Real Estate Monday: All Work Guaranteed

 146 Fifth Avenue is currently on the market for $4,700,000.  As usual around here, proximity to Barclay Center is a selling point.

Corner Property. Walking Distance To Barclay Center And Atlantic Center Mall. Store On Street Level And Three 3Br Apartments Above. No Tenant Has Lease, Rents Are Projected.

Even though the signs say Luis TV Repairs, the business operating here today is Danny's Electronics & Computer Service.  I'd keep that old hand-paintage signage too, with its fine colors and print styles, the "At Home Service" feature and the reference to that entertainment dinosaur T-VCR.  And I really love the gentleman (Luis himself?) who, besuited, behatted and bowtied, is dashing into action, bag in hand.   At the front of the store the bag is marked TV Sales,

& around the side on Douglass it's TV Repair.

You won't get new signs to beat the style of these.
Danny's would like to stay on here, but the future is uncertain.  The sales listing gives a projected rent of $11,000 per month in an expenses rundown, but there's no telling what the actual rent will become.  I hope they get the chance to stick around.

Asea

18th Street (4th/5th)

Rally to Save Bishop Ford

Also on April 28th, a 1:00 p.m. rally at Bishop Ford High School, to help save it from closure in June.

Bishop Ford High School to Close (Brooklyn Daily Eagle)

Coming to PBS this Month

Great news.  Word from director Amy Nicholson that Zipper: Coney Island's Last Wild Ride, which ran at the IFC last summer, will be airing on PBS on April 28th:


"The Bloomberg administration’s many large-scale rezonings have completely transformed neighborhoods like Downtown Brooklyn, Chelsea and Williamsburg, leaving many New Yorkers wondering how they ended up living in a luxury city full of glass towers and national retail chains. Megaprojects like Hudson Yards and Willets Point promise more of the same.

A story about greed, politics and the land grab of the century, ZIPPER chronicles the battle over one of the last bastions of an unfettered New York. On a small rented lot in the heart of Coney Island’s gritty amusement district, Eddie Miranda proudly operates a 38-year-old carnival contraption called the Zipper. When a real estate battle brews between an opportunistic developer and the Bloomberg administration, Eddie and his ride - along with many of Coney Island’s eclectic small businesses - are forced to leave.

 Through interviews with top-level city officials, famed developer Joe Sitt of Thor Equities, and the carnies themselves, Zipper examines the high-stakes power struggle that plays out in the media for over four years. The billionaires at the center of the conflict lock horns when the City denounces the developer’s glitzy vision of condos and shopping and, ironically, hatches its own grand scheme to transform the area with the promise of housing and retail.

Can a reinvented Coney Island remain “The People’s Playground?” With a new city administration now in place, will the affordable housing that was a central argument for change ever get built? Does the selling of Coney Island as a brand ultimately sanitize its spirit? Be it an affront to history or simply the path of progress, ZIPPER examines the high cost of economic development. In an increasingly corporate landscape where authenticity is often sacrificed in the interest of growth, the Zipper may be just the beginning of what is lost."

Do take time to watch it, and tell your family & friends to see it too. Like many other viewers, I'll be catching it for the second time, and carrying thoughts of it with me when I head on down to the boardwalk over the coming months. The film's an insistent reminder of what matters, and what's all too easily lost.

ZIPPER: CONEY ISLAND'S LAST WILD RIDE airs Monday, April 28th at 10:00pm (Cablevision 13/713, Time Warner 13/713, Comcast (NJ) 240 (CT) 237, RCN 613, Patriot Media 165, and Verizon Fios 513.)

Living at the P.O.?

I was walking along Fourth Avenue yesterday, approaching 15th Street, when I saw a building detail I'd never noticed before.  In a row of three brick apartment houses, all of similar construction, the central building, 542, seemed to have had its cornice replaced by this:

Perhaps the Post Office inscription is a little hard to make out.  But what is it doing here?  I've found no mention of a post office ever existing at this address, only a couple of references to an accidental fall and a "trifling" fire in 1909,  and a resident a decade earlier delinquent in the payment of club fees.  Could it be just be an incongruous replacement for a lost original? Just a handy P.O. relic filling in? I suspect that could be it.  Oh for some research lackeys to put to work.  This one will have to wait for a while.

Good Friday

Customers line up outside the Fifth Avenue Polish store Jubilat Provisions.

Further north, the congregation of Holy Family & St. Thomas Aquinas make the Stations of the Cross, with prayers spoken in Spanish, English and Polish.

Rabbits

Better by far these rabbits in the window of Sahadi's than the ones I saw at El Badia Halal Live Poultry (Second at 40th).

Nose to the glass, I saw a crate crammed with twenty or more hopeful creatures in new spring coats, all twitches and bright stares & clambers for top spot. Babies all.  Below them, a mass of hens were hunkered down in witless resignation.   I tried not to focus on the dim shapes further back,  As per live-market usual, a man came out to rail against photographs, so all I have is these bales of hay on an icy sidewalk.  Just as well, just as well.

