The old Studebaker Service Station: Not a brownstone this time around (Brownstoner

Over the years, Jonathan Butler has covered countless Brooklyn real estate deals and developments—and by extension, the delights and absurdities of living in the borough—for his blog Brownstoner.

Now, he can finally write about his own. Mr. Butler and his partners have paid $11 million for a former Studebaker Service Station on Dean Street in Crown Heights. They plan to convert the 155,000 square-feet of space into a commercial mixed-use development that will house artists and assorted creative types as well as a food hall—a $30 million project, to which Goldman Sachs' Urban Investment Group will contribute $25.5 million. BFC Partners, the developer behind Toren, is also involved in the deal, which was first written about in The Journal and then, of course blogged about by Mr. Butler on Brownstoner.

A promising first step—bringing Selldorf Architects on board to design the space, which should be interesting given Selldorf's success with high/low projects in the past: Manhattan galleries and penthouses, a renovation of the Plaza's famed Oak Room and designing a Brooklyn recycling plant.

Mr. Butler, whom The Observer once outed, is also co-founder the popular (and profitable!) Brooklyn Flea food and funky stuff weekend market. He pointed out in an interview that despite the appeal of the blogger turned developer storyline, he's not exactly an ingenue when it comes to business—he has an M.B.A. from NYU, worked on Wall Street and in the late 1990s bought 125 Maiden Lane in lower Manhattan as part of a joint venture. Speaking of industrious, Brownstoner started as a renovation blog for Mr. Butler's Clinton Hill rowhouse.

"It's certainly not like I’ve been doing crochet for the last 10 years and am suddenly putting tens of millions of dollars into a building," said Mr. Butler.

Still, it's a big step, "a big building, a lot of money and a lot of people involved."

So why Crown Heights and why this project?

In some ways, it was kind of came down to the building itself, Mr. Butler said.

"When I’m not thinking about the flea market, most of the time I’m thinking about real estate and I’m always thinking about interesting opportunities," he said. "The building caught my eye and started thinking about the numbers a little bit."

The former garage/storage facility is located in a small enclave of commercially zoned buildings, which makes it significantly cheaper than residential or mixed-use areas in the surrounding neighborhood, a neighborhood that's already significantly cheaper than Dumbo, where Brownstoner is based. Another nearby building was recently bought for use as a deluxe storage facility. "Kind of a wasted opportunity in my mind," Mr. Butler said.

But it was other factors, especially the neighborhood's growing population of young, creative professionals, the burgeoning number of businesses on Franklin Avenue that cater to them and the neighborhoods within a one-mile radius (Clinton Hill, Prospect Heights, Bed-Stuy and even parts of Fort Greene and Park Slope) that closed the deal.

"If you look at commercial rents on Franklin Avenue, half a block away, they've basically doubled in the last 4 years, as have the number of restaurants and bars that have opened around there," Mr. Butler said. "We’d love to draw as many people as possible who live in the neighborhood, but it also has proximity to other neighborhoods."

Goldman Sach's Urban Investment Group also thought 1000 Dean, and moreover Crown Heights, had a lot of potential—it's their first investment in the neighborhood, although  Margaret Anadu, vice president of the Urban Investment Group, said another deal for an affordable housing and community facility development is near closing.

"It's a pretty incredible neighborhood where there’s been some residential investment yet it still has a fair amount of warehouse space that’s underutilized," Ms. Anadu said, noting the abundance of train lines and bike routes leading to the area (bikes!). She described the group's investment strategy as "making catalytic investments in neighborhoods across New York." (Lloyd Blankfein himself traveled to Bed-Stuy two years ago to inaugurate an affordable housing project there.)

As for the development, Ms. Anadu pointed to the demand for light industrial space as well as the low vacancy rates and rising rents in neighborhoods like Dumbo.

"We want to provide a sizable discount from Manhattan and even to other neighborhoods in Brooklyn," Ms. Anadu said. While office space in many parts of Brooklyn costs in excess of $30 per square foot, they were looking to charge in the mid- to low-20s per square foot.

"And it's not just about creative space, it's about shared space," she said. "One thing that’s different about these businesses is that they want to be close together… we think it creates synergies that create value."

Or, as Mr. Butler put it, he thought it was most important to create a sense of community, like Brownstoner and the Flea. And besides the artistic community, the food hall should provide a draw.

What's a food hall, exactly?

"Well, it's not particularly evolved at this point, but something like 5 or 6 little kitchens behind counters, a dining/beer hall," said Mr. Butler, struggling to describe it. "More like... well, there's not anything like it at this point."

So it's a fancy food court?

"Mmm," Mr. Butler hesitated. "A food court has such bad connotations. O.K. Maybe a little bit like that."

And he's netted Selldorf Achitects to design the space with optimal flexibility in mind.

"We want the people to be as local as possible and as creative and industrious as possible," he said.

The ideal tenant?

He declined to say. "We're already having discussions with people."

kvelsey@observer.com

Led by saxophonist Jay Beckenstein, the group is astonishingly comfortable playing together, changing styles and rhythms incessantly. Onstage, Mr. Beckenstein alternated between alto and tenor sax, sometimes breathing into both at the same time. He played his saxophone like it was his oldest friend, looking sheepishly comfortable even when he was bent over his instrument, wailing into it.

