Really. Really? (kerry!/Flickr)

Much as we want to be, The Observer is no real fan of the transformation of the Fourth Avenue from grotty auto shops to shoddy "luxury" apartment buildings. As usual, The Journal's Robbie Whelan delivers another brilliant diagnosis for the city's architectural woes, and this time he focuses in on "Brooklyn's Burden."

Sadly, the damage already is done. Fourth Avenue, anchored at the north end by the sublime Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower, could have one day become one of New York's grand avenues, a broad street full of life, mixed uses and appealing architecture.

But the Planning Department lacked such foresight in 2003 when it rezoned the noisy avenue to take advantage of the demand for apartments spilling over Park Slope to the east and Boerum Hill and Gowanus to the west. Focused primarily on residential development, it didn't require developers to incorporate ground-level commercial businesses into their plans, and allowed them to cut sidewalks along Fourth Avenue for entrances to ground-level garages.

Developers got the message. With the re-zoning coinciding with the real-estate boom, they put up more than a dozen apartment towers, many of them cheap looking and with no retail at the street level, effectively killing off the avenue's vibrancy for blocks at a time.

The city finally got wise and passed another zoning change last year, correcting some of these mistakes. But it was too late. Walking along parts of Fourth Avenue today is like walking in the suburbs, bereft of the interaction between pedestrian and building, except for occasionally having to dodge a car darting out of a garage.

It closes with one of the strongest damnations of City Planning boss Amanda Burden, who has been honored by most every planning agency and civic group on the planet: "After Mayor Bloomberg leaves office at the end of 2013, Ms. Burden may be replaced as head of the Planning Department as well as chairwoman of the Planning Commission. Let's hope her replacement makes his or her mistakes before taking power."

This was clearly an awful oversight, but how much is Ms. Burden to blame, and how much is this the fault of the system with which she is trapped?

This is precisely why there is a war on landmarks, because so many New Yorkers are clamoring for more historic districts precisely because it is the only means of quality control in the city's "built environment." Just a block up the hill is Fifth Avenue, and the start of the Park Slope Historic District, one of the nicest and most expensive stretches in New York.

The historic district was just expanded for the third time, an outcome that makes developers red and blue. But can you blame the neighbors? When left to their own devices, some of these guys can do no right.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated Mr. Whelan's name as "Robby," not "Robbie." The Observer regrets the error.

A real fixer upper. (Wikimedia Commons)

When the city rezoned Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn in 2005, it tried to nudge retail development onto Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn, via the natural selection. Developers built huge residential towers, but the street wall remained blank, empty of retail, a blight for pedestrians. The Department of City Planning is revising its plans for the strip, hoping to ensure any future development will be better, but Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, as is his wont, wants more.

The city's plan—submitted in late June of this year —demands that half of ground floor space in all new buildings be given over to retail. Indeed, those nice condo's like Novo and Crest, would certainly be complemented by the reflected glow that nice shiny, post-modern retail stores can give.

The patch originally earmarked was Atlantic Avenue to 24th Street, Park Slope. Markowitz’ objective is extend that from Atlantic Avenue to the Atlantic Ocean in Bay Ridge.

"By guaranteeing more retail—and requiring developers to incorporate enhanced streetscapes and landscaping with each new project, we are bringing together all of the elements needed to make Fourth Avenue what it was always intended to be: a majestic, user-friendly, economically viable and safe thoroughfare for all brooklynites, new yorkers, and visitors to enjoy," Mr. Markowitz told the City Council in testimony yesterday at a meeting of the zoning committee.

He applauded the plans to require retail, but he also wants prohibitions against certain types of retails, such as technical schools and mental and dental labs. "wW believe these uses don’t lend themselves to a lively and engaging environment—and are not necessarily even pedestrian-friendly," Mr. Markowitz said. The planning department said such requirements would be onerous for property owners, but the borough president hopes to sway the council, which has the final say over the project and will vote later this month.

Fourth Avenue residents are accustomed to the drone of traffic that graces its corridor. If the latest plans to "jazz up" the avenue transpire, Mr. Markowitz hopes the sound of tires can be intermingled with that of clinking tills.

realestate@observer.com

Density is intensity. (DCP)

For years, planners and politicos have talked about transforming Brooklyn’s dingy Fourth Avenue into the borough’s own version of Park Avenue. That transformation is still in the works, but thanks to a handful of rezonings along the thoroughfare, the strip has gotten its fair share of mid-sized apartment buildings. Leaning more Robert Scarano than Rosario Candela, it is not exactly the sexiest strip. But one issue that has caused some real complaints within the community is the utter lack of street life.

Some people blame the Department of City Planning and its chair, that tall, blonde dame of design Amanda Burden, for not forcing developers to follow the tenets of Jane Jacobs and include a few storefronts in their buildings. Of the 10 new towers on Fourth, with 859 apartments scattered among them, only half bothered to include commercial spaces, that catalyst of city life—we’re a town of shoppers and latte sippers. Along with a handful of new hotels, a cinderblock wall or the exhaust of a parking garage is more likely to greet passersby than a new pet spa or tschotske shop.

