Today Mayor Bloomberg and Speaker Quinn announced the launch of an expanded, free Red Hook Summer Ferry service starting Memorial Day Saturday and running weekends throughout the summer!
The expanded service will run from Pier 11 in Manhattan to a new stop at Van Brunt Street and then to IKEA, both in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Free transfers will be available between the Red Hook Ferry and the northbound East River Ferry, which reaches a ridership of two million later this week! Get more details on NYCEDC’s blog.
Said Mayor Bloomberg:
“Hurricane Sandy hit the Red Hook community hard, and that’s why we’re making it easier than ever for New Yorkers to get to small businesses in the area in order to help the community continue to recover.
By expanding the already successful free IKEA ferry to another stop in the heart of Red Hook, and by connecting it to the East River Ferry that is celebrating its two millionth ride this week, the free Red Hook summer ferry will help boost the local economy. I look forward to the Red Hook Ferry’s opening this Memorial Day and encourage all New Yorkers to try it.”
See you on the Red Hook ferry this summer!
Photo credit: Retrofresh! via Flickr
Tomorrow evening, HBK Incubates is hosting an open house of its commercial kitchen space and business support program in La Marqueta, East Harlem. Interested businesses and individuals can come visit and tour the shared facility, learn about features of the kitchen and incubator program, and meet several HBK Incubates entrepreneurs and staff!
Date: Thursday, May 2nd, 2013
Time:
5:30pm, 6:00pm or 6:30pm (select one tour time)
Place: 1590 Park Avenue (at 114th St. under the Metro North rail line)
RSVPs are required: Select a tour time and confirm your attendance by RSVPing here.
For details, check out HBK Incubates’ website and find out more about NYCEDC’s initiatives to support food manufacturers. And watch this video to learn how food entrepreneur Diana Scot-Sho made it here in NYC, through Hot Bread Kitchen’s culinary incubator program.
Moving to Lower Manhattan from the Flatiron District, STELLAService objectively measures and rates the service quality of thousands of online retailers.
Watch this video to find out how this winner of Take the H.E.L.M. NYC is helping consumers make more informed buying decisions and helping businesses benchmark and improve the end-to-end customer experience.
March 2013 Economic Snapshot: NYC Commuting Patterns, Residents and Workers
For our March 2013 Economic Snapshot, NYCEDC looked at new journey-to-work data via the Census Bureau that provide new insight into where New York City residents work and New York City workers live.
- 3.6 million NYC residents worked during the reporting period. The data show that City residents primarily work in their borough of residence: 84.2% of Manhattan residents worked there, while figures for the other boroughs range from 41.7% (Queens) to 50.3% (Brooklyn).
- 4.3 million people worked in NYC during the reporting period. 78.5% of these workers were also NYC residents, while 11% traveled from elsewhere in New York State and 8.4% came from New Jersey. Of commuters from other states, the two largest shares were Connecticut (0.9%) and Pennsylvania (0.5%).
- On a daily basis, commutes outweigh reverse commutes—the 912,451 people who traveled into the City is roughly three times the number of NYC residents who traveled to jobs outside the five boroughs (303,497).
Listen to our podcast and read the full snapshot for more insights. For previous Economic Snapshots, visit our economic data archive on NYCEDC’s website.
Do you work in your borough of residence?
The story behind Paperless Post, a winner of the technology track of Take the H.E.L.M. NYC—they’ll be moving to Lower Manhattan from their current location on Manhattan’s West 25th Street.
February 2013 Economic Snapshot: Foreign- and Native-Born Population in NYC
For our February 2013 Economic Snapshot, NYCEDC took a look at the foreign- and native-born population of New York City and its effect on the economy.
- Among all cities in the U.S., NYC had the largest number of foreign-born residents in 2011 (3,066,599), representing 37.2% of total population.
- Queens had the highest proportion of foreign-born residents among the boroughs in the City. In 2011, nearly half of the borough’s residents were born outside of the U.S.
- Foreign-born residents represented 45.8% of the City’s resident labor force in 2011.
- The growth in the share of native-born residents with a bachelor’s degree increased more rapidly than that of foreign-born residents (8.0% compared to 2.4%). However, the growth in the share of foreign-born residents with a graduate or professional degree slightly outpaced that of native-born residents (8.1% compared to 7.5%).
Listen to our podcast and read the full snapshot for more insights. For previous Economic Snapshots, visit our economic data archive on NYCEDC’s website.
New York Daily News calls Harlem’s coming Urban League Empowerment Center an “urban treasure”:
The first civil rights museum in New York City will rise on 125th St. as part of a mega-development project set to break ground in 2015.
Last week, Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Cuomo announced the first details of a landmark project to transform an underutilized area in the heart of Harlem into the Urban League Empowerment Center, a hub for arts, culture, retail and community use. The project, which was approved by the Empire State Development Board of Directors, will be led by the Hudson Companies, BRP Development Corporation and the National Urban League and will transform a currently underutilized 42,000-square-foot swath of property, located on 125th Street between Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and Lenox Avenue/Malcolm X Boulevard, into the Urban League Empowerment Center.
Once complete, this center will include New York State’s first-ever civil rights museum, as well as the new national headquarters for the National Urban League, a state-of-the-art conference center, and space dedicated to housing, retail and public parking. The Center is a key piece of Harlem’s ongoing renaissance providing neighborhood and cultural amenities, and will create jobs and economic activity in the area. Find out more.
Rockaway Ferry Service Alert
February 8, 2013: Due to the impending winter storm, the last departures from Manhattan to Rockaway today will be the 5:10pm from East 34th Street and the 5:35pm from Pier 11. The last departure from Rockaway to Manhattan will be the 4:30pm. Find out more at Seastreak.com.
Superstorm Sandy has greatly affected many New Yorkers across the City, including longstanding community businesses and new shops alike. Over the past month, we’ve interviewed small business owners across Lower Manhattan, Coney Island, Far Rockaway, and Red Hook who wanted to share their “getting back to business” stories of grit and determination to reopen or begin the process of reopening.
Take a few moments to watch these seven audio slideshows and pass along their inspiring stories to your community. We hope these give a glimpse of the fortitude of New Yorkers and encourage other small business owners who are still fighting to recover from the devastation of Sandy. You’ll hear from:
- Gargiulo’s Restaurant, Coney Island
- The Wave Newspaper, Rockaway Beach
- Jack from Brooklyn, Red Hook
- Thai Rock, Rockaway Beach
- Key Food Grocery, Coney Island
- Token, Red Hook
- Acqua, Lower Manhattan
Find them all at nycedc.com/gettingbacktobusiness, and thanks for sharing these stories of New Yorkers’ resilience.
This Week at NYCEDC:
- We launched the second annual Competition THRIVE to support immigrant entrepreneurs
- We asked NYC businesses to take our NYC Commercial Real Estate Competitiveness Survey
- We shared a job opportunity with #ConeyRecovers
- We announced a Request for Proposals to develop 1.65 million square feet of mixed-use real estate on Manhattan’s Lower East Side
- We cheered free public Wi-Fi for the Chelsea neighborhood, thanks to Google, the City of New York and the Chelsea Improvement Project
Have a great weekend, NYC!
Photo: Manhattan Bridge. Credit: Trista Sordillo/NYCEDC via Instagram
