass in Greenpoint/Williamsburg, just faster and more completely than even the industrial advocates could have thought.
MM –
That’s not unlike the set up at Bush Terminal when it was first built. BT was where all the goods went, while there was a showroom front end at the Bush Building on 42nd (still there, between 6th and Broadway). The same developer did both, with tenants at the terminal taking small office space in Manhattan to display their wares and have a prestigious address.
I’m still not sure this works for BB, though, as part of their “retail” experience is the brewery itself, which even for a small set up requires some amount of space. I think BB got out of the distribution business, so they might no longer need the huge amounts of space they once had in Williamsburg, but they still need something larger than a storefront somewhere.
fsrq, 3-4 a night is not AA territory, you still have a lot of headroom.
BB makes a lot of beers, the pilsner is a good choice if the lager is too heavy.
I think people are dead right that anything near the water or in a trendy spot is desirable for the brand going to be hard to afford, and that you could find a spot for a factory further inland. But what would be wrong with operating a beer garden in one or more “good” locations and the factory somewhere else? I suppose people want to see the vats and all that, but it seems like an idea.
Hindy has worked to support the destruction of light industry in Prospect Heights, so he gets no sympathy from me. I found other Brooklyn beers to drink since he was such a jerk in his support the Atlantic Yards proposal.
Still, I hope he could move to Sunset Park. Though I’m sure someone wants to build luxury condos and/or hotels there as well.
Polemicist, you are correct re: Schlitz. I did a little research, and I think I was remembering Utica Club Beer. I was a tad underage at the time, so I guess I remembered wrong. I’ve never had a taste for beer, so what can I say?
Lots of companies have manufacturing space out in an industrial area somewhere, and their “public face” – tourist area, company store, whatever, in a more travelled area. I don’t see why Brooklyn Brewery couldn’t do the same. The Sunset Park area also seems to be perfect for both. As more of Bklyn opens up to tours and tour buses (mixed blessing, I know)a Sunset Park Industrial area could certainly benefit from that.
It is so important for a city to maintain a manufacturing base of some kind. It is unhealthy for any city to be a one or two industries town. Look at Detroit and Bethlehem, PA. Of course, NYC is different for many reasons, but diversity in industry is as important as diversity of peoples and incomes. All are necessary for a thriving city.
I’m so ambivalent about this story. On the one hand BB is a great story and I totally think that it would be great for the City (and BK) for them to stay in Brooklyn and to expand operations. I think the pier 7 plan would have been great for both the brewery and Brooklyn Bridge Park. A brewpub would have been a great transition from the park to the north to the industrial piers to the south. On the other hand, Hindy is simply not willing to pay enough to get land in the expensive neighborhoods he wants. There’s plenty of cheap land in neighborhoods that Hindy is ruling out. Although it is cheaper for a good reason…
TO me, this is one of the tougher economic development questions in Brooklyn today…
Why don’t more business owners buy their property?