Coney Island
Ups and Downs Now Confined Mostly to Rides
By JAKE MOONEY
Brad Vest/The New York Times
MERMAID AVENUE, the main commercial street through Coney Island’s largest residential section, stretches two dozen blocks west from the faded, raucous amusement park district, past telltale evidence of the area’s varied past.
There are brick tenement buildings with storefronts that, in the mid-20th century, housed the bakeries, butcher shops and luncheonettes that were staples of a thriving neighborhood. There are empty lots remaining from Coney Island’s worst years, in the 1960s and ’70s, when much of the neighborhood drifted away or went up in smoke. And there are tidy one-family houses, white with red awnings — block upon block of them, built beginning in the 1980s by a community development organization seeking to fill the emptiness.
Today’s Coney Island, according to residents, officials and real estate brokers, is in yet another phase: safer and more stable than at its low point, populated largely by middle-class homeowners, yet still without the full complement of infrastructure that such a community needs. At the same time residents are holding their breath for a long-planned but recently delayed reinvention of the amusement district, along with construction of thousands of housing units near the boardwalk. The city government approved plans in 2009, though the timetable for those undertakings is unclear.
Over the course of this metamorphosis, waves of Chinese and Russian immigrants have been moving to the residential blocks. Charles Denson, a Coney Island native who runs the nonprofit Coney Island History Project and wrote “Coney Island: Lost and Found,” said the more active Mermaid Avenue had begun to remind him of the district during his childhood.
Mom-and-pop stores “have brought fresh produce back, and fresh bread, and it’s really nice to see that,” said Mr. Denson, who until last year rented an apartment on Stillwell Avenue, but who now splits his time between California and Sea Gate, a gated community west of Coney Island. “It’s just amazing to be able to walk around and feel safe in the neighborhood, and friendly.”
Eddie Mark, a Department of Transportation sign painter and the chairman of Community Board 13, which represents the area, lives in one of the nearly 1,000 row houses that the Astella Development Corporation built in the 1980s and ’90s. The three-bedroom house, for which Mr. Mark, now 47, paid about $110,000 in 1995, is worth about $300,000, he said. Buyers like himself “were all working-class citizens, and basically wanted the American dream, wanted to own their own house.”
As Gamal Hasan, a broker at Century 21 Block and Lot Real Estate, put it: “These are the houses that really changed the area. They brought in working families.”
Some buildings have changed hands in recent years, Mr. Hasan said, but many original buyers remain in place. Mermaid Avenue’s commercial corridor is still in a state of transition, he added, citing the persistent uncertainty over Coney Island’s development.
The higher rate of homeownership has improved the look and stability of the neighborhood, but even so, “a lot of people are just sitting back and waiting. They’re not putting too much money into their properties because they’re not sure what’s coming in.”
Charles Reichenthal, the community board’s district manager, sees residents’ fortunes as inextricably tied to the thrill rides and midways that made the area famous. With the fate of local businesses, and local jobs, tied to tourism, he said, “what’s good for the amusement area is good for the community at large.”
The amusement area, for its part, still has empty and underused properties. Bought in recent years by Thor Equities, a developer, they have been cleared and in many cases kept vacant, although some have had part-time tenants like flea markets or petting zoos.
Still, Mr. Reichenthal said, the allure of the ocean is strong. “People are coming. The crowds are large, and this is only the beginning of the season.”
WHAT YOU’LL FIND
For most of its length Coney Island is only three blocks wide: Mermaid Avenue runs horizontally down the middle, with Neptune Avenue to its north and Surf Avenue to its south. Sea Gate is at the western border, and Brighton Beach is to the east. The area covers roughly one mile, with a population of about 45,000.
Several high-rise New York City Housing Authority developments, dating to the 1950s and housing thousands, stand near the western end. High-rises including the Trump Village co-op complex — near Ocean Parkway to the east, in an area bordering Brighton Beach known as West Brighton — are privately owned and more expensive.
Peter Bacarella, the owner of Brooklyn’s Scenic View Real Estate, says that although West Brighton is by many definitions part of Coney Island, numerous residents of Russian extraction have spilled over from Brighton Beach and identify more closely with that community. A three-year-old building he has been marketing at 3080 West First Street has been selling briskly, he said, adding that the appeal was the same as in Brighton Beach: “The Russians love the water.”
Mr. Bacarella, who once worked as a parking lot attendant across Surf Avenue from the remains of the old Steeplechase Park during the 1970s, said Coney Island’s western end had improved since that era. “Drugs, prostitution, no rides — it was horrible,” was how he remembered it.
Still, the eastern side, with its demand for housing near Brighton Beach, is higher-end, he said, adding: “All in all, I think Coney Island’s revitalizing. I think it’s going to be at least 10 years down the line.”
Mr. Reichenthal cited challenges: water and sewer lines are in need of work; parking is difficult, as is getting out of the area by car when the amusement district is in full swing. Still, he said, there are signs of progress: Y.M.C.A. is scheduled to open a facility on Surf Avenue at West 29th Street in 2013, replacing one that closed years ago.
WHAT YOU’LL PAY
Single-family houses tend to be small, Mr. Hasan said. Most of those built by Astella have three or four bedrooms and two or two and a half baths. Many have private driveways, but newer houses lack basements.
Such houses often cost less than $400,000, he added. In the last six months, the median sale price for single-family houses in the 11224 ZIP code was $420,000, and that includes pricier Sea Gate properties. He also said a handful of two-family houses had sold recently in the $400,000-to-$500,000 range. Delton Cheng, the owner of Century 21 Homefront, says prices on multifamilies can reach $550,000 to $600,000.
One-bedroom rentals on Craigslist go for as little as $1,200 a month. For $1,750, one- and two-bedrooms can be found near Brighton Beach, or four-bedrooms west of the amusement district.
