A Tale of Two Turnarounds
Reimagining New York’s industrial neighborhoods, from Midtown to the Marine Terminal
We’re deep in the dog days of New York summer: the parks are full of campers in bright uniforms, the ferries are crowded with beachgoers, and the streets hum not with traffic, but with live music and sizzling food carts. But even with New York at its most languid and leisurely, abundance-minded electeds are hard at work thinking about the city’s seasons to come.
The big news: yesterday, the City Council voted to approve the Midtown South Mixed Use (MSMX) rezoning plan to revitalize the struggling Garment District, which has hemorrhaged jobs for years but has not been repurposed due to restrictive zoning laws from the 1960s. It paves the way for nearly 10,000 housing units, nearly $500M in community investments, and—the cherry on top—a car-free busway on 34th St modeled after the successful 14th St busway.
Abundance New York members were instrumental in the rezoning’s passage: we called our electeds, wrote op-eds, contributed to press releases, and testified before the City Planning Commission in support of the plan. In short, we demonstrated that pro-abundance voices can be just as organized—and powerful—as the forces resisting change.
But not all the summer news is good. Another major proposal, at the Brooklyn Marine Terminal (BMT), would modernize New York’s maritime industry and transform crumbling piers—all while adding thousands of new homes, open space, and transit service. Unlike MSMX, it’s mired in repeated delays. Each postponement pushes back desperately needed housing and infrastructure investment, risks fickle federal funds, and leaves a rare opportunity for sweeping change sitting idle.
What made MSMX succeed, and how might those lessons inform other big proposals—including BMT?
Midtown South: A New Pattern for the Garment District
The Midtown South rezoning covers about 42 blocks in four quadrants, bounded by 23rd St, 40th St, 5th Ave, and 9th Ave; it’s the core of New York’s Garment District. At its peak in 1950, the district employed over 300,000 workers; by 2015, that number had plummeted to just 23,000, a 93% workforce decline.
Despite this transformation, zoning has barely changed since 1961; manufacturing and commercial zoning has made it illegal to build new housing in the neighborhood. Indeed, height and bulk limits mean that 47% of buildings in the zone—constructed prior to 1961—are actually taller than the zoning code would currently permit.
Recognizing that New York’s industrial needs have abated while housing costs have exploded, Mayor Adams and the Department of City Planning proposed legalizing housing in 2023. In April 2024, the state lifted the residential floor area ratio (FAR) cap, and at the end of the year, the City Council passed the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, which—among other changes—enabled office-to-housing conversions, eliminated parking mandates in many areas, and upzoned transit-rich zones. These reforms opened the door for DCP to propose 15-18 FAR residential districts in Midtown South.
As part of the unified land use review procedure (ULURP), the plan was reviewed by overlapping Community Boards, Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, the City Planning Commission, and the City Council (most importantly by local council members Erik Bottcher and Keith Powers given member deference).
In response to concerns raised about displaced garment industry workers, transit accessibility, and the public realm, the final plan included a $120M package for the garment industry as well as $340M in infrastructure investments. And after multiple electeds raised concerns about bus speeds—culminating in “racing the bus” across 34th St—the Mayor included a renewed commitment to the busway in the “points of agreement” with the City Council.
The upshot? A massive project that turns a manufacturing slowdown into housing opportunity. Nearly 10,000 new homes will make a real dent in the housing shortage that’s led to skyrocketing rents, displacement, and homelessness. Improved transit will serve these new residents. And the city will prove that we can once again create dense housing at the levels we did before artificial caps were introduced in the 1960s.
Brooklyn Marine Terminal: Waiting on the Waterfront
At first glance, the proposed Brooklyn Marine Terminal project barely resembles MSMX. The 122-acre area—handed from the Port Authority to New York’s Economic Development Corporation (EDC) as part of a land swap—includes a set of dilapidated piers and a port that sees a few shipments a week, accounting for less than 2% of all container traffic into New York Harbor. Unlike Midtown South, with its hundreds of decades-old buildings, the Brooklyn Marine Terminal land was essentially a blank slate.
On the other hand, both involve land previously used by industries that are on the decline, promise to build thousands of homes, make investments in local industry, and include public realm improvements.
The EDC’s plan for BMT is multifaceted and ambitious. It will invest in an all-electric port that is part of a “blue highway” system, shifting local delivery traffic from trucks on the George Washington Bridge to barges in the harbor and on the Hudson. The port will be cross-subsidized by 6,000 new units of housing. As in the MSMX rezoning, the plan invests in both local industry—120,000 square feet of light industrial and commercial space—and public realm improvements, including 28 acres of open space and a park on Pier 7. The plan also includes $200M in funding for NYCHA developments in Red Hook, earning the enthusiastic approval of NYCHA tenant leaders who sit on the task force that must vote to advance the plan.
