Inside Third & Bond: Week 43

Today’s post deal’s with an issue close to many Brownstoner readers’ hearts—neighborhood boundaries. Where are we? Where do our buyers want to say they live? These are two questions that have been bouncing around in our heads lately as we’ve been interviewing marketing firms. Are we in Carroll Gardens? Are we in Gowanus? Are we at the intersection of Carroll Gardens and Gowanus? In terms of the facts of mapped geography, it isn’t clear to us which neighborhood we’re in. The City’s neighborhood map lumps Carroll Gardens, Gowanus, Park Slope, Cobble Hill and Red Hook together and the Department of City Planning’s zoning study on wide streets in Carroll Gardens addresses only a portion of the neighborhood—not leaving us any clues as to the neighborhood boundaries. NY Magazine says the eastern border for Carroll Gardens is Smith Street. Wikipedia punts on the eastern boundary for the neighborhood entirely. Smalltownbrooklyn.com shows the canal as the eastern boundary. It seems like the more places we look, the more answers we get.

So without an authoritative map to guide us not that real estate marketing sticks to official boundaries — we turned to discussing what neighborhood is the right fit for our buyers. Are people more attracted to the established charm of Carroll Gardens, with amenities at every turn? Or does Carroll Gardens make people see $$$$$ and something staid?

What are people thinking about Gowanus? Is it seen as a bargain since it is new to the luxury housing game? Or do people think of it as a dirty industrial neighborhood with scattered tenements—and is that bad for us or good? Do people want reassurance or adventure? Or do they want a piece of both?

If a lot of our buyers are Gen Xers and we believe the stereotypes, then we are looking at people who are ambivalent about a lot of things. Why not let them live at the intersection of Carroll Gardens and Gowanus? They can tell their parents that they live in Carroll Gardens and their friends that they live in Gowanus. At our project The Clinton (W 48th Street), we use the tag: Clinton Comfort with Hell’s Kitchen Rents. That’s worked great for that project. We suspect that particular dichotomy would not go over as well for this one especially since the new projects proposed for Gowanus are looking for prices equal or greater than today’s Carroll Gardens.

In our quest, we looked at the physical geography of our site, too. Going by sheer eyesight, we are at the intersection of two different places. We will be the last of the housing marching down Third St toward the canal (except for the building on the next corner that has a first floor commercial space and housing above). Across the street is a manufacturing district. Behind us is completely residential. We really are on the edge of residential and industrial. For now: residential = Carroll Gardens and industrial = Gowanus. But with Public Place, Toll Brothers, and others putting up new construction on Gowanus, how soon will that change? Is the intersection of two places an enticing image or just messy?
Inside Third & Bond: Week 42 [Brownstoner]
Inside Third & Bond: Week 41 [Brownstoner]
Inside Third & Bond: Week 40 [Brownstoner]
Inside Third & Bond: Week 39 [Brownstoner]
Inside Third & Bond: Week 38 [Brownstoner]
Inside Third & Bond: Week 37 [Brownstoner]

From our lawyers: This is not an offering. No offering can be made until an offering plan is filed with the Department of Law of the State of New York.”