Brooklyn NYC to become a local garment manufacturing hub

Brooklyn is about to become a garment-manufacturing hub in America due to a $3.5 million investment by New York City. The upcoming launch of the Manufacturing Innovation Hub for Apparel, Textiles & Wearable Tech will make the region a new fashion epicenter in the country, according to reports.

The space aims to support up-and-coming designers, encourage local manufacturing, and create jobs in the fashion industry, which currently makes up almost 6 percent of the city's workforce. It will be home to 20 to 30 businesses and up to 50 designers, and is expected to create around 300 jobs.

Services offered will range from a small factory specializing in sample-making, to a research-and-development center focused on wearable tech, to a workforce development center. An incubator space will host 12 private studios, classrooms and conference rooms, a computer lab, an industrial sewing room, and work areas for 50 designers.

Ole Sondresen Architect, which has designed spaces for Etsy and Kickstarter, will lead the redesign of the 160,000-square-foot headquarters. They'll be located in currently unoccupied floors of the Liberty View Industrial Plaza in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, an eight-story industrial building on the waterfront. Construction will begin in February—at the kickoff of New York Fashion Week—and will take around nine months to complete.