It's Mr. Beckenstein's band, but the real star is bassist Scott Ambush. He kept the group's cacophony in check with a clockwork-like rhythm, all the while shifting genre and style nearly every measure, transforming from Dixieland walkups to Mingus-style hard-bop with calculated ease. The Mingus influence certainly wasn't lost on anyone in the room when Spyro Gyra performed a note-perfect, but utterly bland, interpretation of "Goodbye Porkpie Hat," from the classic album, Mingus Ah Um. The quintet's elementary take on one of the greatest jazz standards of the second half of the twentieth century was summed up by Mr. Beckenstein's words upon finishing: "Thanks. [grunt] Sad song."

Unfortunately, South Africa's Jonathan Butler opened with a cover of "Fire and Rain." It was a conventional moment for a guy who's built a career around breaking convention. Singing in an apartheid-ravaged Cape Town, Butler got a record deal from Jive when he was only 13 years old. What was so refreshing about his set after the James Taylor cover, though, was the self-restraint of his band and his own guitar playing. There were fewer notes, and the band took their time reaching a catharsis, a nice balance to the everything-but-the-kitchen sink hedonism of Spyro Gyra. During solos, Mr. Butler would duck-walk across the stage like a slow motion Chuck Berry. His guitar playing was a strange amalgamation of reggae, jazz, blues, and African folk.

Then, out of nowhere: "Does anybody here like gospel?" Mr. Butler asked. "If you like it, you better make some noise." Mr. Butler proved a salacious pastor, playing gospel as if it were a porn soundtrack (there were even a few "Amens!"--possibly even non-ironic--shouted at the stage). James Taylor missteps aside, he can't help but play babymaking music.

The HSBC Jazz Festival continues Saturday March 27 at the Nokia Theatre Saturday, March 27 with Al Jarreau and Christian Scott, and Wednesday May 12 at B.B. King Blues Club with Patti Austin.

For one thing the “Brooklyn Flea” is curated, said founder Jonathan Butler—until recently known only under his nom de plume Brownstoner.

Mr. Butler and his partner Eric Demby, a former communications officer for Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, handpicked about 200 up-and-coming designers as well as vintage clothing and antique vendors out of the 700 who expressed interest.

You won’t be able to find much junk there, but you will be able to buy hardwood tables hand-carved in Dumbo out of former bowling lanes; Belgian Waffles; and slinky silk tops—think Portobello Road by way of Brooklyn.

Anyone who has read Mr. Butler’s blog is aware of his penchant for classic architecture and restoration, but he is also a self-proclaimed “life-long flea marketer.”

“With the decline of Manhattan flea markets, it seemed that the city needed a new one,” he said of the inspiration behind the Flea.

The Manhattan flea market at 26^th Street is “a shadow of its former self”—all that remains is a lot and an indoor space—and there is another one on 78th Street and Columbus Avenue, but “nothing of this scale or quality” exists in New York at the moment, Mr. Butler said.

“Brooklyn seemed like the right place because there are a lot of creative people there, and given the money in Manhattan I think the number of people willing to take the time to hunt around for bargains may have diminished.”

Not everything for sale at the Flea will be bargains to be sure, but Mr. Butler expects the event to attract a lot of people from Manhattan and other Brooklyn neighborhoods.

For more information on the event and a complete list of vendors, you can visit the Web site here.

“Last year we promoted the hell out of the party on our blog,” said Lockhart Steele, the creator of Curbed. “We had 400 people in a tiny room like this.”

A couple of dozen family, friends, “hangers-on and groupies” showed up Thursday, Mr. Steele joked.

Five years ago none of the five bloggers attending the party knew each other, but since the medium began to explode, an informal, uncoordinated “blogger ecosystem” has emerged, explained Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan, the co-founder of Apartment Therapy. “When we all met [around 2003] starting a blog was like living in a small town; they linked to you, you linked to them, then eventually we said, ‘Hey, let’s get a drink,'" he said.

Harry Wakefield, the creator of the contemporary-design blog MoCo Loco, brought the bloggers together for the first time to suggest they share an ad-sales rep. The idea never panned out, but since then they meet at least once a year to talk shop.

“We realized we all had the same problems… How do you pay for this? All of us had other jobs but were spending all of our time blogging," Mr. Gillingham-Ryan said. "Blogging is still new and the rules are still evolving, so getting together and looking at each others’ stats is so helpful--figuring out how to promote, cross link, do well in Google. Right now there are more questions than answers.”

All of the bloggers have obviously found some answers to these questions, since they all have quit their day jobs. Graham Hill sold TreeHugger.com to the Discovery Channel for $10 million last August.

One of the relative latecomers to blogging, Jonathan Butler, a.k.a. Brownstoner, wants to keep his blog personal. Mr. Butler was still working on Wall Street until last February and did not even move to Brooklyn, the subject of his blog, until 2003.

“Part of me secretly hopes no one offers me enough money because I don’t want to sell,” Mr Butler said. “My blog is so connected to me personally that people call me Brownstoner"--Mr. Butler mimicked quotation marks with his fingers--"and I can still see myself being Brownstowner in 20 years."