Bushwick Buzzing, but Not Quite Ready for Prime Time

“I love the J train,” Loriann Girvan said, gesturing out her Brooklyn apartment’s window at the train thundering by overhead. “I love going over the bridge every day into Manhattan. It soothes me.”Like the J train itself, which is thrilling but far from lovely, Ms. Girvan’s neighborhood, Bushwick, is something of an acquired taste. Despite being repeatedly proclaimed as the city’s newest hip neighborhood, it still looks disorderly and a little dejected.Many of Bushwick’s older buildings have not yet been restored, and a number of its new buildings are squat, homely concrete or brick structures set back from the street to accommodate car pads — thus breaking the street front that could give blocks some sense of unity. The neighborhood also has more than its share of subsidized housing, both large, traditional public housing projects and more sensible, smaller projects.Restaurants are few and boutiques almost nonexistent. And while Knickerbocker Avenue’s commercial strip is lively and crowded, packed with hair salons, check-cashing services, 99-cent stores, hardware stores, and lower-end clothing and shoe stores, Broadway, the main commercial street beneath the elevated train, looks forlorn, with enough empty storefronts to deter walkers.In other words, Bushwick still bears some scars from the blackout riots of July 1997, when looters burned whole sections to the ground. (One reason Knickerbocker may be stronger today than Broadway is that it lost fewer stores to arson decades ago.)But the neighborhood has one important advantage: It’s relatively inexpensive. Ms. Girvan’s 47-unit building, a former Buy-Rite whose owner converted it to residential in 2001 with financing from the nonprofit Community Preservation Corporation, offers oneand two-bedroom market-rate rental apartments for between $1,100 and $1,500 a month. “I looked at many different neighborhoods before I moved here twoand-a-half years ago,” Ms. Girvan said. “I wanted value for my money and a comfortable commute.”That commute is reasonably good. When its service isn’t being disrupted by construction or police incidents, the J train takes about 25 minutes to reach Manhattan. Bushwick is also served by the M line and the L train.Still, while Ms. Girvan gets value, she doesn’t receive all the services familiar to Manhattanites — no cable television, for example, although her building is one of the few in the neighborhood eligible for FreshDirect deliveries. But she’s hopeful about the future. “People who don’t know there’s a J train or how to pronounce Kosciusko are moving in,” she said with a sigh. “But that’s okay, because they’ll bring the amenities we need with them.”The neighborhood is bounded by Williamsburg to the northwest, Ridgewood to the northeast, Bedford-Stuyvesant to the southwest, and various cemeteries to the southeast. But with the exception of the cemeteries, Bushwick’s boundaries are unclear and in constant dispute. Some new loft dwellers in East Williamsburg, for example, like to claim they live in Bushwick, Ms. Girvan said, because Bushwick is now considered edgier. On the other hand, the developer of the Opera House lofts on Arion Place marketed his property as East Williamsburg.Corcoran broker Tom Le said he believes that Bushwick is a good alternative to Bed-Stuy or the more established neighborhoods to the west, where half a million dollars won’t buy much. But a half-million will easily purchase a two-bedroom condo in a renovated warehouse in Bushwick, he said, with about $100,000 in change left over. Sale prices hover between $400 and $500 a square foot, depending on amenities.Mr. Le noted that the neighborhood has two distinct markets: the East Williamsburg-Bushwick area, which is “desolate, treeless, and being converted to condo warehouses,” and the “Knickerbocker side streets of tree-lined, beautiful row houses.” (Bushwick’s original name, Boswijck, means “a little town in the woods” in Dutch, and it was named for its trees.)More and more traditional homeowners are arriving in the latter area, attracted by reasonable prices for houses. “A typical twofamily, three-story townhouse, some with exquisite detail, will go from $600,000 up,” Mr. Le said.The “younger crowd” is moving into the other side of Bushwick, close to the Morgan Avenue L stop, where illegal residential lofts abound (which Mr. Le does not handle). Decayed-looking 19thcentury warehouses and factories have banners advertising lofts for rent, though the phone numbers listed yield only answering machines. “You have to know somebody to get the real phone number,” one young resident, who asked not to be identified, said. “We’re supposed to be commercial artists, not residential tenants.”The new residents have brought trendy restaurants and bars in their wake, most famously the Life Café and the NorthEast Kingdom. They’re also patronizing some of the businesses on Broadway, such as the hip music venue goodbyeblue-monday, right around the corner from Ms. Girvan.The bar’s owner, Steve Trimboli, who moved to Bushwick in 2000 after losing his space in Hoboken, N.J., to “million-dollar designer condo lofts,” said he is “beginning to get a small steady regular clientele” from the immediate neighborhood as well as the outer edges of Bushwick. But he added, a little sadly: “The only reason I’m still in business is that people are coming from other areas. Williamsburg is gentrified and it may as well be the East Village, which is now the West Village. As a kid I went to Alphabet City, where you maybe were taking your life in your hands. That’s what Williamsburg was 15 years ago, and that’s maybe what this place is now. People like to go to the Wyckoff stop on the L, where there’s graffiti like they’ve never seen before.”Violent crime in the 83rd Precinct, which includes Bushwick, has decreased 73% since 1993. But while robberies, felonious assaults, and burglaries are all down from last year, rapes are up, with 10 so far this year, in contrast to seven last year. Quality-oflife offenses are an obvious problem — plenty of graffiti, litter, dirt, and noise. At the same time, Mr. Trimboli’s Wyckoff stop is seeing a new sprinkling of restaurants and retail. The owners of NorthEast have opened a coffee shop, Wykoff Star, perhaps signaling a trend.If so, it’s a trend full of ambivalence for some Bushwickers. Curbed, which calls itself “the most-trafficked neighborhood and real-estate weblog on the web,” is carrying an animated dispute about a 185-unit condo development at 358 Grove St., not far from the Myrtle Avenue L stop. Apartments range from between $270,000 for a studio and $682,233 for a three-bedroom “with breathtaking views of Manhattan.”One correspondent, RidgeHooder, calls it a “hideously outsized” brown tower, and another adds, “This area will be gentrified the 5th of NEVER.” But a more subdued contributor writes, “At these prices, these things will sell quickly I assure you.” Indeed, another says, “Build the residences and the businesses will come.”That’s a perennial fact of New York real estate, and it still may work for Bushwick.

Bushwick Buzzing, but Not Quite Ready for Prime Time

More from the New York Sun

Israel and Lebanon Coordinate Aid Convoy to Christian Villages in Combat Zone

Emerging Claim That Targeting Civilian Infrastructure Is a War Crime Proves a Bridge Too Far

Stanford Calls Bluff on Students Using Jain Faith To Dodge Meal Plan

South Florida GOP Congresswoman’s Immigration Reform Bill Sparks Backlash From Colleagues, Conservative Commentariat

Middle-Class Americans Prove the Biggest Winners From Trump’s Tax Cuts in the Big Beautiful Bill

In a Funeral for Economic Liberty, the Casket Cartel Seeks To Bury the Competition

The Double Tragedy of the Jewish Bund

Borrowing a Page From El Salvador’s Bukele, Ecuadoran President Welcomes American Troops To Assist With His Drug Gang Crackdown