THE COMMUTE
The Stillwell Avenue subway station lies at the end of the D, F, Q and N lines. The N runs express through part of Brooklyn. The Q also stops at Ocean Parkway and the F at Neptune Avenue. Both stop at West Eighth Street. A typical subway ride to Midtown takes about an hour. The Belt Parkway, with connections to the Gowanus Expressway, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and eastern Long Island, passes just north of the neighborhood.
WHAT TO DO
Coney Island’s rides and boardwalk draw tourists from around the world, and in the summertime are busy even on weekdays. Mr. Reichenthal said one of the goals of the Coney Island Development Corporation, which was formed by the city in 2003 and of which he is a board member, was to foster year-round activity in the entertainment district. An increasing number of restaurants are remaining open year-round, he said, and neighborhood renovation plans call for some indoor attractions.
Kaiser Park, on 26 acres at Neptune Avenue and Coney Island Creek, has recently restored basketball and handball courts, a running track, sports fields and playgrounds — and a view of the Verrazano. The new Y.M.C.A. is to have two pools, one Olympic-size.
THE SCHOOLS
The westernmost end of the neighborhood is zoned for Public School 188 on Neptune Avenue — one of various elementary options. To the east is No. 329, on West 30th Street, or No. 288, on West 25th, which also serves the middle school grades.
Middle schools include Mark Twain Intermediate School 239 for the Gifted and Talented on Neptune Avenue, which got an A on its city report card, with 92.1 percent deemed proficient in English, 95.4 percent in math.
For Grades 9 through 12, one option is the Rachel Carson High School for Coastal Studies on West Avenue, where SAT averages last year were 389 in reading, 406 in math and 383 in writing, versus 436, 460 and 431 citywide.
THE HISTORY
“Coney” is a name for the wild rabbits that once predominated in the area, according to The Encyclopedia of New York City — which also says the first roller coaster arrived here in 1884. Interest in the amusement district declined after World War II, and Steeplechase Park and its parachute jump closed in 1964.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/08/re...ref=realestate
Eastern Cottontails.“Coney” is a name for the wild rabbits that once predominated in the area, according to The Encyclopedia of New York City
Still there, around the Coney Island Creek. They are wary and remain hidden, but you can spot them on the trails at GNRA Fort Tilden, Breezy Point, or Jamaica Bay.
Gerritsen Beach
The Art of Hiding in Plain Sight
By JAKE MOONEY
Christopher Gregory/The New York Times
Gerritsen Beach, a boating-and-fishing enclave east of Sheepshead Bay,
belongs to the same city as Midtown East, just visible beyond the sandbar.
More Photos »
GEORGE R. BROADHEAD, a retired newspaper executive and Marine Corps veteran, has lived in Beverly Hills and Manhattan Beach, Calif., and Greenwich, Conn., among many other places. The place he is choosing to spend his retirement, though, is the place where he grew up: Gerritsen Beach, Brooklyn.
That doesn’t mean Mr. Broadhead, who is the president of the Gerritsen Beach Property Owners Association, is trying to make the place sound too charming.
“Whenever I run a meeting,” he said, “there are a couple of people who always shout out, during some point in the meeting, ‘We don’t want people to know about Gerritsen Beach!’ ”
In truth, even among people who know and love this secluded neighborhood on Brooklyn’s southern shore, it is not without its issues. Residents do prize its quiet and off-the-grid seclusion, a result of geography — it is on a peninsula east of Sheepshead Bay, flanked by Shell Bank Creek, Plumb Beach Channel and Marine Park. On the other hand, streets are narrow and prone to flooding in bad weather; access to the rest of the city is difficult; and houses, many of them former seasonal bungalows, are squeezed in cheek by jowl.
Then there is the creek. “It’s dirty, it’s smelly, it needs a lot of work,” said Theresa Scavo, the chairwoman of Community Board 15, which represents the area. “Years of neglect.”
But none of that is enough, Ms. Scavo hastened to add, to drive the neighborhood’s longtime partisans away. “Are you kidding?” she said. “They would never live anywhere else.”
The allure, residents and real estate agents said, lies in living among friends and multigenerational families, with a private beach, easy access to boating and parkland, and the security of knowing one’s neighbors.
“The majority of people looking to buy in the Beach are actually from the Beach,” said Janet Graves, an agent at Tracey Real Estate and a third-generation neighborhood resident. She also said there was a pool of buyers among those who “have relatives here.”
Doreen Garson, the owner of Doreen Greenwood Real Estate and another lifelong resident, says outsiders don’t usually pass through the neighborhood, because there is access only at one end and because its retail strip, on Gerritsen Avenue, is understated. In cases when a person stumbles on the area and expresses an interest, she said, “I’ll tell them: ‘You have to like kids and dogs. It’s a family-oriented neighborhood and it’s very quaint.’ Some people like to be where all the action is. This is not the area for them.”
Residents say the area’s property values remained relatively steady during the recent years’ real estate downturn. Many buyers, Ms. Graves said, are second-generation residents who buy their parents’ or a neighbor’s house and are willing to spend money to make improvements.
The insularity may indeed be daunting for outsiders, but if you’re an insider there’s a high level of comfort. It is evident in the way residents lay unofficial claim to the parking spaces in front of their houses, or the way drivers, unable to fit down narrow two-way streets, will pull off to the side, let a neighbor pass, and then wave.
Mr. Broadhead, who has fond memories of barefoot summers growing up in the neighborhood, remembers when, half a century ago, streets were unpaved and the adjacent parkland held stables and a tomato farm. He is not alone.
“Down here, they would say you’re new to the neighborhood if you lived here 30 years,” he said. Hipsterization, he added, is unlikely: “I can’t imagine anyone who would rather live in the Village or Park Slope or anywhere else deciding, ‘Oh, I’d rather live in Gerritsen Beach.’ ”
That is fine with most residents, he said, adding, “I say, let ’em think it’s a shantytown.”
