Results tagged “gentrification”

If the outer boroughs aren't willing to come into the city for their Whole Foods, then the city is making sure it finds a way to get Whole Foods into the outer boroughs. Yesterday the City Planning Commission approved a plan to encourage grocery stores with fresh produce, meats and dairy to expand into poorer areas by allowing them to sidestep existing zoning and development regulations. Supporters of the plan say it would encourage gentrification to continue its sweep across the boroughs.

The name Hell's Kitchen, unlike those of Dumbo and SoHo, was not a creation of the real estate world. CityRoom revisits how the push to change the menacing moniker occurred nearly 50 years ago, when three teenagers were stabbed and two were beaten on West 46th Street between 9th and 10th Avenue. Business owners became upset with the press using "Hell's Kitchen" in coverage of the crime and offered the more neutral "Clinton" after the DeWitt Clinton Park. For real estate purposes, Clinton has become more accepted, but does anyone really use it? A 56-year-old told CityRoom, "Anything was better than Hell's Kitchen... But 20 years ago you wouldn’t be asking me this question. Then the streets were filled with hookers and junkies. And I remember. I’m old so I use old name. A new name doesn’t change the place." And a 26-year-old said, "Clinton is a stupid example of gentrification. I’ll never call it that. It’s a name like Hell’s Kitchen that make New York neighborhoods quirky." Google Maps shows Clinton above 42nd Street and Hell's Kitchen below, while Wikipedia sticks with Hell's Kitchen. And the city can't make up its mind: The DOT calls it "Clinton/Hell's Kitchen" while the City Planning office goes with "Clinton."

Another St. Marks Place icon may have bitten the dust with word that DJ Lenny's Music Stand being shut down by the NYPD. The small stand has sat for over a dozen years on the corner of St. Marks Place and Third Avenue in between former punk club/cheap shots bar The Continental and what is now the restaurant Tahini, selling color-coded mixtapes and bumping hip-hop out onto the street throughout the night. Down by the Hipster reports that "several plain clothes officers confiscating all of Lenny's music and just about everything else from his small booth." The end of an era in the East Village seems to be (d)evolving rapidly in recent months with Kim's Video moving off of St. Mark's, toy store Love Saves the Day closing and the unclear status of the Holiday Cocktail Lounge.

Now that hipsters have gentrified the neighborhood, the Times is reporting that a new group is moving into Williamsburg and undoubtedly endearing themselves just as much to longtime New Yorkers--immigrating Europeans. Europeans have accounted for one-third of those who have scooped up the 2,000 new condos in Williamsburg in the last two years. Europeans say the neighborhood resembles the areas they left behind--like Brighton in England and Marais in Paris. They also find its residents less career-driven than Manhattanites. One Brit who hangs out at the bar Spike Hill tells the paper, “There isn’t that same kind of talk about money and jobs. People leave work at work. It’s more like friends back home.”

Danny Hoch is widely renowned for bringing authentic stories from the New York City streets into the often effete and insular world of theater. While you might recognize him from his supporting role in last year’s We Own the Night or Whiteboyz, the '90s film he wrote and starred in, he is most known for his work on the stage. His latest show, Taking Over, is a return to his signature one-person shows where he takes on a wide spectrum of New Yorkers. In this show, he tackles the hot button issue of gentrification, focusing in on the transformation within Williamsburg primarily from the perspective of natives who have lived through the influx of new residents coming into their neighborhood. The result is a show that often tiptoes an uneasy line of venting the frustrations of lower-income New Yorkers who hoped the impact of new money would mean better hospitals and instead have woken up to an abundance of muffin shops. Taking Over is running at the Public Theater through December 14th.

    

The pigeon keepers of New York have been in the spotlight recently, and now a new JL Aronson documentary, Up on the Roof, looks at the gentrification of Williamsburg through their experiences.

Up on the Roof follows several devoted pigeon breeders in one predominantly Latino section of Brooklyn through the rigors and rewards of a quintessential New York tradition. All along the waterfront, and throughout blue collar Brooklyn, pigeon fancying has been an active pastime for centuries, handed down from one group of residents to the next, and Williamsburg has long been the center of the action. But as with so many once blighted and now hip districts throughout the world, Brooklyn and Williamsburg in particular is being scrubbed of its old world character to make way for a new urbanism. This colorful, urban-wildlife doc considers what we lose in the process of urban renewal and treats the audience like an insider in an unseen and in many ways vanishing world.

Today at 2pm in Tompkins Square Park, there will be a punk concert to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the police riots that took place there. The NY Times has an account of the battle between cops and protesters that took place back on August 6th and 7th, 1988 over a city-imposed curfew of 1 a.m. that had been enacted in an attempt to clean up the rampant homeless population and drug usage that dominated the park's nights. The Times paints the anniversary celebration (which began last weekend) organized by Jerry Wade, aka "Jerry the Peddler", as a bit of an anachronism within a heavily gentrified East Village, pointing out, "these days the park’s curfew is one hour earlier, but it is rarely a source of controversy."

