Saving the Center
A coalition of business owners in New York’s fashion district has formed a campaign to preserve the area as a garment center in reaction to several landlords’ recent shift to converting traditional garment buildings to hotels and office space. The coalition is calling itself “savethegarmentcenter.com” and designated July 18 as “Garment Center Pin Day,” when volunteers solicited support for its efforts by passing out pins and asking fashion-district visitors and workers to sign a petition in favor of maintaining the mid-town district as a garment center. According to organizers, as buildings along New York’s Seventh Avenue convert to hotels and buildings on the side streets traversing the district become office buildings, designers, manufacturers and costumers will lose their convenient access to the samplemakers housed in many of the district’s buildings.
