Gentrification/upscaling starts trickling east of Nostrand

rosefox

The nameless 24-hour "farmer's market" on Eastern Parkway and Schenectady has completely renovated in the past month. It used to be full of heaps of root vegetables, most with clouds of hovering flies. Now it's full of shelves of fancy packaged goods. I didn't look closely at the shelves, but the freezer contained Talenti gelato and gluten-free chicken nuggets, which is... quite a change. Maybe they're trying to compete with the 24-hour fruit & veg grocery on Utica and Carroll that has Bob's Red Mill and organic rainforest honey alongside the buckets of salt fish.

The McDonald's at Eastern Parkway and Utica has also gotten a facelift, bringing it up to the current McDonald's design standard. It looks really clean and nice. There are spiffy electronic kiosks where one can order food without being forced to interact with a person.

A few months ago the bank at Eastern Parkway and Utica got turned into a Modell's. I never see anyone in there. There's an independent sporting goods store around the corner from it that's been there much longer. I hope they have lots of loyal customers.

An actual sit-down restaurant is supposed to be opening at 366 Utica between Carroll and Crown. I should go down that way and see whether it's open yet. It's debatable whether a Caribbean-American restaurant in a Caribbean neighborhood is gentrification, of course. Longtime locals opening spiffy independent places is certainly better than outsiders coming in.

Some things are still the same—lemons are still three for a dollar at the farmer's market, and the McDonald's staff still let their oversalted fries get cold and chewy—but it definitely feels like more early markers of upscaling are creeping toward Utica, and coming at a faster pace.

whynot_31

At this point, the means and preferences of enough of the residents has already changed and we are seeing the area businesses respond or perish.

The business mix often lags behind, and then catches up.