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ketzal7 t1_ja85s9b wrote

Reply to comment by kinky_boots in Midtown Owners Hedge on Costly Office-to-Home Conversions by psychothumbs

Yeah so many offices in FiDi became apartments after the 2008 recession. Don’t know why this is being painted as alien or new.

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iamnyc t1_ja8cium wrote

The FiDi ones that were converted had the floorplates to do so. I'm 100% certain that ANY current office building owner that has a floorplate (and zoning!) that even kind of works will do the same. Unfortunately, the big towers in Midtown generally do not fall in this category, so the owners are stuck.

We shouldn't care about the owners, but we SHOULD care about the tax base.

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drpvn t1_ja8fkdt wrote

Garment District has a fair number of buildings that would be suitable for conversion into two-per-floor or floor-through units. Hope to see it happen. It’s a great location that just needs more residents.

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iamnyc t1_ja8gj8a wrote

Garment District also has manufacturing zoning, so you've got to go beg the City Council. We've seen how that turns out.

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drpvn t1_ja8gz12 wrote

I may be naive, but there is so little “manufacturing” left in the neighborhood, and the climate now is very different now than it was in the past, so I think they’ll ultimately allow more residential.

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iamnyc t1_ja8w3mq wrote

In the past, the City Council has generally erred on the side of zoning for the least profitable and viable uses, in order to make owners come to them to beg for whatever the market wants there. Local land use control is a pox on American society.

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Important-Ad1871 t1_ja9c32u wrote

There are still a lot of textile factories in the garment district, they’re just high up so you don’t see them

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drpvn t1_ja9ce04 wrote

3,000 jobs in the neighborhood, according to article

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Important-Ad1871 t1_ja9cuxg wrote

Total, or specifically for manufacturing?

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drpvn t1_ja9cxke wrote

Doesn’t specific so I assume it means total.

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Important-Ad1871 t1_ja9dhzn wrote

Well, I’m not sure if that’s supposed to be a lot or a little because the garment district isn’t very large.

But if you google “garment district factories” there really are a lot of them, especially for midtown.

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drpvn t1_ja9e9db wrote

It’s been a steady decline for a long time. I’ve read that at its peak (a long time ago), there were about 150,000 garment industry jobs in the neighborhood.

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Important-Ad1871 t1_ja9euui wrote

Yeah, because Manhattan used to be an industrial hub. But then it got too difficult to move all of the manufactured goods across the Hudson and everyone moved their operations to New Jersey or elsewhere. There are a lot of modern manufacturing companies that were founded in NYC between 1870 and 1930.

As someone who works in manufacturing, the number of textiles factories I expected to see in the garment district was 0, not 20+ lol.

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drpvn t1_ja9fh9u wrote

We can both agree that there are more garment industry jobs in the garment district than you expected.

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[deleted] t1_ja9gqc6 wrote

[deleted]

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drpvn t1_ja9guyl wrote

> There were only 12,750 textiles employees in the US in 2021, of course there aren’t 150k just in Manhattan.

We also agree there aren’t 150,000 textile jobs in Manhattan today.

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D14DFF0B t1_ja8jgre wrote

Also, the Fidi floorplans for converted apartmenuare shitty. I don't think I've ever seen a good one. So much wasted interior space

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curiiouscat t1_ja9eyjh wrote

> The FiDi ones that were converted had the floorplates to do so

IDK dude, there are some seriously funky apartments in FiDi lol very long, winding hallways to get to a window.

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LoneStarTallBoi t1_ja9nmna wrote

Landlords will never do a single thing without also acting like they're Jesus on the cross.

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