More change ahead for New York’s shrinking garment district

NEW YORK – Hundreds of thousands of garment workers once toiled in the sweaty, elbow-to-elbow workshops of midtown Manhattan before the whirring of sewing machines was mostly silenced by foreign competition.

But the city’s garment district isn’t dead yet.

A group of manufacturers, landlords, designers and politicians has a plan to preserve a remnant of the garment industry in a neighbourhood where about 5,000 people are still employed in workshops mostly serving higher-end designers.

City Hall now wants to allow more real estate developers to bring in 21st century businesses, but still preserve at least 300,000 square feet for garment manufacturing.

That’s far less space than small factories occupied in the industry’s glory days from the 1920s to the 1960s.