Hermes arrives in Williamsburg and joins Chanel in the former hipster’s paradise.
But “gentrification” comes in many aspects and nuances.
I like them all: why shouldn’t all low-income neighborhoods have access to better shopping and food, and more middle-class residents to spread their money around?
But the sweeter form of the g-word occurs organically.
That is, when people follow their hearts and instincts to revitalize the dead zones we used to call slums.
And do it without the zoning changes, subsidies, and political machinations necessary to launch megaprojects that often generate more press conferences than truly “affordable” housing.
It happened in the South Bronx, much of Harlem and elsewhere.
But closest to my heart is my childhood neighborhood of low-rise Ocean Hill in Brooklyn, the eastern outcropping of Bedford-Stuyvesant.
Now predominantly black and Hispanic, including a significant Caribbean immigrant community, Ocean Hill is one of the district’s lesser-known neighborhoods and is unfortunately linked in many minds to the NYCHA inferno of Brownsville to the south.
When I first revisited my old stomping grounds more than 40 years ago, I had no problem that the colonial movie theater where I saw “Pinocchio” when I was three had been converted into a Baptist church.
But Ocean Hill was so dangerous that I walked in the middle of the street. Everywhere were empty lots left by arsonists from the 1977 blackout.
Signs of new development in Ocean Hill, where newly designed modern residential buildings are rising on once-abandoned lots.EMMY PARK
Just 13 years ago, the blighted Broadway shopping strip below the J and Z tracks was so eerie after dark that the local (and only) restaurant closed for its own safety at 4:30 p.m.
What has happened since then testifies to the incomparable regenerative powers of New York City.
The cheap properties were unlikely to attract real estate investors who put up new buildings on vacant land and restored old ones.
Easy subway access at Broadway Junction’s threatening but indispensable complex of underground and above-ground stations helped attract families who couldn’t afford fancier parts of Bed-Stuy.
The newcomers point to a more “organic” form of gentrification than what is taking place in Williamsburg, where a chic Chanel outpost has opened. chanel
The zoning does not allow large new residential construction, which might be better. The change has been dramatic (make that amazing) since my last ride before the 2020 lockdowns.
Older three- and four-story buildings are thriving thanks to the investment of their owners.
The beautiful brownstones on Bainbridge Street, one of the city’s lesser-known gems, would be right at home on the Upper East or West Side.
There is no Hermes (ha!), but there are many more supermarkets, pharmacies and shops than in a long time.
An Hermes boutique is also planned to debut in Williamsburg.Hermes
Restored facades, manicured gardens and even some modestly “architectural” residences lifted my heart.
So did the feeling of security.
Ocean Hill has its rough edges, but thanks to broken-window policing and a political determination to lock up bad guys, crime steadily declined in Ocean Hill as it did in most of the Big Apple before 2020.
Even after “bail reform” and an uptick that followed former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s mutilation of proven police tactics, District 73, which covers both Ocean Hill and Brownsville, recorded 22 murders last year, compared to 74 in 1993.
This year there have only been six. Most of the bloodshed occurred in and around Brownsville’s gang-infested projects south of Atlantic Avenue, according to New York Police Department incident maps.
Although the area is growing, many abandoned stores remain in Ocean Hill. EMMY PARK
As a result, people looking for affordable housing voted with their feet.
While some minority neighborhoods lost residents, Ocean Hill’s population has steadily increased from 31,935 in the 2010 U.S. Census to 37,952 in 2020.
Now, the government is finally taking action. (To his credit, Eric Adams fought for improvements during his tenure as Brooklyn Borough President.)
The Economic Development Corporation plans a $500 million redesign of the infamous, labyrinthine Broadway Junction station and the wasted sidewalks around it.
Ocean Hill’s iconic Broadway Junction train station, where much of the neighborhood’s renaissance is scheduled to take place.EMMY PARK
It won’t start until 2027 and the work will take three years, but after half a century of decline, better late than never.
The eastern end of Hull Street, where I grew up in the early 1950s, is at the foot of the station.
The street’s recovery from the 1977 riots was slow. But of at least a dozen vacant lots that I remember, very few remain.
I was born on one of those concrete-paved, steel-fenced plots at 137 Hull St.
It is unclear when or why the building, located between two other homes, was razed.
It appears in the property registry of the city’s Department of Finance literally as a figure: “The street code is zero.”
The Department of Buildings says the address page is “an obsolete container preserved solely for historical purposes.”
But if recent history is any omen, it shouldn’t remain empty much longer. I hope someone gently gentrifies it before the price goes up.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn