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By Matthew Perlman
Brooklyn Daily
Downtown is on the up-and-up.
The neighborhood we like to call “America’s Downtown” is still taking shape a decade after a major rezoning opened up it up to sky-scraping new developments. Luxury apartment towers are now being erected at a breakneck clip and the world-famous Fulton Mall is undergoing an infusion of chain stores and even, after decades of being retail-only, housing. An area booster says that the flurry of activity Downtown carries all the makings of a perfect locale.
“The fabric of a great urban environment is when people get to live, work, and play in the same area,” said Alan Washington, director of real estate and planning at the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership. “And what’s exciting about Downtown is that there’s integration with the local community.”
The biggest and most noticeable growth so far has been in residential high-rises. Five thousand apartments have been constructed in the area since 2004, another 3,300 are currently being built, and a mind-boggling 9,200 units are in the planning stages. In other words, barring another economic crisis like the one that idled work crews for years after 2008, Downtown’s housing stock does not look like it will stop growing any time soon.
“It’s hard not to notice the residential boom,” Washington said.
He can say that again. If the crowds of new residents roaming the streets at night and packing the new businesses catering to them did not give it away, the building boom does. That is in large part because a handful of developers are not content to just build big – they are trying to build biggest.
The mantle of Brooklyn’s tallest building, held for 81 years by the iconic Williamsburgh Savings Bank tower in Fort Greene, has been snatched twice since 2010, both times by steel-and-glass Downtown edifices. The current titleholder 388 Bridge Street opened this March standing 53 stories tall, dethroning the Brooklyner a block away on Lawrence Street by a hair or, in contractor terms, two stories. The Brooklyner enjoyed four short years as the borough’s loftiest structure, but 388 Bridge’s reign will likely be even shorter as a tower called Avalon Willoughby West is slated to rise to 57 stories next year — directly across Bridge Street.
The 388 Bridge executives don’t seem to mind the imminent loss of their bragging rights, saying they see their project as a stepping stone in the construction frenzy.
“Since the rezoning, things have been really exciting,” said William Ross, managing director of Halstead Property Development Marketing, which is handling sales and leasing at 388 Bridge. “We’re only at the beginning of the changes that are about to happen.”
In the meantime, though, the view from the top of 388 Bridge is unparalleled, and unobstructed. One of the two penthouses will set its owner back about $6 million, according to the developer.
It won’t be all caviar, champagne, and online stock-trading, though. Forty-eight of the 378 units will be rented at below-market rates.
Nearby, at a city-backed project on Fulton Street near Rockwell Place, half of the 600 pads in the works are slated to rent for below-market rates.
The new construction is not all housing, either. Jody and Al Laboz, who own the United American Land company, are hoping to complete their conversion of Fulton Mall’s Offerman building sometime this year. The 123-year-old, seven-story former department store at 505 Fulton St. is on its way to becoming 120 luxury lofts with just-opened TJ Maxx and Nordstrom Rack discount clothing stores and an H&M at its base.
A few blocks down Fulton Street, Brooklyn’s busiest shopping strip, which according to the Fulton Mall Improvement Association attracts 100,000 people each day, another, much bigger mixed-use project is being built from the ground up on the site of the former Albee Square Mall. City Point will combine ground-floor shops with office space and apartments in a massive development stretching a block to Willoughby Street. The first phase, an eye-catching storefront facing Fulton Street, has already opened with an Armani Exchange store as its anchor tenant. The next piece will add more retail and will be capped by two residential towers containing 700 apartments. The third phase, the particulars of which are still being planned, will bring the total retail floor-space in the compound to 12 football fields.
Fulton Street has been Brooklyn’s primary shopping district for more than a century and it received a pedestrian-friendly makeover as part of a 1980s urban renewal project. Its Macy’s is the only chain department store to survive the economic downturn of the 1970s and it remains best known for its sneaker and cellphone shops, but national retailers such as Swarovski Crystal, Aeropostale, and the Gap have been steadily scooping up storefronts there during the last several years.
And more big-name vendors are on the way, which makes good economic sense, according to one borough booster.
“Anything that opens in Brooklyn becomes number one for the companies that do it,” said Carlo Scissura, president of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce.
Still, the one constant in Brooklyn life is change, and some changes have left longtime commercial tenants on Fulton floundering.
“Business has been worse for me,” said Irvin Rabinovich, who has owned Bargain Bazaar on Futon Mall near Bond Street since 1991. His store makes, fixes, and sells jewelry, in addition to housing a pawn shop. He said the changes are making life here better, but that many of his customers have been lost.
Other stores have been nudged off the main mall, taking refuge in storefronts on the side streets where rents are lower. Chae Hui Hung owns a beauty shop called Top Beauty and has been doing business Downtown for 17 years. He moved from Fulton to his current storefront on Jay Street, between Fulton and Willoughby streets, five years ago in order to hang on. But things are not going much better for him.
“I’m not making any money,” he said. “The rents are going up, and business is slower.”
His wig stylist thinks there is room for mom-and-pops alongside the national chains. Independent stores offer different strands of products and services, she said.
“The ladies always want to look beautiful,” said Carmille Clyne, adjusting a customer’s new wig, priced at $299. “When the big stores come, the smaller stores will be off to the side. The area’s going to have everything.”
That is the type of arrangement civic groups want to see too.
“You would never want to see Fulton Mall look like every other mall in America,” said Scissura. “It would lose its Brooklyn flavor.”
Perhaps the most recognizable contributor to Downtown’s actual flavor is the iconic restaurant Junior’s, which sits off the mall at the corner of DeKalb Avenue and Flatbush Avenue Extension. The eatery has outlets in Grand Central Station and Times Square and served up boxes of its famous cheesecake to President Obama and then-mayoral candidate Bill DeBlasio during the Commander in Chief’s visit in October. Now, despite the sweet taste of commercial success, the owners of the nearly century-old restaurant are looking to sell the building it has occupied since 1950 to a developer looking to build a tower in its place — and have Junior’s as a ground-floor tenant.
New restaurants are starting to follow the train of recently arriving residents, with Hill Country Barbecue opening a location in a cavernous former courthouse building on Adams Street late last year, near where a Rocco’s Tacos, a Florida-based chain restaurant and tequila bar, is under construction in the former Morton’s Steakhouse. But eating options in the area are still overwhelmingly lunch places and a local administrator says it will be a while before that changes, despite demand from more affluent recent arrivals.
“Commercial areas need to have a certain critical mass before you start to see supplemental services like restaurants and bars,” said Robert Perris, district manager of Downtown’s community board.
Many tenants at 388 Bridge Street bemoan the lack of hip bars and restaurants in the neighborhood, which forces them to hoof it to Fort Greene or Cobble Hill to eat, drink, and be merry, according to Ross, the high-rise’s rep.
“What they want is something to do at night,” he said. “They want a hot bar.”
Ross thinks that as some of the small, longtime businesses in the area close their doors, new restaurants and bars will start filling their places.
“This is the natural progression or evolution of a neighborhood,” Ross said. “These little spaces are exactly what the cool bars and restaurants look for.”