Search Results for: gentrification

As the city's land costs rise, interest has been focused on the South Bronx, including the potential for a huge waterfront development above the MTA's Concourse Yards, as 6sqft previously reported. Now, Crains reports that Empire State Development (ESD) has invited developers to present offers for leasing or purchasing a 13-acre South Bronx rail yard along the Harlem River just north of the Willis Avenue Bridge and decking it over to build a residential or mixed-use project.
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Real Estate Trends

December 2, 2016

How 100 years of zoning has shaped New York City

By Cait Etherington

In October, city officials unveiled plans to rezone a large swath of East Harlem. The major thrust of the rezoning initiative is to bring more high-rise buildings to a corridor running several blocks along Park, Second, and Third avenues. By building up, city officials hope the neighborhood will increase its housing stock, including its affordable […]

Proposed towers could bring 500 apartments to Crown Heights, including 140 affordable units

Google Earth rendering created by CityRealty; Image depicts the massing of the proposed buildings, not the design

November 23, 2016

Proposed towers could bring 500 apartments to Crown Heights, including 140 affordable units

Crown Heights is a neighborhood undergoing rapid change, but the western area south of Eastern Parkway has remained relatively quiet and unaltered by new development. However, it appears that could soon change. As The Real Deal reports, Cornell Realty Management is hoping to rezone two parcels at 40 Crown Street and 931 Carroll Street, just one block from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, to make way for a pair of towers that would house more than 500 residential units.
more here

New Developments

November 9, 2016

Target opening a store in new Hell’s Kitchen condo

Over the summer, Chinese developer Xinyuan Real Estate filed plans to build a seven-story, 105,305- square-foot condominium at 615 Tenth Avenue in Hell's Kitchen, their second NYC project after the Oosten in Williamsburg. The address had formerly been home to a Hess gas station until Xinyuan bought the site last January for $57.5 million. Their new 82-unit project, dubbed Hudson Garden, will also have a 29,000-square-foot retail base along the western blockfront between West 44th and 45th Streets, for which the Post reports Target has signed a lease.
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New Developments

November 3, 2016

Apple will open second Brooklyn store at 300 Ashland Place

Apple opened its first Brooklyn store on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg over the summer, which many felt was the final nail in the coffin of the neighborhood's gentrification. The company has now set their sites on another rapidly developing part of the borough, as The Real Deal reports they've inked a 10-year deal for a 12,000-square-foot space in the ground floor Two Trees Management's 300 Ashland Place in Downtown Brooklyn's BAM Cultural District. It was an off-market deal, so there's no asking rent, but sources say the going price for the 32-story rental tower's retail space is $150 per square foot.
More details ahead

New Developments

Former juvenile jail in Hunts Point will be replaced with $300M mixed-use affordable housing complex

Rendering courtesy of WXY Architecture + Urban Design

October 27, 2016

Former juvenile jail in Hunts Point will be replaced with $300M mixed-use affordable housing complex

The Spofford Juvenile Detention Center (later renamed Bridges Juvenile Center) was built in 1957 in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx, quickly gaining a reputation for its poor conditions--the Daily News once described it as "vermin-infested" and said it "held about 100 youth in dark cells with no air conditioning." It was closed in 2011, at which time urban revitalization consultant Majora Carter began her quest to have the site transformed into a mixed-use housing complex. The city eventually stepped in, and today officials announced plans for the Peninsula, an affordable housing development that will rise on the five-acre site and offer 740 apartments, 52,000 square feet of open and recreational space, 49,000 square feet of light industrial space, 48,000 square feet for community facilities like health care providers, 21,000 square feet of retail, and 15,000 square feet of artist space, reports the Wall Street Journal.
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My 630sqft: Inside ‘Store Front’ photographers Karla & James Murray’s East Village home of 22 years

Our ongoing series “My sqft” checks out the homes of 6sqft’s friends and fellow New Yorkers across all the boroughs. Our latest interior adventure brings us to the longtime East Village apartment of acclaimed photographers James and Karla Murray. Want to see your home featured here? Get in touch!

