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 hen
Roger and Katy Chan started a garment
factory almost a decade ago in Chinatown, they had dreams
of being successful and of helping new immigrants get their
feet on the ground. But thanks to skyrocketing real-estate
prices in New York City, they are about to say good bye to
six years of business and over 40 employees, the majority
of whom are Chinese immigrants with base-level education,
and a language barrier that makes it difficult for them to
find work.
“The
rent goes up five percent, every year and that’s fine,” says
Chan, who now pays $15 per square foot, up from $10 when the
business first started. “The problem is that the Internet
firms are paying anywhere from $24 to $60 per square foot,
and we cannot afford that. The landlord doesn’t want to renew
our lease.”
Their
business, Essence Fashion on 215-217 Grand St., is one of
400 garment factories that have been affected by the increasing
number of Internet and Wall Street investments in the area,
according to a press release by the Center for an Urban Future,
a nonprofit organization.
As
midtown’s Garment Center and Chinatown continue to attract
the money-minting Silicon Alley industry, apparel manufacturers
are mostly shutting down or moving to outer boroughs and New
Jersey because they cannot compete with the inflated real-estate
prices spreading through the area like a bush fire.
At
a press conference held in late February 2000 in the heart
of the Garment Center in midtown Manhattan, small business
owners challenged City Hall. “It has not demonstrated support
for this important industry as it has ‘glitzy, cash-rich new
media and Wall Street industries,” says Jonathan Bowles, a
research director with the Center for an Urban Future.
Other
officials from the organization, Center for an Urban Future,
together with representatives from unions have asked the mayor’s
office to reinforce New York City’s ignored zoning law. At
stake are the jobs of 75,000 garment workers and of 48,000
others in the wholesale apparel industry, union officials
say.
The
city is allowing building owners to sidestep a zoning law
that requires landlords to reserve 50 percent of all space
on the side streets in the Garment Center for manufacturing,
says Bowles. The zoning law was meant to protect garment factories
from steep rent increases, but enforcement efforts stopped
back in 1993, Bowles says.
“What
happened to city planning?” says May Ying Chen, the vice-president
of a textile allied workers union called UNITE. “What happened
to a city that cares about its residents needs? People should
not have to be unemployed, and workers cannot afford to commute
to New Jersey every day. We don’t oppose these new industries;
we just want to be able to live as well.”
According
to a press release from the Center for an Urban Future, City
Hall failed to address the growing space crunch affecting
industrial businesses throughout the city, or come up with
a strategy to help garment manufacturers thrive outside of
Manhattan. The city’s department of Housing Development did
not return phone calls.
Another
report by the nonprofit organization titled, “The Empire Has
No Clothes,’ revealed that in 1998, for the first time, fashion-related
firms accounted for less than half of all businesses in the
Garment Center.
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