Manufacturing Site

Greenpoint Manufacturing Design Center

In the late 1980s, local activists and tenants of the building met with the North Brooklyn Economic Development Corporation to organize a group to assume ownership of the manufacturing building at 1155 Manhattan Avenue, a complex built for the Chelsea Fiber Mills company,  from the city. In 1992, city sold it to the newly formed Greenpoint Manufacturing Design Center for $1. The goal of GMDC would be two-fold: to include historic preservation of buildings and to keep rents affordable for industrial tenants. Never before had a model of a non-profit industrial developer existed to help protect space for small to medium sized manufacturers. As you walk through the naturally lit halls, activity explodes around you as manufacturers, designers and craftsman hustle and bustle about.

In partnership with the NYCEDC and other organizations, the GMDC has expanded beyond Brooklyn and rehabilitated its sixth building in 2009 (in Bushwick), with an additional building since then. Targeted for 2018 is its eighth project, the renovation of a former bicycle factory in Ozone Park, Queens.