The Dream is Dead: Red Hook

NY Magazine has an article currently published online that is helping us feel more grounded in reality.

The topic is Red Hook, everyone's favorite up-and-coming baby.  However, the dreams of a gentrified Red Hook have largely failed to take flight.  Why?

Here's the paragraph that basically sums up the "problem" with Red Hook:

This is why Red Hook has seemed uniquely immunized against gentrification. It’s an isolated neighborhood, roughly one square mile in size, and it’s very difficult to commute to, except by car. Brokers and boosters like to describe Van Brunt as a "twenty-minute walk from the subway," but they don’t often tell you what this journey entails: From the Smith Street–Ninth Street F-train stop, you travel by foot over, under, and around the tangle of the BQE and the entrance to the Battery Tunnel, then cross an uninviting wasteland of warehouses and Dumpster-storage yards guarded by barbed wire and the occasional unfriendly dog. There’s a bus, the B61, that’s famous in local lore for its sporadic appearances and circuitous route. Did I mention that the Smith Street–Ninth Street subway station is scheduled to close for repairs in 2010? For about a year? At least?

Regardless of whether a neighborhood is boosted as trendy, limited infrastructure will keep new people from moving to the neighborhood.  It will also prevent consumers from traveling to the neighborhood.

We specifically chose PLG as our home because of the quick subway ride to Manhattan and access to Prospect Park.  Don't get us wrong - we wanted (and continue to want) more amenities to arrive, but we decided to live in PLG because it did not come with the isolation of a neighborhood such as Red Hook.

In summary, we're not surprised that Red Hook did not live up to its imagined potential.  NY Mag tries to make the argument that we could see "de-gentrifcation" emerge as a citywide trend, but we get the sense that Red Hook was never very desirable to begin with.

Jon Brownstoner offers his commentary today as well.

Comments

[Bob Marvin]

Since I'm a BWAC member I spend a fair amount of time in Red Hook and like the area a lot. Still, it really is a special case because of the lack of transport and I don't think it's possible to draw any inferences applicable to Brooklyn or NYC as a whole.

[Paul]

I think you hit the nail right on the head. We looked in Redhook before we bought in PLG. Although there are a number of good things about it, the isolation factor has no easy fix. Some day that might change - especially if the idea of reviving light rail around NYC takes hold. But until then, Redhook will be edgy.

[Sharon]

I remember hearing some talk about a year or so ago about Red Hook getting a makeover a la Hoboken with a waterfront park, ferry service and cruise ship terminal. That's too bad - it sounds like it must've fallen through or had just been a rumor.

We just bought a place on the border of PLG...not quite PLG but very close. We're looking forward to getting to know the neighborhood.

[Dan Icolari]

Greetings from St. George, Staten Island

I was interested in the piece on Red Hook because my wife and I remember it when it was seriously a no-man's land--and because we have friends who exhibit at BWAC, so we're there a lot.

We got to know Red Hook in 1967, when our friends Donna and Steve and their two kids rented a floor-thru near Columbia Street with space heaters for $35 a month. I don't have to recount how much we could have bought for how little, but we didn't, and for precisely the reasons enumerated here.

The perception of remoteness--not the reality, as in Red Hook, but the perception--is exactly what has kept my neighborhood, St. George--which has amazing topography, stunning harbor views and a large census of pre-World War I buildings at prices 1/4 to 1/3 less than their equivalents in Brooklyn--from being restored and commercially developed as quickly as its real circumstances would seem to warrant.

In some ways, the slower pace of restoration/development here is a positive. Though I think prices are absurd (we bought when it was cheap; you know the rest), they're a whole lot less absurd than those on either side of Prospect Park. And that allows people with more taste than money to find a perch here.

Example: Our son and his wife, recently married, moved from Fort Greene to an 1100 square foot, 2 bedroom St. George co-op diagonally across Richmond Terrace from the ferry terminal. Price $225K; 5% cash down.

So the perception of remoteness can actually work in one's favor. It certainly worked for us many years ago; and more recently, in a different market, it's worked for our son and his wife.

[Bob Marvin]

The Red Hook waterfront park, ferry service and cruise ship terminal mentioned by Sharon are not a rumor and have not fallen through. They've all been built.

That still doesn't solve Red Hook's transit problem though. FWIW I still like Red Hook a lot.