WHAT YOU’LL FIND
Gerritsen Avenue, which runs along the eastern edge of the 0.25-square-mile neighborhood, has a pizza place, a bagel store, a couple of bars, a public library and a few churches. There are also some attached houses, and a one-story office building that is being expanded, with two new stories of condominiums on top. The work is a matter of some local controversy, Mr. Broadhead said. There is a general resistance to any new construction that isn’t strictly low-rise.
Most of the 5,200 or so residents (about 95 percent are white) live west of Gerritsen, in two grids of streets divided by a canal. Many streets are one-way, and all eventually dead-end into the water. Even most two-way streets are narrow enough that cars can park only on one side. Ms. Scavo says the streetscape breeds neighborly familiarity.
“It’s very, very tight,” she said. “It’s not like you’re going to have a neighbor and you’re not going to bump into the guy.”
Roads are in need of repair, she said, but there is not enough government money available do all the work. But Ms. Garson, who is also assistant chief of the neighborhood’s volunteer fire department, said that flooding, while severe during large generational storms, is also relatively rare.
“Most people love the water, love to live on the water,” she said, “but every once in a while, something happens.”
Lots in the neighborhood are relatively compact — mostly 40 by 45 feet in the older section, south of the canal, and 34 by 52 feet in the newer section to the north, Ms. Garson said, adding that waterfront lots measure 24 by 70 feet. But some residents have built bigger houses, she added, by combining two or as many as four lots, as a means of including yards, garages or driveways.
One of her sons, Ms. Garson said, bought a small bungalow in 2004 for about $250,000 and raised it up, adding in a basement, then building a second floor on top a few years later. It is now worth closer to $500,000, she said.
WHAT YOU’LL PAY
Ms. Garson says the most affordable houses are small bungalows, often with around 800 square feet and two bedrooms; they sell around $240,000. The next step up, she said, are houses of roughly the same size but with finished basements, selling around $350,000.
She estimates that the neighborhood has about 1,700 houses, and that 40 to 50 are on the market — more than usual, in a lingering effect of the downturn.
Sale prices climb to $600,000 or higher for houses on the water, or on double lots, especially the rebuilt ones.
Ms. Graves said rental rates — typically for apartments within detached houses — run $1,000 a month or so for one-bedrooms, and $1,400 or $1,500 a month for two-bedrooms.
WHAT TO DO
Kiddie Beach, at the end of Lois Avenue by the southern tip, is owned by the property owners’ association, and accessible to owners or renters who are members. There is also a small beach, ringed with grass, at the end of Gerritsen Avenue on the edge of Marine Park. The spot has become popular with fishers and personal watercrafters. The latter, Mr. Broadhead said, have become a concern for residents.
Marine Park also has sports fields, bocce courts and a golf course.
The Gerritsen Beach Fire Department was founded in 1922, originally because the area was too far away from the nearest city fire departments. It is believed to be among the last volunteer departments in Brooklyn.
THE SCHOOLS
Elementary age students attend Public School 277, on Gerritsen Avenue, which received a C on its most recent city report card. On state tests in 2011, 73.7 percent of students scored at or above grade level in English, while 83.4 percent were proficient in math.
Middle school students are zoned to attend Junior High School 278 on Stuart Street in Marine Park. The school received a D on its report card, with 43 percent of tested students proficient in English, 47.6 percent in math.
Nearby secondary schools include Sheepshead Bay High School, on Avenue X, where in 2011 SAT averages were 390 in reading, 408 in math and 381 in writing. Citywide averages during the same period were 436, 460 and 431.
THE COMMUTE
Two city bus lines run down Gerritsen Avenue: the BM4, an express bus stopping in downtown and Midtown Manhattan, and the B31, which connects to the B and Q trains at Kings Highway. All told, the trip to Manhattan can take over an hour, though Mr. Broadhead says it can be as short as 45 minutes for those who know what they are doing. Still, he added, recent reductions in bus service have made the journey more treacherous, especially late at night, when the bus no longer runs.
The Belt Parkway passes within sight of the neighborhood, though the nearest on-ramp is a short drive away.
THE HISTORY
The place is named after Wolphert Gerretse, a settler who helped found the New Netherlands colony in the 1600s. A developer called Realty Associates bought the land in the early 1920s, developing houses over the ensuing decade. The St. James Lutheran Church was founded on Gerritsen Avenue in 1924. In recent years, the neighborhood has been used occasionally for movie shoots; in Martin Scorsese’s “The Departed,” it served as a stand-in for the Boston waterfront.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/re...medium=twitter
When Is a Neighborhood a Sandwich?
By ALISON GREGOR
Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
Pedestrians at 18th Avenue and 62nd Street in Mapleton.
MAPLETON is on New York City’s street closures map. You’ll also find houses in Mapleton on real estate sites like Trulia and Streeteasy. There’s a Mapleton branch of the public library and a Mapleton public school, along with a bowling alley and a Kiwanis Club. But just where the heck is Mapleton, Brooklyn?
If the borough’s history is one of neighborhoods buffeting one another with each new wave of immigration, Mapleton, which is at least a century old, appears to have gotten the squeeze. Years ago, Italians claimed the southern portion for Bensonhurst, while Hasidic and Orthodox Jewish families have pushed the borders of Borough Park to include the northern section.
And most recently, Chinese immigrants overflowing from Sunset Park and other areas are settling in the southwestern portion.
“I’m a Kiwanian, and we actually have a Mapleton club,” said Michael E. Napolitano, an associate broker with Re/Max Metro who lives nearby in the Bath Beach section of Bensonhurst. “But they don’t even meet in Mapleton. I guess the name is pretty old, and over the years the name has been diluted and nobody really uses it anymore.”