Despite its multiple benefits—and the support of stakeholders from affordable housing to NYCHA to industrial groups—the plan is stalled. Rather than going through a ULURP process, the EDC’s plan has to be reviewed by, and requires a two-thirds vote from, a 28-member task force—including electeds ranging from Chuck Schumer to Shahana Hanif, industry and labor groups, neighborhood associations, NYCHA, and affordable housing developers. In short: it’s a messy, complicated decision-making process that makes even the bogged-down ULURP seem desirable, with lots of cooks in the kitchen and lots of potential visions for the port.
Still shy of a two-thirds majority, the task force has now postponed the vote five times. As EDC goes back to the drawing board and the group plans to reconvene, what can they learn from the success of the MSMX rezoning?
What Brooklyn Marine Terminal Can Learn from Midtown South
1. Old industries are best served by an adapting city.
The history of the Garment District shows that clinging to past land uses does not preserve industries—it merely freezes neighborhoods in an obsolete form. For years, manufacturing-only zoning neither brought back the garment work nor created new opportunities for the area. The MSMX rezoning paves the way for housing and new job creation, while also making targeted investments to support the garment industry’s adaptation.
Members of the BMT task force might take this lesson to heart when considering the trajectory of New York’s maritime industry—and voting on a plan that, like MSMX, invests in existing industry (with the support of labor!) while also opening up the land to critically needed housing.
2. Pro-housing politicians can go big on new supply. Electeds have long taken an almost apologetic stance for building new housing, especially market-rate housing, implying that the latter is a necessary evil in exchange for income-restricted housing. With increasing public awareness of the scale of the housing crisis, building housing is no longer a political liability.
The tide is turning: whereas Community Boards typically oppose rezonings, Manhattan CB5 approved it with conditions. And while the board advocated for lower density in one of the quadrants, it inquired about raising density in part of another quadrant, challenging DCP to shoot for even more housing. Most importantly, the local council members and the Manhattan borough president are pro-housing champions—supporting a maximally impactful plan rather than insisting on watering it down. Thanks to both state and city legislation, it’s possible to aim higher, making use of a lifted FAR cap, transit-oriented upzoning, and office-to-residential conversions.
Conversely, the introduction of housing in the vision for a revitalized Brooklyn Marine Terminal was greeted by many as a threat to the process, raising new questions about infrastructure and affordability—even with 40% of the proposed homes designated for low-income residents—rather than excitement about the new residents who could be welcomed into the area.
As both the Overton window and the window of possibility shift in favor of more supply, electeds citywide should take notice, take bolder action, and take credit for housing.
3. A scarcity mindset kills projects; an abundance mindset can use the prospect of new housing to crowd in infrastructure investments.
“We’d love to build more housing here, but there’s not enough _______.” It’s a classic line NIMBYs use to oppose new housing, and the blank has been filled with everything from sewer pipes to schools to bus lines to parking spots. (Local complaints about the BMT plan talk about “overwhelm[ed]” and “maxed out” infrastructure.)
Sometimes this line of reasoning is used in good faith; parts of the city are buckling under strained services. But more often than not, existing scarcity of infrastructure is used to drive further scarcity of housing, creating a vicious cycle of undersupply.
In the case of MSMX, stakeholders operated with an abundance mindset. Council members Bottcher and Powers took the opportunity to ask: if we’re building more housing here, why don’t we also invest in faster and more efficient transit? Their pressure, and the overwhelming support of local community boards, led to the inclusion of the 34th St busway, a win-win for abundance in New York.
4. Successful rezonings often build off of an existing blueprint, rather than starting from a blank slate.
In Midtown South, nearly half of buildings were already taller or denser than the 1961 zoning allowed; it was easy to see what a slightly denser neighborhood might look like. Brooklyn Marine Terminal, on the other hand, currently exists as a dilapidated set of piers. The possibilities are endless—which is both a blessing and a curse. Each stakeholder could project onto it the vision they’d want; and inevitably, even an inspired proposal that combines port modernization, homes, and open space would deviate from that vision.
And while MSMX’s transit problems could be solved with a busway, connecting BMT to transit hubs would require new routes and modes, from increased ferry service to an electric shuttle. Like many of the biggest changes to the cityscape, the future neighborhood is years away and difficult to imagine, making it much easier to fear what might be lost than to celebrate the benefits to come.
5. MSMX was a perfect storm of pro-abundance forces—but we can’t let perfect be the enemy of the good.
In many ways, MSMX is the Platonic abundance project. It enacts a long-overdue change to manufacturing zoning in a neighborhood that no longer manufactures goods; its proposed density matches that of 47% of buildings in the district. The project’s key ULURP stakeholders—Bottcher, Powers, and Levine—are a veritable who’s who of abundance champions. And the inclusion of the 34th St busway made the plan more popular. (To be sure, the proof is in the pudding—and some are skeptical that housing permits will reach DCP projections—but as far as rezoning proposals go, this one is a near-perfect model.)
Other rezonings, like BMT, face steeper challenges: they’re located in less transit-rich areas, make more dramatic changes to the skyline, or are balancing a complicated set of interests. But, as abundance champion Andrew Gounardes has argued in the case of BMT, we can’t let perfect be the enemy of the good.
For a 21st-century city stuck in 20th-century constraints, “good enough” is often far better than “not at all.”