1377 Pacific Street - how is the neighborhood
Hi All, I saw a beautifully renovated home on pacific st. in crown heights (http://realestate.nytimes.com/sales/detail/253-NS1205311170/1377-Pacific-Street-fully-renovated-by-architect-BROOKLYN-NY-11216). It looks nice, however, I am very concerned about the safety and crime in the neighborhood. I know bed stuy and crown heights is rapidly changing, and there are definitely some beautiful and safe blocks there, but it doesnt look like this is one of them. Anyone know anything about the area? I havent heard good things but is a decent house worth it?
anonymous
in Real Estate - Sales 13 years ago
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NeoGrec | 13 years ago
It’s all so relative. In 1988, I was looking to buy my first apartment. I lived in Park Slope btw 6th and 5th. I only went to 5th during daylight hours. Even so, the prices in the Slope were high enough that I got discouraged. I started looking in Manhattan instead. Found an adorable one-bedroom in the far West Village. Slightly smaller than the comparable apts I’d seen in the Slope. I bought it. Just to say, Park Slope was thoroughly gentrified and over-priced 25 years ago!
Miguel | 13 years ago
Have to agree with brokelin. Park Slope in the 80’s (at least the mid-late 80’s when I lived here and in Prospect Hts) was nothing like what the nastier parts of Crown Hts feel like today. Sure, PS was rough around the edges in parts, but in more of a crunchy hippy meets working stiff kind of way, not in a violent street thug, waking to the sound of gunfire in the night night kind of way. And yes, muggings were common but that was the case all over NYC in that era. By the 80’s Slope gentrification was already practically a religion… heck at the time, in my early 20’s, I could only afford an illegal half-finished plywood walled, cement-floor studio in my buddy’s cellar… no exaggeration, and this was on what even today would be considered the border of the Slope. When I lived in Prospect Hts, I’d come over to Park Slope and ogle at all the rich people with their pretty brownstones and fancy co-ops and cute restaurants and organic produce… not to mention their really cool turbo-charged Saab 900’s (the windows of which were continually smashed to get at their Blaupunkt hi-fi sound systems). Now Prospect Hts – that was a whole other matter. In the 80’s, once you drifted east of Underhill…. now you were talking crackhead sketchy… like take your Sony Walkman and smash your face and maybe kick your head a couple of time for the fun of it sketchy. And Crown Hts was like the 9th level of Hell in that era. Yuppies may have gone in, but they were never seen again. Funny… Sometimes I really miss those days.
callalily | 13 years ago
You could talk to neighbors on the block. Blocks that are mostly homeowners in their homes vs. absentee landlords tend to feel a little more responsive and responsible, and more stable.
anonymous | 13 years ago
I’m not concerned about what area is “cool” although it is nice to have some certain amenities in the area. But maybe you were responding to kateruba. I dont really care about people’s economic status, just the safety of the area. Although, I guess some may say it is all interrelated. I agree that people need a place to live, regardless of economic status. I saw this article awhile back – http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-05-10/news/31659131_1_black-white-population-neighborhoods – very sad.
brokelin | 13 years ago
Oh, please, I was living in park slope 20-30 years ago, and it was gentrified and even futher gentrifying then. The wholesale conversion of rentals to coops, in both large and small apartment buildings and in brownstone buildings, was really going ablaze already in the early 80s. Renovation construction could be seen all everywhere. People were moving in, and investing (while others were being forced out in that era when evicting renters to convert to coops was still allowed by law.) While I noticed the coops reducing the rental pool more than houses, some of this renovation must have been happening in single family homes (or reconverting multi-apartment rentals to single family homes, or owner occupied, if still containing rentals). People who could but didn’t buy houses there then and regret it, if there are any such people, which I highly doubt, just didn’t want to live there…their friends thought it wasn’t cool to not live in Manhattan, and not being people who thought for themselves, they conformed. Parts of the slope were quite lovely, gentrified, and many who would have liked to buy just couldn’t afford it, even at the prices of that era that seem cheap by today’s standards. Prices were a lot less than Manhattan, but it was still tough for many younger folk, burdened even then with student loans, to come up with the downpayments required then by banks and by coops, and still generally required by coops. Everybody wasn’t trying to make the most money possible. Most college students before the 80s studied things that they were interested in, for careers they were interested in, not subjects that would get them jobs at investment banks. It was an era before low and no downparment loans, and before there were any condos to speak of, so coops’ requirements ruled. It was also a neighborhood known for housing lesbians and post-college types and artists who couldn’t afford to live in Manhattan, and who preferred Brooklyn anyway for various reasons, not people with money to burn to buy houses. Other parts of the slope were scary (some blocks in the lower slope) with violence and drug dealing (I lived in both parts of the slope in the 80s, on both sorts of blocks, and blocks in-between), and yes, people didn’t want to live long on certain blocks, either as buyers or renters, if they could avoid it. Hindsight is 20-20, but most will agree they didn’t want to live on the scary blocks then. My point is that most of the slope (everything above 5th Ave.) was gentrified even then (even if not as gentrified as now), and that the reason people didn’t buy there then was not because it was too scary…it just wasn’t cool. It occurs to me that perhaps gentrification moves slower now since eviction plans for conversion to coops and condos were done away with. I, for one, do not view that as a bad thing…people have to live somewhere, whatever their economic status. Changing a neighborhood fast because a new demographic has deemed it a cool place to live by evicting current residents is not something I want the laws to facilitate.