Even if that’s so, Mapleton is a community apart from the two rather homogenous ones sandwiching it, said David G. Greenfield, who is a resident.
“Mapleton is sort of like the melting pot in the middle,” added Mr. Greenfield, a city councilman. “On a typical block, you’ll probably find several Hasidic families, several Italian-American families and several Asian-American families. They all get along very well.”
So what makes up Mapleton today? The Web site for the Mapleton School indicates that Mapleton constitutes the approximately 60 blocks that stretch from 16th Avenue on the west to Dahill Road on the east, and from 57th Street on the north to 65th Street on the south. On the Internet, sites like Google Maps show Mapleton as a triangle generally in that same area, except its peak stretches up to the intersection of 18th and McDonald Avenues. According to 2010 census data, Mapleton has about 27,000 people.
Some people see the northern boundary of Washington Cemetery, a predominantly Jewish cemetery that is one of the largest in Brooklyn, as the northern limit of Mapleton. And because of the Mapleton School and the Mapleton branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, which are both in the 60th Street area, the name rings bells with many locals who otherwise would not describe themselves as living there.
Often called Borough Park north of 60th Street and Bensonhurst south of 60th, the area is almost completely residential, with small retail shops and restaurants on some avenues, particularly in the Bensonhurst portion.
There have been setbacks since the 2008 housing crash. One Hasidic resident, who asked not to be identified, said that he had bought his three-bedroom two-bath home six years ago for $725,000 — and that its value had depreciated at least 35 percent.
But with everything he needs around him, the resident said, he probably wouldn’t have moved anyway. “It’s a community,” he said. “Everything you need for an Orthodox Jewish life is in the neighborhood. The schools for the boys, for the girls. The stores, kosher restaurants, everything. My parents, my wife’s parents, my brothers, my sisters, my uncles — I see them every day.”
WHAT YOU’LL FIND
When Mapleton was developed as Mapleton Park, beginning around 1910, homes were built of brick with large porches on 30-by-100-foot lots cut out of farmland. The area was one of the “choicest home communities” in that part of Brooklyn, according to an article in The New York Times from 1914.
Nowadays, Mapleton consists primarily of one- and two-family attached and semiattached homes of brick or clapboard, many about a century old. A substantial number still have small porches or stoops, or even a bit of lawn. On Mapleton’s fringes are some small four- and six-family apartment buildings, Mr. Napolitano said.
Eighteenth Avenue between 57th and 65th Streets is full of small shops, an increasing number of them serving the Asian residents moving in. One of the oldest businesses, 62-year-old J & V Pizzeria, belongs to Italian immigrants — a reflection of a bygone era. The owner, Vito Conigliaro, originally from the Sicilian city of Palermo, speaks English and Spanish to get by, in addition to his native Italian, though he doesn’t know Mandarin or Cantonese.
“There’s a lot of Hispanic people here,” he said, kneading thick ropes of dough. “When you work with Hispanic people you learn the language. Now, 45 percent of the area is owned by Asians.”
Mr. Conigliaro’s pizzeria is surrounded by Asian grocers, bakeries and restaurants, though there’s still an Italian pork store across the street. Two blocks east, on 20th Avenue, the mix of businesses is even more diverse, reflecting Mapleton as a melting pot, with signs in Arabic, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Hebrew, Korean and English.
“Today,” declares the Public School 48 The Mapleton School site, “our population is a mixture of Italian, Jewish, Asian, Pakistan, Polish, Latino and Arab families.”
North of 60th Street, the neighborhood tends to be quieter, encompassing Washington Cemetery and the 6.4-acre Gravesend Park; there are fewer businesses, and most have signs in Hebrew. There are glatt kosher restaurants, kosher wine shops, a big kosher supermarket called Goldberg’s Grocery Glatt Meat, and even kosher pizzerias.
WHAT YOU’LL PAY
Home prices fell about 10 percent in the recession, but the neighborhood has remained healthy with the large numbers of Chinese immigrants moving into its southern portion, as well as the rapidly growing population of Hasidic residents to the north.
“I know it’s a pretty hot neighborhood right now, and a lot of people are coming in and buying,” said Joseph Giordano, an agent with Coldwell Banker Reliable.
On Trulia.com there are 99 sale listings in Mapleton; Brooklyn’s Multiple Listing Service doesn’t have a separate category for the area.
The average sale price for a two-family home is about $660,000; a single-family home would sell for about $600,000, Mr. Giordano said. According to Mr. Napolitano, small four-family buildings are selling around $1 million.
Mike Daus, an agent with Charles Rutenberg, says that studios rent for $700 to $900 a month, one-bedrooms for $1,000 to $1,200, and two-bedrooms for up to $1,600.
THE COMMUTE
Residents like the easy commute to Manhattan. “It’s convenient to the subways, and there’s lots of transportation,” said Sister Elizabeth Schroeder, who has lived in the neighborhood at the St. Athanasius Convent for 17 years.
The N and the F subways make several stops here, making Midtown Manhattan and even parts of Queens accessible along with Coney Island. The ride into Midtown typically takes 45 to 55 minutes. There are several local bus lines, including the B9, B6, B8 and B11.
WHAT TO DO
From 1916 to at least 1920, Mapleton had a baseball field at 62nd Street and 20th Avenue, called Mapleton Oval or simply Mapleton Park. There are no signs of it today. Athletic activity has shifted northwest to Gravesend Park, which has a playground, ball fields and basketball courts, and offerings like bocce and tennis.
By the end of 2013, the playground will be greatly expanded, said Wolf Sender, the district manager of Community Board 12, which encompasses the northern part of Mapleton. About $15 million has been earmarked for the park, which is on 18th Avenue between 56th and 58th Streets.
“The area now has got a lot of children, the Mapleton area,” Mr. Sender said. “There’s a lot of large families. Hasidic families on the average are 5 to 10 children.”
