Announcer:
Hey BK with Ofer Cohen
Andrew Kimball:
You know, there's nothing more exciting than seeing, you know, people flow into the Brooklyn Navy Yard through their gates in ways that they hadn't been, you know, since the mid sixties. And, and same thing at industry city. When you see masses of folks coming down the hill, you know, from Sunset Park and the surrounding areas.
Ofer Cohen:
You are listening to Hey BK, I'm Ofer Cohen. Today, I talk to Andrew Kimball chief executive of Industry City, the largest privately owned industrial complex in New York City on the Sunset Park waterfront, totaling 6 million square feet. The site is being transformed by Andrew and his partners into an eclectic mixed use project. But before taking on Industry City, Andrew was at the helm of the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation. Like Industry City, the new navy yard signifies a new era for innovation and manufacturing on the Brooklyn waterfront. Are you proud?
Andrew Kimball:
Incredibly proud and incredibly appreciative of the time I spent there.
Ofer Cohen:
We've already devoted three Hey BK episodes to the Navy Yard, David Belt of New Lab, David Ehrenberg, the duke over for Andrew and Doug Steiner of Steiner studios have all been on the show. Now, Andrew Kimball, a key force behind the Brooklyn transformation.
Andrew Kimball:
You're generous giving me that credit. The truth is that, you know, one of the great stories of the Navy Yard is that the series of competent and strong executive directors, presidents, and then a really strong board, the governance piece, you know, you can't overstate the importance of the governance piece. People who both understood real estate really well and were very hardheaded and and really grilled us on every single deal.
Ofer Cohen:
Innovations to modernize Industry City began with Jamestown and partners took over five years ago with Andrew at the helm. The tremendous amount of capital thoughtfulness and the hard work is starting to pay off with industry and workers coming back and activating the area. I asked Andrew, where do you start?
Andrew Kimball:
It was tough the first couple of years. I mean, you know, you're looking at a site where the electric, you know, barely worked. We had blackouts every summer or the first three summers I was there. I mean, that's, that's not a happy day when you're moving in. Companies that are tech reliant, whether they're manufacturing or they're designing or they're, you know, a tech office and, and you have an outage, I mean, that's, that's not a happy moment as landlord and you know, so a 144 elevators that needed to be upgraded, 17,000 windows that needed to be replaced, you know, the list just went on and on and on. And you're exactly right. Where do you start? Um, and, you know, look, we tried to be very disciplined. Obviously it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out, hey, one of the great competitive advantages we have, there's only one block from the subway, the N, R and the D with very fast access to the rest of Brooklyn into Manhattan. Um, so of course you want to start with those buildings closest to the subway. The finger buildings, as we call them, they tend to be a little narrower than the buildings along 39th street. Those are much bigger floor plates. So we tried to stay focused there. Um, but then of course the Brooklyn Nets came along and the first year and said, hey, we want to build a $50,000,000 practice facility on your roof. Um, so we were delighted to try to make that work. Um, and they're there, but they needed to be in the buildings along 39th street because of the size of the footprint so that, you know, that was a pleasant distraction to have, but a but a distraction, a, it's now safe for pedestrians. And so that was number one. Number two was, and others had this idea but never executed creating a common walkway through the middle of all the buildings that we call innovation alley. Um, that really created a campus feel connected the building's otherwise you had to walk the full block length to get around these buildings. And you know, that's been incredible in terms of creating more food amenities, what I like to call maker retail. So you know, the hat maker where you can actually see the goods getting made and buy it. And that piece has been so successful. We're now looking at creating more common area, publicly accessible area where you walk up to a second floor and have more maker space. The glass blower, the Woodworker, the guitar maker, um, those sorts of amenities. Um, and then the third I would say is the courtyards. I mean, we're, we're blessed to have these beautiful courtyards. When those buildings were built in 1890 and 1910 by Irving T Bush, sort of Andrew Carnegie type character who built really the nation's first inter-modal center. So goods would come in by ship first it was coffee than bananas, garment. They get off the ship, they get on rail that come into the courtyards, they'd go up in the buildings that get stored, they get work done, they'd go out on the streets, you know, those days are over of that use of rail. So the courtyards, you know, remain. And when we got there, most of them were overgrown with weeds, 10 feet tall and we've now renovated three of them. Created five acres of publicly accessible space and know that's incredibly satisfying. It's a place where the tenants congregate. It's a place where the community comes down to hang out and you know, now if you come down and Industry City on the weekend, they're, you know, 15 to 20,000 people there every weekend and that's only growing.
