Brooklyn Office Report – Summer 2019
- By
- Sep 09, 2019
A favorable business climate, largely attributed to its proximity to Manhattan, and a growing young and well-educated workforce have earned Brooklyn more and more exposure. Larger tech firms are expanding their footprint beyond Manhattan, while smaller companies and startups are seeing Brooklyn as a viable environment for their businesses. Examples of firms expanding in the metro include Amazon, Etsy and Netflix. The Brooklyn-Queens Connector is still in the planning stage, while the L train’s 15-month shutdown is also a transit issue that the borough is coming to grips with.
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Employers added some 14,100 office-using jobs in New York City overall in the 12 months ending in May. Major gains were recorded in the professional and business services sector (16,100 new jobs), indicating heightened confidence in the metro’s business community, while a 3,600-job contraction in financial services curbed some of the office employment growth. Coworking has been growing in popularity, with WeWork continuing to increase its footprint and anchoring new developments in the borough.
Public and private authorities are making the best of the borough’s industrial past, proposing rezonings of Brooklyn’s northern end in order to encourage commercial redevelopment. Obsolete warehouses are being converted into creative office space to meet growing demand. The metro’s strong development pipeline encompasses 3.7 million square feet under construction as of June. The 2.2 million square feet slated for completion in 2019 will account for 7.2 percent of total office stock.