October 26, 2016

My 630sqft: Inside ‘Store Front’ photographers Karla & James Murray’s East Village home of 22 years

You might not immediately recognize their names, but there is no doubt you know their work. Photographers James and Karla Murray burst onto the scene back in 2008 with the release of their seminal book "Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York," a work culling hundreds of images of the bygone retail graphics that once covered the city—and jointly, the mom and pop businesses that vanished alongside them. Since then, the Murrays have released two more tomes of the same vein, and collected countless awards and accolades for their documentary work along the way. In fact, their photographs can now be found in the permanent collections of major institutions around the world, including the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage and the New York Public Library. Their images also decorate the homes of countless celebrities, among them Sarah Jessica Parker, Ralph Lauren, Alicia Keys and Roseanne Barr. In this week's My sqft, 6sqft visits this warm and spunky husband-and-wife team in their East Village home to talk about their tenure in the city (they moved downtown in the 80s—though Karla is from the Bronx) and their ongoing efforts to chronicle what remains of "old New York." We also get a peek inside their studio apartment/workspace of 22 years, which as Karla and James share ahead, has some crazy stories of its own.
go inside their home here

October 19, 2016

East Harlem rezoning would allow for towers of up to 30 stories tall

In 2003, East Harlem received a boost when the Bloomberg administration pushed through a plan to rezone a whopping 57 blocks of the neighborhood. The initiative (the first of its kind in 40 years) allowed for increased density along First, Second, and Third avenues, while preserving the lower slung mid-blocks in between. Following the change, the area saw more than a dozen buildings of 8-12 stories sprout up along its busiest stretches. Now, the de Blasio administration is looking to build even bigger, and on Tuesday officials presented their latest upzoning proposal (pdf), a plan that would allow towers up to 30 stories tall to be constructed in the area.
more here

Affordable Housing

October 12, 2016

Peek into the rooms of millennials around the world (PHOTOS)

While it's certainly fun to admire listing photos for pristine homes dressed up by famous designers, those images are nowhere near as interesting or insightful as getting a raw, unstaged look at how people really live. In a news series called "My Room Project," French filmmaker and photographer John Thackwray takes us into the private spaces of one of the world's most misunderstood groups: millennials.
inside 21 rooms this way

City Living

October 7, 2016

The Urban Lens: Attis Clopton documents New York’s fleeting moments and faces

6sqft’s ongoing series The Urban Lens invites photographers to share work exploring a theme or a place within New York City. In this installment Brooklyn resident Attis Clopton offers us a look at his stunning portraits. Are you a photographer who’d like to see your work featured on The Urban Lens? Get in touch with us at [email protected]. If you ask Attis Clopton what his day job is, he'd quickly respond "musician." However, the drummer, who's travelled the world recording and performing, would be remiss not to mention his impressive photography skills. Though not formally trained, Attis has developed an eye and the ability to capture subjects in a way that many professional photographers struggle with throughout their career. But what may set Attis apart from his contemporaries is his openness, his curiosity and his unpretentious disposition, all of which help him lock into the moment and keep his photos from looking overthought or overdone. Ahead he shares some of his recent favorites with 6sqft.
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The Urban Lens: Photographer Bob Estremera captures vestiges of the Lower East Side’s early days

6sqft’s ongoing series The Urban Lens invites photographers to share work exploring a theme or a place within New York City. In this installment, photographer Bob Estremera documents the historic buildings and businesses of the Lower East Side. Are you a photographer who’d like to see your work featured on The Urban Lens? Get in touch with us at [email protected].

September 30, 2016

The Urban Lens: Photographer Bob Estremera captures vestiges of the Lower East Side’s early days

When Bob lived briefly on the Lower East Side in 2011, he loved "walking its crumbling sidewalks and admiring it’s equally crumbling architecture." But the neighborhood's gentrification was already underway: "Tucked away among the little stores, restaurants, apartments and barber shops, upscale boutique restaurants were making themselves felt with prices and menus that could only be supported from clientele outside the neighborhood," he describes. So he decided to return to the LES and capture what he feels is the area's essence. In this resulting black-and-white series, he turns our attention to vestiges of the early days, "the decayed store fronts and once proud architecture and businesses that have vanished and others still clinging barely to life."
Hear more from Bob and see all the photos

Places

September 30, 2016

Darling one-bedroom townhouse flat in Greenpoint asks just $660K

It's hard not to fall for Greenpoint's mix of waterfront loft energy and quaint, leafy old-school ethnic enclave. On a typically twee and tree-lined block in a prime spot between McCarren and McGolrick Parks, this one-bedroom-with-possibilities co-op at 100 Newel Street, asking $660K, is on the parlor floor of a totally charming building and has great prewar bones; the 800-square-foot apartment's layout, though, is somewhat in need of an update.
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Distinctive Homes

