NYT Article-The Hunt goes to CH

THE last straw for Stephanie Jo Klein came when the towers of boxes that cluttered her Kips Bay apartment — which doubled as the office for her gift-bag business — started tipping over.

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Ruby Washington/The New York Times
Stephanie Jo Klein, seated, with Amy Olsen, her assistant.

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John Marshall Mantel for The New York Times
530 Second Avenue in Kips Bay was too cramped for a home and business.


John Marshall Mantel for The New York Times
A ground-floor apartment in East Midwood was owned by a distant relative.
One day, a tissue packet from a pile of "random girly things" fell on her head. "I thought: I do not want to live like this," she said. "My apartment was so filled with gift bags that I literally had to push them aside to go to sleep."

Two years ago, Ms. Klein, a University of Michigan graduate, began her own business, Klein Creative Communications (kleincreative.com), which produces gift bags for special events. She worked from her bed and a fold-down desk. Within weeks, it became clear that her business was too space-intensive for her $1,400-a-month alcove studio. She found a stopgap solution, renting desk space for $450 a month in a nearby office suite.

The situation was better, but still not ideal. She was on the phone all day, while her office mates were quiet. And, toting her laptop back and forth, "I felt my work was following me everywhere," she said.

Just as bad, when her lease expired, the rent would be rising. "I liked the apartment, but not for $1,440," said Ms. Klein, 29.

Her Brooklyn friends seemed to have more space for less money. And she liked visiting the Brooklyn Heights home of her sister, Amy, where "there was a little more green, and people say hello to their neighbors."

So she started the hunt for a home-office space in Brooklyn. She wanted quick subway access, a convenient commercial area and enough space for an office — preferably one suitable for an employee.

Listings in her price range, $1,400 to $1,600, revealed neighborhoods she wasn't familiar with: Crown Heights, Midwood, Borough Park. She would ask agents or managers whether they had any properties similar to those they advertised, or any about to come up for rent.

One agent took her to a nicely renovated brownstone on Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights, for around $1,300. She was filled with questions — whether she could leave boxes in the hallway, and how much an air-conditioner would increase the electric bill. The owner was away, and the agent didn't have the answers. She told Ms. Klein, "If you sign, you can ask afterward." Sorry, but she needed to know beforehand.

A listing for a $1,475 ground-floor apartment in East Midwood was already promised to someone, but she was welcome to visit, just in case. She was told to ring the top bell, labeled with the name of the owners, Jonah and Eileen Kinigstein.

"Really!" she mused. A distant relative was compiling a genealogy, and she had recently learned that Kinigstein was a family name. Could they be related?

Sure enough, her hunt sparked a family reunion. Jonah Kinigstein, a painter, was a first cousin of her grandmother, Belle Stein Klein.

Ms. Klein rushed over, in the meantime calling her parents in White Plains. "Jonah looks exactly like the Stein family," she said. "They all have strong features. I am standing there looking at my family history."

The Kinigstein home, however, was too far away for her liking, and was rented to the other tenant.

Ms. Klein crossed more places off her list when she discovered they had inconvenient subway access. Then came another listing in Crown Heights — the top floor of a three-family house. It was just two blocks from the subway. The new owners, Hannah and Joseph Apfelbaum, had cleaned the building up and moved into the ground-floor apartment.

"Stephanie knew what she wanted and didn't seem willing to settle," Mrs. Apfelbaum said. "She was taking out her measuring tape."

The Apfelbaums had posted the apartment on the Web site Craigslist, saying it was on the outskirts of Prospect Heights. "She sounded a little wary of moving into this neighborhood," which is identified with the race riots of 1991, Mrs. Apfelbaum said.

"A lot of people have that concern," she said. "I grew up here. Yes, there is some tension between the blacks and the Jews, but I never felt I lived in an unsafe neighborhood."

(The Apfelbaums now have a vacancy on the middle floor; a student just moved out. Rent is $1,550.)

Ms. Klein returned that night with a burly male friend, who declared the neighborhood unsafe, inconvenient and certainly a place he wouldn't live. Her response: "I said, 'Hmm, it's good you are not going to live here, because I am.' "

She signed a one-year lease for $1,600, and spent last fall getting used to the area. "At first, I was a little cranky," she said. "I realized I wasn't right next door to everything, and it was really jarring, even though I told everybody it was fabulous, it was wonderful, it was easy! It wasn't."

Over time she adjusted. "Some stores near me close a little early, but there's lots that don't," she said. "It just took a little bit to find them." Neighbors sit on their stoops. Children put portable basketball hoops in the street, and run to the Mister Softee truck. Never before has her landlord brought her a little basket of treats for Purim, or has the Shabbat alarm sounded Friday night before candle-lighting.

Now, Ms. Klein's only complaint is that meetings in Manhattan consume so much prime work time. It takes nearly two hours back and forth to Midtown on the subway, or $60 in cab fare. But she luxuriates in the space: a bedroom, living room, office and storage room, which she calls the swag room. "I am so used to piling things up that I have to teach myself not to," Ms. Klein said.

A few months ago, she hired an assistant, Amy Olsen, 23. Though Ms. Olsen lives in Park Slope, she has a commute requiring a bus and train. "When I tell people I work in Crown Heights in a brownstone, they don't really know what I am talking about," she said.

Ms. Klein sometimes gets that reaction, too. Other times, people ask: "Are you Orthodox? Did you get superreligious?"

She tells them: "I didn't get superreligious. I just got religious about having good rent."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/02/realestate/02hunt.html?_r=1&oref=slogin