The Mapleton library branch, at 60th Street and 17th Avenue, is a popular outpost of the library system. Mapleton also has as its namesake the bowling alley Maple Lanes, on 60th Street near 16th Avenue — but not for long. The bowling alley is to be demolished to make way for more three-family homes, Councilman Greenfield said.
THE SCHOOLS
While some Catholic boys in Brooklyn travel long distances to go to Xaverian High School in Bay Ridge, some Catholic girls do the same to go to Bishop Kearney High School at 60th Street and Bay Parkway in Mapleton, Mr. Napolitano said.
Among the public primary options, the Mapleton School serves about 620 students from prekindergarten through fifth grade. It got a B on its most recent city progress report, with 60 percent of tested students showing mastery in English, 79.5 in math, versus 47 and 60 citywide. A public secondary option is the Franklin Delano Roosevelt High School at 20th Avenue near 59th Street, where SAT averages in 2011 were 382 in reading, 485 in math and 382 in writing, versus 436, 460 and 431 citywide.
THE HISTORY
Mapleton, Borough Park and Bensonhurst, along with Bay Ridge, Fort Hamilton and Dyker Heights, all used to be part of a Dutch village known as New Utrecht, said Ron Schweiger, the Brooklyn borough historian.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/r...ref=realestate
Assets Many, Listings Few
By VERA HALLER
Michael Nagle for The New York Times
Residential blocks in Bath Beach, like this one on Bay 20th Street, are often lined with red-brick
row houses and open to wide vistas of Gravesend Bay.
More Photos »
At St. Finbar Roman Catholic Church, the Rev. Michael Louis Gelfant presides over a flock that spans an old and new Bath Beach.
He leads a Sunday morning Mass in English and Italian for parishioners, many of them Italian-Americans who have lived in this South Brooklyn neighborhood for decades. The afternoon Mass is celebrated in Spanish for more recent arrivals, many from Guatemala and Mexico.
Bath Beach is a neighborhood of melding communities, a long-ago beach resort along Gravesend Bay that became an Italian-American area and is now increasingly home to Chinese-American families and recent Latino immigrants.
As the ethnicities begin to blend, Father Gelfant said, some Hispanic families are attending special children’s Masses in English, forgoing the Spanish versions later in the day. He views this as a result of the Spanish speakers’ increasing comfort level with the language.
He said parishioners had begun a fund-raising drive for the commission of a statue of Archangel St. Michael — the patron saint of the cathedral in the Guatemalan town of Totonicapán, where many parishioners came from — to be erected on church grounds. The effort was another sign that the Guatemalan community is growing roots here. “It will be a very large statue,” he said.
As for the growing Chinese population, it is drawn to Bath Beach — a neat rectangle of about a square mile sandwiched between Bensonhurst and Gravesend Bay — by its larger homes, good schools and subway access.
Eric Chan, a broker who owns Exit Realty Best in Bath Beach, says about 90 percent of the people he meets who are looking to buy in Bath Beach are of Chinese or Asian heritage. He pointed out the growing number of restaurants and markets on 86th Street, the main shopping area, that cater to Chinese residents.
According to 2010 census data that the city government sorted by neighborhood, 55 percent of Bath Beach’s 29,931 residents were white, 30 percent were Asian and 13 percent Hispanic. The Asian and Hispanic populations had both grown by nearly 70 percent since the 2000 census, the numbers showed.
Mr. Chan says some Chinese buyers already own single-family homes in Bath Beach and are looking for places to accommodate multiple generations as their children marry and have families.
Others are coming from Sunset Park in search of a quieter Brooklyn neighborhood, and still others are second-generation Chinese-Americans from Chinatown in Manhattan who want more space for their children and elderly parents. The neighborhood’s multifamily houses are especially sought after, Mr. Chan said.
Kathy Samaris, a broker at Pecoraro Realty in Bath Beach who has lived in the area her whole life, said she welcomed the changes in demographics. She described many of the Italian-Americans who remain in Bath Beach as elderly people whose children had long since moved on to Long Island, New Jersey or Staten Island to start families of their own. The recent arrivals bring new life to the area. “It’s so nice to see the young children,” Ms. Samaris said.
What You’ll Find
According to Brooklyn Community Board 11, Bath Beach is defined by Gravesend Bay to the south, 86th Street to the north, 14th Avenue to the west and Bay Parkway to the east. Some brokers lump Bath Beach together with Bensonhurst, its neighbor to the north.
Although the Belt Parkway, built in the late 1930s by Robert Moses, precludes direct access to the water, its presence at the bottom of Bath Beach imparts a distinctive quality. Residential streets run north to south from 86th Street to the parkway, and many blocks open up to wide vistas of Gravesend Bay.
The most prevalent house style is the squared-off red-brick row house, often with a small front yard and a porch with an awning. There are also various multifamilies with two to four units, both wood-frame and brick. Among new options are midsize brick co-ops of as many as six units.
The area also has rentals. Along the Belt Parkway, for instance, is the 32-building campus of Shore Haven, built in 1949 by Fred Trump, Donald J. Trump’s father. Immigrants from Mexico and Central America live in some of the rentals closer to Bath Avenue, where Guatemalan shops are popping up.
What You’ll Pay
Anthony Mussolino, an associate broker at Ben Bay Realty, says one-family houses start around $500,000 and go higher depending on size and parking. Multifamilies begin at $650,000 and can reach $1 million, he said.
A search of Bath Beach properties on Trulia.com turned up 85 listings ranging from $199,000, for a one-bedroom one-bath co-op in a three-story brick building, to $1.1 million for a two-family with six bedrooms, four baths and a pool.
Mr. Mussolino, like other local brokers, said housing prices had dipped slightly during the economic downturn but were now back at pre-2007 levels. Tight inventory and a high demand have kept the prices strong, he said.
