Fort Greene: City's Best Nabe?

Well, not that we need easily ridiculed publicity, but I have to say that for us, Fort Greene is just right. It's the right scale, has an active community crossing many age, cultural, orientatin, and ethnic lines and, people need to realize, it has been a place where, for decades and still today, so-called "mixed" couples can feel at home and comfortable. Living in other parts of the NYC you might not have the same experience--from the horse's mouth. This has been a big plus for us over the many decades.

The public transportation is absolutely excellent and no one should be arguing that point. The proximity to BAM's theatres/cinemas is a real plus for us. The shopping has improved vastly over the years. Parking is easy (esp. right now...). People are friendly. The green market is very cozy and friendly. There are many, many playgrounds. The area is generally pretty and quiet but not way off the beaten track in the least. And, yes, over these last years, there are lots of new dining options, some of which are good. I dislike Smith St. to be honest. The feeling of the street and the difficulty in parking in that area is stressful and I'd rather have a nice, easy-going place to have dinner at a short walk from the house.

I cannot tell you how nice it is in the summer to stroll down to the LIRR and be able to catch a train all the way out to the East End to go to Shelter Island to visit friends and NEVER get in a car. That said, I suppose anyone living within walking distance of the Atlantic Terminal could say the same thing.

Look, I'm a Fort Greene booster...but I felt I had to have my say. I'm not saying other neighborhoods are not wonderful. I'm just saying that for those of us who call Fort Greene home, we tend to really, really like it. It's like the village that you don't want to leave. Park Slope has lots of shops and amenities, and of course, coveted public schools if your kids are that age, but it feels much more "big city" than Fort Greene.

Brooklyn Heights feels non-villagey, although more consolidated and prettier, richer, etc...it feels like a morgue sometimes.

The other areas mentioned above may be more expensive than Fort Greene but none of them feels quite so homey and villagesque. In fact, some areas feel a bit like Hoboken with the level of young professionals trapsing back and forth. It kind of lowers the neighborhoodiness for me.

ms bg

Posted by: BrooklynGreene at February 17, 2009 12:57 PM

I read the article, and yes, it is a bit facile and embarrassing but as Lily Langtree said, any publicity was good publicity...or was that someone else?

Just a note: the writer labeled Lafayette as "Street" instead of "Avenue". Anyone who takes cabs home to Fort Greene knows how to make this distinction to cabbies since they are likely to think you want to go to Lafayette Street in Manhattan if you only say "Lafayette". I find it helpful to say "over the Mahnattan Bridge, up Flatbush to Fulton to Lafayette Avenue."

Oh, well, most of you kids are negative today but I still like our neighborhood.

Posted by: BrooklynGreene at February 17, 2009 2:32 PM

iz,
very amusing! i laughed.

Posted by: BrooklynGreene at February 17, 2009 2:35 PM

Yes, thank you IZ for being pro-Fort Greene. I felt so all alone out there!

Now if Nokilissa and family finally move to Fort Greene, I'm sure we'll have a remarkable booster on our team (Team Princess as opposed to Teams Bull and Bear).

ms bg

Posted by: BrooklynGreene at February 17, 2009 2:44 PM

What kind of deals are you seeking PDT? Are you looking to buy a house or apartment of simply looking for a decent rental?

I seems everything is awfully expensive even with the economic downturn.

I wonder if Fort Greene's recent catapult into the realm of trendy NYC will be its downfall...

I hope we can strike a balance.

Has anyone been to the Irondale Theatre at the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church? When the lights are on, the arched windows on the back of the building as from Cumberland are rather pretty.

Yes, Dave, true, the writer of that article wrote "down Lafayette" when he should have written "up Lafayette"...oh well. Made me wonder how familiar he really is with Fort Greene or if he was just writing this on a deadline as a handout from the editor. I can't imagine he wrote it on spec since he probably would have known his subject better.

Posted by: BrooklynGreene at February 17, 2009 3:12 PM

I got mugged in my own house!