City Planning argues that requiring retail from the start could have stymied the area’s growth, though the opposite seems to be true, as it has created an oppressive character on Fourth as uninviting as the auto body shops that predated the apartments. Park Slope Councilman Brad Lander, who represents part of the strip and worked on its rezoning while at the Fifth Avenue Committee, said no one is really to blame for this oversight, though.

“Almost nobody really thought—I don’t remember a single advocate talking about the need for ground floor retail,” Mr. Lander said today. “The consequences of not doing it are plain for everyone to see, but the Park Slope rezoning was really the first rezoning of any significance in the Bloomberg administration. It was missing a lot of things, like affordable housing and streetscape design.”

What passes for Park Avenue. (Streetsblog)

Now, the department is trying to rectify this problem with yet another rezoning on Fourth Avenue, running from Atlantic Avenue to 24^th Street, down near the Greenwood Cemetery. “This new proposal will help ensure the continued transformation of the avenue into a dynamic commercial corridor and provide much needed services to its surrounding communities,” Ms. Burden said in a release.

Three fairly simple proposals are in the works. One would require all new developments to dedicate at least 50 percent of their ground floor to retail uses, with a minimum of blank spaces—columns and walls no wider than 12 feet—and a maximum of transparency, e.g. glass, “to maximize interaction, visibility and pedestrian-oriented environment,” as the department puts it in a brochure. The third provision encourages driveways and curb cuts be located on side streets.

“A couple of buildings certainly speak to the reality that some developers don’t care about their community,” Mr. Lander, the council member, said. “Whether it is their neighbors or even their residents, design doesn’t much matter. It’s building to the lowest common denominator.”

Then again, there are almost no shops lining Manhattan’s Park Avenue, either. Maybe it is just the stench of the Gowanus and the 18-wheelers barreling by that keeps Fourth Avenue from becoming the latest BroBo haven.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

City Planning spokewoman Rachaele Raynoff stood up for the city's work and pointed out that some of the problems would have been addressed by the forthcoming rezoning of the Gowanus -- though that has been put on hold after the area was designated a Superfund site:

Creating inviting and engaging streetscapes has been a key part of City Planning's work, and indeed, active ground floor uses on streets within the Gowanus rezoning, including on Fourth Avenue, were an important part of the City's framework. However, a requirement for ground floor retail or community facilities would not have been appropriate in 2003 when the Park Slope rezoning was adopted by the City Council, nor was this issue raised during the public review process. Absent a market for the retail space on a newly developing corridor, such a requirement at that time could have discouraged development altogether by making it financially infeasible.

The Brownstoner Jonathan Butler agrees with City Planning that street life is important, but he disagrees with the rationale for forestalling it until now:

Obviously the main problem is the failure of all those new buildings to include retail.

Ron Shiffman, founder of the Pratt Center and a former member of the City Planning Commission, also thinks more should have been done from the start. But putting that aside, Shiffman said the issue the area's industrial legacy:

Part of the problem is that this is still a heavily automotive and industrial area, unlike Park Avenue, which was always residential and office when it was built. And unlike Park Avenue, you don't have all the truck traffic that you do on Fourth. Park Avenue is in the middle of a major residential and office neighborhood whereas Fourth Avenue is at the edge of a neighborhood. [...]  There are things other than urban design. Add inclusionary housing, so gentrification is less of an issue, and overtime, the character of the neighborhood would change.

Eric Safyan, an architect whose offices are located just off Fourth Avenue on President Street, reiterated the importance of retail and greenspace, but he thought a radical transformation of the street could have its advantages:

There should be a lot more landscaping, like you see on Park Avenue. Just taking out a car lane or two would help, slowing down traffic and creating more space for pedestrians and bikes. Right now, there's no bike lane on Fourth, but you see a lot of bikes. It's pretty dangerous.

Going back to the original Journal article that set off this debate, perhaps people are thinking about Fourth Avenue in the wrong way. Maybe it's not that the area has been slow to develop but that the other neighborhoods that were rezoned in its wake and against which it has subsequently been judged, places like Williamsburg and Downtown Brooklyn, perhaps they are the ones out of whack, growing too fast to reasonably control or grapple with.

As the Journal and our panel of experts suggest, things have been getting better along the stretch, largely in an organic way. Maybe this is how development is supposed to happen in New York City. Though a nice little infrastructure boost, say a bike lane and some trees, wouldn't hurt either.

mchaban [at] observer.com / @mc_nyo

While much of the article is a by-the-numbers status report on what's built and what's stalled, there is an undercurrent emphasizing the importance of a well-designed street:

While the 2003 rezoning resulted in 859 new apartments -- either built, under development or in planning -- the design of many of the new buildings have come under attack. They've done little to improve the character of the neighborhood or make it more pedestrian friendly because they have parking garages, air vents or concrete slabs at street level rather than shops and cafes, critics say.

The result is that Fourth Avenue remains relatively desolate, attracting little of the street activity that has made Park Slope one of the most desirable neighborhoods in the city.

