Set Speed Condo Report: 364 Myrtle Avenue
Today’s new condo reports focuses on a development that has been profiled on Brownstoner before. Located on a busy commercial stretch of Myrtle Avenue between Clermont and Adelphi, lies this unique 4 story building. Featuring angled windows to take advantage of light and outdoor spaces, this new construction attempts to set itself apart from the…
Today’s new condo reports focuses on a development that has been profiled on Brownstoner before. Located on a busy commercial stretch of Myrtle Avenue between Clermont and Adelphi, lies this unique 4 story building. Featuring angled windows to take advantage of light and outdoor spaces, this new construction attempts to set itself apart from the others.
The site consists of one commercial condo and three large floor-thru duplex condominium units. The ground floor commercial unit measures in at just under 2000 square feet for $994K, while the other three units are 1533-1688 square feet and cost $877K, $890K and $919K. The residential units have 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. Maintenance is about $260 a month.
Units feature 17 foot high ceilings, large gourmet kitchens with stainless steel appliances, en-suite bathrooms, spacious closets and laundry hook-ups. This condo is located close to many amenities, like supermarkets, restaurants, bars and hardware stores. But as last week’s two shootings attest, the area still contains some rough spots. An open house is scheduled March 26 from 12:30 to 3:30pm.
364 Myrtle Avenue [Corcoran] GMAP
New Building on Myrtle [Brownstoner]
Every Thursday, ltjbukem, whose own blog Set Speed scrutinizes the progress and quality of new developments in the area we know as Brownstone Brooklyn, pens a guest post about goings-on in the condo market with an emphasis on new projects.
I know some people who live in Manhattan housing projects. Their apartments are registered in relatives names who don’t work and have little income. But the folks I know make about 100k/yr and so do their siblings who also live nearly rent free in Chelsea or East Village housing projects.
Of course, most project dwellers are poor and uneducated, but there are lots and lots like these folks I know who are SCAMMIMG the system.
Not to mention, these people have access to huge private parking lots and drive expensive foreign cars. Drive by any big project in Manhattan or Brooklyn and you’ll see many expensive cars in the parking lot.
If I wanted a private parking space where I live in lower Manahattan it would cost almost 500 bucks a month!
WHAT A SCAM!
This thread has become, at its base, a thread about what rights poor people in a gentrifying neighborhood should have when prices rise to the point where they can no longer afford to live in the area. Of course there are racial issues involved, but ultimately it is about socioeconomic class. If you live in the projects, you are a more insulated from market forces in the neighborhood since the government owns the land and your apartment and cannot as easily find a way to continue to uphold its obligation to house you if it wanted to use the land for a different purpose. Hopefully, in the long term, the City will be able to provide new housing alternatives (which would hopefully be mixed income communities, not ghetto projects). I don’t think people on either side of this debate, for the most part, are racists. I do think it is socioecomnic and class based and is a microcosm of the issues faced in any gentrifying area.
Oops- great post CHP!! And anonymous 5:33, yep- lots of poor white folk (me for one). But I have always found it interesting how white people use economic terms as codespeak for their biases. And how do you expect the Black people of any neighborhood to feel, when they have lived for years in the neighborhood- for good or bad- and now white gentrifiers have decided they are prime property (with great views!) and they should be relocated? You’re damn straight they are going to feel there’s a racial bias. We’re talking people here, not cattle to be herded wherever you want. The way some people have posted about those who live in projects makes it obvious they feel money buys them more rights. Look at the disaster plans for New Orleans- they made no intelligent plan for the poorer Black neighborhoods and look at the result. Before you carry on about welfare- let me point out that not only were man (if not most) of the families in the 9th ward homeowners, but most of them had businesses or jobs. Just not a lot of money.
Anon 5:33 Here are 2 quickies:
1. People of color did not invent the “race card.” The “race card” is actually an inventive label that was coined by intolerant white folk as a means to quickly devalue and dismiss any legitimate criticism of a racist act and/or idea.