Ofer Cohen: I was there a couple of weeks ago at the ABC store and that was amazing to see that corner of 39th street activated this way, was for me like a big moment because I've seen, you know, every few months I've seen everything you've been describing the sidewalks and the loading docks and the inner courtyard and the retail activation. But that corner of 39th street for me was a big moment of like, wow.
Andrew Kimball:
And it's a challenging intersection from a transportation point of view. You've got the coming off the BQE, you've got second and 39th meeting, you've got a street that probably hasn't been touched in 120 years. So that's one of the key parts of the infrastructure work that's going to happen down there.
Ofer Cohen:
That will be some pedestrian...
Andrew Kimball:
Improved pedestrian, improved lights, improved safety. The greenway will run along second avenue and then down 39 street. So that will be terrific in terms of bike access.
Ofer Cohen:
You make it sound so easy now five years into the job.
Andrew Kimball:
You know, there were days in the first couple of years, you know, forgetting the blackouts, like you'd, you'd come down to the ground floor at lunch and there's nobody there and, you know. Or You'd come on the weekend and, you know, the only way we'd get people there as to have a specific event to draw people there. That was stressful. Will they ever come? I think we've passed that moment like we're on the map. People certainly know what Industry City is. A funny story, you know obviously we've done a lot in terms of events and marketing to try to encourage people to come down there. But Lyft has done an interesting advertising campaign. This was well before they took over motivate our tenant. But I think maybe six, eight months ago a billboard went up in Chelsea, that was, you know, a really cool sort of cartoony image of Industry City and, you know, essentially the message was Lyft can get you there.
Ofer Cohen:
Industry City is in the middle of a rezoning process to support the commercial growth and activate more retail around the area. What's division, like closing your eyes and thinking like what would Industry City be in like seven, eight years?
Andrew Kimball:
Yeah, I mean, look, its challenging as you know, it takes a very, very long time. Zoning is really outdated in New York. I mean it was designed in the fifties and sixties for things that, you know, for a very different economy that said we've got to keep things apart and separate. The noxious uses need to be way over here. The less noxious uses over here or the office over here and the residential way far away and, you know, we all know those things can mix a lot more. There's obviously going to be no residential in our project and that's core, that's something that the community wanted. But there should be more academic as an example. And so, you know, under the M3 zoning, we're very constricted there. We can do some narrow vocational, academic collaborations and we're doing that with Cuny City Tech. We're doing it with St Francis now and an innovation space and through internships. But if any one of those schools said, hey, you know, we love being embedded here. This is great for our students. We want a place where they could see stepping out of school and starting their own business. And more and more schools are coming to us with that, but we can't have classroom space under the M3 zoning. So we want the flexibility to add to the vocational, to the maker spaces up to 600,000 square feet of classroom space. We think that's fundamental. It's sort of that great intersection of good public policy, right? Really good for the city that the academic sector is growing. Really good at those students are being connected to those jobs, and good real estate because it's, it's a great component. And Brooklyn College Graduate School of Cinema at the Navy Yard is a big example of that. An amazing example and one that ought to be replicated in multiple different sectors. So that's one big piece of the zoning. We want to have some more flexibility on retail. So, you know, ABC is there, it's great. They've got a very small store and you know, a huge amount of warehouse distribution space. But it's challenging. You couldn't do a sporting good store underneath the Nets because, you know, under the M-3 you could sell baseball bats a hard good, but you can't sell a baseball glove, a soft good.
Ofer Cohen:
Also feels like ABC could use some co-tenancies
Andrew Kimball:
100 percent and that, you know, there's some co-tenancy moving in along 39th street. There's a really cool company called gumption coffee. It's an Australian, a roaster so it's mostly manufacturing, but they're going to have a small cafe but you're absolutely right. Some bigger players and obviously retail is evolving very quickly. But that corner of 39th and second facing Costco, and then on the other side of Costco, in our building one that could be a very dynamic retail center, be great to have a grocery store that, serves industry city and serves the broader Sunset Park community. Increasingly, people are doing business at the Navy Yard or a Downtown Brooklyn or at Industry City or at BAT or in Domino. They're coming from all over the nation, all over the world. We want that. We want more tech companies that are going to say, you know, hey, it's one thing being in a suburban campus somewhere in California. But where the real action is in Brooklyn.
Ofer Cohen:
And at that point you would think at least in the 10 years at that point, that would be a lot more demand for housing around Industry City.
Andrew Kimball:
Yeah, there's no question. Look, there's a lot of heat and debate and anger around issues of gentrification and affordability and the issue when I was growing up in New York was, you know, crime and creating diversity in the economy and jobs. Now crime is at record lows and jobs are coming, but that's obviously creating economic pressures because everyone wants to come into the urban core again, and this is not a New York phenomenon. This is Cleveland, Detroit, San Francisco, LA, like it's happening everywhere. These pressures and you know, the answer to that pressure is not stopping job growth or slowing it down. You want to continue to increase that job growth, particularly in job sectors that are accessible to people with limited educational backgrounds. But you're absolutely right. Like the answer is and this mayor deserves kudos for putting it at the top of the agenda is more affordable and workforce housing and we need to be much more aggressive. Throughout that Long Island City to Sunset Park corridor at building that kind of housing.
