New York Times Article- Another DH mention!!
Congrats Andy!
December 18, 2005
Living In | Prospect Heights, Brooklyn
A Neighborhood Comes Into Its Own
By JEFF VANDAM
ON the heavily trafficked Web site www.dailyheights.com, a recent poll asked visitors to vote on new SoHo-style nicknames for Prospect Heights, their beloved Brooklyn neighborhood. While there was some support for ToPoSlo (Too Poor to live in the Slope) and HoSloFugee (Home for Slope Refugees), the biggest winner by far was not a name, but a criticism: "This poll is extraordinarily dumb."
Such dismissals are common in Prospect Heights, long in the shadow of Park Slope, its neighbor across Flatbush Avenue. For years, Heights residents have been told their neighborhood is a fallback for those who can't afford the Slope's brownstones and co-ops and all the attendant shopping and dining.
But in the last few years, Prospect Heights has begun to hold its own, enticing newcomers with attractive lofts, newly constructed luxury condominiums and brownstones that are often larger and more elegant than those in the rest of Brooklyn.
"People used to view Prospect Heights as an alternative to the Slope," said Peggy Aguayo, co-owner of the Aguayo & Huebener Realty Group in Brooklyn. "Ten years ago, that was the case. Today, it's become its own destination."
Perhaps more than any other area in Brooklyn, new projects are being announced and sprouting up all over this small corridor. Most notably, a 15-story tower designed by Richard Meier is planned for the corner of Eastern Parkway and Plaza Street East, at Grand Army Plaza and the entrance to Prospect Park.
Elsewhere, new construction projects already have many buyers, including the Washington at Washington Avenue and Dean Street, which will feature an interior Japanese Zen garden.
In addition to the neighborhood's residential upsurge, restaurants and shops are quickly opening on Vanderbilt Avenue and the cachet of cultural institutions along Eastern Parkway, including the Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn Botanic Garden and Brooklyn Museum, have all initiated or finished impressive upgrades.
"There's a great cultural corridor here," said Jon Keegan, an illustrator who moved in 2002 from Park Slope into Newswalk, a Dean Street loft building formerly home to a Daily News printing plant, with his wife, Julie, a painter. "There's this sweet spot of being between BAM and the Brooklyn Museum - Prospect Heights is so perfect for that," he said, referring to the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Yet as Mr. Keegan and his fellow users of dailyheights.com are well aware, there is an undercurrent to all of the recent success of Prospect Heights: the plans of the developer Bruce Ratner to build a sizable complex of shopping, offices, housing and a Frank Gehry-designed arena for his New York Nets over the railyards on Atlantic Avenue. Concerns about eminent domain issues and the project's potential impact on the area's density are widespread, as is uncertainty over what form it will finally take.
Still, not everyone is up in arms. Mark McCartney, a computer programmer who rents a one-bedroom apartment on Washington Avenue with his fiancée, Beth Elliott, lives south of the proposed project's area. "We're so far away it wouldn't affect us," he said. "And I don't like basketball."
What You'll Find
Prospect Heights is a trapezoid of a neighborhood, wedged between Fort Greene, Crown Heights, Prospect Park and Park Slope. The residential options within its borders are representative of nearly every type of housing in Brooklyn, from still-rough industrial properties in the neighborhood's northeastern section to tall, wide brownstones in its center and graceful early 20th-century apartment buildings and towers in the south, near Prospect Park. Modern condos are, of course, on the way.
The central commercial strip is Vanderbilt Avenue, which features many new and old businesses and runs directly into Grand Army Plaza at Prospect Park. It offers perhaps the clearest signs of change in Prospect Heights.
"When we first started, there was maybe one restaurant on the block," said Colin Daring, co-owner of Pieces, a clothing boutique at Vanderbilt and Park Place that opened six years ago. He is also president of the Vanderbilt Avenue Merchants Association. Since he opened Pieces with his wife, Latisha, he said, roughly nine restaurants have opened on Vanderbilt alone.
John Policastro, who has operated the Garden Cafe on Vanderbilt Avenue with his wife, Camille, for the last 20 years, confirmed that Prospect Heights just feels different now.
"Sometimes we would leave here at 10:30 or 11 at night years ago and it was just a bleakness, a desertion," Mr. Policastro said. "Now we have the advent of the bars and the restaurants that stay open later than we do. It's a comfort."
Flatbush Avenue, the neighborhood's western border, is home to express subway stations and is itself a busy commercial strip, much more trafficked than Vanderbilt. Cars and loud trucks move quickly - on a recent Sunday afternoon, one man crossing the street had to dive out of the way of an oncoming Mazda. Businesses like carpet outlets and the House of Hair dominate, though newer occupants like iSold It, an eBay drop-off store, have moved in.
