City floats tax break to restart Garment District rezoning

Owners apparently aren't swayed by it

Garment District
Garment District

The city is trying to sweeten the idea of rezoning the Garment District by offering tax breaks to certain landlords.

Last year, the de Blasio administration temporarily tabled its plan to rezone the area, which would’ve lifted a 1987 restriction that required landlords to maintain a certain amount of manufacturing space in their buildings. Critics of the plan, including Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, argued that it didn’t do enough to protect garment tenants.

Instead, the city’s Economic Development Corporation has been offering tax breaks to building owners in exchange for reserving a portion of their properties for manufacturing tenants for a certain amount of time, Crain’s reported. The logic behind the incentive is that the city would then be able to axe the district-wide requirement, while also saving some manufacturing space.

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But owners don’t seem to be too hot on the idea. They are uncertain that they’ll find tenants to fill the manufacturing space.

“If I asked you to invest in DVDs, would you do it?” one owner asked.