Metropolis looks at the growing manufacturing industry in Brooklyn, and how those industries are also acting as community builders.
"And then there's the Brooklyn Navy Yard, a 300-acre site on the East River, established by the U.S. Navy in 1801. Since 1966, when the Navy pulled out, it's been a city-owned industrial zone. Sitting on what is now prime real estate, just across the river from Manhattan, the Navy Yard contains a fascinating mix of about 240 businesses, only a couple of which have anything to do with ships. There's Crye American, a young company that managed to snag a defense contract to make Kevlar body armor; Steiner Studios, the largest soundstage on the East Coast; and Cumberland Packing, the company that invented Sweet & Low. There are also artisans-metal- and woodworkers, set builders, display makers-who straddle the boundary between art and industry. The Navy Yard, according to Andrew Kimball, its president, is energetically rebranding itself as a 'sustainable industrial park,' home to America's first 'multistory, green industrial facility,' the newly completed, 89,000-square-foot, LEED-certified Perry Building."
