More than 7k jobs at Brooklyn Navy Yard, double since 2001

Employment at the Brooklyn Navy Yard has just about doubled since 2001, to more than 7,000 workers there. David Ehrenberg, who became CEO of the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation last August, boasted that last month while introducing an event Technical.ly Brooklyn hosted at BLDG 92.

His group is working to get more people working there on two fronts.

First, it is helping developers clear hurdles to get its historic buildings repurposed for modern enterprises. It is also helping individuals get placed at jobs inside its 330 businesses.

The Navy Yard presents its own set of challenges. For example, its largest building, Building 77, only has windows on the top two floors (and they can’t retrofit it). Nevertheless, power tools are buzzing away all over the site. All of this is detailed in a story on the space’s progress in the New York Daily News:

The Navy Yard opened in 1806, authorized by President John Adams as one of the young country’s first naval shipyards.

In its heyday, the Yard employed 70,000 people, who helped build military supplies for World War II. The Yard closed in 1966, but the federal government only recently began transferring the bulk of the site to the city.

The Bloomberg administration invested $250 million to boost the infrastructure around the yard, including water, sewer and roads.

[New York Daily News]