More Signs of Gefntrification In Sunset Park, Losing Section 8

 

DNAinfo/Nikhita Venugopal

The website DNAINFO.com has a piece on the recent decision by E&M  Associates which owns a lot of housing stock in Sunset Park to not renew their section 8 housing contract when it expires. E&M has a total of 24 buildings with 270 units. The decision appears to be purely an economic one as rents on the average in the neighborhood now fetch from $2000 to $2100 for an average sized apartment in the neighborhood. This is in keeping with the rents in the Greenwood Heights section of Sunset Park which are slightly higher and signs that the gentrification wave is reaching southern Sunset Park. Opting out of section 8 housing would give E&M the opportunity to get higher rental income from their properties. It may also be that due to the rising real estate values they are considering getting rid of some of their properties... READ MORE HERE..

 

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Massive Development Planned For Sunset Park

 

An article on another development  in downtown Brooklyn had a link to this story that somehow went under my radar in The Brooklyn Paper. Apparently someone has big plans for the empty lot next to the N train station on 62nd street and 8th Avenue. The lot recently changed hands for it's previous owner for, get this, an astounding $51.5 million. That kind of outside money coming into the neighborhood is what is changing the dynamics of the hood. With mainland Chinese money being heavily invested in New York City (The recent sale of the Waldorf Astoria to the Chinese for example) it would only be natural that one of the places it would end up would be what has become New York's premiere Chinatown our own neighborhood of Sunset Park. According to the article the plans are for a "Plans call for a three-story, Chelsea Market-style retail space to cover the entire site, which is covers an area about as big as three football fields. Rising from that base will be a 150-room hotel standing about 10 stories, two 15-story residential towers with a combined 350 apartments, and an office tower standing 17 stories". Additionally plans also call for "A public green space and sculpture garden will cover exposed sections of the retail building’s roof, and a library, computer lab, and space for a pre-kindergarten program will serve the area’s burgeoning immigrant population". Nothing this massive has ever been done recently in the neighborhood. With all the additional money coming into the Industry City area on the other side of 3rd Avenue we will see a completely different neighborhood in the next ten years if not sooner increasing a process of gentrification that has snowballed into an ever increasing acceleration in the last two years. The question for our neighborhood is whether to oppose it, accept it or ignore it. The only two places where we can make our voices heard in whichever direction you fall is The community board and our local City council member Carlos Menchaca. Notice that none of this was in the news and most of us in the neighborhood are the last to hear about it. And yes, the plans include yet another Hotel in the neighborhood. It might be good for tourists but I'm not sure about the rest of us. I have to wonder what other projects are being planned in the neighborhood that we are unaware of. With billions in Chinese investment money looking for a place to park you can rest assured this neighborhood will get a chunk of it. Trying to stop it will be difficult for us peasants with limited resources when reality and history shows that "money talks". Hold on to your seatbelts, we're in for an interesting ride. I urge all readers of this blog who live in the neighborhood to pick up the phone and call the community board to voice your opinions and throw in Menchaca's office as well, don't let him off the hook. To read more about this you can read the whole article right here.

 

 

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Spanish Entrepreneurs Hit Sunset Park, Live in a "Mansion".

 

The tech website Tchinca.ly has a story about a group of Spanish entrepreneurs taking an intensive course on entrepreneurship right here in Sunset Park. The title of the post "A bunch of Spanish entrepreneurs are living in a mansion in Sunset Park"  was what interested me as I wasn't aware there were any mansions in this neighborhood. If the above picture is any indication someone has a sense of humor. Nevertheless the article is rather interesting to read and indicative of how Sunset Park is slowly attracting High Tech to the neighborhood at Industry City and the surrounding buildings and attracting a lot of attention, not just in the city but from abroad as well. 

 

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Party to Fight Gentrification

 

The website Brownstoner posted an announcement for a party to be held at Irish Haven this October 18. The party is to raise funds by the Sunset Park Landmarks Committee. 

In an email, Lynn Massimo, the committee’s project manager, said that both preservation and affordable housing are important to the future of the neighborhood. “Together we, the community groups and our electeds, must keep Sunset Park viable for a diverse population. That doesn’t have just one answer. It has multiple answers. Affordable housing, safe streets, cultural diversity, economic diversity, local jobs, and yes, preservation of historic rowhouses,” she said.

The event will be held at Irish Haven at 5721 4th Avenue at 58th Street this Saturday, October 18, from 7 to 10 pm. Tickets are only available at the door.