To the west, Washington Avenue represents the traditional eastern border of Prospect Heights, though the border has occasionally been pushed farther east into Crown Heights, a development akin to the seemingly bottomless southern expansion of "South Park Slope." On Washington, auto body shops and bodegas are common, though new condo projects are appearing there, and newer restaurants like Cafe Shane and the Ginger Root Cafe serve traditional African-Caribbean dishes in comfortable, bright environments.
What You'll Pay
For all its proximity to hot real estate markets in Fort Greene and Park Slope, the prices in Prospect Heights can at times seem suspiciously low. But that is quickly changing, especially as new developments are completed and bring up per-square-foot prices like a high tide.
For example, prices at the Washington, the new condo building on Washington Avenue with few available units left, begin at $675,000 for a two-bedroom and exceed $800,000 for a 1,900-square-foot duplex.
As for the neighborhood's already established housing stock, the most sought after are its polished brownstones, many of which currently feature "No Arena Complex" posters in their oversized windows. While houses in Park Slope are selling for as high as $3 million, Prospect Heights prices are about half that, averaging around $1.5 million and heading north toward $1.8 million.
"As you get closer to Park Slope, prices go up," said Robert Krieger, a broker at the Corcoran Group who does business in both neighborhoods. "It's all about location. I haven't seen anything below a million in a long time."
In apartment sales, Ms. Aguayo of Aguayo & Huebener recently sold a co-op with one bedroom and a small den on Eastern Parkway for $650,000. A few blocks north on Sterling Place, a 1,400-square-foot three-bedroom in an elevator building sold for $770,000. One-bedroom apartments generally range from $200,000 to $300,000 and average-sized two-bedrooms start at $600,000.
As for rentals, one-bedroom units generally start at $1,300 a month, and two-bedrooms begin at around $1,900.
What to Do
Prospect Heights is at the center of the cultural heart of Brooklyn, with next-door access to all of Eastern Parkway's institutions, as well as the theaters of the Brooklyn Academy of Music to the north and the best access to Prospect Park outside of Park Slope. At the Brooklyn Museum, families flock to Target First Saturdays, free monthly arts and entertainment programs.
And whereas Heights residents used to have to travel to Park Slope for shopping and nightlife, such trips are no longer necessary. Bars like the Tavern on Dean, Bar Sepia and Beast Bar are attracting locals and outsiders, and long-established restaurants like the highly rated Garden Cafe and the immortal Tom's Restaurant on Washington Avenue generate lines out their doors.
As for grocery shopping, there are a few supermarkets on Washington Avenue, but as of now, no Whole Foods or Fairway stores have been announced for the neighborhood. Still, a bustling farmer's market operates in Grand Army Plaza every Saturday year-round, attracting a dedicated base of shoppers.
The Schools
The old Public School 9 on Sterling Place is now a stunning apartment building converted by the Forest City Ratner Companies, and the current version of the school on Underhill Avenue is the only primary school in the neighborhood. While it outspends the city average per student by about $1,000, the number of students meeting standards on state and city tests is eight percentage points behind city averages in English language arts and 13 percentage points behind in math.
The best junior high school in the area, the Park Place Community Middle School, is a relatively new school with a small enrollment where students far outscore city averages, in English by 32 percentage points and math by 36 points. At Prospect Heights High School, next to the Brooklyn Museum on Eastern Parkway, the average score in 2003-4 in the verbal portion of the SAT was 356, compared with 497 statewide, and 351 in math, compared with 510 statewide.
The Commute
Prospect Heights has several good subway options, with a 15-minute jaunt to Union Square on the Q train at Seventh and Flatbush Avenues. There is also access to the B and the No. 2 and 3 trains, and the Long Island Rail Road Station at Atlantic Avenue is a short ride away.
The History
Prospect Heights came into being in the late 19th century as New Yorkers looked for other places to live around the recently completed Prospect Park. A multiethnic working-class population thrived for the first half of the 20th century, though as New York declined in the 1960's and 70's, so did Prospect Heights, where many buildings were burned during racial unrest. After the real estate market in Park Slope and other nearby neighborhoods improved in the 80's and 90's, Prospect Heights came into its own.
What We Like
Prospect Heights retains the feel of unreformed, unartificial Brooklyn. Spillover or not, it is its own neighborhood, with cultural amenities to beat any competitors.
What We'd Change
Despite the character and beauty of the houses in Prospect Heights, it does not have landmark protection status from the city, as parts of many of the surrounding neighborhoods do.
