Earlier this year a giant murky puddle at Brooklyn’s McCarren Park was being affectionately referred to as “Hipster Lake.”
Nearly half a year and $930,000 later, Williamsburg and Greenpoint residents must say goodbye to the oft-flooded section of the park between Bedford and Driggs avenues.
The park reopened yesterday, with newly carved pathways, drains designed to Read More
The Brooklyn commercial real estate market is on fire.
Demand for properties in the borough is at an all-time high, and many neighborhoods in Brooklyn are rivaling some Manhattan neighborhoods in terms of value and desirability. Today, many young people moving to New York City are choosing Brooklyn over Manhattan, and their motivation is not simply based on affordability. For teenagers and those in their 20s who live in Manhattan, partying in their own borough is passé. They want to go to Brooklyn, which is now widely considered the hipper of the two boroughs. Read More
First it was the hipsters. Then it was China. And now the city’s largest office landlord, SL Green Realty Corp., is finally seeing promise in the residential development of Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
The real estate investment trust and commercial real estate giant announced this morning that it has agreed to purchase a newly completed, vacant residential building in the hip-turned-posh Brooklyn neighborhood — the company’s first foray into Brooklyn’s residential market.
Information in a prepared statement sent by the company suggests that the address is 250 Bedford Avenue, though it was not specified. Read More
The popular New York-based restaurant chain Meatball Shop is set to open a new location in Manhattan.
The new restaurant located at 1462 Second Avenue will become the fifth location in the city. The space was previously occupied by a hardware store and features 2,000 square feet of open space divided between the basement and Read More
The purveyor of low-calorie frozen yogurt, Pinkberry, is set to open its second Brooklyn location in Dumbo.
Pinkberry will serve its light and tarty yogurt at a 1,000-square-foot space in the 55 Washington Street building at 117 Front Street. The area, nestled between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridge, is a few minutes away from the Read More
The Southern California-based footwear designer Supra known for their unique skate shoes has inked a deal for a new location in Brooklyn.
The footwear designer and retailer will open its second New York City location – the first operating out of 4 Prince Street in trendy SoHo – in Beorum Hill at 288 Atlantic Avenue.
The Read More
If the Fulton Mall is being transformed, it is only so much. The strip is being glammed up, stocked with major national retailers, at the cost of the mom and pops who have called the mall home for decades.
Still, things are not changing so much. As previously, pretentiously noted, Smith Street it ain’t, nor is it going to be. This is still a discount strip. From H&M to Target, the Gap to the almost-Filene’s, the newcomers have been far from high end—not counting the hamburgers. For further proof of the trend toward the same, welcome Century 21 to the neighborhood. Read More
You can take the freaks out of Coney Island… actually, you can’t. Read More
There are slumlords and then there are slumlords.
Three Brooklyn landlords were arrested yesterday for failing to address a combined 500 open housing code violations on two properties, according to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. Read More
Late last month, a “rat tsunami” descended on Brooklyn, kicking up rodents on the streets surrounding the Atlantic Yards project. Neighbors in Prospect Heights and Fort Greene complained that construction of the Barclays Centre was sending rats into the neighborhood. Though a Forest City Ratner spokesman at the time suggested to The Observer that the problem was not conclusively worse than anywhere else in the city, the developer has now seen fit to pony up for some industrial strength garbage cans for neighbors as well as a tougher pest plan. Read More
For years, planners and politicos have talked about transforming Brooklyn’s dingy Fourth Avenue into the borough’s own version of Park Avenue. That transformation is still in the works, but thanks to a handful of rezonings along the thoroughfare, the strip has gotten its fair share of mid-sized apartment buildings. Leaning more Robert Scarano than Rosario Candela, it is not exactly the sexiest strip. But one issue that has caused some real complaints within the community is the utter lack of street life. Read More
You’re welcome, Toll Brothers.
The big-time developers fumed, along with the mayor, when the Environmental Protection Agency decided to designate the Gowanus Canal a Superfund site last year. Playing a game of Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil, Toll threatened to pull out of a big 447-unit development on the Read More
Bruce Ratner went on Bloomberg yesterday to discuss the state of the local economy and progress at Atlantic Yards. During the interview, he said he expects to break ground on the first apartment tower at the site by December or January.
That is pushing Ratner’s promise made last fall to have the tower Read More
Is the city’s public-private affordable housing model—the Community Preservation Corp., a group of 70 banks and insurance companies, in particular—expediting Brooklyn’s gentrification?
The Gotham Gazette seems to think so. The Gazette investigated the city’s publicly available property transaction records and found that since 2007, 65 percent of the $701 million invested in Brooklyn Read More
Back when Frank Gehry got bounced off Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards project, the new designs for the Nets’ arena, created by Ellerbe Beckett, were said to be so loathed by certain city officials that the developer had to find another firm to dress things up. Ratner chose local hotshots SHoP, which had made its Read More