Photo by Sunset Park Landmarks Committee

 

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Sunset Park is now "Trendy" accoding to RE marketing..

 

I get notices in my mailbox when when there are rentals posted in Sunset Park to keep an eye on the local Real Estate market so I can see what's developing around me. lately I have been seeing an all too familiar pattern that I saw before in the gentrification of our northern neck of the neighborhood when the section towards 17th street from 30th street was slowly transformed into Greenwood Heights. Some realtors in the small print on their pages will note that it's a subdivision or subset of Sunset Park. But unless you ask them they will never volunteer that information, until now.. Well, they can't rename the core of Sunset Park something else. So, the next available option is to give it an adjective like "trendy", "up and coming", "upcoming", "gentrifying", "fashionable", "popular" etc.. So when I got this latest listing in my mailbox as "Live in Trendy Sunset Park Brooklyn"  I knew that we have arrived as the next target of the hipsterization wave in Brooklyn. Gone are the days when the neighborhood was know as "Gunset Park", "Needle Park, "grimy", "working class", "ethnic enclave", "industrial", "crime ridden", "blue collar neighborhood", "working class" etc.. No, those days appear to be gone, we are now trendy and fashionable. I wonder how many hipsters are stupid enough to fall for that marketing ploy. Well, judging by the accelerated changes around us and the fact that the realtors are managing to get the rents they are asking for, quite a few.  And so goes the process of gentrification. The neighborhood I moved into some 45 years ago has changed and continues to change. Sometimes for the better, sometimes not so.. The only constant in life is change and that is true in Sunset Park as it is anywhere else...

 

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More on Gentrification in Sunset Park

 

The website Voices of New York has an article (translated from Chinese) on a different perspective about the process of gentrification and Sunset Park and adds a bit on the Chinese contribution to the process and notes that mainland Chinese investment in the neighborhood is also helping to drive out working class Chinese from the neighborhood by making it more expensive to live in their own Chinatown. The piece by CUNY Professor Tarry Hun argues for trying to maintain Sunset Park a working class neighborhood. You can read the piece here and if you are a Chinese reader of this blog you can read the original Chinese article here..

 

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Hipsteria and Gentrification in Sunset Park

Hipsteria takes over Industry city at Mister Sunday dance parties.

They used to be known as Yuppies at one time, but how do you name a disease after yuppies? No, hipster is more fitting a word to invent hipsteria. A disease that invades sleepy neighborhoods of the old fashioned Brooklyn type and turn them into high priced rental spaces with restaurants that sell birdfood sized servings on a plate priced accordingly for the well heeled anorexic and bolemic, always on a diet over paid urban professionals whose idea of work is pushing a sheet of paper around the desk a few times. These are the invaders who are the vanguard of a well orchestrated plot by developers to turn or Sunset Park into yet another version of village like downtown Manhattan. At the website Fast Company writer Erica Berger has an excellent essay explaining the tactics being employed with Jamestown developers in the lead to gentrify Sunset Park. It makes for sober reading and reveals a bit of the underlying process that is changing our neighborhood.   Meanwhile, over at Gawker is another article timely in it's appearance, since it names another culprit spreading the disease.. Also, Caesar Zuniga has an open letter against gentrification in the Brooklyn spectator, Mr. Zuniga wants to be our assemblyman. My take on the subject is that opposing these waves of gentrification have always proved fruitless as history has tended to show. It's like trying to drain the ocean with a thimble. 

Street Theater comes to Sunset Park August 23

 

Image Brooklyn Daily photo by Elizabeth Graham

Both the Brooklyn Paper and the Brooklyndaily websites are carrying a piece by Mathew Perlman about a street theater troupe that  is making the rounds in Brooklyn and will arrive at our nabe on August 23. The troupe is giving free performances (or at least we the public aren't paying for it) at various locations and Sunset Park has been picked as one of them. As if we needed more proof of the hipsterization that with gentrification this is one of them. The fact that this event is taking place here is an indication that Sunset Park has arrived as far as hipsterism is concerned. Such performances a mere couple of years ago would have been more likely targeted at our northern neighbor Park Slope or at least the already gentrified section of our neighborhood that real estate marketers have dubbed Greenwood Heights. But, there is no need to go into an emotional state of hipsteria about it. We are bound to see more of this stuff with more art galleries, cafes and art troupes making it into our nabe. We aren't sure yet if hipsteria is an airborne disease or you simply catch it by osmosis or like bed bugs is carried into neighborhoods by new residents who move in. In any case, it appears that hipsteria is here to stay.. Coney Island Brooklynites will catch a preview of what we can expect on August 16.  Catch all the details of where and when by clicking here and scrolling down to the bottom. Tentatively, we've been informed it will occur at 44th street between fifth and sixth Avenues at around 2 PM. Bring sanitizer with you, just in case you don't want to catch any hipsteria...

Sunset Park On The Web Today

So much stuff and so little time. The web is full of stuff about Sunset Park today and not enough time to write about it in detail..

A Blogger at the Huffpost visited our nabe last April and posted some sketches of her impressions of Sunset Park..

Brooklyn online Magazine has yet another piece on the plans to spend $100 million in our nabe.

Crain's New York Business with yet another article on Industry City and city and developer investment in the nabe..

And there's a bunch of dupes on other blogs. You would think that someone is story dumping on the press and hyping the story to get reaction. From experience in politics I can tell you that none of this happens by accident. All these fluff pieces are designed to evict a certain reaction and not from long time residents of the nabe. This is all by design to accelerate the process of gentrification, attract investors and renters to the complex. Coincidence that this avalanche of stories appear a few days apart on all the mainstream press? I think not. One theme has been running in all the economic stories about Sunset Park, GENTRIFICATION..

Industry City in Sunset Park In The News, Again

Industry City seems to be in the news a lot lately. Yesterday the Wall Street Journal published an article about how both private developers and the City plan to dump over $100 million into three sites in Sunset Park to upgrade and turn int some kind of "industrial" zone and bring in the type of firms that don't need abundant manufacturing or development space. The article was followed by another piece siting it on the Gothamist website.  The reason manufacturing collapsed in the city is what a lot of bureaucrats and Real Estate developers don't seem to understand is that manufacturing technology changed and New York City was not the place to operate. When manufacturing began to change from a vertical mode of production to a horizontal one manufacturers slowly began to leave the confined spaces of the city and move to places where a number of conditions had to be met to build horizontal manufacturing plants which are today's mode of production. The needed to move somewhere where the was a lot of land, either the suburbs or further out. They also needed to be near transportation (highways, railways). It had to be cost effective which meant no taxes or very little. In the competitive atmosphere cities are just not the places to be with high taxes, costly housing, higher wages etc.. That was the main reason most manufacturing left Sunset Park and the City. Planners don't seem to get that. The only rationale for small manufacturers and developers to move into Sunset Park would be if they have a high profit margin in order to deal with the higher costs of working in the city. So the types of businesses willing to relocate there are anything but "industrial". That being said, I took a visit this morning to the new food court and walked around on a few floors on one of the buildings at 36th street. I will write about that separately. How much of the money being spent will be of benefit to the local population is another matter. Brooklyn Army terminal never panned out as the type of manufacturing and development center they have planned for industry city for precisely the above reason I stated above. We will have to see what develops. On the other hand, the modes of manufacturing are changing as we write, from 3d. printing and custom pieces made to specific order and specifications May make a lot of the empty space at Industry city more palatable and attractive to some specialized firms..

Map that as part of the article on the WSJ page.

 

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A Perspective on Genrtification in Brooklyn

In my meanderings on the web regarding gentrification I stumbled on an article by Daniel Hertz at his Blog. Aside from his take on income disparities I found the above map on his site rather interesting. Showing changes in real estate prices in Brooklyn over a two year span from 2012 to 2014. As you can see prices in the Sunset Park area have shown a rise of between 21% and 16% respectively. While northern Bay Ridge showed a rise of 10% Southern Bay Ridge shows a decline of 19%. There is of course a positive in the numbers for long time residents seeing their houses rise in value. On the downside is the fact that since valuations are the peg the city uses for Real Estate Taxes maintaining a property has become more expensive in that regard. The article also points out that average income throughout the borough has declined slightly. Obviously there is a correlation between the pink areas and the process of gentrification where people are moving to. Of interest are also the comments left at the blog, in particular the ones regarding Sunset Park. Basically it confirms what many residents have deduced from casual observation about what is going on in our neighborhood.

Is Sunset Park slated to become a New York Fashion Center?