For a couple years now, a Chicago-based group called the Neighbors Project has been encouraging gentrifiers in cities across America to “connect with their diverse neighbors to improve the neighborhood for everyone.” The goal is to neutralize the “polarization” caused by widespread urban gentrification, and also offer advice for people who have had it with the corner bodega’s refusal to carry the New York Times and stock more produce beyond the usual “bananas that look like they're in pain.”

The Brooklyn Flea gets the NY Times treatment today, which succinctly breaks the market's presence in Fort Greene down to this: the old timers just may not like the yuppies much. The dichotomy in this neighborhood drama is that Flea founders Jonathan Butler and Eric Demby are, per the Times, themselves "protectors of so-called Brownstone Brooklyn, defending their adopted homelands of Fort Greene and Clinton, Cobble and Boerum Hills from rampant, insensitive gentrification. So it is disorienting, to say the least, to be cast as the local villains ruining a neighborhood." On Thursday, they told the community members, “Dictating the hours of our business does not seem reasonable. We want to hear your specific concerns. If you just don’t like us, there’s not a whole lot that we can do.”

EV Grieve has details from Friday night's protest over the tenement-to-mansion conversion of 47 East 3rd Street. According to EV Grieve, the protest, organized by other East Village residents (and not remaining tenants at the building), seemed to be "fairly calm and orderly," with "protestors...fenced in by the police" (and the police seemed nice, too). There's also video here. Sidenote: Lately, the cousin of 47 East 3rd Street's owner has apparently been commenting on various blogs, eviscerating his "spoiled brat" cousin.

* are planning a planning a protest tonight--a flyer explains, "Landlord Economakis says: 'Let them Eat Cake.' L.E.S. says let him eat shit." However Alistair Economakis is unhappy with the comparison to Marie Antoinette, writing, "As the statement was invoked to justify the death and destruction that came with the French Revolution, I hope that persons attending the protest do not mistakenly use it to justify the destruction of property." (* The tenants in Economakis's building are not organizing the protest; other EV residents are.)

"Everyone is super excited about the Target." Everyone! Or at least real estate players like Jessica Armstead of the Corcoran Group, who predicts that the Target store finally coming to fruition in East Harlem will “totally change” the area’s lagging pace of gentrification. "It appeals to everyone," she tells the Sun. "You go in to get toothpaste and come out with three bags. It's amazing." Armstead is already luring condo buyers into East Harlem with the amazing, exciting shopping utopia to arrive any year now.

Two years ago The NY Times visited the changing landscape of Harlem; at the time Maya Angelou told them about her part-time neighborhood, saying, "The hope is there. The minute you look down a street and see a Dumpster, you know that's hope." Earlier this year the paper revisited 125th Street and focused in on long time residents and their apprehension about gentrification and the changes afoot that many cannot benefit from. This was around the same time two more Starbucks entering the neighborhood sounded alarms.

Last week the LA Times released a video documenting the gentrification of Carroll Gardens, and now the other, newer locals respond with their own take on the place they call home (also a place they call "East Village East"). These three residents see the silver lining in gentrification; you know what they say, one man's neighborhood mainstay is another man's Duane Reade.

The Daily News scored an exclusive account of life inside the Economakis building on East 3rd Street-- their intern Barry Paddock happens to be one of the tenants getting evicted: "In eviction papers, they laid out a plan to combine our cramped but beloved rent-stabilized apartments into a suburban-style mansion. Apartments on my floor would be demolished and replaced by a hanging walkway overlooking their new two-story living room." Bonus fact: the Economakis family paid less than $1M for the building in 2003-- about the cost of a one bedroom apartment in Manhattan today.

The LA Times, of all papers, takes a look at Carroll Gardens and its old time Italian locals. They're not too happy with the new residents, high rises overshadowing brownstones, and kids playing video games instead of street ball. Take a look...