2. I agree with you that there are plenty of poor white people in America. In fact, I seem to remember reading somewhere that the majority of welfare recipients in this nation are white people. But I don’t believe poor white folk to be the majority occupants in the Ingersoll and Whitman Projects — nor in any other of these hoped-to-be gentrified, prime property communities that we have been dicussing on these forums.
Anon 4:48, in answer to your question: no. In case you hadn’t noticed, very few people in this world get what they “deserve”, good or bad. Do attractive, good looking people “deserve” to get more in life because of their looks? Do tall people “deserve” higher ceilings in their homes because they are tall? (Any other analogies about people are going to get me in trouble, so hopefully you get the point.)
And of course, not all wealthy people are elitist snobs. Never said they were. Likewise, not all poor people are unemployed, unmotivated, or have criminal tendencies. Would that we were all blessed to have had good schools, encouraging teachers, supportive parents, and educational options and opportunities, enabling us to move up in the world. The amazing strength of the human spirit is that there are so many who don’t have any of those things, yet they perservere. I don’t worry about them, they’ll do just fine. We need to be about the business of helping those who want to help themselves, not lumping them with those who don’t, and consigning the whole bunch to the wayside, while the rest of us try to shove them out of the way while we get what we “deserve”.
What does that have to do with housing? As goes your environment, so goes your chances of success. I agree, the projects as they exist today need to go. But only if they are replaced without displacing people, and offer New Yorkers an opportunity to have safe, affordable housing, mixing income levels, coops/rentals, etc. Everyone deserves the opportunity to have a good place to live.
Who Knew? Now the people with money are royalty? You have to be kidding- anon at 2:20. The last time I read comments that sounded like yours (poor people shouldn’t be allowed on “prime real estate”)was in a Dickens novel and they had a date with the guillotine. As several other people have pointed out, the working poor also pay taxes and rent. The majority of soldiers fighting today, and in Vietnam were working class. They have fulfilled their responsibilities in fighting for this country. The working poor are the majority of lower income neighborhoods and are far more victimized by local crime than you will ever be. THey are not an expendable, portable population that can be moved around at the whim of the rich, zoning planners, or developers. It may surprise you to realize they also need a decent place to live. I grew up in projects- hated them because they are people warehouses- even the nice ones. In ten years Ratner’s travesty will be a “projects” too. But there are very successful ones- such as amalgamated in the Bronx. The failure is not the people who have to live in them, it’s the failure of management and the city to run them properly.
This isn’t a communist country but we are supposed to be a compassionate one, founded on the principles of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Sometimes that means caring about the people around us- whether it is convenient or not. You may think you are entitled to everything if you throw enough money around. Money doesn’t make you the lord of the manor and the rest of us peons. You can’t buy class- you have to live it.
Seems like a strange thread to take a swipe at us in, but as David Lee Roth once said, “You’ve got to roll with the punches to get to what’s real.” And, no, we have not been posting Anonymously. Since when have we been afraid of speaking our mind?
GardensGal I understand what you are saying but from my perspective it is those throwing around the race card that are using codespeak. Its codespeak for “Uou’re moving into my neighborhood. You’re are different color, probably a racist and I don’t like it.”
There are plenty of poor white people in America.
I can tell that this is going to be another one of those posting with 80 comments associated with it. There isn’t enough time in the day to educate all you ‘priviledged’ posters. You’ve got to live it or love someone who’ve lived it in order to understand. This is the reason why so many of us consider the rest of you ‘far right’ leaning fools to be heartless and soulless.
I’m the one who considered the idea of leveling the projects tantamount to ethnic-cleansing/genocide. Why? Because you’re talking about displacing thousands of residents just because you’re uncomfortable with their presence.
A mixed-income housing project sounds like a better solution….which is what it will become if the projects were converted to coops. So, why not just let them be.
I don’t want to generalize, but I find that so many whites are uncomfortable with the ‘legacies’ of slavery, the projects being one of them. They would prefer to ignore it or paint it over with invisible ink or simply knock it down rather than attempt to come up with a constructive solution for a problem that is a several hundred years in the making.