New York City has largely recovered economically from COVID-19 — if researchers look at what’s happening in the outerboroughs, not just Manhattan’s business districts, a key Big Apple industry rep says.
Long Island City — in Queens just across the East River from Manhattan — is making the case, says Laura Rothrock, president of the Long Island City Partnership/Business Improvement District, which is in one of Gotham’s fast-growing neighborhoods.
“The main commercial corridors of New York City are no longer going to be just Manhattan,” Rothrock recently told The Post.
“Long Island City is an example that New York City is back.”
In a post-pandemic and growing remote-work world, Rothrock and other city business advocates say it’s no longer accurate or fair to measure the strength of the Big Apple’s economy by foot traffic and other economic data derived just from the Manhattan business districts when more people are living, working and playing in the outerboroughs.
A recent study found that foot traffic in the Big Apple’s Midtown and Lower Manhattan business districts was still down 33% in mid-2023 from what it was before the coronavirus pandemic — one of the lowest recovery rates in the country. The dismal finding came even as New York City Mayor Eric Adams boasted the Big Apple had recovered nearly all of the 1 million jobs it had lost during the deadly outbreak.
LIC has bucked Manhattan’s recovery-rate trend: Foot traffic was up 5% from 2019 to 2022, according to city data gathered as part of the Making NY Work for Everyone study jointly issued by Gov. Kathy Hochul and Adams last year.
Long Island City, long a manufacturing-industrial hub, has emerged as the quintessential mixed use neighborhood, with ample room to grow as one of the few neighborhoods in the city with vacant land, advocates say.
Retail spending jumped by 35% in LIC during that period and went up 20% in downtown Brooklyn, while it dropped by double digits in Manhattan’s business core largely dependent on tourists.
“We’re the only neighborhood where consumer retail spending and foot traffic were both up,” Rothrock said, comparing Long Island City to the Manhattan business core and downtown Brooklyn.
Despite losing the proposed Amazon headquarters in 2019, LIC is growing like crazy — thousands of new residential units are under construction, along with more than 300,000 square feet of retail space as well as 32 hotels under construction or planned, proponents say.
Many of the hotels are in the more remote industrial areas and are currently being used by the city as migrant shelters.
“That’s an ongoing challenge,” Rothrock acknowledged of the migrant crisis.
Meanwhile, LIC’s population has jumped from 70,000 to 100,000 from 2010 to 2020, and the growth spurt continues.
“Long Island City is growing so rapidly and outpacing the rest of the city,” Rothrock said. “We have a ton of economic activity in Long Island City.”
The Making NY Work for Everyone report also identified emerging neighborhood employment hubs including Forest Hills in Queens, DUMBO and Broadway Junction in Brooklyn, Fordham Plaza in The Bronx and St. George/Stapleton on Staten Island. Other growing downtowns identified include Flushing and Jamaica in Queens, 125th Street in Harlem in Manhattan and The Bronx Hub.
Because of its mixed-used zoning, LIC offers activities barred elsewhere — such as indoor sky diving that draws visitors.
Among new LIC developments: