Alexis Bittar, Clara Sunwoo ink leases at Industry City, bringing total fashion space to 350,000+ square feet

There’s been much talk in the past couple months about the city’s push to drive the fashion industry from its long-time home in the Garment District to new, lower-cost space in Sunset Park. The new, $136 million, 200,000-square-foot “Made in NYC Campus” has become synonymous with the shift, but the adjacent Industry City mega-development has been at the forefront since even beforeBelvedere Capital and Jamestown Properties took over in 2013. With tenants such as the Gap, Bauble Bar, and Rag & Bone, they’ve now announced that internationally known jewelry company Alexis Bittar will lease an additional 10,000 square feet (they already have 17,000), and a source tells us that women’s apparel label Clara Sunwoo is leasing 14,000 square feet of space, moving completely from the Garment District. This brings Industry City’s total space leased to fashion companies to 350,000 square feet, more than 200,000 of which is manufacturing space.

Over the past several years since Belvedere and Jamestown began their $1 billion undertaking to transform Industry City, the 30-acre complex has grown exponentially. In just three years, they’ve tripled the number of people working here from 1,900 to more than 6,000 today and have leased more than 2.5 million square feet. Of this, 11 companies take up 211,000 square feet for cut-and-sew manufacturing, and an additional 115,000 square feet is reserved for the following 13 fashion brands:

• Gap Inc. (design and photo studio)
• Swimwear label Malia Mills (design and production space)
• Rag & Bone (facility to build their store fixtures)
• Jewelry designer Freida Rothman (workshop space)
• Accessories maker By Boe (workshop space)
• Handbag designer Maria Castelli (workshop space)
• E-commerce fashion and home decor startup The Line (workshop space)
• E-commerce fashion exchange company Material Wrld (workshop and distribution space)
• Fashion label Merlette (design studio)
• Women’s clothing brand MM.LaFleur (photo studio)
• Garment manufacturer and fashion industry consultant Funari Fashion (design space)
• Athletic-wear brand Verge Sport (design space)
• Jewelry company Alexis Bittar (manufacturing space)

As 6sqft previously explained, “At its peak in 1950, the city’s garment industry, [centered in the area bound by 5th/9th Avenues and 35th/41st Streets], employed 323,669 New Yorkers. By 2000, this number had dropped to 59,049, and in 2015, it was less than half that with just 22,626.” This is due “not only to national trends of work being shipped overseas, but local issues like rising rents, outdated facilities, and competition from tech and media companies.” In addition to the Made in NYC Campus, the city plans to push the garment industry towards Sunset Park by removing Midtown‘s manufacturing preservation requirement, which will give landlords the option to rent to any commercial office tenants.

RELATED:

• The Success Story of Industry City as Told by Its Innovative Manufacturing Tenants
• The city’s struggling garment industry finds a new home in Sunset Park
• WXY reveals renderings of the city’s just-announced $136M fashion and film complex in Sunset Park
• City reveals garment district rezoning plans, citing incentives to move makers to Sunset Park