“The one- and two-family houses cater to young professionals as well as families with children,” he said, extolling the attributes of homes close to the city with parking, a backyard and the added convenience of the Belt Parkway.
What to Do
Residents are well situated to take part in outdoor activities. The Belt Parkway Promenade, with 4.3 miles of waterfront walkway, is ideal for jogging, walking or in-line skating. The promenade offers spectacular views of the bay and the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Residents can access the promenade via a footbridge over the highway near 17th Street, or by following Bay Parkway until it dead-ends at the water. Bensonhurst Park, at Cropsey Avenue and Bay Parkway, has playgrounds and basketball courts. Dyker Beach Park, which runs along Bath Beach’s western border, has tennis courts, one of Brooklyn’s two public golf courses (the other is in Marine Park), baseball fields and the CityPark Junior Golf Center.
Residents do most of their shopping on 86th Street, which has boutiques as well as chain retailers like the Gap and Marshalls. Caesar’s Bay Shopping Center, on the bay off Bay Parkway, was damaged by flooding from Hurricane Sandy. Some stores, including Kohl’s, remain closed.
The Commute
In addition to easy access to the Belt Parkway — a conduit to the Verrazano, Staten Island and New Jersey in one direction and the parkways of Long Island in the other — residents have good public transportation options. The D train runs on elevated tracks along 86th Street. Commuters heading to Rockefeller Center in Midtown from the Bay Parkway station have a 45-minute ride during rush hour. There are also two express buses, the X28 and X38. The trip to Lower Manhattan takes about 45 minutes.
The Schools
Mr. Mussolino cited the public elementary schools as a particular attraction. They include Public School 229 on Benson Avenue, which runs through Grade 8; P. S. 163 on Bay 14th Street, also through Grade 8; and P. S. 101 The Verrazano, on Benson Avenue, which stops after Grade 5. At the most sought after, P. S. 229, 82 percent of third graders last year met standards in English and 85 percent in math, versus 49 and 57 percent citywide. For high school, most students travel outside the neighborhood. SAT averages last year at the New Utrecht High School in Dyker Heights, which has about 3,200 students, were 416 in reading, 485 in math and 413 in writing, versus 496, 514 and 488 citywide.
The History
Named after the English spa town of Bath, the area started life as a waterside resort. Historical accounts describe yacht clubs and villas lining the bay, and a popular restaurant, Captain’s Pier. There was even an amusement park, Ulmer Park, created by the Ulmer Brewery, with rides and a dance hall. It closed in 1899 as Coney Island gained a following.
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/r...tings-few.html
Brooklyn’s New Gentrification Frontiers
Dave Sanders for The New York Times
Those priced out of Brooklyn Heights, Williamsburg and Park Slope have begun house hunting deeper in Brooklyn, including, clockwise from upper left, Bushwick, Crown Heights, Sunset Park and Ditmas Park.
By MICHELLE HIGGINS
Published: March 8, 2013
Enlarge This Image
Dave Sanders for The New York Times
Town houses in the historic district in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, top, sell for well over $1 million. A renovated studio co-op in a prewar elevator building on Winthrop Street is a little less pricey, at $105,000. Barbara Brown-Allen(718) 780-8181; elliman.com
The subway commute to Manhattan is longer, and organic markets and stylish boutiques are fewer. But those are the trade-offs as the search for more affordable real estate in Brooklyn pushes deeper into neighborhoods that for some New Yorkers still evoke images of burned-out buildings, riots and poverty. Many Brooklynites, priced out of Williamsburg, Boerum Hill, Carroll Gardens and Park Slope, are heading farther in. They are turning to neighborhoods like Sunset Park, Crown Heights, Bushwick and Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, bringing a willingness and an ability to pay more for housing than the waves of residents who came before them.
“What many clients have told me is that they like the old Brooklyn vibe of these up-and-coming areas,” said Kristen Larkin, an agent with TOWN Residential. “They like the sense of community, friendliness of the neighbors, and the mom-and-pop shops that come along with it.”
Brokers and developers say the cross-Brooklyn migration has picked up in recent years, as recent college graduates, artists and families, mostly white, seek new affordable neighborhoods. The median real estate price for Boerum Hill ($675,000), Carroll Gardens ($677,500) and Cobble Hill ($750,000), once viewed as out-of-the-way destinations for renters and homeowners unable to afford Manhattan, now rivals those in the northern reaches of the Upper East and West Sides and parts of Lower Manhattan, according to Streeteasy.com.
Park Slope reached a new median high of $670,500 last year. The median price in 2012 in prime sections of Williamsburg, including its waterfront, was $765,000, which outpaced even Manhattan destinations like the Gramercy Park area, where the median was $725,000 for the same period.
Housing prices in neighborhoods deeper inside Brooklyn are even competing with or surpassing real estate in solidly middle-class areas of Westchester County, Long Island and northern New Jersey, according to Trulia.com.
Sunset Park
Stretching along New York Harbor between Greenwood Heights to the north and Bay Ridge to the south, Sunset Park has long been a magnet for working-class immigrants. Once almost exclusively Scandinavian, the area is now home to large Chinese and Hispanic communities.
Its lovely hillside park offers striking Manhattan views and has a recreation complex with a gym and an Olympic-size outdoor pool. The local Chinatown is larger than Manhattan’s, and express D subway line trains make the eastern area a bit more accessible than neighborhoods reliant on the F and other sluggish trains. Last year the median sale price was $280,000, according to Streeteasy.
A new green space, Bush Terminal Piers Park, is scheduled to open this summer along the waterfront between 43rd and 51st Streets, offering softball and soccer fields, tidal ponds, walking paths and a wooded area. Other stretches of the industrial waterfront are being refashioned to attract artists and artisanal food manufacturers. Last month the chocolatier Jacques Torres announced that he was opening a factory, designed with tourist viewing in mind, in a 40,000-square-foot space in the Brooklyn Army Terminal. In 2000, the opening of Jacques Torres Chocolate in Dumbo was among the clearest signals of the gentrification that was to come.
