Brooklyn makers are getting yet another new home — this time, in Gowanus

Brooklyn’s makers will soon have a new outlet to unleash their creativity.
A new light industrial building (that is, as opposed to heavy industrial) is planned for Gowanus at 497 Carroll Street, DNAinfo reports, and it will include eight floors for what its architect, Peter Sweeny, is calling “boutique manufacturing.” Construction will likely begin in late 2018, Sweeny told DNAinfo. When it’s finished, the building will replace the parking lot of another light industrial building, which is home to tenants such as the Textile Arts Center. The owner plans to sign up similar small-scale manufacturers as tenants for the new building, Sweeny said.
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Sweeny compared the upcoming building to the Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center, which he also designed. Elsewhere in Greenpoint, there’s A/D/O, which is devoted to design and hardware professionals and houses the forthcoming Urban-X accelerator. And of course, there’s the Navy Yard and its new, so-called “cathetral of manufacturing” New Lab. We are starting to wonder, a bit like with the coworking boom: are there enough makers around here to sustain all this space?
Bolstering small-scale manufacturing has been a stated goal of entrepreneurial boosters in Brooklyn for some time. (Etsy’s Dana Mauriello recently addressed it at the Make It In Brooklyn Innovation Summit.) It certainly looks like it’s happening.