Is Sunset Park slated to become a New York Fashion Center? If you believe a blog piece just written by Brady Dale at his blog Tchnically that appears to be the case. Following up on a piece in The Epoch Times on plans by Manufacture New York to open up a fashion design incubator at a facility in Sunset Park that is slated to open soon. Sunset Park has always been a center of sweat shops that have opened in the neighborhood since the Chinese moved in, so in a sense we have always had part of the fashion industry here. The plan though is to make Sunset Park a design center to supplement 7th Avenue in Manhattan. We will have to see what develops. As Sunset park's Bush terminal and Industry City become centers of all types of trendy businesses that encompass everything from film production to high end electronics we will continue to see more economic development in Sunset park that will also accelerate the gentrification process that is going on in the neighborhood as the people working in these enterprises decide to move into the neighborhood to be close to their work...

Sunset Parker Fights Losing Battle with Gentrification..

The Daily News has a story on local resident Imani Henry and his project to try to stem the tide of gentrification in our borough. It is not the first nor wilt be the last. When I came to Sunset park in 1970  the neighborhood was a mere 6 years old. Modern Sunset Park having been created by taking northern Bay Ridge and southern Park Slope to cobble together the areas that were in decline and separate them from the  other two neighborhoods to preserve their real estate values which the city uses to raise revenue via real estate values.  The place has changed radically in all that time. It is now the largest Chinatown in New York City. Most of the predominantly Puerto Rican population has left. The Norwegians, Finns, Irish and Italians who once dominated the southern part of the nabe have mostly moved on though a few are left. There are still strong pockets of Dominicans left but most of the Hispanics in the nabe are now Mexican or Central Americans. On my block gone are the Puerto Rican and Italian neighbors replaced by Chinese on either side who rent to Mexicans and Hipsters that have started to move in due to the cheaper rents. The northern part of the neighborhood has become a subset named Greenwood Heights since realtors have renamed the area in a marketing ploy to get higher prices for rentals and houses. The irony is that they have to revert back to naming it Sunset Park if the gentrification wave continues though old timers still living there will tell you it's still Sunset Park. If there is one constant in this neighborhood it's change and the only recourse is to be able to adapt to the new conditions. If there were no change the neighborhood would have remained the depressed, drug infested, crime ridden area that it had been in the late 60's and 70's. I am not at all nostalgic for those days when the Park Itself had become known citywide as "Needle Park". Some residents will remain behind like myself. Others will be newcomers. The Chinese will stay here for some time since they tend to settle long term in an area for generations. But even there change has occurred with the original Cantonese settlers being quickly replaced by Fujianese .  The only constant is change and like it or not our neighborhood is gentrifying. We may not even recognize the place in ten years..

Read the piece in the Daily News Here..

 

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More Gentrification: Sunset Park and the Burgeoning Industry City Food Hall

As if we needed more proof of the accelerating gentrification of the neighborhood comes this piece from the blog Fashion Whirled. From the article; "A quick ride on the N express takes you to the 36th Street stop, where you walk west to the water. Trust me, this will be the next new “Chelsea Market” of hipsterville (Chelsea market developers own 50% of this venture). Already anchoring the retail fashion, food and art scene are the Nets, Blue Marble Ice Cream, Steve & Andy’s Organics Modern Primitive Café, Ninja Bubble Tea, Colson Patisserie. Slated are The Fashion Chef, Ruby Beets’ vintage furniture and Liddabit Sweets."

What it all boils down to is that the changes in the neighborhood are accelerating at a fast pace to the degree that in a couple of years we won't even recognize the waterfront area of the neighborhood. We all knew this was going to happen with all the plans on the drawing boards to completely redo the waterfront part for some time now. It appears that the process or actual changes are beginning to take hold in the physical sense. Check out the piece at the blog to see more pictures and read the rest of the piece..

 

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Around New York: Changes, The constant in our World.

I stumbled on this website thanks to a Facebook post. The tile of the post 

Photos of New York City storefronts taken 10 years apart show gentrification and decay [36 pictures] Gentrification is a process that is the opposite of decay and an unavoidable consequence of progress. Imagine if nothing had changed in the last thousand years. Monty Python would be going around with a cart yelling "Bring out Your Dead!" and we would all be illiterate. Oh wait, our education system is making most of us that.. But on a serious note. The site is worth a visit if you're a long time New Yorker or have been here at least ten years. If there is one constant in New York it's change..

