Last day: Actors of urban development

Waiting in front of the Goldman Sachs

Our final day (which was the hottest and most humid day of our stay) included set of activities that clarified diverse actors of urban development. We've had a chance to meet diverse actors from property development scene. We've met actors from the investment, development and management side of diverse types of property.

View from the meeting room

We've started early morning in front of the Goldman Sachs Bank USA. The meeting there included both the investment and the development actors of affordable residential property market. We've had high-end meetings at the Urban Investment Group with the participation of the NYC Housing Development Corporation about affordable housing provision in the city. It was  quite an interesting meeting which took place in an office with incredible views over the Hudson River and New Jersey. It uncover how actually private banking sector is encouraged by the Federal Law to invest in affordable housing provision and how it was developed and put in the market. We could also see how the involved actors communicated with each other to issue bonds and subsidize low-income households. Extremely informative and interesting meeting.


Coming out of this comfortable (and air-conditioned) building we hit the road towards Dumbo (area known as 'Down Under the Manhattan Bridge') in burning temperatures to find the bus that would take us to an old industrial side: Brooklyn Navy Yard Industrial Park. An excellent example of de-industrialization of the city, this former navy shipyard dates back all the way to the 18th century (see the history at http://www.brooklynnavyyard.org/history.html). 


Although ship-building activities continued in the area, the industrial activities slowly disappeared from this 450 acres site, leaving empty historical industrial buildings, warehouses and even a 18th century military hospital behind. The site is operated by the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation today as an industrial park which included 40 buildings, 230 tenants and 5.000 employees. It also includes a museum that beautifully displays the story of this industrial heritage site. It is interesting to see the new industrial activities there. They still build ships, though not for the army, on site but many buildings are occupied by new industries that need special space. 

There are companies dealing with food production on site, a company that is located in smart buildings to store and restore expensive art pieces for museums, a film studio (!), Steiner, companies that are working on innovations and smart technologies, storing and distributing special products and many others (see the list of tenants at http://www.brooklynnavyyard.org/existing.html) that show the changing industrial functions in the city. We were guided through the whole site and was kindly invited also to explore the museum, which was absolutely brilliant. There are still many possibilities and properties waiting for investment in this site but we now understand that the new and creative industries of New York City will have this area as one of the prime destinations to go. 


A similar transformation is experienced in the former Pfizer manufacturing plant which is also located in Brooklyn. Trying to understand this new industrial era we went to this property as well. Pfizer is a very large pharmaceutical company with dozens of factories and labs accross USA, which got started on this site between South Williamsburg and Bed-Stuy (here is an interesting blog about this site when it was still empty http://www.scoutingny.com/?p=4058). After many years of waiting for re-investment (and perhaps re-development) a property investment company took over the property and is now leasing it to tenants with special spatial needs. While walking along the corridors of this amazing plant we came accross with a wide-range of activities from food packing to cookie baking, police training to decor building for movies. And yes, this property also offers space for movie producers to shoot special scenes using the large empty spaces. Visiting both sites we could have a clear picture on how actually the de-indurstialization was followed by new and creative industrial functions that serve the city in the former industrial locations which are still not redeveloped with commercial properties as many brownfields are accross the world.


That was pretty much the final step of our amazing trip. Coming out of the Pfizer plant we said goodbye to each other. This amazing study trip was designed, developed and implemented by Professor Jan van Weesep and Rob van der Vaart of UCU, they put enormous amounts of work that was put into this program, which I was kindly invited with my students from RA to participate. We are grateful to them for accepting us to this off-campus course.My blog ends here (at least for this year) and I guess I'll see you next year around this time with new students and new stories. Thanks for following us.


And bye bye New York...we'll be back!

New York field course class of 2012

RA students and me at the Flushing (Vlissingen!) metro station