As the battle to save Bay Ridge’s Green Church from being razed and reborn as condos winds down, the Observer finds the neighborhood is becoming a haven for such “McCondos.” Despite a three-year-old rezoning preventing “‘out-of-character development’ in the low-rise neighborhood,” they write, “tensions between nostalgic residents and developers who continue to squeeze three- and four-story apartment buildings into plots once occupied by single-family homes show no signs of abating.” Residents fear the area will become another “mini Manhattan,” or transform at the pace and scale of downtown Brooklyn. Perhaps as offensive to some as the onslaught of “Feders” buildings are the demolition of century-old limestone townhouses and single-family Victorian homes, the old preservation-versus-progress paradigm, that inevitably recalls nostalgia for an earlier time and extends beyond an attempt to rescue buildings. As one resident said, “We were just telling my brother’s kids about how all the kids in the neighborhood used to play stickball in the street when we were young. Now all the kids are inside playing those electronic games. The whole neighborhood thing is really changing.”
McCondos in Bay Ridge [NY Observer]
Bay Ridge Row Houses. Photo by bondidwhat.