September 26, 2016

Inside the Art Deco banking halls of 20 Exchange; new app will let taxis act like Uber

Take a tour inside the off-limits banking halls of Art Deco skyscraper 20 Exchange Place, now a rental property, but formerly the City Bank-Farmers Trust Building. [Untapped] Victoria’s Secret Model Isabeli Fontana finally sold her Central Park South pad for $2.5 million. [LL NYC] Gentrification is playing a starring role in new NYC-based television shows like “High Maintenance,” “Mr. […]

Uncategorized

September 21, 2016

The Urban Lens: A walk through the 90th annual Feast of San Gennaro in Little Italy

By James and Karla Murray

6sqft’s ongoing series The Urban Lens invites photographers to share work exploring a theme or a place within New York City. In this installment, award-winning authors and photographers James and Karla Murray introduce us to the faces and food vendors that make up the 2016 Feast of San Gennaro in Little Italy. Are you a photographer who’d like to see your work featured on The Urban Lens? Get in touch with us at [email protected]. 2016 marks the 90th anniversary of the Feast of San Gennaro, which is held in the "Little Italy" neighborhood of lower Manhattan from Thursday, September 15 through Sunday, September 25th. The Feast is an 11-day salute to the Patron Saint of Naples, Saint Januaries, and it is the longest and most popular street fair in New York City (anticipated to bring in one million tourists and New Yorkers this year). Little Italy was once known for its large population of Italian immigrants and is now centered on Mulberry Street between Broome and Canal Streets. Italians first began to settle in the area during the 1850s, but by the 1960s, wealthy Italians began to move out and Chinese merchants for the first time began to move north of Canal Street—the traditional boundary between Chinatown and Little Italy. Observing the changes in the neighborhood, Italian merchants and restaurateurs formed an association dedicated to maintaining Mulberry Street north of Canal as an all-Italian enclave, which it still largely remains. Ahead we document some of the longtime New Yorkers, tourists, and decades-old Italian vendors who've added their own flavor to this year's festivities.
our account and more photos here

September 16, 2016

Historic and possibly haunted mansion near Navy Yard is priced to scare at $4.5 million

Though we can see how the otherwise potential-filled historic–and allegedly haunted–Lefferts-Laidlaw mansion at 136 Clinton Avenue in the Clinton Hill/Navy Yard/Wallabout neighborhood may terrify prospective buyers with an ask of $4.499 million, an 1878 New York Times account describes the persistent and mysterious ring-and-run situation that apparently plagued the home’s then-resident, Edward F. Smith. Neither crafty attempts to discover who was responsible for “doorbells rung, doors rattled" on a nightly basis and a brick hurled through a window, nor police intervention could produce a culprit. The house became a fixture on the map of spiritualists who held seances on the sidewalk. Locals suggested the pesky poltergeist might be either a lawyer who had committed suicide on the premises, or, as Mr. Smith suggested (possibly with some sarcasm attached as it was, after all, Brooklyn), Satan.
Does this house look spooky to you?

September 15, 2016

City Council approves La Central development, bringing nearly 1,000 affordable units to the Bronx

On Wednesday the New York City Council voted to approve the La Central development project in the Melrose section of the Bronx, the Daily News reports. The project, which will be designed by FXFOWLE architects, is slated to bring 992 apartments to the borough, all of them designated as affordable housing under Mayor de Blasio’s mandatory inclusionary housing (MIH) legislation. It is the biggest project to be approved to date under the MIH rules, which require some income restricted apartments in projects that need the city's approval.
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September 13, 2016

Lofty details abound at this bright and bold $1.4M Greenpoint condo

By Emily Nonko

This Greenpoint building at 59 Green Street was originally a 19th century flower warehouse, but today it holds apartments with lots of lofty goodness. This two bedroom, which has just hit the market for $1.395 million, boasts exposed brick, wood-beamed, 10-foot ceilings and an open floorplan. Located on the top floor, it also gets lots of light from eight big windows, not to mention views toward the water and Manhattan skyline.
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Distinctive Homes

September 7, 2016

C-Squat: The history of one of NYC’s longest standing squat houses

By Cait Etherington

In the 1980s, the idea that Avenue C would eventually be home to condo developments with names like Boutique 67 would have sent most local residents into a fit of laughter and possibly a fit of rage. At the time, heroin was so widely available in Alphabet City that junkies would simply line up outside local tenements […]

History

August 31, 2016

POLL: Will the South Bronx become the next ‘it’ neighborhood?

