By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/23 2:14pm

Manhattan Transfers

Corten steel: it's not just for Barclays!

Sandy Who? Red Hook Townhouse Tries To Set Neighborhood Record With $2.15 M. Pricetag

“The slum that faces the bay” is what Alfieri, an Italian lawyer in Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge, calls Red Hook. Wedged in a subway-less corner of South Brooklyn, hemmed in by the docklands and Robert Moses’s Gowanus Expressway, Red Hook was for years—as late as 1988, LIFE magazine called it “the crack capital of America”—Brooklyn’s most notorious slum.

But that was then. Buoyed by an unrelenting wave of gentrification sweeping eastwards across the borough, Red Hook has been enjoying the runoff of demand from neighborhoods like Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens, which has turned the neighborhood into any other in brownstone Brooklyn: that is, too rich for our blood (and that of most other New Yorkers). Read More

By Kim Velsey 10/31/12 11:22am

The Food Supply

Rising waters in Red Hook. (Kathleenhoran, yfrog)

Red Hook Community Farm Decimated by Hurricane Sandy

As Hurricane Sandy pummeled the city on Monday, the storm waters surged through the streets of Red Hook, flooding basements, cars and Red Hook Community Farm’s field of late-fall salad greens, arugula and cabbage.

“The farm was under two and a half feet of water. It’s total crop loss,” said executive director Ian Marvy, who lives nearby in Red Hook, where he stayed as the hurricane struck. Read More

By Matt Chaban 8/30/12 5:54pm

An Arena Grows in Brooklyn

Jumpin' off? (Property Shark)

The Nets Really Are Pushing the Brooklyn Thing: Team May Open Practice Facility in Redhook

Could it get any more Brooklyn than Red Hook? From On the Waterfront to that new Spike Lee movie you haven’t seen, the neighborhood is just off the grid enough to keep nostalgic hipsters feeling like they live in some far away place that is anything but Manhattanized (never mind the IKEA and high-end restaurant scene). But just as the Barclays Center has transformed the nexus of Park Slope and Fort Greene (for the worse, at least in certain [fresh] eyes), might a new Nets training facility do the same to Red Hook? Read More

By Jess Schiewe 6/04/12 4:52pm

Mysteries of Brooklyn

Better act fast: brownstones in Brooklyn are snatched up like hot cakes.

The Manhattanization of the Brooklyn Brownstone Means Red Hook Is Hotter Than Ever

Christabel Gough, the secretary for the Society for the Architecture of the City and a resident of the Greenwich Village Historic District, has a simple, to the point message for New Yorkers: Beware. Manhattanization, she warns, is growing, encroaching on historical neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs. It is the real estate equivalent of kudzu and Brooklyn, Ms. Gough says, is the next victim. Yet unlike it’s leafy cousin, Manhattanization cannot be eradicated with sheep.

But first, a word on Manhattanization, as explained by Ms. Gough in her keynote speech, “Can Cobble Hill Avoid Manhattanization” at the Cobble Hill Association General Meeting on May 29th, and helpfully reprinted at Brownstoner. Read More

By Kim Velsey 4/04/12 1:35pm

The Mysteries of Brooklyn

The beginning of the end?

Will Whole Foods Be As Bad for Brooklyn as Ikea—or Worse? [Video]

There is something about big box stores that brings out irrational hatred. Especially in Brooklyn.

Now that plans for a 52,000-square foot Whole Foods store are hurtling toward groundbreaking, Brooklynites have been forced to confront their fears that without dogged opposition, the borough might come to resemble the kind of suburban hellhole found in the southern or central U.S. Or the Upper West Side, even. Read More

By Matt Chaban 11/02/11 11:00am

on the waterfront

All aboard.

Ahoy, Brooklyn! Defying Recession, Developers Drop Anchor Along East River

The sun had not quite broken over the rowhouses and warehouses of Greenpoint Monday morning when The Observer arrived at the new concrete pier jutting out into the East River at India Street. The dock seemed barely finished, its concrete planks not entirely even, the sides of the structure lined with chain-link fencing. Whole sections were torn up and surrounded with orange construction netting.

When the ferry pulled up, ghost decals clinging to the foredeck, the passengers filed on, handing over their $4 tickets, joining the nearly 3,000 New Yorkers who have ridden the ferry each weekday since its launch in mid-June, according to the city—more than double the number officials had expected.

After ordering our locally brewed fair-trade coffee and a pain au chocolat, we turned to see a gay couple smiling across a starboard table, sharing a quiche, a floating picnic. On the port side was a pretty biracial pair staring out the window at Long Island City, its gleaming towers pulling into view. The woman held a breastfeeding baby on her lap.

The subway this was not. Read More

By Matt Chaban 10/26/11 6:21pm

on the waterfront

Long necks. (Barry Yanowitz)

Red Hook Redo Already a Reality? Give It a Decade

Two weeks ago, Port Authority boss Chris Ward declared that one of the biggest projects the city could undertake would be the redevelopment of Red Hook. Not only would it vitalize another corner of the Brooklyn waterfront, but it would also become a critical connection to burgeoning development on Governors Island.

At the time, this sounded like pontification—Mr. Ward fought to keep the container terminal active at his previous job running American Stevedoring—but now it is looking more like prognostication.

Last week, it was revealed that the Port Authority had quietly cancelled its lease with American Stevedoring, which has led a handful of outlets to speculate that Red Hook’s redevelopment is in the near future. According to a highly placed source at the Port Authority, though, it will be at least a decade before the port ships out for good and the BroBos can move in. Read More