Cleaning Out (Atlantic)

Closeout Heaven

A trio of old & new(ish) products here: Cougar, closeouts, coffee.  41st between Second & Third.

Imprint

Back to 635

Yesterday's post concerned 635 Fourth, home to the Seafarers International Union and currently listed for sale at $24,500,000, with approved development plans in place.  I neglected to mention that 635 4th Avenue Holdings LLC bought the property from the Seafarers Union just four months earlier, for a trifling $10,000,000.   Quite a bump. (Update: No sale took place.)

I was looking around for picture of 635 in earlier days, and struck gold.  From a series of 1910 photographs chronicling the Fourth Ave. subway construction, this one, from 19th Street looking north, shows 635 (at right) in statelier days.

Brooklyn Visual Gallery


And here's 635 today:

In the sixties  farmworker Ed Chiera passed this way, sent East to New York by Cesar Chavez to gather support for a national boycott of California grapes:

So, in February 1968, we left Delano for New York in a caravan of a few beat up cars, circa
1950s, and an old donated yellow school bus, which ran okay but lacked a heater to keep us
warm in the winter ride across the country. Stopping each night at cities along the way, we
rode for seven days, wrapped in blankets, eating cold sandwiches of salami, cheese, and
peanut butter and jelly, yelling ¡Viva la Huelga! ¡Viva César Chávez!, and singing many rounds
of De Colores and Huelga en General to keep us warm. Cesar had sent Fred ahead of us via air
to make arrangements for the organizers to live at the Seafarers International Union
headquarters and dormitory in Brooklyn.

However, Chiera didn't stay at 635.  SIU sources seem to indicate 675 Fourth (20th/21st) as the original union headquarters, & ACRIS records suggest a move two blocks south in the early 90s.  675 is (was) a much grander building.  Here's another picture from 1910.

The Seafarers Union was founded in 1938, so the building (at left) clearly pre-dates union presence.  It also looks very much like a school building, so its transition is mysterious.  Anyhow, it's a school now - Al-Noor -- and like 635, it lost its looks over the years.

As a side-note, if you happen to be passing this way, drop in at the great Al-Noor Halal Deli across the avenue. The deli name is a little misleading: it's really a diner, especially busy at lunchtime when it caters to a (mostly male) crowd of nearby workers. The food is cheap, the servings big, and the atmosphere friendly.

Update - 6/25/15
After receiving Virginia's lovely comments (see below) I did a little more digging around, and found footage of the bar she recalled.  It's contained in an early Stanley Kubrick documentary, The Seafarers.  You can find it here.

Real Estate Monday

A cool $24,500,000 price tag for a development lot at 635 Fourth Avenue (19th Street) - home to a branch of the Seafarers International Union of North America - with approved plans in place for an 89,500 buildable sq. ft. site.  This translates into a 12 storey building of up to 91 units, with parking, commercial & a small community space & 6 - 12 units of affordable housing.

Ideally situated just south of Park Slope, Greenwood Heights shares many of the same amenities while representing its own unique character and sense of community. The R subway line is 2 blocks away at Prospect Avenue with direct access to the Barclays Center, Downtown Brooklyn in 10 minutes. In the immediate area, you will find Industry City, with their creative work space and big box retail and 5th Avenue, with its café’s, restaurants and boutique stores. With rents exceeding $50/SF this offering represents a significant and clear point of entry into the ever-growing Brooklyn market. (Massey Knakal)

And talking of the Barclays Center, here are the dismal remains of Bergen Tile on Flatbush, glimpsed through construction fencing. The arena looms over the site, and the old yellow house to the rear appear in an optical illusion to be perched on a pile of rubble.  Not an illusion really.

Next door to the wooden house, a couple are up on the roof, legs dangling, enjoying the spring sun.

Changes

Around 38th & 39th, three buildings that caught my eye.

The NYC Transit Authority Maintenance of Way Shop and Crew Quarters, at 465 38th Street, just below Fifth Avenue, & close to the 38th Street Yard :

The 38th Street Yard is located between Fifth and Seventh Avenues in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, adjacent to the Jackie Gleason Bus Depot. This yard is not normally used for revenue-service train maintenance. Its primary function is to store diesel and electrically powered maintenance-of-way and other non-revenue service rolling stock. It is also used to transfer trash from garbage collector trains to trucks via platforms inside the yard just south of 37th Street. This southern part of the yard was formerly the center of the South Brooklyn Railway, which extended from Bush Terminal through the north part of the yard, then down Gravesend Avenue and into the Coney Island Yard. The yard is entirely equipped with hand-operated switches. Only Fresh Pond Yard and East New York Yard share this characteristic. (wiki transiTalk)

The brickwork repairs look mismatched, but the building  facade remains handsome.

