Retailers So Far Fail To Follow Homebuyers to North Crown Heights

In North Crown Heights, where the rebounding residential market is attracting young, affluent buyers anxious to acquire single-family homes, the retail scene is lagging.Bounded by Eastern Parkway to the south, Pacific Street to the north, and Albany and Franklin avenues to the east and west, North Crown Heights, where homes can cost less than $1 million, is pulling in homebuyers priced out of Park Slope, the Upper West Side, and other established neighborhoods. Last month, the first Crown Heights North Association House and Garden Tour took place, and community leaders are working to polish the faded commercial strip along Nostrand Avenue to make it appealing to businesses.The area has many well-preserved single- and multi-family homes on large lots, some with driveways and garages. On the streets perpendicular to Nostrand, between Eastern Parkway and Atlantic Avenue, there are numerous freestanding mansions and finely detailed brick rowhouses. Depending on their condition, they can sell for $650,000 to $1 million. In places like Prospect Heights, brownstones sell for as much as $1.5 million, while on the north side of Park Slope it is more than $2 million for a single-family home.“You can still find a bargain, however there are fewer and fewer,” a sales agent with Fillmore Real Estate, Alexander Gurevich, said. “When compared to Prospect Heights, Forte Greene, and Park Slope, Crown Heights is a bargain.”Earlier this year, the city granted landmark protection to 472 houses and other historically significant buildings in North Crown Heights, and hundreds more have been designated for future landmark status. During the house tour, the public was able to peek inside a few of the homes representing architectural styles from late Victorian to Renaissance Revival. The houses have grand proportions, high ceilings, and detailing, such as ornate woodwork and plaster ceiling medallions.“It puts you on the map in terms of people knowing what’s in the community,” the chairwoman and president of the Crown Heights North Association, Deborah Young, whose group sponsored the tour, said. “I don’t think New York City had a real good understanding of what jewels we have in Crown Heights. It exposed us.”While homebuyers see the area’s potential, new businesses are proving harder to attract. Along Nostrand, for example, many stores have old facades and rundown signs. Graffiti covers the security gates over the storefronts. While heavy on nail and hair salons and barbershops, the commercial strip lacks basic services such as a bank branch.“People are buying nice homes and spending good money and there are no services,” a project coordinator for the North Crown Heights Merchants Association, who is a sales agent with Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate, Barbara Brown-Allen, said. “They don’t know the spending power that’s here.”One newcomer agreed. In September a 40-year-old bachelor who works in business development on Wall Street, moved into a four-story, two-family home on Hampton Place that he bought for $870,000. The purchaser, who requested that he not be identified, said he spent more than a year hunting for a brownstone that would provide rental income for less than $1 million in Prospect Heights, Boerum Hill, and Bedford-Stuyvesant.“I must have looked at over 100 buildings in the past year,” he said. “I bid on five and didn’t get any. Every time I’d try to buy one there were 100 people just like me, just as well-funded, making the move. I kept getting outbid.”His house requires cosmetic improvements, and while it’s not “dripping with details,” it does have a fireplace, some wood molding and wainscoting, a beautiful garden, and a roof deck with views of Manhattan. His neighbors, who mostly are West Indian, are friendly and many are retired, he said. He is optimistic about the future.“There aren’t a lot of restaurants in the neighborhood,” he said. “If there was something to patronize, I’d willingly spend money there. I’d like to see more amenities. People have money here. Somebody has to be the pioneer and open up something. It’s just a matter of time.”One new shop is Crown Sky Café, which opened in July in a formerly vacant 800-square-foot storefront in the middle of Nostrand between Bergen Street and St. Mark’s Avenue. Bright and cheerful, the eatery specializes in Caribbean and American cuisine. Takeout orders comprise most of the business, though the café can seat up to eight diners. Opening the restaurant was a longtime dream for Denise Robertson, who had worked as a caterer in the neighborhood for 10 years.The rent is affordable, as commercial space along Nostrand can be leased for $25 to $30 a square foot, depending on the condition of the property, a director of sales at Massey Knakal Realty Services, Ira Krivit, said. He is marketing two properties for sale on Nostrand, a vacant three-story building that needs to be torn down — on a 40- by 100-foot parcel — for $990,000, and a small one-story, 600-square-foot shop housing a nail salon, for $295,000.“You’re seeing shop owners committed to providing a better retail experience,” Mr. Krivit said. Retail property “will become more valuable as Prospect Heights moves eastward along Washington. The nice thing about Nostrand is the density of foot traffic.”Ms. Brown-Allen and other activists are exploring the formation of a business improvement district to revitalize Nostrand. In the meantime, the street is scheduled to get new trash containers, lights, and trees, Ms. Brown-Allen said.These improvements are needed desperately, as can be seen in a Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce survey conducted in 2005. Restaurants, banks, health clubs, and pharmacies topped the list of new businesses people would like to see open on Nostrand. Since the survey was taken, not much has changed, Ms. Brown-Allen said.“We have to go out of our community to buy things,” she said.

Retailers So Far Fail To Follow Homebuyers to North Crown Heights

Retailers So Far Fail To Follow Homebuyers to North Crown Heights

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