December 18, 2005
Living In | Prospect Heights, Brooklyn
A Neighborhood Comes Into Its Own
By JEFF VANDAM
ON the heavily trafficked Web site www.dailyheights.com, a recent poll asked visitors to vote on new SoHo-style nicknames for Prospect Heights, their beloved Brooklyn neighborhood. While there was some support for ToPoSlo (Too Poor to live in the Slope) and HoSloFugee (Home for Slope Refugees), the biggest winner by far was not a name, but a criticism: "This poll is extraordinarily dumb."
Such dismissals are common in Prospect Heights, long in the shadow of Park Slope, its neighbor across Flatbush Avenue. For years, Heights residents have been told their neighborhood is a fallback for those who can't afford the Slope's brownstones and co-ops and all the attendant shopping and dining.
But in the last few years, Prospect Heights has begun to hold its own, enticing newcomers with attractive lofts, newly constructed luxury condominiums and brownstones that are often larger and more elegant than those in the rest of Brooklyn.
"People used to view Prospect Heights as an alternative to the Slope," said Peggy Aguayo, co-owner of the Aguayo & Huebener Realty Group in Brooklyn. "Ten years ago, that was the case. Today, it's become its own destination."
Perhaps more than any other area in Brooklyn, new projects are being announced and sprouting up all over this small corridor. Most notably, a 15-story tower designed by Richard Meier is planned for the corner of Eastern Parkway and Plaza Street East, at Grand Army Plaza and the entrance to Prospect Park.
Elsewhere, new construction projects already have many buyers, including the Washington at Washington Avenue and Dean Street, which will feature an interior Japanese Zen garden.
In addition to the neighborhood's residential upsurge, restaurants and shops are quickly opening on Vanderbilt Avenue and the cachet of cultural institutions along Eastern Parkway, including the Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn Botanic Garden and Brooklyn Museum, have all initiated or finished impressive upgrades.
"There's a great cultural corridor here," said Jon Keegan, an illustrator who moved in 2002 from Park Slope into Newswalk, a Dean Street loft building formerly home to a Daily News printing plant, with his wife, Julie, a painter. "There's this sweet spot of being between BAM and the Brooklyn Museum - Prospect Heights is so perfect for that," he said, referring to the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Yet as Mr. Keegan and his fellow users of dailyheights.com are well aware, there is an undercurrent to all of the recent success of Prospect Heights: the plans of the developer Bruce Ratner to build a sizable complex of shopping, offices, housing and a Frank Gehry-designed arena for his New York Nets over the railyards on Atlantic Avenue. Concerns about eminent domain issues and the project's potential impact on the area's density are widespread, as is uncertainty over what form it will finally take.
Still, not everyone is up in arms. Mark McCartney, a computer programmer who rents a one-bedroom apartment on Washington Avenue with his fiancée, Beth Elliott, lives south of the proposed project's area. "We're so far away it wouldn't affect us," he said. "And I don't like basketball."
What You'll Find
Prospect Heights is a trapezoid of a neighborhood, wedged between Fort Greene, Crown Heights, Prospect Park and Park Slope. The residential options within its borders are representative of nearly every type of housing in Brooklyn, from still-rough industrial properties in the neighborhood's northeastern section to tall, wide brownstones in its center and graceful early 20th-century apartment buildings and towers in the south, near Prospect Park. Modern condos are, of course, on the way.
The central commercial strip is Vanderbilt Avenue, which features many new and old businesses and runs directly into Grand Army Plaza at Prospect Park. It offers perhaps the clearest signs of change in Prospect Heights.
"When we first started, there was maybe one restaurant on the block," said Colin Daring, co-owner of Pieces, a clothing boutique at Vanderbilt and Park Place that opened six years ago. He is also president of the Vanderbilt Avenue Merchants Association. Since he opened Pieces with his wife, Latisha, he said, roughly nine restaurants have opened on Vanderbilt alone.
John Policastro, who has operated the Garden Cafe on Vanderbilt Avenue with his wife, Camille, for the last 20 years, confirmed that Prospect Heights just feels different now.
"Sometimes we would leave here at 10:30 or 11 at night years ago and it was just a bleakness, a desertion," Mr. Policastro said. "Now we have the advent of the bars and the restaurants that stay open later than we do. It's a comfort."
Flatbush Avenue, the neighborhood's western border, is home to express subway stations and is itself a busy commercial strip, much more trafficked than Vanderbilt. Cars and loud trucks move quickly - on a recent Sunday afternoon, one man crossing the street had to dive out of the way of an oncoming Mazda. Businesses like carpet outlets and the House of Hair dominate, though newer occupants like iSold It, an eBay drop-off store, have moved in.
