Housed in Building 128 of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the $35 million project[1] serves as a hardware-focused shared workspace, research lab, and hatchery for socially oriented tech manufacturing.

Media coverage of Newlab has focused on the company's role in revitalizing the Brooklyn Navy Yard,[4] its public-private partnership lease structure, and Urban Tech initiative with the New York City Economic Development Corporation.

[9] Belt leveraged his development firm, Macro Sea, a company that specializes "in bringing historic properties back into cultural relevance,"[10] to obtain funding, architectural expertise, and begin constructing a lease with the city of New York.

[12] Among the technological advancements that took place at the Navy Yard are: the first use of the steam-powered pile driver; construction of the first undersea telegraph cable; development of a commercialized form of anesthetic ether by E.R.

[15] Construction of navy ships like the Fulton II, a first-of-its-kind steam-powered warship, and fabrication of the USS Arizona, state-of-the-art among its peers, induced many influential manufacturing process refinements and advancements.

[16] According to a Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation document, 128 was raised in 1899 as a "steel structure... used to assemble large boiler engines and fabricated sections of naval vessels."

Recladding the building's armature and repurposing of the 51,000 ft2 machine shop into an 84,000 ft2 multidisciplinary design, prototyping, and advanced manufacturing space took approximately 5 years and continued until the company's full opening in September 2016.

[22] Newlab's open floor design was intended, spatially, to reinforce its mission, the layout meant to encourage member companies to collaborate and cross-pollinate ideas.