Luxury Condos Back in Bushwick

You couldn’t give away a new-construction condo in Bushwick in 2009, but now new ones are starting to appear — along with Miley Cyrus twerking at parties there, apparently, as a story in The New York Times makes official. Brookland Capital has just launched sales at 13 Melrose Place, which is well located on the north side of Bushwick close to Flushing.

They weren’t aiming to attract families, because all the eight units in the building there are one-bedrooms. The condos are aimed at the first time buyer and intended to equal the cost of renting, Brookland Capital’s Boaz Gilad told the Times. “If they’re renting an apartment now for, let’s say, $2,400 a month, we price our units between $2,400 to $2,700 a month for mortgage, taxes and maintenance — but now they own the unit.” Asking prices for the units range from $389,000 to $733,000 (the latter for a one-bedroom duplex with windowless storage space).

Other developments are pushing into still marginal areas by the last Bushwick stops on the J train and L train. A condo development at 1300 Decatur Street, for example, is two blocks from the cemetery and a Superfund site in Ridgewood, Queens.

Much more common are new rental developments in the area. Construction is nowhere near started on the huge Rheingold Brewery development. Above, construction is well along at the block-long development of a church and school at 616 Bushwick Avenue, a rental development not mentioned in the Times article.

The rest of the article describes well-traveled territory such as how trendy Bushwick has become, displacement and rising rents. Interestingly, a new anti-gentrification group, Northwest Bushwick Community Group, which is helping residents stay in their homes, is asking the city to start tracking displacement of residents. What do you think of that idea?

Bushwick Takes the Spotlight [NY Times]