More signs of Gentrification in Sunset Park

THE BUYERS 
Jeff Bobula and Caitlin Mennen-Bobula with their son, Ellis, and the family cat.CreditÁngel Franco/The New York Times

The New York Times recently published an article that typified the ongoing gentrification of Sunset Park proper. I think we can all mostly agree that the Greenwood Heights (so named by realtors) section of the neighborhood has already pretty much reached the peak of it's gentrification stage and is now well saturated with Hipsters and yuppies. The story is interesting in two respects. As rents and property values in the northern part of the neighborhood continue to inch up the pressure is to move further south in search for more reasonable rents and values. The second interesting part of the story is that there is a wave that is moving into the Chinatown section of the nabe providing a competitive pressure for housing and competition with the Chinese population. Nevertheless, despite a rather stagnant economy those who have well paying jobs and the cash to spend are moving ever southward into the neighborhood and the only result can be an upward pressure on rents and property values. For homeowners this necessarily means higher real estate taxes because those taxes are based on valuations. For poorer families it means that affordable rents at their income levels will be harder and harder to find.  You can read the entire article here on the New York Times site..

First Sign of Creeping Gentrification In Sunset Park's Center?

This new building on the corner of 52nd street and 3rd Avenue may be the first sign of the creeping wave of gentrification that has been moving south from Park Slope in the neighborhood over the last few years. The building nearing construction will either be slated as a rental or perhaps as condos. 3rd Avenue is dotted with lots which are waiting for development and are either on sale or waiting to be bought. The building will probably be high rent compared to other rents in the area or at the very least if condos will help drive market real estate prices up. Only one block from the subway station on 4th avenue it is an ideal location. It is a sign of the ever changing nature of the neighborhood. Chinese families have been buying real estate as far as the blocks between 5th Avenue and 4th Avenues as they run out of available properties closer to 8th Avenue and since they are competing with a wave of hipsters moving into the area the result is inevitably higher rents and higher real estate values...

 

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Art in the Hood: Sunset Park Artists and the SOHO of Brooklyn's Short Lived Life

     It was hoped that when Bush Terminal was bought by some developers and renamed Industry City a few years back that Sunset Park would evolve into a center of the arts for Brooklyn and New York City. But starting late last year some disturbing stories began to appear in the news. In particular some articles in the New York Times. As someone who walks every corner of the neighborhood and what I call the PASUBA (Park Slope, Sunset Park, Bay Ridge) corridor on either side of 4th Avenue, I have seen the slow wave of gentrification creeping along southward towards Bay Ridge that began when Real Estate agents renamed the norther part of the neighborhood south of 17th street Greenwood Heights so they could rent apartments and sell houses at a higher price. As this wave of hipsters begins to move south with it come higher real estate prices and higher rents driving out long time local residents that now find it difficult to survive  in the gentrified areas.  There are two aspects to this encroachment. On the one hand one is seeing more upscale restaurants and bars appearing along 4th and 5th Avenues. On the other hand, artists who settled here because of the cheaper rents are now finding themselves priced out of the market. The moving in of the Brooklyn Nets as a tenant at Industry City certainly didn't help matters. The result is that a diaspora of artists has begun and is accelerating out of the neighborhood. The most recent article published last week in the Times confirrms this. As does this piece on another blog..

    There were high hopes that with all the artists moving into Sunset Park we would become a center of creativity and a magnet for other aspects of the arts, such as music etc.. All is not lost however, as there are still some artists remaining. At least those who can afford the higher rents. There are other warehouses on the other side of third avenue that could well become artists spaces. perhaps someone with an inventive mind could perhaps firgure out a way to get some city money to subsidize rents for artists spaces. Why not? We waste money on a lot of useless stuff in this country and city and putting it into art has at least some long term gain. If there is one constant in Sunset Park as most residents know, it is change. And more often than not, it's not for the better.

Closings: Podlasie Meat Market and Deli

The last store catering to the dwindling and disappearing Polish community on 8th Avenue has closed. The location will likely be taken over by a Chinese store as 8th Avenue is becoming almost exclusively Chinese from 65th street to 39th street. Last week I reported on the abrupt closing of  World Electronics another Polish owned store that catered to the Polish community and others. Many Poles have either returned back to Poland or moved elsewhere. If there is one constant in our neighborhood it is change. The demographics are changing. More and more Chinese are moving in and spreading towards 5th Avenue. A wave of gentrification is slowly making it's way south from the Greenwood Heights section of Sunset Park driving out the Hispanic population and others who can no longer afford to live in certain parts of Sunset Park.

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