Big Bucks for Jazzing Up 'Outdated' Fulton Mall
As part of a $40 million investment in the Downtown Brooklyn streetscape, the city’s Economic Development Corp. will pony up $15 million to spruce up the Fulton Street Mall. “You’ll have a great new open space a la Herald Square at 34th Street in Manhattan, and an overhaul of the Fulton Mall’s physical environment,” said…
As part of a $40 million investment in the Downtown Brooklyn streetscape, the city’s Economic Development Corp. will pony up $15 million to spruce up the Fulton Street Mall. “You’ll have a great new open space a la Herald Square at 34th Street in Manhattan, and an overhaul of the Fulton Mall’s physical environment,” said Joseph Chan, president of the city’s Downtown Brooklyn Partnership. The effort will include new bus shelters, benches and street furniture as well as the addition of new lights and trees. Another $3 million to $4 million will be out towards creating a 10,000-square-foot green space at the former Albee Square mall that could double as a place for public performances. Work is expected to begin a year from now. Even sooner, the greening of Downtown Brooklyn will also extend to two “gateway to Brooklyn” planting projects on Flatbush Avenue and Boerum Place.
$15 Mil for ‘Herald Square in Bklyn’ [NY Post]
Dear Lily,
I think you are a nice person, but don’t
you think most people know that already.
Aren’t you all a little redundant. Isn’t this a place to stroke yourselves.
i am going to Montana to grow dental floss. I am sure you can give me the literary musical reference. Still holds.
Downtown Brooklyn is one of EDC’s “Central Business Districts”(along with LIC, Jamaica, Hudson Yards, Lower Manhattan, etc) that they are trying to revitalize in the hopes of attracting businesses and creating job growth (meaning offices, not retail). Companies are offered major incentives to relocate to these districts. The idea is that if the areas are more visually appealing it will help to attract more businesses which will give a boost to the area and create more jobs in the long run. It’s really not about driving out the minorities.
Wow- I’m disturbed by the tenuous link between a decent street scape and a racist agenda. Arguing that business investment equates to gentification does a disservice to the city and those who own businesses in the area.
It seems this investment is more about making Fulton Street a clean, safe and family friendly shopping corridor – not an insidious attempt to expell the current businesses.
Fulton Mall may not be pretty or where people from Brooklyn Heights want to shop but it is a huge and successful business district. Sprucing up is to attract higher end retailers and drive all the black folks out- let’s get real.
A few years ago many city bureaucrats and some elected officials must have simultaneously slapped themselves on their foreheads when they realized that vast tracts of some of the city’s best properties were hidden under a few layers of urban archeological decay. Especially in Brooklyn.
Fourth Avenue, from Flatbush as far as one could see from a dentist’s office in the Williamsburg Bank Building. A wasteland with subways running below it.
The Atlantic Yards site. Virtually unused, well, forever.
Fulton Mall. A decaying and tacky retail district surrounded by commercial activity and connected to the whole city by many subways.
Coney Island. Not only the dumpy boardwalk area and Surf Avenue. But Mermaid Avenue too. Acres of land for market-rate housing.
What madness allows cities to build project housing on its waterfront?
The Rockaways. Queens, I know. Project housing giving way to condos. Fabulous beaches there that are often empty.
Meanwhile, when do we get control of Floyd Bennett Field? When does that vast wasted space become Floyd Bennett City?
I am older than all of you. I guess people my age aren’t so computer literate.
Anyway, there used to be a Mccory’s on Fulton Street, a grand place to spend an afternoon. There was food, there was material to sew, there were great make=up counters, where someone would make up a special lipstick, to match those shoes.
Gadgets of every kind, before informercials took away all the fun.
Martins, bought my daughter’s prom dress there. A@S was nice, and generous to the schools in the hoood, but Martin’s was just ethereal.
Then in the early sixties, it changed, you could get mugged down there if your
rhythm was wrong, Kids would mug kids etc. It changed, and the area became less habitated. Blight, flight, white
hope and fear, you know the rest don’t you.
AS IF HERALD SQUARE AND ITS SRO’S AROUND MACY’S DIDN’T HAVE A HARD TIME FOR YEARS.
YOU WANT TO MAKE FULTON STREET MORE THAN IT IS, CRAFT COOPS, ART GALLERIES, GREAT CAFES WITH SIMPLE GOOD FOOD, ETC.
ART MOVIE THEATER, WOULD BE NICE AS WELL, UNDER THE AUSPICES OF A LOCAL COLEGE OR UNIVERSITY WOULD BE APPRECIATED AS WELL.
NOBODY GOES TO THE MOVIES ON fULTON ST. TOO MANY SHOOTINGS OVER THE YEARS.
INSTALLING A BANANA REPUBLIC WON’T DO IT. GIVE THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY NEED AND WHAT THEY DREAM.
Let the agenda begin!
D – O – N – E – D – E – A – L – !
David, my argument was exactly that- do all those upscale prettifying things because it is successful and will be appreciated. But that’s not what their intent is with Fulton Mall. Face it, people with lower incomes can’t afford to shop in Tiffany. I know this first hand. But I go to Fulton st because I can find what I need at good prices. Sure I’d love Fulton Mall to be a nicer environment- most people do. But the infusion of money is not to make the present merchants and clientele happy, or to attract better services for them. It’s to make the gentrifying neighborhoods happy by “improving” the area to their so-alled higher standards. I don’t assume poorer folk can’t appreciate the finer things in life- I know they do. But its also very obvious from a lot if the comments that they and the stores they frequent for economical reasons, are considered a passing phase and to be gotten rid of at the earliest possible opportunity.