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.