To the west, Washington Avenue represents the traditional eastern border of Prospect Heights, though the border has occasionally been pushed farther east into Crown Heights, a development akin to the seemingly bottomless southern expansion of "South Park Slope." On Washington, auto body shops and bodegas are common, though new condo projects are appearing there, and newer restaurants like Cafe Shane and the Ginger Root Cafe serve traditional African-Caribbean dishes in comfortable, bright environments.
What You'll Pay
For all its proximity to hot real estate markets in Fort Greene and Park Slope, the prices in Prospect Heights can at times seem suspiciously low. But that is quickly changing, especially as new developments are completed and bring up per-square-foot prices like a high tide.
For example, prices at the Washington, the new condo building on Washington Avenue with few available units left, begin at $675,000 for a two-bedroom and exceed $800,000 for a 1,900-square-foot duplex.
As for the neighborhood's already established housing stock, the most sought after are its polished brownstones, many of which currently feature "No Arena Complex" posters in their oversized windows. While houses in Park Slope are selling for as high as $3 million, Prospect Heights prices are about half that, averaging around $1.5 million and heading north toward $1.8 million.
"As you get closer to Park Slope, prices go up," said Robert Krieger, a broker at the Corcoran Group who does business in both neighborhoods. "It's all about location. I haven't seen anything below a million in a long time."
In apartment sales, Ms. Aguayo of Aguayo & Huebener recently sold a co-op with one bedroom and a small den on Eastern Parkway for $650,000. A few blocks north on Sterling Place, a 1,400-square-foot three-bedroom in an elevator building sold for $770,000. One-bedroom apartments generally range from $200,000 to $300,000 and average-sized two-bedrooms start at $600,000.
As for rentals, one-bedroom units generally start at $1,300 a month, and two-bedrooms begin at around $1,900.
What to Do
Prospect Heights is at the center of the cultural heart of Brooklyn, with next-door access to all of Eastern Parkway's institutions, as well as the theaters of the Brooklyn Academy of Music to the north and the best access to Prospect Park outside of Park Slope. At the Brooklyn Museum, families flock to Target First Saturdays, free monthly arts and entertainment programs.
And whereas Heights residents used to have to travel to Park Slope for shopping and nightlife, such trips are no longer necessary. Bars like the Tavern on Dean, Bar Sepia and Beast Bar are attracting locals and outsiders, and long-established restaurants like the highly rated Garden Cafe and the immortal Tom's Restaurant on Washington Avenue generate lines out their doors.
As for grocery shopping, there are a few supermarkets on Washington Avenue, but as of now, no Whole Foods or Fairway stores have been announced for the neighborhood. Still, a bustling farmer's market operates in Grand Army Plaza every Saturday year-round, attracting a dedicated base of shoppers.
The Schools
The old Public School 9 on Sterling Place is now a stunning apartment building converted by the Forest City Ratner Companies, and the current version of the school on Underhill Avenue is the only primary school in the neighborhood. While it outspends the city average per student by about $1,000, the number of students meeting standards on state and city tests is eight percentage points behind city averages in English language arts and 13 percentage points behind in math.
The best junior high school in the area, the Park Place Community Middle School, is a relatively new school with a small enrollment where students far outscore city averages, in English by 32 percentage points and math by 36 points. At Prospect Heights High School, next to the Brooklyn Museum on Eastern Parkway, the average score in 2003-4 in the verbal portion of the SAT was 356, compared with 497 statewide, and 351 in math, compared with 510 statewide.
The Commute
Prospect Heights has several good subway options, with a 15-minute jaunt to Union Square on the Q train at Seventh and Flatbush Avenues. There is also access to the B and the No. 2 and 3 trains, and the Long Island Rail Road Station at Atlantic Avenue is a short ride away.
The History
Prospect Heights came into being in the late 19th century as New Yorkers looked for other places to live around the recently completed Prospect Park. A multiethnic working-class population thrived for the first half of the 20th century, though as New York declined in the 1960's and 70's, so did Prospect Heights, where many buildings were burned during racial unrest. After the real estate market in Park Slope and other nearby neighborhoods improved in the 80's and 90's, Prospect Heights came into its own.
What We Like
Prospect Heights retains the feel of unreformed, unartificial Brooklyn. Spillover or not, it is its own neighborhood, with cultural amenities to beat any competitors.
What We'd Change
Despite the character and beauty of the houses in Prospect Heights, it does not have landmark protection status from the city, as parts of many of the surrounding neighborhoods do.
Comments
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Subject: Re: New York Times Article- Another DH mention!!