When 6sqft shared views yesterday of how a trio of new residential towers will alter the South Bronx skyline, we also looked at developer Keith Rubenstein's ambitious, albeit misguided, plans to rebrand the neighborhood. After dubbing the area "the Piano District" and throwing a party that made light of the troubled "Bronx is Burning" days of the 1970s, locals criticized his insensitivity and blatant attempts to accelerate gentrification. In addition to the aforementioned project, which will yield a total of six towers, Rubenstein is planning a food and beer hall nearby. And he's not the only one turning to this new frontier. Other seemingly "trendy" establishments that have opened up in recent years include the Bronx Brewery, Bronx Baking Company, a slew of coffee shops, and the Port Morris Distillery, and there's the plan to transform the Bronx General Post Office into a dining/drinking/shopping destination. But on the other side of the coin, the Bronx has been a hotbed for affordable housing development. In fact, the borough was issued the most residential permits in the city during the first six months of 2016, likely due to the fact that 43 percent of units under Mayor de Blasio's affording housing plan that began construction during this time were in the Bronx. But is this enough to preserve the diverse culture and demographics of the South Bronx, or is it poised to become the next "it" neighborhood?
Share your thoughts in our poll

Real Estate Trends

August 30, 2016

See how Keith Rubenstein’s trio of South Bronx towers will transform the ‘Piano District’ skyline

Controversial South Bronx Developer Keith Rubenstein of Somerset Partners, along with the Chetrit Group, received approvals earlier this summer for a two-site, six-tower, mixed-use master plan on the Mott Haven banks of the Harlem River. This is the same project that Rubenstein touted as part of his campaign to rebrand the southern portion of the borough as the "Piano District," a marketing ploy that nodded to the piano manufacturers that dotted the area 100 years ago, but that featured a misguided party with burning trash cans and a bullet-ridden car, referencing the horrible "Bronx is burning" days of the 1970s. Contention aside, the development is moving ahead, and CityRealty.com has a 360-degree look at how the first site's three towers (two at 20 stories and one at 25) will transform the South Bronx skyline. These buildings at 2401 Third Avenue will rise just to the northwest of the Third Avenue Bridge, the former site of an 1880s iron works building that will soon boast $3,500/month apartments.
More details ahead

August 26, 2016

‘Laundry-free linens’ perfect for super lazy college kids; Red Hook IKEA should adopt China’s naptime

By Alyssa Alimurung

Heading back to college and hate laundry day? Get your hands on these biodegradable linens that are meant to be thrown away after just a few weeks. [Business Insider] Here’s an idea for Red Hook’s IKEA: In China, IKEA shoppers are allowed to curl up on the furniture for a quick nap. [NYTimes] Hear Majora Carter talk about the […]

Uncategorized

August 25, 2016

Bad tech: Landlords use stalker-like surveillance to weed out ‘risky’ tenants

6sqft recently covered the practice of offering landlords “blacklists” of tenants who may have withheld rent or taken action against previous landlords. Now Quartz reports on the growing use of screening software services and surveillance technology that lets landlords know if prospective tenants have recently arrived from another country, what their social media profiles say about them and even how often they’ve been hitting the bars. Could high-tech data collection and surveillance tools become as dangerous to the diversity of communities as redlining was decades ago?
Is this as scary as it sounds?

Policy

August 23, 2016

Housing lotto kicks off today for 27 Bed-Stuy/Ocean Hill apartments, from $834/month

As a subsection of Bed-Stuy—and with a location adjacent to rapidly gentrifying Bushwick—Ocean Hill has seen renewed interest from developers in the last few years. The approved rezoning of East New York in February has also given the neighborhood a big boost and brokers have started calling the area Brooklyn's "last frontier." As such, although the area median income remains very low ($35,000), home prices are quickly moving skyward and flipping is already in full effect. But not all is lost for those with lesser means. Starting today, qualifying NYC residents can apply for 27 newly constructed apartments at 1676 Broadway and 8 Rockaway Avenue. Apartments ranging from one- to three-bedrooms have been priced between $834 and $1,163 a month and are being offered to households earning between $30,000 and $63,000.
See more on if you qualify here

Affordable Housing

August 22, 2016

Reimagining Streit’s Matzo Factory on the Lower East Side: Two perspectives