Last week the LES gentrification piece in New York magazine circa 1984 began circulating again, and now a look back to October 6th, 1985 when the NY Times published an article titled "If You're Thinking of Living In; The East Village." Ah, a time when buyers bargain shopped for run-down buildings in the now pricey neighborhood, seeking out "maximum space for minimal outlay." Even today residents are echoing the "Die Yuppie Scum" sentiment around the vastly changed landscape of the EV; as they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Some choice quotes from the article:
• Catching the eyes of an increasing number of New Yorkers who view it as the next likely alternative to chic Washington Square, the trendy Upper West Side or the East Side.
• Condominium prices and rents for rehabilitated apartments, while lower than in established Manhattan neighborhoods, are rising fast and are likely to keep rising for the next few years.
• Crime, particularly crime related to drug abuse, is prevalent. Drug deals are made openly in Tompkins Square, the neighborhood's only park, and burglaries have risen markedly, according to officials of the Ninth Police Precinct, which serves the area.
• Quality-of-life problems abound. Residents complain that garbage remains uncollected for weeks, graffiti are endemic and the Fire Department says the East Village is among the most arson-prone areas in the city.
• The cultural mix has been further enlivened by an influx of an increasing number of students from New York University, Cooper Union and other colleges, as well as young professionals.

A lively, discontented rabble marched through the East Village Friday night, protesting what they see as the neighborhood’s ongoing desiccation, caused by “real estate developers, landlords, yuppie wine bars and Republicans.” Organized by longtime gadfly John Penley, the group swelled to approximately 100 protesters, who jeered, sang, read poetry and generally condemned others for enjoying fine wine and luxury apartments.

Even back in 1984 there was mainstream media attention on the ever-changing landscape of the Lower East Side and East Village. Real estate was "exploding," chain stores were popping up, and galleries were abundant. The New York Magazine cover story on May 28th of that year was titled: The Lower East Side -- There Goes the Neighborhood.

When it comes to turbo-gentrification, longtime East Village activist John Penley has drawn a line in the sand at the Bowery Wine Co.; the newish wine bar co-owned by actor Bruce Willis. Penley, who joined Jerry "the Peddler" Wade in pushing the Parks Department to permit this August’s concert commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Tompkins Square Park riots, not only objects to the “yuppie” wine bar’s sterile aesthetics but also Willis’s GOP support. A couple months back Penley announced plans to “roast a whole hog” named Bruce.

      

Last night, the Reverend Al Sharpton participated in the monthly Critical Mass rally and bike ride. In his introduction of Sharpton, civil rights lawyer Wylie Stecklow noted Sharpton's relentless fight for civil rights and against unfair police practices. Stecklow also pointed out the Sharpton-led May 7 civil disobedience event was much more peaceful and was actually , compared to what many Critical Mass riders have experienced (the police didn't use orange fences to contain protesters, actually stopped traffic, made repeated warnings they would start arresting people, and processed the 200+ arrestees relatively quickly).

Brooklyn Paper has it that the smaller, funkier Tea Lounge in Park Slope, on Seventh Avenue and Tenth Street, is to close at the end of July. And you’ll never in a million years guess what the reason is! Turns out an obscene rent hike is forcing the neighborhood hang-out to move along and make room for, most likely, a Corcoran real estate office. Where have we heard this tune before?

The Gray Lady slums it out to far East Williamsburg to report on the hipster bohemian squalor of the sprawling McKibbin Street “dorms;” two hulking buildings converted from garment factories to lofts in the late nineties by a trio of savvy Stuyvesant alums. It’s since become a filthy, bed-bug ravaged rite of passage for the young DIY arts set, who pile on top of each other in warren-like lofts more crowded than one of Dan Deacon’s dance-a-thons.

Harlem resident met with city planners in a public forum yesterday afternoon to discuss whether a major rezoning plan will enhance the historic neighborhood or rip out its heart. The zoning plan, covering 124th, 125th, and 126th Streets, paves the way for condos, a 21-story office tower, a hotel, and more.

Leval Lyde, a 36-year-old Brooklyn rapper who went by the street name "Kevlar," was gunned down yesterday on the corner of Clinton Ave. and Fulton St. in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn. Lyde was shot just before 5 p.m. on the street corner and declared dead on arrival at Brooklyn Hospital. Lyde had just exited Fish & Crustaceans Quality Seafood and was walking with his sandwich towards the maroon Jaguar (owned by the mother of his child) when he was shot once in the torso.

City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden was called a "rich, rich, rich horrible person" by an opponent of 125th Street rezoning. The City Planning commission approved rezoning for the boulevard, which means a 21-story building called Harlem Park, which includes new headquarters for Major League Baseball TV, will be one of the many new developments for the neighborood.

The Mayor and City Council are facing off over housing regulations that could lower barriers to low-income tenants receiving federal housing vouchers to subsidize their rents. The City Council is attempting to pass a law which would make it harder for landlords to refuse Section 8 tenants, but Mayor Bloomberg just vetoed the Council-passed law.

The notorious Brooklyn House of Detention – immortalized by everyone from the Beastie Boys to Jonathan Lethem – has been closed since 2003, but plans to reopen the jail at twice its previous size are still moving forward. Last year many newcomers to the steadily gentrifying neighborhood decried plans to bring back the detention center, located at the intersection of Atlantic and Smith.