"When we first started, there was maybe one restaurant on the block," said Colin Daring
Hmmm, I wonder was this George's (now The Usual), Mitchell's or Nicks? -
Great article. Need that landmark protection.
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please post URL for this article.
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Soda snubbed! And so were Ripple and Half, not to mention Freddy's in the freaking footprint. But I'm always glad to see Sepia get love. If DH doesn't win Curbed Neighborhood of the Year, I'll be really surprised.
Here's the link. -
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Red Lipstick was also snubbed.
Argh. -
These places weren't snubbed (although Half, having referred to itself as a "lifestyle store," deserves it); the times couldn't mention everyplace...
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big ups to the entire DH community for allowing our collective ironic detachment serve as the lead in for the Times' neighborhood profile.
did I just say "big ups?" -
teddyballgame wrote: big ups to the entire DH community for allowing our collective ironic detachment serve as the lead in for the Times' neighborhood profile.
Yeah you did! Come back from '93, Teddy. :P
did I just say "big ups?"
That poll was forever ago. The lead in made us look like a pack of *gasp* hipsters or something. -
Candicissima wrote: [quote=teddyballgame]big ups to the entire DH community for allowing our collective ironic detachment serve as the lead in for the Times' neighborhood profile.
Yeah you did! Come back from '93, Teddy. :P
did I just say "big ups?"
That poll was forever ago. The lead in made us look like a pack of *gasp* hipsters or something.
was Teddy alive in '93?
anyway, horray. and thank goodness that article confirmed that I got a damn good deal on my apartment. I hate second guessing myself.
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I've got to say that it's sorta comforting to have gone into the bodega on Washington and Lincoln in search of light bulbs and not only were they hidden behind the counter, but homeboy gave them to me with no packaging in a paper bag. Meanwhile, the other people in place were buying single cans of Bud and looking for dutches and tobacco. That's right. Keep it gully, PH!
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TimesRatnerReport on the article: The Times Real Estate section on Prospect Heights: no blight, and few warnings
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So... the audio slideshow accompanying the NYT article...
Rumor has it that the majority of the audio (all the audio?) is the voice of a DH regular. -
it was someone from the neighborhood.... i don't know if he's a dh regular or not because he didn't say his DH username to the New York Times for whatever reason...
Also, I was alive and kickin' in 1993, although I probably didn't say anything like "big ups" until my beastie boy craze began, which I believe was the following year. -
dailyheights wrote: So... the audio slideshow accompanying the NYT article...
Rumor has it that the majority of the audio (all the audio?) is the voice of a DH regular.
:oops:
It was I. There goes my anonymity. Just remember - they don’t print/publish everything you say. I talked to the guy that wrote the article for at least 20 min - and my quote is …hmmm...but I did say that.
Oh, I guess according to Mr. Blogger I’m "blithe"...nice. It’s a reoccurring, light-hearted, short, informational piece about a particular neighborhood. Don’t take it for much more than that blogger man.
*sigh* -
Subject: "Mr. Blogger" replies: point taken, but...
added to the blog posting:
[The resident comments, on the DailyHeights.com discussion forum devoted to this article: "Oh, I guess according to Mr. Blogger I’m "blithe"...nice. It’s a reoccurring, light-hearted, short, informational piece about a particular neighborhood. Don’t take it for much more than that blogger man."
Point taken: the quote was blithe, not necessarily the person. But light-hearted and informational seem to come into conflict when it comes to covering real estate.]
http://timesratnerreport.blogspot.com/2005/12/times-real-estate-section-on-prospect.html -
Subject: Re: "Mr. Blogger" replies: point taken, but...
TRR wrote: added to the blog posting:
Fair enough. But even more the point is they use the quotes they want. But thanks for giving me a say.
[The resident comments, on the DailyHeights.com discussion forum devoted to this article: "Oh, I guess according to Mr. Blogger I’m "blithe"...nice. It’s a reoccurring, light-hearted, short, informational piece about a particular neighborhood. Don’t take it for much more than that blogger man."
Point taken: the quote was blithe, not necessarily the person. But light-hearted and informational seem to come into conflict when it comes to covering real estate.]
http://timesratnerreport.blogspot.com/2005/12/times-real-estate-section-on-prospect.html -
There goes the neighborhood. Or, maybe just my rent.
And I've lived here since 2000, biznatches! -
Gen was snubbed too! Personally I think they run a pretty good kitchen in there and the people are really cool.
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I learn about this site from that article.
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What I learned from that article is that the PS 9 building on Sterling & Vanderbilt is owned by Ratner! Did other folks know this?
Howdy, Stranger!
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