Erika Storella, a literary agent, and her husband, Daniel Heidkamp, a painter, were living in Greenpoint when they began hanging out at a friend’s art studio on the industrial waterfront in Sunset Park a couple of years ago. “We were drawn in by the sense of fresh creative energy in this neighborhood, as well as the beautiful park, the city views, and the historical details of the Finnish Co-ops,” she said, referring to some of the first co-ops in the city, on 43rd Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues.
In January of last year, the couple, who now have a 6-month-old son, bought a two-bedroom co-op a half a block from Sunset Park for less than $300,000. The listing agent was Peter Bracichowicz, a Corcoran broker who specializes in the area. Mr. Heidkamp also moved his painting studio to Sunset Park from Greenpoint.
Ms. Storella’s commute to Midtown has doubled, to about an hour each way, and she pines for a good wine store. But there are benefits: “We appreciate the natural beauty of the neighborhood,” she said. “We walk through the park almost every day with our son. We eat a lot of dumplings and burritos, and there is a new organic/local restaurant that we frequent called Café Zona Sur.”
Ditmas Park/ Kensington
A decade ago, buyers drawn to Ditmas Park’s Victorians, complete with front porches, backyards and driveways, would have found 99-cent shops and vacant storefronts lining Cortelyou Road, the main business strip. Today Cortelyou has a number of popular restaurants, bars, cafes and shops catering to an evolving clientele. A recent addition, Brooklyn Industries, the hipster outfitter, opened its 16th clothing store at the corner of Cortelyou and Marlborough in December. That’s a good distance from Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, where the first shop opened in 2001.
Ditmas Park’s increasing gentrification is helping attract and retain families who might previously have gone to the suburbs. “There’s more holding them here now,” said Jan Rosenberg, who has lived in the neighborhood for more than 20 years and is a founder of Brooklyn Hearth Realty. “It’s more of a neighborhood.”
Younger families who bought one- or two-bedrooms and had another child are now selling those apartments and buying the next step up, she said. Sometimes that might be a grand Victorian, but more often it’s a smaller home nearby in Kensington, a diverse neighborhood of Orthodox Jews and immigrants from Pakistan, the Darfur region of Sudan, and Poland, among many other places.
Next Page »
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/re...me-prices.html
Columbia Street Waterfront District
Between the Drink and the B.Q.E.
By JOHN FREEMAN GILL
Daniel Krieger for The New York Times
The Columbia Waterfront District, a sliver of blocks west of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway,
draws gay couples and is popular with young families. Scooter Bottega sits at 65 Union Street.
Daniel Krieger for The New York Times
29 TIFFANY PLACE, #6G
A four-bedroom two-bath condo with water views, listed at $1.695 million.
Daniel Krieger for The New York Times
57 CARROLL STREET, #1R
A two-bedroom one-bath condo with a shared barbecue area, listed at $555,000.More Photos »
Daniel Krieger for The New York Times
145 SACKETT STREET, #4B
A studio with a shared roof deck with Manhattan views, listed at $410,000
A cynic might call this Mosesville. Ever since the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel were built in the 1940s, courtesy of the powerful city planner Robert Moses, the semi-industrial strip of South Brooklyn now called the Columbia Street Waterfront District has been a skinny, scruffy island of a neighborhood cut off from adjacent areas.
In recent years, however, the roaring traffic trench of the expressway has been losing its force as a psychological barrier between the up-and-coming Columbia Street district and the more affluent residential neighborhoods to its east, Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens.
“It’s not a problem getting people to cross the B.Q.E. anymore,” said Frank Manzione, an associate broker at Realty Collective who has sold real estate in the area for decades. “Years ago, people would say: ‘Frank, I can’t even buy a pair of nylons. Frank, I can’t even buy a greeting card,’ ” he said. “That’s probably still true here, but it’s not a problem because people don’t care about that as much as they value the seclusion and the distinctiveness of the neighborhood.”
Elliott Arkin, a sculptor, was one of those who swore they would never move west of the B.Q.E. But in 2004, while living in Cobble Hill, he found himself looking across the highway from the window of his condominium on Degraw and Hicks Streets, pondering the value to be found in the Columbia district. With his daughter nearing kindergarten age, he was also enticed by the highly regarded Public School 29.
In 2005, he and his wife, Deborah Wingert, a dance teacher, paid $900,000 for a “dumpy building” on the southwest corner of Hicks and Union Streets, a two-story structure facing the highway. The building had three commercial spaces on the ground floor, one vacant and the other two leased by a florist and a chimney sweep.
The rental income made the equation work. “I basically have the New York dream of owning a place, and the rent pays my mortgage,” Mr. Arkin said.
He and Ms. Wingert spent $100,000 renovating the upstairs two-bedroom unit in a loft style and adding a glass sculpture studio. The rumble of passing trucks can be felt, but Mr. Arkin is at peace. “I literally only moved two blocks,” he said, “and I don’t see it as any different in terms of inconvenience. I still go to Court Street and Smith Street as I did before.” For shopping he walks to Met Food on Henry Street, traversing one of the few streets that cross the B.Q.E., or drives to Trader Joe’s in Cobble Hill or to Fairway in Red Hook.
The uncrowded, low-rise character of the district gives some blocks the feeling of an urban small town. Mr. Arkin and his family eat regularly at Petite Crevette, the catch-of-the-day restaurant that rents space downstairs from them. Next door, Mr. Arkin runs a vest-pocket gallery, through whose window a sculptor has been seen at work on a statue of St. Salvatore for an owner of the Famous House of Pizza and Calzone around the corner.
