Industrial Jobs Coalition Issues Statement on the Certification of the City of Yes Economic Opportunity Text Amendment

The IJC, a city-wide coalition of industrial policy advocates, service providers, and non-profit developers of industrial space that advocates to ensure New York City’s industrial sector continues to provide our neighborhoods with good paying, working and middle class, industrial jobs welcomes the beginning of public review process of the City of Yes Economic Opportunity Text Amendment as a means of improving upon this important Mayor-led reform- and in particular its manufacturing provisions.

In our many conversations with the Department of City Planning and members of the City Council, we stressed our coalition would welcome a text amendment that creates new manufacturing districts that prioritize the preservation and growth of essential industrial businesses and limit competing, non-industrial uses. While the “Core” and “Transition” Districts proposed by the Department of City Planning are a good start, they must be strengthened to ensure these goals are met.

We believe these reforms are critical to realizing not only the vision and purpose of this text amendment but, more importantly, sustaining and revitalizing New York City’s industrial sector for future generations of New Yorkers to secure our supply chains, ensure a just, clean transition, and ensure fair and equitable economic development for each and every New Yorker.

We commend the Department of City Planning for the inclusion of new manufacturing districts and zoning reform that will encourage light manufacturing in more commercial areas. But we remain concerned that the manufacturing proposals in this text amendment will continue to allow non-industrial uses to proliferate in M zones and weaken its potential to safeguard and revitalize the sector. We look forward to engaging the public, members of the City Council, and DCP to build upon this generally solid effort over the course of the public review process.

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ABOUT THE INDUSTRIAL JOBS COALITION  

The Industrial Jobs Coalition is a citywide alliance of community groups, policy advocates, and service providers fighting to protect and preserve manufacturing as a sector in New York. We advocate for a zoning framework that allows manufacturers to stay in the city and ends speculation on industrial land, to ensure that the jobs being created in manufacturing areas are good jobs accessible to all New Yorkers.