anonymous | 13 years ago
doesnt sound good. ::sigh:: decisions decisions
bksuperdad | 13 years ago
I have been a lurker on this site for a long time, however this one hits close to home. I live in the Bed Stuy area off Hancock but I grew up one block away from the listing you are talking about. I agree that in 20 or 30 years the area will be completely transformed but there legitimate short term concerns about this area. There is a lot of drug activity and sexual dealing including rapes happening on the surrounding blocks above and below this listing. There are several run down apartments in that area and there are several drug dealers and sex offenders who live there. I have seen police raids within the past year on Pacific right up from the charter school. Also, I know several people, certainly not criminals, who have been the victims of crime and harassment. When I go there to visit family and old friends I do not bring my wife as women are often harassed by men standing in front of apartment buildings. I know I may seem negative on the block but I used to live there and visit there often enough to know it is not safe. Due to the large number of apartment buildings it will not be a quick turnaround as has been the block I live on now in Bed Stuy. My block is tree lined and truly feels like a community with people of diverse backgrounds who take pride in where they live. There are great blocks in the Bed Stuy and Crown Heights area and I suggest you see what else might be out there before you spend $800K on what looks to be a beautiful house surrounded by a ton of potential, but also a ton of problems.
Kateruba | 13 years ago
I’ve been receiving google alerts whenever/wherever Bed Stuy is mentioned since I started house shopping (about 1.5 years), and these are the conclusions I’ve come to after reading about the crimes that happen here: while it is still disconcerting to be in the vicinity of crime, it is a little comforting to know that most of the serious crime (murder, shootings) happens to criminals in these parts. It’s very unlikely that the average person would get caught up in that unless they are involved in buying or selling drugs. Muggings, a type of crime that the average person is susceptible to, happen all over town. Just an anecdotal example: I know someone who lives in Bed Stuy, but where did they get mugged, TWICE in the span of a few weeks? Chelsea.
anonymous | 13 years ago
Thanks! I love Stuyvesant Heights area and ideally would like to live there. you are very lucky to have found a home there. I really like peaches, saraghina, celestino, etc. I will def check out the place at night. There are a lot of apartment buildings in the surrounding blocks so I guess I will see how it goes. I have been looking at the crime maps on trulia, and the surrounding blocks are bright red. If you check out stuyvesant heights area – the crime map is def different.
Kateruba | 13 years ago
Unfortunately I don’t know anything specifically about this block (although I was a hair away from going into contract on a house 1 block up in Bed Stuy). I ended up buying a house in the Stuyesant Heights area of Bed Stuy a few months ago and I don’t regret it a bit. I felt trepidation about Bed-Stuy, but after moving here, I found that my fears were overblown. So far, I’ve experienced no shady situations (knock on wood) and neither has my SO (who often works nights and comes home around 1-2am). Although I can’t say anything about the block in question, this is my general feeling : the fact that these 2 neighborhoods are improving is obvious, especially in the Western parts (with new cafes/restaurants/bars coming to the area every few months). You don’t have to have much foresight/crystal ball talents to see it. People who are buying houses here are no longer “pioneers”, they are just able to look past the mainstream, outdated view of these neighborhoods that is still holding strong in the general public’s mind. Once the PR problem begins to fade away, it will be too late for those without deep pockets to buy property here. I feel very very lucky to have found the house that I live in now. All those people who “regret” that they didn’t buy in Park Slope 20-30 years ago? If we sent them back in time, they wouldn’t have had the balls. And I am sure you’ve heard this numerous times, but I will repeat it anyway : go check out the block in different times of day. Not once, but 5-10 times – it will make you feel more confident. Just judging by the price, size and location, I would seriously consider this house.