Ofer Cohen:
Now as Amazon announced their plans for a large footprint in Long Island City. Andrew predicts that it won't be long before the next industry giants take on Brooklyn
Andrew Kimball:
You know, I think what makes Industry City and the Navy Yard, and now increasingly the Brooklyn Army Terminal, so compelling though is the eclectic mix of the businesses and that ecosystem. I have no doubt that at some point a much bigger player is going to come along for us, whether it's 100,000 or 250,000 or it's a whole new building. But core to what makes us special is that, you know, there are 500 plus companies on the way to 1000 and the dynamism that you get from that as opposed to just, you know, one company taking the whole thing. This is not the manufacturing of the 1950s. Those smoke stacks are gone. It's looking very different. And what has happened along the Brooklyn Queens waterfront is primarily driven by the innovation economy. That broad range of making a physical, a digital or an engineered product. Now that's very, very broad. I mean, having grown up here in the, you know, in the seventies and eighties when people were fleeing the city, you know, we couldn't keep the talent here. The Brooklyn Queens waterfront was a wreck, unsafe. We had an incredible over reliance on, on the fire sector, you know, Wall Street, finance, insurance. And here we are diversifying the economy in these amazing ways, bringing this waterfront back to life. I mean, it's an incredible success story, but both the Navy Yard and Industry City, what really gets my engines going, they're really two things. One is interfacing with the tenants and you know, I think there are 400 plus tenants at the Navy Yard. Now there are 550 tenants at Industry City. That's up from 150 when I got there in 2013. There's 7,500 people working there now that's up from 1900 when I got, that's equivalent of 100 new jobs a month. So interacting with those entrepreneurs, those businesses that, you know, these folks are putting everything on the line everyday. They're creating, they're innovating, you know, whether it's a ceramicist or a software startup or a candle maker, a designer, a woodworker. And that's exciting to be around. I love that energy. And then I think that's one. And then two, I love, you know, there's nothing more exciting than seeing, people flow into the Brooklyn Navy Yard through their gates in ways that they hadn't, you know, since the mid sixties. And same thing in Industry City when you see masses of folks coming down the hill from Sunset Park and the surrounding areas walking from the subway at Thirty Sixth Street, coming onto the BQE, which for years and years had been this barrier. Many of them, local, many of them folks who need these jobs badly to move up the economic ladder in New York and deal with some of the issues of inequity that we have. That's the other exciting piece for me is the workforce component.
Ofer Cohen:
Tell us something that nobody knows about you.
Andrew Kimball:
When my younger son Elliot who is now a 17, I think was 10, he decided that he wanted to have a chickens and so, we told him he had to make up a business plan and a pitch to his parents and do some research and of course we helped him a little bit, who's going to take care of these chickens? What kinds of cages would they need? How do they get fed? How do you find them? How do you order them? How noisy are they? Are they allowed? Ultimately we ended up with having two chickens in the backyard, Buddha and Himalaya for about two years. They were called Easter Eggers, so they had blue and green eggs that were delivered, almost every morning. Incredible tasting eggs. So we really loved them. Our neighbors tolerated it. But unfortunately Ricky the raccoon and found them about two and a half years now and that was the end. So there's a little Brooklyn story and you may not have known about me.
Ofer Cohen:
I actually thought if you're going to say that as a result of it we're allocating a chicken farm space in Industry City and a 17 year old is going to run.
Andrew Kimball:
I will say though, on a more serious point that the urban farming movement is something that really gets my engine going. And obviously Brooklyn grange at the Navy Yard, which you've seen is just extraordinary. They're expanding now down to Sunset Park. They're not in our buildings yet. They're going on the top of liberty view, which is about 100,000 square feet. We will get to the point where more of our roofs can be used in that way, but there's a guy that's making honey on our roofs. He's got a beehive. We had something like that at the Navy Yard. That kind of local sourcing I think is so important on every level of sustainability, supporting local farms, etc.
Ofer Cohen:
Great. Andrew Kimball Thank you so much.
Andrew Kimball:
Thank you.
Ofer Cohen:
You're, listening to the podcast about the people behind Brooklyn's transformation. You can find us at heybk.nyc or wherever you get your podcasts. Please download and subscribe to our episodes. I'm Ofer Cohen. Thanks for listening.