Newcomers Find Crown Heights Retail Lacking

How dare the guy in the article move TO Crown Heights and then complain there aren’t any amenities! I own a brownstone in CH and like other posters stated “we residents are doing just fine”. The real residents that is – not the newly minted “I didn’t have the chance to buy an overpriced house in Manhattan or Park Slope so he figured he’d move to CH and wait for the hip businesses to open” residents who don’t want to experience a neighborhood in all its glory but want to change the neighborhood regardless of the people who made and make it what it is.

Well, guess what? I like the fact that my children can walk around the neighborhood past houses where they know everyone and vice versa or children actually play out front and people congregate on their stoops and have impromptu get-togethers. It’s part of what makes CH great.

And maybe the houses will never sell for millions on a regular basis BUT “we residents” tend to buy and hold. “We residents” didn’t buy at the top of the market looking for a quick flip. Most of all, “we residents” bought into CH because we saw the value in the neighborhood – not as up-and-coming but as a long-term prospect.

Wow, long read of some fascinating rants, raves and whatever…permit me to say just a few things about some of the historical observations about NA’s commercial history by Nostalgic on Park Avenue – you remember and describe it well, as do I – and I am committed to bringing that back. And to Montrose Morris, who astutely pointed out that much of the strip was owned by a few families – you are dead right there as well -but that too is historical. Let me tell you that there is SIGNIFICANT change afoot behind the scenes at this very moment. The strip has been the habitue of many commercial lenders of late. They have a fondness to lend to such stable properties – and have done so in meaningful amounts over the past 3 months. And will continue despite the upheaval in the credit markets. What that means is fresh capital is flowing along the commercial avenues – and that capital will seek to improve the return profile of the avenue – working with the strong local merchants, as well as bringing in sorely missing services best provided by national merchants (think banks, UPS/Mailbox Etc, cellular service providers and such)

And to all those who think that the SUN article was just a fluke of timing – you are so wrong. There are savvy players who are shaping, supporting and guiding things to transform CHN’s major commercial thoroughfare.

If you cast aspersions without having been there because of the crime level – you are missing it, because it is happening in front of your very eyes. The people are there, and the change is happening.

If anyone is so interested as to move beyond the GUEST label, and wants to meet along the Avenue so I can persoanlly share with you what I know – then email me back at – wingo947@hotmail.com. That way you can join forces and be part of the group that as guest 12:26 put it so eloquently makes things happen rather than be a part of group 3. That was worth the read alone of this entire thread! Sorry for the long mmessage…but I figure if you came back to this thread after all of today’s earlier trash talking, it might as well be worth your effort.

“Are other Brooklyn neighborhoods not hip enough for you? ”

Um, yes?

This has been one of the longest conversations about Crown Heights on Brownstoner ever. It just points out that CH is like a mini-city where the personalities of streets and blocks change corner to corner. It was the same in the 1950s. Back then, many railroad-flat tenements housed working-class and poor people along Nostrand Avenue; middle-class managers and professionals and their families had apartments with step-down livingrooms in elevator buildings along St. Marks Avenue (lots of doctors’ plaques under the canopies in those days, and doormen, too); and the most affluent had brownstones and limestones along streets like Dean, Prospect, and Eastern Parkway. The area was also changing, like today, if in a different way. Middle-class and affluent African-American families had to break the “gentlemen’s agreements” that restricted access to good housing; speculators bought and flipped buildings, “block-busting” as they went along; and community organizations did their best to maintain a racially-integrated, economically-diverse community against the odds. Cheap mortgages to suburban housing for white families (legal in this country until the 1960’s and still widespread today), middle-class urban renewal projects in other parts of the city, and the Fulton Street riots in the 60’s, sadly, dashed a lot of people’s hopes. But from neighborhood residents’ comments here, no doubt things are on the upswing. Look, I’m old enough to remember when Prospect West was considered undesirable, and for a lot of incontestable reasons people concerned for the safety of their families wouldn’t live there. I also remember when friends on Central Park West discouraged my parents from buying a six-room apartment at the Dakota (for $25,000!) because the West Side was hell. Crown Heights? The next Gold Coast.

Nostalgic on Park Avenue