3rd Avenue is Starting to Happen
If 4th Avenue is the next Park Ave. (a laughable notion at this point), does that make 3rd Avenue the next Madison? Silly comparisons aside, 3rd Avenue in Gowanus is quietly transforming into an exciting retail/restaurant corridor. New businesses are joining neighborhood mainstays like the Glory Social Club and more recent ventures such as Canal…
If 4th Avenue is the next Park Ave. (a laughable notion at this point), does that make 3rd Avenue the next Madison? Silly comparisons aside, 3rd Avenue in Gowanus is quietly transforming into an exciting retail/restaurant corridor. New businesses are joining neighborhood mainstays like the Glory Social Club and more recent ventures such as Canal Bar, Le Chandelier Salon, Tri-State Chess, Bella Maria Pizza, and the light manufacturing/artists’ hub at the Old American Can Factory. Here’s a roundup (from south to north) of what’s recently hit and forthcoming:
Bar Tano at 9th St.: Italian restaurant from Slope’s Bar Toto owners; opens this week.
Brick Oven Barbeque on 6th St.: BBQ joint opening in old warehouse.
Whole Foods on 3rd St.: Should come to fruition…eventually.
Home Ec betw. Carroll & 1st St.: Owners of the Flirt boutiques teach sewing lessons.
Hotel at President St.: Construction under way for 4-story hotel.
Crooked Tail Café at President St.: New coffee/sandwich shop; will open in about a month.
Drugstore or Supermarket on Degraw St.: New owner is looking to lease big warehouse.
Skate park at Douglass St.: Local group wants Thomas Greene park revamped with skateboarder friendly features.
Check out the photo montage of the new places and coming attractions on the jump.
ART!
11:43 is probably just some transplanted young shmuck who has a business degree who just moved into Williamsburg who bases his entire ignorant understanding of how his new neighborhood got that way on the painting he doesn’t like in the local gallery.
wtf happened to the union hall thing. you fucked that up
“Artists love to take credit for everything, but they have little to do with gentrification. If artists moved to Brownsville or East New York, does anyone believe that yuppies would follow them in five years?
These areas gentrify because of location (Williamsburg is only one train stop from Manhattan, Fort Greene is near a major transit hub), beautiful architecture (Park Slope, Prospect Heights), or lower rents as compared to Manhattan (nearly all of Brooklyn). Art galleries, easels, paintbrushes, and self-congratulatory people with no talent have little, if anything, to do with this picture.”
spoken from the point of view of a completely clueless individual totally ignorant to the actual real history of the issue at hand. There is real hard concrete PROOF that in areas such as SOHO in the 1960’s and 1970’s, The East Village in the 70’s and 80’s, Williiamsburg in the 90’s and many other area in the City’s history, ARTISTS were the people who moved into otherwise undesirable neighborhoods and slowly created an area that got noticed and transformed into a gentrified neighborhood. Anyone who says otherwise has absolutely no understanding of how the process DID and continues to work. Artists have EVERYTHING to do with what establishes a neighborhood to go the path towrads eventual gentrification. The irony is that once it takes hold, the artists are then pushed out economically.
Artists may be poor but they are not stupid. Of course they are going to pick a downtrotten neighborhhod with warehouse space and cheap rents that’s only one train stop from Manhattan like Williamsburg rather than one like East New York or Brownsville that’s a lot farther. Anybody would.
That being said, yes, if enough artists smoved into Brownsville or East New York and created a scene there the neighborhood would slowly gentrify. It would take longer than five years. But then Williamsburg took a lot longer than five years too., get your facts straight.
Williamsburg has been only one train stop from Manhattan since the subway was built in the early 1900’s. Interesting that it only started to gentrify after Artists moved in about a hundred years later.
Fort Green has been near a major transit hub also since the inception of the subway system. I didn’t see that area gentrifying in the 1970’s. 1980’s or early 1990’s. And the major subway hub was there through all those decades. Only after the artists moved in did it start going upscale.
And anyone who says that an art gallery has nothing to do with the picture of gentrification is a moron. Do you see art galleries in non gentriying or under-developed neighborhoods?
at this point in the game it’s developers who are luring artists into neighborhoods as a primer for development to come. case in point is Chelsea. as far as the Gowanus area, sure there were artists there but it was a largely benign group. Dumbo and Williamsburg were the real thing and were definately primed by the art communities that were there (East Village and Soho were too of course). Gowanus suffers from it’s proximity to Park Slope, period. watch what gets built there (there were no art-community serving cafes already BTW, because it just wasnt’ that sort of place). the development there is not organic, it’s an expansion from Park Slope and it’s going to be the same kind of boring stores that are in PS, not the kinds of places that grow out of artist communities.
I own a building on 3rd Ave btn 8th and 9th street, and in the processes of evicting the current tenant “Atlantic Restaurant”.
This building has been in the fam for years and i cant wait until 3rd ave finally changes.
11:24 typifies the people in the last part of the cycle who have no understanding of the steps that preceded them.
Artists love to take credit for everything, but they have little to do with gentrification. If artists moved to Brownsville or East New York, does anyone believe that yuppies would follow them in five years?
These areas gentrify because of location (Williamsburg is only one train stop from Manhattan, Fort Greene is near a major transit hub), beautiful architecture (Park Slope, Prospect Heights), or lower rents as compared to Manhattan (nearly all of Brooklyn). Art galleries, easels, paintbrushes, and self-congratulatory people with no talent have little, if anything, to do with this picture.
“do not agree that this is developing because of artists. that’s crap.
every area that gentrifies with yuppies sells for higher psf prices.
i live in williamsburg and am so tired of that BS. it’s the people with jobs and money and the local entrepeneurs and developers who gentrified it there. people who don’t spend money aren’t doing much.”
The above comment is bullshit.
If you look at all the dangerous, dark, forgotten industrial neighborhoods in NYC over the decades that have becomne gentrified it is solely because artists moved in when no on else would because of cheap rents and large working spaces. Soho, Williamsburg, etc etc… Local entreneurs and developers NEVER go into a crime ridden, dark, depressing forgotten warehouse area to gentrify unless it has already hit the map for many years of being inhabited by artists. get a clue. Yes you live in Williamsburg, but you are probably a new transplant that has absolutely no idea whatsover what the neighborhhod was like fifteen years ago when it was only artists there and no entrepeneurs and developers.