The Cities Within New York City

Empire Stores in Dumbo will open this summer and Mayor de Blasio recently announced plans to develop Governors Island, which might set the bar for most out-of-the-way commute

“I share a massive shop with a 3-D-printing company, a wood sculptor from Korea, and a girl who works on special effects for television,” says Paul Kruger, whose design studio, Fallen Industry, is part of Industry City, a 6 million-square-foot megacomplex in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

“One day I came into work and thought she was trimming her fingernails on our bandsaw. Turned out she was trimming a fake hand she designed for a crime drama.”

That mash-up of creative activity is typical of Industry City, and it can also be found in the growing handful of other former manufacturing hubs that have been remade into what are essentially urban industrial parks designed with the modern worker in mind. Co-work spaces are big, as are extracurriculars like on-site yoga, happy hours, and dance parties. This focus on amenities is in part a matter of necessity.

“This isn’t midtown, where there are tons of restaurants on the corner,” said Chris Havens, a Citi Habitats broker who leases at 1000 Dean in Crown Heights. “Buildings need to create that environment.” The result is an office that’s also a seven-day-a-week entertainment complex.

Other cities within the city are:

Brooklyn Navy Yard NAVY YARD  -“Everyone is making things,” says David Benjamin, of experimental-architecture firm the Living. On a single floor, there are two robots under construction, samples of a building façade, and a light sculpture that “makes you feel like you’re looking through a telescope at the sun.” Tenants include Steiner Studios and New Lab, a design co-work space.

 Industry City -  Brooklyn Nets move into a practice facility atop one of the warehouse buildings, and Steven Alan recently moved its design offices and showroom there, joining artist studios like the collective SPark Workshop. To serve all the new tenants, the building installed a ten-vendor food hall that serves bubble tea, pastries, and tacos.

 1000 Dean - “In the first few months [after moving in], we played Ping-Pong in unused office space on our floor,” says Georgia Frierson, who works at Brooklyn Flea headquarters. “Now it’s like a little community — people will see our name on the door and stop in to say hi.” The co-work company the Vault is currently building out the ground floor, but the office is mostly made up of small businesses.