The Plan

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1078 Fulton Street

When Nechama Levy began her search for retail space last July, she took advantage of years of experience as a bicycle shop employee to inform her real estate decisions, and then Colliers International brokers Charles Goldberg and Hank Widmaier sealed the deal at 1078 Fulton Street.

Beside ample basement space, Ms. Levy also considered floor plates large enough to install what she described as ergonomically correct racks and other bicycle-specific design flourishes. After the jump, Geoffrey Prisco of Brutus Park Architecture and Ms. Levy review the floor plans with The Commercial Observer and discuss what, exactly, convinced the first-time business owner to open her 5,800-square-foot shop, Bicycle Roots, in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Read More

Affordable Housing or Lack Thereof

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Lloyd Blankfein's Bed-Stuy Pet Project Rising Fast

It was less than a year-ago that Lloyd Blankfein’s set his loafered foot in Bed-Stuy, for the groundbreaking of the Bradford, a middle- and low-income development being constructed on Fulton Street. It was an unusual place to find the banker, but Goldman, capable of making money anywhere, had made a $45 million investment in the project. Brownstoner recently passed by the project, and, as you can see, it’s come a long way in a short amount of time.The whole shebang is due to open next summer. Read More

power broker

Mr. Riney, a navigator of Brooklyn's shifting landscape.

The Multifamily Guy

To look at the buildings neighboring it, 567 Vanderbilt Avenue is a typical four-story, mixed-use apartment building in Brooklyn. From the bricks it was built with to the upwardly mobile professionals and strollers it presumably houses, the structure is nearly identical to the other assets in that corner of Prospect Heights.

With a recent shift on the ground—characterized by relatively new restaurants like James, Cornelius and, inevitably, the Vanderbilt—sales prices in the neighborhood are rising.

But over on Vanderbilt Avenue in particular, where trendy bars and cafés pop up each week, prices are absolutely surging, in part because of Nostradamus-like predictions of basketball fans flooding the zone once the Nets start playing inside the proposed Atlantic Yards arena and, ultimately, exiting en masse from doors leading directly to the street. Read More

The Afternoon Wrap: Thursday

  • London’s wonderful mayor Ken Livingstone wants to charge gas-guzzling cars £25 to enter London’s “congestion charge zone.” What will Mayor Mike do in response? One can only hope that he bans Hummers, at least those yellow ones. [Times of London, via Streetsblog]
  • The crawl toward gentrification out in Bed-Stuy is speeding up thanks to Read More

  • Empowerment Convention in Debt

    The Black Brooklyn Empowerment Convention of 2006 has been a fascination of mine since I got my hands on the first email about it…which referred to David Yassky as a white individual and threw a spotlight on the racial implications of his congressional race.

    Then we found out about a not-so-publicized meeting of convention Read More

    Marty Markowitz, Montauk Washout

    A trip to the East End last week was met with rain, wind and cold eating away the last full week of summer. Sad for Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, whose Monday-through-Thursday vacation in Montauk was washed out.

    “It rained every day,” he said, after a press conference in Bed-Stuy on Tuesday. He sounded a Read More

    Rally in Brooklyn

    Via Gowanus Lounge, on Sunday there will be a rally to protest yet another out-of-scale development in Clinton Hill/Bed-Stuy. Not only are the developers at 335-345 Greene Avenue using the oft-abused “community facilities” floor-area-ratio boost, it appears they’re not exactly following safety guidelines:

    The demo, being done by the fine folks Read More