Clothes are displayed for sale along a sidewalk in the Garment District neighborhood in Manhattan, March 31, 2025.
REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
New York City has a once-in-a-century opportunity to confront the long-standing crisis along Eighth Avenue between Penn Station and the Port Authority Bus Terminal — a corridor that has become one of the city’s most troubling gateways.
Anchored to the south by Penn Station, the nation’s largest transportation hub with over 600,000 daily users, and to the north by the Port Authority Bus Terminal, serving another 200,000 a day, this stretch of Eighth Avenue sees some of the highest pedestrian traffic in New York. Yet few places offer a more discouraging first impression. The corridor between 34th and 42nd Street is visibly downtrodden, unsafe, and stands in stark contrast to the energy and ambition that define the rest of Midtown.
Manhattan’s Garment District was once a powerhouse of apparel manufacturing
The surrounding Garment District, once a powerhouse of apparel manufacturing, has suffered decades of industry decline and outward migration. As a result, it lags far behind neighboring districts in office tenancy and residential growth. Quality of life on Eighth Avenue is further compromised by a lack of sustained public investment, open drug use and dealing, and acute mental illness crises playing out daily in the public realm. These conditions stem from restrictive, outdated zoning that prohibited residential and other stabilizing uses for generations. In turn, the area became oversaturated with social service facilities, attracting a vulnerable population and a criminal element that preys on individuals seeking support. Together, these long-standing issues have suppressed the neighborhood’s economic opportunity, contributing to vacancy rates of 25–40% on many side streets.
Today, however, new possibilities are emerging. The passage of City of Yes for Housing and the MSMX rezoning plan — despite an unfortunate carve-out of key sites on and around Eighth Avenue — opens the door to a more diverse mix of uses, including residential. If the financial challenges of converting buildings to housing can be overcome, the Garment District can evolve into a safer, more vibrant, 24/7 neighborhood in the heart of Midtown Manhattan.
Equally transformative are the planned redevelopments of Penn Station and the Port Authority. These multibillion-dollar transit investments create a unique moment to reimagine Eighth Avenue itself. With meaningful infrastructure and streetscape improvements, the city can capitalize on these transit upgrades, restore safety and dignity to the corridor, and unlock the full potential of City of Yes and MSMX.
The stakes are too high — and the opportunity too rare — for the city to look away. Eighth Avenue is the front door to New York for nearly a million people every day. Leaving it in its current deplorable condition is unacceptable. It’s time to invest, rebuild, and reclaim this corridor. Failure to act would not just be a missed opportunity — it would be a civic failure of historic proportions.
Blair is president of the Garment District Alliance, a not-for-profit corporation established in 1993 to improve the quality of life and economic vitality of Manhattan’s Garment District.