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We were excited to hear from Weissman Equities about their plans to bring “retail amenities and upgraded rental units” to Bed Stuy East, in the words of Weissman Equities Acquisitions Analyst Shay Sellars. First up is a mixed use building at 426 Bainbridge Street, where renovations will start in the next two weeks. The rendering shows an organic market or cafe, juice bar, bookstore and a wine shop. We’re guessing the retail mix is a suggestion rather than set in stone, but we love the idea. Right now the retail on these blocks is sparse as well as basic —  the occasional bodega, hair salon, and Chinese takeout — but the recent success of Delhi Heights is an encouraging sign. The firm said it is in the process of buying other properties in the area, including on Malcolm X Boulevard, as well. Click through to the jump for more renderings and to see the building as it is now.

 

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What's Your Take? Leave a Comment

  1. While I find the idea of new businesses opening in vacant storefronts heartening, useful, and good, I really don’t like the speed of this flip, or the number of foreclosures I see listed on Trulia in Bed Stuy and Crown Heights. I am not one to believe in conspiracies–but it’s a little harsh, this mass clearing of families who have lived in these neighborhoods forever and how fast their replacement businesses are becoming organic juice bars, wine stores, and bookshops, all of which we know from brownstone booklyn are sure-fire moneymaking businesses that will never, ever close. To look at the scale you’d think it was infinite–that every few blocks we could have another wine store, another korean taco place, another branch of Greenlight or Word and that this kind of expansion–somehow–is “good” and meaningful and sustainable. I guess I know too many families who’ve lost their storefront daycares, their fish markets, their social clubs, their hardware stores, all in the name of improvement to think that a bunch of wine stores and juice bars make a neighborhood.

    I know I’ve been one before pleading for decent coffee–and I know eastern Bed Stuy is underserved in pretty much everything–but, ugh. Another wine store. Where’s the yoga studio? Where’s the beer garden? Where’s the kombucha bar, I ask?

  2. cate obviously knows who butters her bread. seriously, though, this is a brooklyn real estate blog and there has been nothing hotter in brooklyn real estate than bed stuy for months and months now. by far the most comments today are in the bed stuy threads, and this has been the case for a while.

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