Report: IBZ's Not Entirely Industrial

Five years ago Mayor Bloomberg created 16 Industrial Business Zones in the outer boroughs in an effort to protect the manufacturing businesses there by preventing residential development. A recent report by the New York Industrial Retention Network is critical of some aspects of the program, citing the fact that there are 39 commercial (but not industrial) businesses that have opened within the IBZ’s and the stat that industrial rents have doubled to $18 a foot since 2000. Among the non-industrial businesses cited were two bowling alleys, an art gallery and a few bars in Williamsburg.
City’s Industrial Zones Undermined, Report Says [Crain’s]
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