"If you're going to bring more people to Fourth Avenue, you want it to be a place that's more comfortable to walk," says City Councilman Brad Lander, whose district includes the east side of Fourth Avenue. "Some of these cement walls turn their backs on the neighborhood and make it a much scarier place to walk."

Clearly Jane Jacobs was not consulted in the planning process. The article acknowledges this in a way--this inforgraphic pretty much says it all--by noting how the Department of City Planning has since gone out of its way in ensuring more street-life and retail by requiring them in subsequent rezonings. "Absent a market for the retail space on a newly developing corridor, such a requirement at that time could have discouraged development altogether by making it financially infeasible," Brooklyn planning director Purnima Kapur told the Journal. The only problem is, now that all these unattractive and uninviting buildings have been built, who really wants to live in or around them?

By taking a shortcut early on, City Planning may have cost itself in the long-term. There is no reason not to think this won't get better over time, as more condos replace more auto body shops. But if those buildings continue to be of shlocky quality, the transformation may never fully take place.

Wandering Manhattan's Park Avenue, there actually aren't that many storefronts, arguably fewer than on Fourth Avenue, so a lack of retail can't reasonably be blamed for the difference. On both streets, the cars still whizz by at life-threatening speeds, so it's not the number of lanes or traffic, either. What makes Park Avenue so much nicer than Fourth is that there are nice buildings lining it. Its the same thing that makes Fifth and Seventh avenues just up the Slope so popular. Until the same can be said for Fourth Avenue, it will never be able to compete.

mchaban [at] observer.com / @mc_nyo

My roommates and I had recently moved into a three-bedroom near Fourth Avenue, assuming we'd entered the land of baby strollers and Tea Loungers. (After all, Fifth Avenue is one block away.) But our address--on the northwest side of the mini-highway--puts us outside Park Slope's boundaries and firmly in Gowanus.

At least for now.

Park Slope is growing, spreading not only further south but also further west, into an industrial area which looks nothing like the boutiques-and-brownstones district closer to Prospect Park. In this advance, Fourth Avenue is the front line: a litmus test for the fungibility of Brooklyn's neighborhoods.

The most recent example of the spread is the Argyle Park Slope, a condominium development at Fourth Avenue and Seventh Street (i.e. "the building that likes to pretend it's in Park Slope," according to neighborhoods blog Curbed). The L-shaped structure is technically on the Gowanus side, yet the Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group is promoting the condos based on their Park Slope location--notably at a sales office at 294 Fifth Avenue at First Street, in Park Slope proper.

The 60-unit building, which is still in construction, has been on sale for $734 per square foot since October. It's 70 percent sold. Dan August Cordeiro, the senior managing director of Corcoran Sunshine, estimates that about half the buyers are current Park Slope residents.

"We named our building the Argyle Park Slope because we think it is in Park Slope, which is mostly a residential neighborhood," Mr. Cordeiro said. "And with Gowanus, people think of the industrial uses or maybe the artistic uses."

But if we think it's Park Slope, does that make it so?

"There are no 'official' neighborhood borders," said Craig R. Hammerman, the district manager of Brooklyn Community Board 6, which encompasses both areas, "but Fourth Avenue is widely recognized as the border between Gowanus and Park Slope. Neighborhoods are self-defined entities."

Definition comes from the look and the feel; from physical boundaries like expressways and parks; from retail, residents, and dwellings. In 2005, the whole area was rezoned to allow increased commercial and residential development along Fourth and to preserve the character of the brownstones. Buildings along Seventh Avenue are now capped at 70 feet, while on Fourth Avenue development is permitted to 120 feet.

Many of the newest constructions are not retail: the Novo condos, the Crest On Second Street, and the Hotel le Bleu. And the shops along Fourth? There's a U-Haul storage facility, a Staples, a car wash, a deli or two.

"As you can see, we're the only business on Fourth Avenue," said Craig Sorrenti of Staten Island, who owns Victoria's Gourmet Deli and Pizza at Fourth Avenue and Sixth Street. "I mean, in this general location."

How does he feel about the new development? "It's great for business," Mr. Sorrenti said.

When Michael Brennan, a 43-year-old painter, moved to Eighth Street and Fourth Avenue three years ago, he said, no one would deliver to his address.

"Fourth Avenue is the dividing line between Park Slope and Gowanus," declared Mr. Brennan. "Unless you talk to a realtor. A realtor would tell you something else."

Like other residents, he takes pride in the Gowanus label; he doesn't object to the changes in the neighborhood, but he still prefers its less pretty parts.

"Without insulting my neighbors, it's a little less high-strung on this side," Mr. Brennan said. "My building is right on the edge of the industrial zone, and I wanted to be closer to these kinds of spaces. As you walk up the hill, each block gets nicer and nicer and nicer."

"It's one block," Mr. Cordeiro said, "so I don't think it's that big of a leap for people. People are buying on Fourth Avenue because it's a block from Fifth Avenue."

And pretty soon they'll be buying on Third Avenue--or at least that's the plan. For Mr. Cordeiro, Third Avenue is "the new frontier."