Decades after the hulking Silvercup Bakery was transformed into a major film and television studio and the famed Fink Bakery was vacated due to bankruptcy, Long Island City is back in business as New York City's breadbasket, a place where the air is heavy with yeasty aromas.
This summer, Amy's Bread, the outfit that elevated humble baking to a public art form with its glass-walled kitchen in Manhattan's trendy Chelsea Market, will join a dozen bakers that have flocked to the Queens neighborhood in the past decade.
Amy's is shifting its main production facility to a new 33,000-square-foot space on 34th Street in Long Island City, one block south from its longtime Chelsea Market neighbor Eleni's New York, which set up its cookie-making factory in LIC seven years ago. All come for the same reasons: cheaper rents; open, one-story spaces; and proximity via the Queensboro Bridge and Midtown Tunnel to clients and retail shops in Manhattan.
"We are excited to be in Long Island City," said Amy Scherber, owner of Amy's Bread, who will move 120 employees to the new facility.
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