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October 25, 2011
The Multifamily Guy
NY Observer
by Daniel Edward Rosen
Bruce Ratner's basketball arena appears to be having a pronounced gentrifying effect on the surrounding neighborhoods, while his allegedly "affordable" housing remains nothing more than a promise.
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.
Posted by eric at October 25, 2011 11:57 AM