Brooklyn’s Rise in Creative Class
February 3rd, 2012
Writer Kay S. Hymowitz’s article titled How Brooklyn Got Its Groove Back on City Journal is a fascinating read into what changes took place in the past few decades that brought Brooklyn to the forefront of the creative-class in NYC. Ms. Hymowitz asks, “How did the Brooklyn of the Lehanes and crack houses turn into what it is today—home to celebrities like Maggie Gyllenhaal and Adrian Grenier, to Michelin-starred chefs, and to more writers per square foot than any place outside Yaddo? How did the borough become a destination for tour buses showing off some of the most desirable real estate in the city, even the country?”
She answers them by showing how Brooklyn neighborhoods, including Dumbo, grew from being an industrial area into a creative-class gentrified neighborhood and “one of the wealthiest and fastest-growing neighborhoods in Brooklyn”.
In 1981, though, developer David Walentas took a look at the brick warehouses and factories (most dating from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) and, taking a cue from his recent development successes in another former industrial area, Soho, bought 11 of them—almost an entire neighborhood. Or what he hoped might someday become a neighborhood: like Red Hook, Dumbo was still zoned solely for manufacturing, despite manufacturers’ indifference to the area. Walentas had to wait 17 years for the city to pronounce Dumbo “mixed-use” and for the area to come alive.
Walentas’s prescience—and patience—put him in an unusual position. Like many successful developers, he was able to make a lot of money: space in the buildings he bought for $6 per square foot now sometimes sells for $1,000 per square foot. But unlike other developers, Walentas owned so much of a neighborhood that he could play God. Also, since he was making so much money from the properties overall, he could give rent breaks to commercial tenants that he viewed as desirable—for instance, upscale retailers like West Elm, the modern-furniture outlet, and Jacques Torres, a high-end chocolatier—while refusing chains like Duane Reade, which, he felt, set the wrong, down-market tone.
Read the article for more about Dumbo’s digital-media marketing and startup firms, Williamsburg’s gentrification, and Park Slope’s literary center.
2 Responses to “Brooklyn’s Rise in Creative Class”
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February 3rd, 2012 at 4:45 pm
Brooklyn always had many creative folks, yet the numbers have grown greatly. Third or Second most populous US creative county, almost tied with LA County and NY County.
I believe the main reasons are: Brooklyn is a great family town; Manhattan is too expensive now; generally the architecture here is the best in the city; vast foreign money pouring in manhattan for years pushes others out of the small island to the big island; general growth in the creative class and services in the economy and our fair city.
February 7th, 2012 at 11:16 pm
Gentrification.