The Sun Rises on Brooklyn's Sunset Park

When Nyssa Halgrimson graduated from Vassar College two years ago, she looked to rent a cheap apartment in a safe neighborhood with a reasonable commute to her art assistant job in Manhattan.

One by one, she checked off neighborhoods that didn't fit her list of requirements: Park Slope, Williamsburg, the East Village. Even the apartments listed in Bushwick were too expensive. On a budget of $1,000 a month, she would be lucky live in a shoebox in any of these places. Then, she found Sunset Park.

"It was perfect for me," Ms. Halgrimson, 24, said. An acquaintance of her mother's gave her a tip about a three-room railroad apartment at the top of a brownstone a few blocks from an N train express stop.

Lately, she and her neighbors are running into other recent graduates and young professionals. Real estate brokers said the demographic that was once finding reasonably priced places in Park Slope and Williamsburg is finding homes in Sunset Park's corner of Brooklyn. In fact, there has been a surge of development and rental conversions in the neighborhood, and the Department of City Planning is conducting a rezoning study of the area. The most well known development under way is a six-story building at 420 42nd St. The developer had planned to build a 12-story building, but reduced the size after opposition from local residents and politicians.

"People are discovering it," a vice president with Corcoran's Brooklyn real estate office, Stanley Gerasimczyk, said. "It has a lot of the prices that Park Slope had in the 1980s." He said he is closing a deal with a recent Princeton graduate who is buying a two-bedroom apartment in the neighborhood after a fruitless search for value in other parts of Brooklyn. Apartments in Sunset Park sell for around $500 a square foot, compared with $850 a square foot in Park Slope, Mr. Gerasimczyk said. For example, in Sunset Park a two-bedroom apartment with a kitchen, den, and roof terrace at 4610 Sixth Ave. is selling for $429,000 or about $529 a square foot. In Park Slope, a 530-squarefoot one-bedroom at the Crest, on Fourth Avenue and 2nd Street, is on the market for $451,000, or $851 a square foot.

The increase in the number of young professionals in the neighborhood started about three years ago and has recently picked up pace, a sales representative for KCD Real Estate on Fifth Avenue, Miriam Mitchell, said. "It's very near to Park Slope," she said. "There are transportation advantages and it's still relatively cheap."

With all the influx of students to the neighborhood, there is some concern about gentrification. Several immigrant families have felt some pressure from landlords to move out to make room for higher-paying tenants, the executive director of Neighbors Helping Neighbors, Julia Fitzgerald, said. "People are concerned about displacement, but I don't think it's students moving in that they are worried about," Ms. Mitchell said. "It's the new developments." Still, young people are drawn to the area.

Lindsey Nelson, 22, a recent graduate of New York University, said she and her roommate were attracted to the large number of families and sense of safety when she first visited Sunset Park after seeing an advertisement on Craigslist. On the flip side, she said it is difficult to find bars or cafes in the area like the ones she became accustomed to in the West Village. "We're pretty isolated — most of my friends live in or around Williamsburg," she said. "But everybody is nice and the food is great." Ms. Nelson and her roommate pay less than $1,500 for a large two-bedroom with a separate living room and eat-in kitchen.

"I looked around Clinton Hill, but I just didn't like the neighborhood," Ms. Nelson said. "It felt sort of desolate to me. In Sunset Park, there is a sense of a community."

With some creative arrangements, prices can be nearly unfathomable.

A junior at Brooklyn College, Jake Chandler, said he and his roommates were able to fit four people into a two-bedroom apartment with two smaller rooms. They pay a range of $250 to $450 a month, he said.

"I go to school in Brooklyn and work in Park Slope," Mr. Chandler said. "I lived in Mexico for a year, so I like the culture and the food." So far, the area has retained its multi-ethnic feel. Mexican restaurants, bars, and shops populate a large section of Fifth Avenue. On the other side of the park that gives the neighborhood its name is one of the city's three Chinatowns. The streets are active places, with residents socializing outdoors.

The large Sunset Park is also a large draw for new residents. It is the highest point in Brooklyn, and has views of Manhattan and Statue of Liberty, as well as a public swimming pool.

Kieran Walsh, 23, who does economic research in the Financial District, said he was drawn by the low prices and easy commute. Now that he has moved into a twobedroom on 45th Street and Fifth Avenue, he and his friends have found several jewels in the neighborhood.

One of them is Irish Haven on Fourth Avenue and 58th Street, a gritty bar that was used for Martin Scorsese's "The Departed."

"This is probably the coolest place in Sunset," Mr. Walsh said. Other benefits of the neighborhood include drastically cheaper grocery prices. Ms. Halgrimson, the Vassar graduate, said she goes to Three Guys From Brooklyn and Circus Fruit wholesalers on Ft. Hamilton Parkway.

"The fruit and vegetable markets are so, so cheap," she said.