Once I was fussing around in a cabinet and an old mug that I hate fell on my head. Very annoying. The mug must have been aware of the esteem I held it in...

But seriously, with the way the economy is going, I hope we do not see a wild increase in mugging. According to the article earlier today, the muggings are mostly teenager-on-teenager for ipods.

Heather, there are streetlights on the streets of Fort Greene...I hope you're not suggesting we have one per house! Actually, in truth, we really could use the old-fashioned streetlight the City is apparently storing. We (property owners) would have to self-fund their replacement apparently and it would require quite a bit of infrastructure work but would be, in my opinion, well worth it and very Landmarks-oriented.

Posted by: BrooklynGreene at February 17, 2009 3:31 PM

Yes, I have done some damage with the checkbook at the fleamarket.

I have had a couple of run-ins a la "Honey, why are you bringing something ELSE into the house?..."

Okay, so there have been a couple of pity purchases and some things I sort of regretted (always giftable though!), but there are were some pretty wonderful finds!

Posted by: BrooklynGreene at February 17, 2009 3:52 PM

PDT,
Are you looking for a one- or two-family or something with more income?

Some people want to rent out the garden level and live on the parlor floor(and above) and others have their 4-storey house split into two duplexes so the owner(s) live on the ground and parlor floors with the garden and the tenants have a duplex upstairs which can rent for a tidy sum.

I wonder what prices are right now...if you're looking you probably know better than I. I don't have a perfect feal for it a the moment but I do know a double duples went for $1.9 not long ago and a friend of ours got the(ee) top sale price in Fort Greene last year--actually end of 2007...but that, as they say these days, was "last year".

Although, being an oldishtimer, I do have my ear to the rail when it comes to people thinking of moving on to sunnier climes. Give me more of an idea of what you're thinking of and the price range and I'll see who's what where.

Posted by: BrooklynGreene at February 17, 2009 4:16 PM

Oh, and PDT, it depends on how much renovation work you can stomach living through and spending on. I guess purchasing a house is always a balancing act between price, cost of work needed to change/upgrade the house and stomach for renovation.

Fexley, isn't that the house that had the fire and has been moulding and falling into the earth these many years? I would be curious to see that house...but it sounded like it was so icky, a number of people who wrote about it on another thread on Brownstoner were horrified by the state of the place. I guess if you have the wherewithal to do a complete gut renovation and rip out the entire interior structure to the joists...eeek! Some of the people who saw the house made it sound like it was positively dangerous to walk around in.

Posted by: BrooklynGreene at February 17, 2009 5:02 PM

Donatella, I thought there's new food store on Greene? Anyway, yes, going east in FG toward Clinton Hill limits your options. I hear that Fulton has been getting more exciting on that whole stretch up though Clinton Hill but haven't had a chance to really walk it for a long time.

But, as you say, you take the car. It seems this is the trend. Again, let's not forget that parking is a lot easier for us, even in the more crowded western edge of Fort Greene than it is in Brooklyn Heights and Park Slope. I have a feeling that the trend to multi-families being converted to one- and two-family homes and, sadly, the job losses in NYC which leads to Fort Greene being a daytime park-n-ride, has helped decrease the number of parked vehicles in our area. Parking is remarkably easy lately. I've seen whole swathes of "the wrong side" (the side that has street cleaning the next morning) being empty, two, three and even four spaces all night long.

Posted by: BrooklynGreene at February 17, 2009 5:29 PM

Flexy,
Dearheart, how can anyone live in that kind of wreck that is getting that kind of renovation? I certainly wouldn't advise it. It sounds as if the mould and warped floors which all need to be pulled up means the interior may be little more than studs and joists for a long time. And if it needs all new everything, I'm not too sure someone would have even a rudimentary kitchen or even a bathroom...and, goodness knows it would probably drag on and on and on. I'm sure someone will buy that house at the right price.

I'm sorry for posting so many times but Fort Greene is kind of a passion...did anyone notice?

