Bushwick Mural House to Be Razed for Apartments as Sellers Close Nearby Cafe
Bushwick’s mural-covered house at 104 Central Avenue, which seems to have launched a trend of colorful facades in Bushwick, has been sold as a development site and will be razed. The sale closed last week for $1,285,000 but has not yet hit public records. Seller and local business owner Jeremy Sapienza was fed up with Bushwick…
Bushwick’s mural-covered house at 104 Central Avenue, which seems to have launched a trend of colorful facades in Bushwick, has been sold as a development site and will be razed. The sale closed last week for $1,285,000 but has not yet hit public records.
Seller and local business owner Jeremy Sapienza was fed up with Bushwick and saw opportunity in soaring property values. He and partner Luis Velazquez plan to close the last of their two Florida-style Bushwick cafes Sunday, they announced via Facebook Wednesday.
“We’re closing because I haven’t made a dime in two years, Bushwick is a nightmare on earth full of obnoxious yuppie brats, and I’m tired. Maybe that’s not a nice angle, haha,” Sapienza told Brownstoner.
Cafeteria La Mejor at 146 Wilson Avenue will close Sunday. Photo via Cafeteria La Mejor
Sapienza also founded BushwickBK, a hyperlocal blog that chronicled local politics, the art scene, restaurants and real estate until it closed in 2010.
New owner and developer Domes Properties, based in Williamsburg, Wednesday filed a new-building application calling for a four-story building with eight apartments over 5,458 square feet, as NY YIMBY was the first to report. The architect is Diego Aguilera of Rego Park. No applications for a demo permit have been filed.
The property was worth more as a development site than a home because the lot is 25 feet wide. It is part of a trend of frame houses on oversize lots being razed to make way for bigger apartment buildings in Brooklyn, particularly in Bed Stuy, Bushwick, East Williamsburg and Flatbush. (It was a Brownstoner House of the Day in December.)
Sapienza and Velazquez are temporarily renting in South Williamsburg while they contemplate their next move. “There’s good food around and we’re convenient to everything so it’s hard to complain,” said Sapienza.
BushwickBK Coverage [Brownstoner]
Wood-Frame Houses Coverage [Brownstoner]
Seems to me the demise of La Mejor was the fact that they attempted to cater to the obnoxious yuppie brats rather than the employed folks who like to buy coffee en route to their jobs, at hours that La Mejor was not open. As La Mejor was at the end of my street I wish I could have given them my business, but they weren’t open when I left for work and closed before I got home from work. Another neighbor was convinced the building was a front for something else as they never seemed to be open. The only people who may have had access then is people who don’t have jobs, the kind of folks the owner seems to despise.
There are families and working artists in Bushwick, and I’d say more moving in. But if your business isn’t open to serve them, it’s no surprise to see it close.
Nah, exactly backwards. We weren’t in an area with foot traffic — as you well know — so we were always a mid-day destination for people with jobs from home and artists and service industry people. If you think artists are moving IN to Bushwick, instead of barely hanging on, you’ve been reading blogs instead of actually experiencing your neighborhood.
No, I said WORKING artists are moving into Bushwick. I speak for many of newer Bushwick residents employed in creative fields who need coffee in the morning hours. I agree that the artists barely hanging on are moving out. The ones who nurse a $2 coffee all day for free wifi are probably being priced out of the neighborhood.
Wilsons has a line most mornings by 7:30 of people on foot headed to M train. Those customers don’t strike me as obnoxious yuppie brats at all. They appear to be responsible working professionals.
I’d like to add some background:
I’ve lived in Bushwick for nearly 9 years. Only during the last two did I get fed up. Yeah, I know, someone hated me when I got there. But a shift happened two years ago: in demographics, in the market. Bushwick was a bedroom community for the hipsters moving in a decade ago. Then it became their home, they founded organizations of all kinds, and did the best they could to try to become part of the community. When the real estate bubble reinflated — and it is one, sorry stoners — this time it was accompanied by an avalanche of investment capital from hedge funds and Hasids. No normal person could buy a house in Bushwick now, when they have to beat people paying full price in cash and whose investment horizons are measured in decades. This came with the gut renovations of hundreds of railroad buildings. Families and artists left in droves, the people who birthed the orgs I mention above were spread to the winds. People are leaving New York for greener pastures and being replaced by the next, slightly more well-off batch of kids who think THEY’RE gonna make it, baby. And they don’t care about community organizations; Bushwick has reverted back to a white-kid crash pad. This was also accompanied by endless media hype about the neighborhood, which attracted tons of clueless investors and flooded the streets with dozens of new businesses that are all empty of customers.
Meanwhile, Bushwick is dirtier, uglier, and louder than ever before. Often people rationalize gentrification because it comes with good aspects. There are none in Bushwick. It’s just the same problems as before, except many many times more expensive.
We can have this conversation. Hopefully not colored only by tossed-off quotes I shared with Cate not realizing they would be my ONLY words in the post.
–Jeremy
PS: It’s not having my cake and eating it too if I cash out of a place I hate.
Three Diamond Door is empty?
Heavy Woods is empty?
Archie’s is empty?
AP Creative Cafe is empty?
Mominette is empty?
Montana’s Trail House is Empty?
More sour grapes Jeremy. Stop tossing off quotes and stop being a tosser.
Sapienza, with his “I haven’t made a dime” and “yuppie brats” makes it sound like the closing of the cafe is something that’s someone else’s fault.
I went in there once on a hot day looking for a place to chill and read, and was confronted with an empty cafe where the barista was talking to his friend and seem really annoyed to be interrupted.
I turned around and needless to say, I didn’t give him any of my dimes either. It’s not surprising that he hasn’t been handed any in two years. He’s got competition on Wilson, Central and Flushing. He’s probably doing the right thing by cashing in and skipping town.
The mural on 104 Central looks like it was painted by a 5th grader and has nothing to do with the great street art organized by the Bushwick Collective. Sorry to see cafe owners go out of business but equally sorry to see their sour grapes attitude after a failed website and 2 failed cafes in a thriving neighborhood. Fortunately they’ll survive by ny selling their house and cashing in on the price increases brought by the very people they seem to loathe.
Not understanding his comments at all -he runs a cafe (which is yuppie-personified), can’t make any money, says the neighborhood sucks, then cashes out, thereby contributing more to its decline, as he sees it. Guess he wants it both ways.