Bloomberg official and an advocate strongly disagreed about the using zoning to create manufacturing jobs in New York City. Speaking at an Association of the Bar of New York City event, Adam Friedman, Executive Director of the New York Industrial Retention Network explained how real estate prices and zoning changes are hurting the city’s base of manufacturing jobs. Sandy Hornick, Deputy Director for Strategic Planning at New York City’s Department of City Planning, claimed that zoning has a limited ability to promote industry development.
Hornick also supported Michael Slattery’s view that macro-trends over the last century were the reasons that manufacturing declined in the City. As the Real Estate Board of New York’s Senior VP for Research, Slattery supported flexible zoning that allowed market forces to build office space and residential housing.
Other panel participants included Eva Harnhardt of the Municipal Art Society and the moderator Stuart Beckerman, Esq. Everyone in attendance agreed that manufacturing jobs were important. In addition to paying better, than retail and restaurant jobs, Friedman also provided a strong reason why manufacturing jobs are important to certain populations in the city: 63% of manufacturing jobs are held by immigrants and 24% of the sector employees do not have a high school diploma.
On a personal note, I believe that New York should concentrate on knowledge industry jobs. However, I don’t have a good solution to the problem of creating high paying jobs for immigrants and people with limited educations; of course, no one else has a solution either.