Industry City Rent Hike Last Straw for Some Priced-out Brooklyn Artists
It’s not exactly news that as neighborhoods gentrify, the artists who jump started the process are priced out. However, it may be the end of the line for some artists priced out of Industry City in Brooklyn, the huge industrial complex in Sunset Park, according to a story in The New York Times. The Times…
It’s not exactly news that as neighborhoods gentrify, the artists who jump started the process are priced out. However, it may be the end of the line for some artists priced out of Industry City in Brooklyn, the huge industrial complex in Sunset Park, according to a story in The New York Times.
The Times followed up with some 24 of nearly 50 artists who left the complex more than six months ago after new owners raised rents there. After moving every few years for decades, some are using their living space as studios, changing the art they do to accommodate cramped quarters. Meanwhile, a few artist organizations are working on buying or leasing spaces for artists in Brooklyn in the affordable $250 to $400 a month range. The article noted that affordable space is even difficult to find in areas that are “too remote” such as Staten Island, Queens and the Bronx.
Many reader comments said it’s no longer necessary for artists to live in New York City, thanks to social media, and they should consider alternative locations such as Newburgh, Philadelphia and Buffalo.
“To own in Manhattan, you need an income over $250,000,” said commenter avery_t. “People with an income of $150,000 are getting pushed into Brooklyn. People with an income under $100,000 are getting pushed further into Brooklyn. People with an income of $50,000 are getting pushed out of Brooklyn. Etc.”
Here’s how reader RG of La Jolla, Calif., described the process: “Artists are the worms in the compost heap of redevelopment. Developers are the ones with the pitchforks.”
Do you think the city should give tax breaks or other assistance to artists in Brooklyn or let them move out of the borough?
Rising Rents Leave Sunset Park Artists out in the Cold [NY Times]
Photo by Chris Havens
Fellow Brownstoners, in all due respect, your comments are completely missing the point of the original article. This isn’t about anyone trying to buy an apartment, or about trying to rent a place to live in, it’s about the price of commercial-only studio space, and the fact that the rents in this particular commercial-only, highly industrial area are rising by almost 50%. The choicest quote from the original Times article: “Industry City was bought by a partnership that included Jamestown Properties, a private developer that wants to turn the area into a hub for light manufacturing, technology, fashion, design and art. It is renovating and modernizing the buildings, said Andrew Kimball, chief executive of Industry City.”
How ironic that this developer wants to turn it into a hub for fashion, design, and art, yet is tone deaf to the true needs of creative people & small creative businesses, and what they can afford, and how they work. One wonders who the developer is going to find to to rent space in this building if real working mid-career artists can’t afford (and frankly, don’t want or need) newly renovated, modern spaces that no doubt will be marketed as luxury units.
And the comment about the Internet and social media providing freedom from having to live in a certain city, within a certain distance from it’s commercial center, obviously has no idea how much the art world (and affiliated creative industries) still rely on in-person contact and networking – whether that be from curators visiting studios, the public attending open studios events at artist buildings, and artists interacting with each other in a common, shared building. Making art is often an incredibly solitary endeavor, and losing a community work space can feel like the equivalent of getting laid off from an office job.
I’m a photographer who has space in my house in Bed-Stuy, and plenty of would-be clients think where I live is too far out of the way to utilize my at-home studio, so 98% of my business ends up taking place on site in Manhattan with me schlepping my equipment there. I wish I could afford to rent studio space closer to the city – or even in Manhattan – so that I could pursue certain jobs that I am unable to due to a lack of MHTN studio space, and so I wouldn’t have to carry thousands of dollars of worth (not to mention hundreds of pounds worth) of equipment everyplace. But every developer in this city wants to create and market only luxury units catering to people with lots of money, and it’s tiring for everyone.
“People with an income of $150,000 are getting pushed into Brooklyn. People with an income under $100,000 are getting pushed further into Brooklyn. People with an income of $50,000 are getting pushed out of Brooklyn. Etc.”
People with an income under $100,000 who want to buy might be able to afford an apartment somewhere in East Flatbush. Those with an income of $50,000 might be able to afford an apartment, rent stabilized, if they are lucky, in some parts of East Flatbush as well. But the hipsters and other gentrifiers likely don’t have an interest in areas like East Flatbush. Moreover, it is quite clear that is the case, when they map the parts of Brooklyn where they all want to live.
> “But the hipsters and other gentrifiers likely don’t have an interest in areas like East Flatbush.” Give it five years. Hell, give it THREE years.
I called this area a long time ago saying it’s going to increase in value. Also watch East Flatbush and Cypress Hills which has some really great blocks.
I’m basing that estimate on my nearly infallible “Follow the Lesbians” method.
Yes, because if instead of spending $200/year on a phone and 2K a year on lattes, you saved that money….
In one hundred years you’d have enough for a downpayment in brownstone Brooklyn. People are just lazy, y’all.
Could be 185 Hall, that’s my last great hope. Or since Rob said Fort Greene, it prob is University Towers or that other place down by BK Hospital.
If a couple has been conservative and saved all their life, making good investment decisions, they could afford a place. The problem is most people want to blow all their discretionary income, and then whine at the thought of going “farther in brooklyn” which is apparently anything east of grand army plaza.
Strip clubs