Inside the Brooklyn Navy Yard's Quiet Manufacturing Comeback
Once a symbol of industrial decline, the 300-acre campus is now packed with hardware startups building everything from batteries to stage sets.
The Brooklyn Navy Yard hasn't launched a warship since the 1960s, but walk its streets today and you'll hear the hum of machinery again. The historic campus now houses hundreds of small manufacturers, and its managers say demand for space has never been higher.
The tenants are a new breed of maker. A fictional battery firm, VoltHarbor, assembles storage units for apartment buildings a few doors down from a company that fabricates Broadway stage sets. What they share is a belief that building physical things close to customers is a competitive advantage, not a nostalgia act.
City officials have leaned in, funding job-training programs aimed at Brooklyn residents. The Yard now employs more people than at any point since World War II — most of them living within a few subway stops of the gate.
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