Thanks for everyone's input today.

Posted by: BrooklynGreene at February 17, 2009 5:34 PM

Well A.J.,
WE certainly haven't gone anywhere and yes, there are a LOT of oldtimers (how old is old?)...How can you write "All the old timers were gone"? That is silly and very objective.

I'm sorry you had this shocking experience with a new real estate agent though. I would hate to be the poster child for anything. Do you remember who the agent was and from what agency? How did you handle it?

Look, things had changed and by 2003 when you left it was NOT the Fort Greene of 1993 or 1983 or earlier. I can imagine if you wanted something that edgy or with very little food shopping you were happy.

I have to say, yes, I've been exasperated at times by "the new Fort Greene" you seem to be referring to, but, though I may be a bit insulated from things, I appreciates some of the upsides. Frankly, the same thing was going on all over NYC in many places, not just Fort Greene--you couldn't escape it easily.

Case in point, your neighbor who moved to Harlem...do you mean to tell me Harlem didn't experience "gentrification"? Price increases in Harlem probably outstripped Fort Greene by a long-shot.

I hope you're happy wherever you moved but it might have not only been off your radar screen in 1995 but it might have seemed unpalatable to you then as well. The citywide changes may have changed the neighborhood you moved too quite a bit in the years leading up to 2003.

And I wouldn't write your old neighborhood off so fast. I'm sure if someone left you her brownstone in her will, you'd come back to Fort Greene in a heartbeat, no?

Listen, I can understand the things that irritated you. I understand it and can relate...but your reaction tells me more about you than about Fort Greene.

Posted by: BrooklynGreene at February 17, 2009 6:17 PM

Hi PDT,

I'm not sure you'll be checking back at this point but just to let you know I saw your last note. Yes, I had heard that the house on South Elliot was a mess. Another unfortunate house is that one on Lafayette in so-called "Prime Fort Greene" that had the back fall off during construction and had stop work orders slapped on it.

The other sad one is the one you mention on South Oxford. It had a fire in, say, 1974 (?) and the lady who owns it has battled the insurance company for years. She/the family own a good number of properties. Oddly enough, though she does not need the money (at all!), she goes around collecting cans for the deposits. She tells people it's her Atlantic City money. I guess the old adage "God helps those..." is her life motto.

Anyway, when we're looking to sell and move permanently to the country, we'll let you know though I'm not sure how. We've been thinking of doing a low key sale with no listing. A quick and easy, although with probably less profit for us, type of sale because I would rather not try to wring every last dollar out of selling our house and have to also deal with the associated stress and possible sour deals that fall through. When we do the calculation, even with what people would currently consider a bargain price, the profit will allow us to buy the hobby farm with cash on the barrelhead and still have a nest egg.

I also wouldn't mind selling for just under $1 million so a buyer could avoid the mansion tax. Maybe if the market keeps dropping, we *have to* sell for under $1 million. For now though, I have a feeling all of our real estate friends will be mad with us if we sell for that kind of price.

What does a 2-family prime FG house that needs TLC and new mechanicals go for these days?

Frankly, if you come to the table with an honest sale offer and have good will, you will attract that type of serious buyer. Selling one's house is not necessarily a battle (as it often appears to me) but more a handing off of a home into another's custodianship, especially with these landmarked houses.

To "FGLady" who wrote about the supposed mugging: I have a feeling that was a lie thrown into the conversation. That was your only post ever to this blog. Not that I'm that internet savvy, but even I can click on a name and figure out how many comments have been posted by that person. I live right near the supposed mugging spot and didn't hear about it as yet...and the Brooklyn Paper's crime blotter has nothing...Not that any of this is conclusive evidence to rule out your story but I just wanted to make it clear people need to take these one-off quickie comments with a grain of salt, especially when they lack information. Question, if there were 10 police cars there in seconds, were the muggers caught?...

Posted by: BrooklynGreene at February 18, 2009 3:35 PM