Declare Sunset Park a Special Purpose District
New York City Council & the City Planning Commission
For more than a century, Sunset Park has been a proud, working-class, immigrant community anchored by its vibrant industrial waterfront where generations of residents have built both family stability and the city’s industrial foundation. Today, Sunset Park remains home to NYC’s second-largest Industrial Business Zone (IBZ) and the largest Significant Maritime and Industrial Area (SMIA), essential hubs for manufacturing, logistics, and green innovation. But this legacy is at risk. As real estate prices soar, developers are pressuring city agencies to rezone industrial land for high-end, mixed-use projects that cater to wealthier newcomers, chipping away at the neighborhood’s capacity to host industrial and maritime jobs, and pushing out long-time residents and small businesses.
The result?
- Thousands of industrial jobs lost across the city
- Worsening air quality and congestion from increased truck traffic
- Growing displacement of working-class families
- Broken promises on climate and equity.
But there is a path forward.
The Green Resilient Industrial District (GRID) 2.0 Plan, developed over 10 years by UPROSE and Sunset Park residents in response to community identified priorities, lays out a bold, achievable roadmap for a Just Transition. It envisions a waterfront that supports green-collar jobs, climate adaptation, and community ownership, transforming Sunset Park into New York City’s first center for regenerative industry.
To make this vision real, we need the City to take one clear, decisive step:
Declare Sunset Park a Special Purpose District (SPD)!
An SPD will ensure that all future development in Sunset Park advances environmental justice, industrial retention, and equitable climate resilience, not speculation and displacement. An SPD will give the city the legal and regulatory tools to protect industrial land from speculative displacement, enforce environmental justice standards, and ensure all future development serves the community, not developers.
Sponsored by
To:
New York City Council & the City Planning Commission
From:
[Your Name]
I call on the New York City Council and the New York City Planning Commission to create the Sunset Park Special Purpose District (SPD) in alignment with the community-authored GRID 2.0 Plan.
This action will protect industrial and maritime land from speculative rezonings and safeguard good-paying, green-collar jobs, advance environmental and climate justice by reducing pollution, truck traffic, and flood risk in frontline neighborhoods, ensure equitable development and accountability through a community-led SPD Advisory Board with real oversight power, and build a regenerative local economy by supporting workforce training, cooperative business models, and local ownership in emerging green industries.
We demand that the City initiate the zoning process to establish the GRID 2.0 SPD as an enforceable zoning overlay, incorporate GRID 2.0 principles into all land use, economic development, and climate planning decisions, and eject any proposal that undermines industrial retention, environmental justice, or working-class stability in Sunset Park.
The time is now! Sunset Park has long been a leader in climate and economic justice.
By adopting the GRID 2.0 SPD, New York City can become a national model for equitable climate governance, proving that innovation and justice go hand in hand.
This is our moment to protect our community, preserve good jobs, and secure a resilient, regenerative future.