Brooklyn’s historic Navy Yard will open to the public tomorrow for the first time in 200 years and boast a $25 million hybrid visitor and employment center.
The facility — an already thriving job engine — is expected to yield 300 new jobs over the next 12 months and thousands more in the following years. The building will also provide the public with the opportunity to see inside the Navy Yard — the birthplace of the USS Arizona and Missouri —which has operated as a secure government zone for over two centuries.
Speaking at the opening ceremony of the center, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the yard was in the midst of its “largest expansion since World War II,” with over 6,000 New Yorkers employed — a 60 percent increase since 2001.
The Navy began building ships on the site shortly after the Revolutionary War and employed up to 70,000 people during World War II.
Andrew Kimball, president of the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation, which operates the shipyard’s two-million-square-foot workspace, said 30 percent of its employees come from the yard’s surrounding neighborhood and 50 percent are Brooklynites.
The Navy Yard has functioned as an industrial business park since 1966. Private companies within the yard have agreed to hire employees through the BNYDC’s new employment center, which was built in the same facility as the visitor center.
Kimball noted Steiner Studios — the largest production studio outside California — as an example of the shipyard’s “dynamic mixture” for growth. Steiner currently employs 1,000 people at the yard and plans to grow its workforce to 2,000 in the next three years.
“We’re working against so many elements and one of them is affordable capital,” U.S. Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez (NY-12) said.
Velazquez cheered Bloomberg at the event for lowering the overall unemployment rate for New York City below the national average.
Just down the block from the ceremony, two men born and raised in the community, Mitchell Lamont and Allan Williams, were working at a construction site. Lamont has worked in the shipyard in the past. Williams only wishes he could.
“I would love to work in there,” Williams said, unaware of the employment help BNYDC offers.
Lamont used to watch the ships pull in and helped clean their tankers once they docked. It paid better than his current job, but despite his efforts, nobody in the yard ever rehired him.
“It’s really not a site where tourists would hang out,” he said. “Who’s going to come and visit that place?”
But for some, including Elizabeth Bradford — a resident of neighboring Walt Whitman Houses for the past 50 years — just a chance to see the facility is an exciting prospect.
“I’ve been past there, around there, but never inside,” Bradford said. “This might be the opportunity. Just out of curiosity, I think I’ll go.”
As Bradford enters, she will see an extensive graphic timeline of the shipyard —from its original deed of sale through its aid in the fight against Barbary pirates and of course, its role in the battles of the Pacific. Many artifacts were donated to the BNYDC and are well displayed, including a 22,000-pound anchor in the lobby.
Admission to the visitor center on Flushing Avenue will be free, but bus tours of the site — offered Wednesdays through Sundays from noon to 6 p.m. — will charge a fee.
Leave a Reply