IndyCar engine design shop to open in Brooklyn
"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," said Mr. Bloomberg, failing to elicit much laughter for his word play, during a news conference at the site at 105 Metropolitan Ave.
Company owner Ethan Bregman plans to open the facility next summer and continue work on a project designing the Honda IndyCar. The environmental cleanup at the site, which has been vacant for 27 years, is slated to be completed at the end of this summer.
"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 cutoff from development for decades," Mr. Bloomberg said.
Daniel Walsh, director of the city's Office of Environmental Remediation, praised Mr. Bregman for choosing to develop a site with "environmental challenges" because, he said, Mr. Bregman could have found a "much easier property to develop." Mr. Bregman has already received $6,100 as part of the city's brownfield cleanup program and could receive as much as $85,000.
The program, the first such municipal initiative in the nation, has approved its 50th project since beginning last year. The cleanup at these properties will yield $1.5 billion in new capital construction and produce 2,000 permanent new jobs and 5,100 construction jobs, the city said.
"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," Mr. Bregman said. "And the opportunity to bring that back to New York was just too good to pass up."
Clients of his company have won several U.S. and world racing championships. Wall Street Journal
08/20/12 NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – From the concrete jungle to the asphalt race track, one New York native is looking to put Brooklyn on the map in the world of IndyCar racing.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Ayton Performance owner and engineer Ethan Bregman announced a new race engine design facility will be constructed on a cleaned up Williamsburg brownfield site.
The clean-up is expected to last through the end of the summer, with development and construction scheduled to begin after.
The design studio and machine shop for Indy racing engines will be at 105 Metropolitan Avenue.
“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 told WCBS 880′s Rich Lamb.
Mayor Bloomberg touted this project as a job creator for city residents.
“You might say this is Silicon Alley meeting Gasoline Alley," Mayor Bloomberg said.
The engine design firm is expected to open its doors next summer.