Brooklyn Preparing for New IndyCar Company at Former Brownfield Site
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently announced that a new company is coming to Brooklyn, this one specializing in the elite design of auto-racing engine plans. The IndyCar company plans to put roots in the Williamsburg neighborhood, on a former brownfield site.
While discussing the project at a news conference, Bloomberg said:
“You might say this is ‘Silicon Alley’ meeting ‘Gasoline Alley’ and it’s another example of how when it comes to creating jobs our administration has the pedal to the metal.”
Ethan Bregman, owner of the arriving company, shared that the facility will be opened next summer and will continue to work on the design of the Honda IndyCar. The site is currently undergoing an environmental cleanup, having sat vacant for almost thirty years.
“Before work began in February to transform this site, it was like so many other brownfield properties in the city- a vacant, blighted and polluted eyesore that has remained cut off from development for decades” Bloomberg shared.
NY’s Office of Environmental Remediation director Daniel Walsh expressed his appreciation for Bregman’s decision to develop the site despite it ‘environmental challenges’. Mr. Bregman could’ve found a “much easier property to develop” he said.
City officials have said that the project, which is the first such municipal effort in the U.S., will yield at least $1.5 billion in new capital construction, create 2,000 new jobs, as well as another 5,100 construction positions.
“I’m building this project because when I grew up here there wasn’t a race shop for me to go in and offer to sweep the floors or find a mentor. And the opportunity to bring that back to New York was just too good to pass up” Bregman said.