“It’s got a more relaxed vibe than Carroll Gardens,” said Frank Galeano, who sells real estate out of the Union Street row house, west of the B.Q.E., where he grew up in the 1970s and ’80s. “You talk to your neighbor, and you might have a beer standing in front of your house.”
What You’ll Find
The district is one of Brooklyn’s smallest neighborhoods, about 22 blocks between the B.Q.E. and the waterfront, from Atlantic Avenue to the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel (formerly the Brooklyn-Battery). Sixty percent of its 3,616 residents are white and 23 percent Hispanic, census figures show; African-Americans and Asians each account for 7 percent. The area is popular with gay couples and has also been drawing young families.
The tantalizing proximity to the water, from which it is cut off by working piers, is both its allure and its frustration. Much of Columbia Street offers views of the Manhattan skyline behind a foreground of cargo containers and cranes, which by night are spangled with lights. (The Pier 6 Playground in Brooklyn Bridge Park, at the foot of Atlantic Avenue, is a short trip on Columbia Street’s bike or pedestrian paths.)
But access to the water is blocked within the district by the active Red Hook Container Terminal and by Pier 7, which is leased by a beverage distributor. “If you live in that neighborhood, you cannot get to the waterfront,” said Craig Hammerman, the district manager of Community Board 6. “You are landlocked. It’s frustrating, and it’s a lost opportunity.”
Stronger connections between the Columbia district and publicly accessible stretches of the Brooklyn waterfront are in the works. The bike and footpaths on Columbia and Degraw Streets, part of an envisioned 14-mile Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway, are to be extended south along Van Brunt Street to Hamilton Avenue after city roadway reconstruction, five years behind schedule, is completed. Additionally, the transportation committee of Community Board 6 last month approved a further extension of the greenway south through Red Hook to Louis Valentino Jr. Park, known for its Statue of Liberty views.
The nonprofit Brooklyn Greenway Initiative has also worked with the Regional Plan Association, an advocacy group, to develop conceptual plans for a two-acre park between Columbia and the piers. The property is not yet under Parks Department control.
What You’ll Pay
New condos are popping up, joining hundred-year-old row houses, converted industrial buildings and multifamily urban-renewal town houses built in the ’80s and later.
Sale prices, stuck for years at $500 a square foot, have been rising. Urban-renewal town houses are selling for $600 to $700 a square foot, Mr. Manzione said, adding that new condos were bringing $800 to $900. Two-bedroom condos in a converted house at 118 President Street recently sold for $800,000 to $1.1 million.
At 107 Union Street, Marshall Sohne, a developer, is building an energy-efficient “passive house” with an elevator, Manhattan views, and a garage equipped with an electric car hookup.
Passive houses use highly effective insulation and airtight construction to minimize energy demand.
Mixed-use row houses with retail space on the ground floor had been selling around $1.2 million, Mr. Galeano said, but when the next one comes on the market he expects it to go for nearly $2 million, given rising condo prices.
Two-bedrooms in row houses typically rent around $2,500 a month, he said. Rentals in new buildings like 295 Columbia can cost over $3,000.
A search on Streeteasy.com found just six properties for sale, and nine for rent.
What to Do
Good, comfortable restaurants are close at hand. The Thai hot spot Pok Pok NY has lines down the block. Alma, which has Mexican fare, offers a grittily picturesque view of the piers and Manhattan. The Jalopy Theater and School of Music is a vibrant hangout offering banjo and ukulele lessons.
The Commute
The Columbia district has no subway. To the east, the F and G trains run along Smith Street, with station entrances at Carroll, President and Bergen Streets. Lower Manhattan is a 20-minute trip on the F, with a change to the A; Midtown is a half-hour ride. The B61 bus plies Columbia Street, reaching Downtown Brooklyn in about 15 minutes.
The Schools
Parts of the district are zoned for two popular public elementary schools, P. S. 29 on Henry Street and P. S. 58 on Smith. P.S. 29 got a B for student performance on a recent city progress report; P. S. 58 scored an A.
Nearby middle schools include No. 447 in Boerum Hill, which got an A on its progress report. Public high schools include the South Brooklyn Community High School in Red Hook, where SAT averages last year were 430 in reading, 416 in math, and 425 in writing, versus 434, 461, and 430 citywide.
The History
In the 1840s, when nearby Bergen Hill, “a popular resort for sport and mischief,” was cut down by 130 feet to bring it to the grade of Court Street, the material removed was used to fill in Columbia Street, according to an 1896 Brooklyn Daily Eagle article.
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/24/r...WhDcKoZxhXbraw
B44 Select Bus Service is being built along Nostrand Avenue in Brooklyn. Here is construction at Emmons Ave & Nostrand Ave in Sheepshead Bay:
http://www.sheepsheadbites.com/2013/...strand-avenue/
Ditmas Park
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Coney Island
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Brighton Beach
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Great photos as always, Nexis, especially those Russian mob-financed mid-block mid-rises in Brighton between Neptune and BB Avenue
WOW! Awesome photos, Nexis.
Ditmas Park is out of this world.
That was a fantastic photo tour of the Brighton Beach / Coney Island areas: I enjoyed it too. We should all chip in to buy you a bottle of Smirnoff Vodka for all your kind effort .....HeHe
Thanks i'm not done will Brooklyn yet or Queens or the Bronx , I will explore and photograph a few more neighborhoods...
Brooklyn : Bay Ridge , Dyker Heights , Ocean Parkway
Queens : Elmhurst , Rego Park , Murray Hill , Whitestone
The Bronx : Pelham Bay , Woodlawn , City Island , Orchard Beach
Bay Ridge - Brooklyn
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Next Photo Thread : Newark's Branch Brook Park Cherry Blossom's , Downtown Newark & The Ironbound
Thanks again, Nexus, excellent
The cherry blossoms are gorgeous.
BTW, what is that bridge with the amazing bas-relief friezes in post #99 (couldn't find it)?
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