Economy
Eagle Electric, now known as Cooper Wiring Devices, was one of the last major factories in the area. They have moved production to the People's Republic of China, and Plant #1, which was the largest of their factories and housed their corporate offices, is being converted to residential luxury lofts.
Long Island City is currently home to the largest fortune cookie factory in the United States, owned by Wonton Foods and producing four million fortune cookies a day. Lucky numbers included on fortunes in the company's cookies led to 110 people across the United States winning $100,000 each in a May 2005 drawing for Powerball.
Online grocery company FreshDirect, serves the Greater New York area via deliveries from a warehouse and administrative offices on Borden Avenue in LIC. A customer can also order online and come to the warehouse for pickup.
The city has been the home since 1999 to the Brooks Brothers tie manufacturing factory, which employs 122 people and produces more than 1.5 million ties per year.
Long Island City is the new home of independent film studio, Troma.
To accommodate new families, Long Island City Kids Enrichment Center opened its doors in December 2008.
On March 22, 2010, JetBlue Airways announced it was moving its headquarters from Forest Hills to Long Island City, also incorporating the jobs from its Darien, Connecticut, office. The airline, which operates its largest hub at JFK Airport also operates from LaGuardia Airport, and will make The Brewster Building in Queens Plaza its home. The airline plans to move around mid-2012.
Read more about this topic: Long Island City
Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“Cities need old buildings so badly it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them.... for really new ideas of any kind—no matter how ultimately profitable or otherwise successful some of them might prove to be—there is no leeway for such chancy trial, error and experimentation in the high-overhead economy of new construction. Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)
“Quidquid luce fuit tenebris agit: but also the other way around. What we experience in dreams, so long as we experience it frequently, is in the end just as much a part of the total economy of our soul as anything we “really” experience: because of it we are richer or poorer, are sensitive to one need more or less, and are eventually guided a little by our dream-habits in broad daylight and even in the most cheerful moments occupying our waking spirit.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)