At 39th & Third, opposite the Rose Quartz Lounge, a radical paneling/stucco job (or something!), combined with a lively color choice.  The furniture warehouse is bigger than it looks, having a broad frontage on Third.  The makeover is shockingly heavy-handed (covered over entrances?), but not, at least, humdrum.  Why though, would you cover up anywhere in such a strange fashion?   Looks like a minimum expenditure maximum speed plan.

t Yard is located between Fifth and Seventh Avenues in Sunset Park, 














Also on 39th, up between 7th and 8th.

The windows inside the windows were not a great upgrade, but otherwise I kinda like the look here.

Melody Lanes (37th)

38th

39th Street

Though the pace slowed down in winter months, my walking project has now taken me from 9th Street as far as 40th. Now I'm Beyond the Cemetery, there's no natural barrier to stop me from going further east at Fifth Avenue, so of course this afternoon I walked on 40th at Third across as far as Ninth & turned back down 39th. I suppose I could have gone as far as Fort Hamilton Parkway, which I now think might be a good new boundary. We shall see. At the other side, winter really stopped me from heading onto Second (too icy & not that accessible ), so I'll have to get back to cover that area (from 31st or so) in the near future. I've been there before, along with plenty of other parts of Sunset Park, but want to walk every block in a fairly systematic way. And I'd better hurry up a bit - Time's winged chariot & all. Change is coming fast, with waterfront development and rapidly rising housing prices. A three family on the market for over two million - unthinkable even a year ago.   I wonder what Fifth & Fourth will look like in a few years, and just which tenants (business or residential) will be able to afford those rising rents? Cronuts in, tamales out, and maybe a Wafels & Dinges truck where Tacos El Bronco used to be? And even around the Expressway? Maybe it'll get a hip new acronym: DUNG (Down UNder the Gowanus)? EXWARE (Expressway Waterfront AREa)? GASP (Gowanus Area of Sunset Park)? It may seem far-fetched, but God knows, anything is possible.

This Sent In ...

Lurching in cement shoes.  34th Ave& 11th Street,  Astoria.

Worth Waiting For?

How drear and robotic the service announcements of modern bus & subway trains, or those deep-into-the-bowels-of-the-earth escalator rides.  All the locality's vanishing from public transport voices. Where once we heard an actual New Yorker over a crackly intercom- usually a mildly depressed, late-middle aged one by the sound of it, though sometimes a younger, more playful ham - more often now there's a Stepford wife or husband haunting our journeys through the city.  Currently tunnel repairs are giving F train riders a blast from the past by way of old cars & a real live conductor going through the roll call of station stops, but this is a rare treat for the ears.  And yet ... In downtown Brooklyn at Cadman Plaza, if you wait long enough, a crossing signal yields an almost forgotten transit demotic. Recorded, not live of course, but still - a surprising gesture.  The shaking hands of the camera person here do not signify extreme age, merely the discomfort of being seen videoing a crossing signal.  In broad daylight.  Among crowds.

Real Estate Monday: Worry Free in Brooklyn

A quick update on a house from last fall. 161 16th , marketed at those who were "Looking  For More Benefits Than A Condo Can Offer," was bought for $450,000 last October & flipped back on the market the next month at $799,000.  Our flipper friends didn't quite do as well as they'd hoped. After some price reductions the diminutive house - 14' x 25' on a 14' x 25' lot & directly abutting a condo building parking lot - closed last month at $600,000.  Still, no renovation expenses incurred.  The square footage was listed at 584 or 1,050 sq. ft., depending on whether you can count the basement as living space, and the terrace footprint is ambiguous.  In these times, & this rabidly popular part of Brooklyn, the sale price is almost a pittance! I was trying to find a similar kind of listing elsewhere in the Brooklyn hot zones, and came up with a slightly smaller (landmarked)  renovated "cottage" on Dean Street in Crown Heights, at $599,000.  No exterior pictures, but a quick Google search shows it to be a nice looking little place, on a beautiful block, but its triplex description somewhat deceptive, perhaps, with the lowest floor looking well below grade.

The triplex layout boasts 2 bedrooms and 2 full bathrooms, a modern kitchen featuring a Bertazzoni range and soft close cabinetry, full size vented washer/dryer hookups, beautiful exposed brick, and plenty of storage. Who has time for common charges or maintenance fees? The new owner of this historic, one-of-a-kind property won't have to worry about either.

1336 Dean Street was another flip, bought a year ago for $125,000.

Animal Pals at Broadway & Dyckman

Coney Island Monument

Dream on Me

Heading South

Work took me to Avenue M.  It was a fine day to stroll between Ocean & McDonald, and enjoy the abundance of barbers & candy shops, kosher pizzerias & lingerie stores.  A pharmacy on every block, or so it seemed, & look, there was a Rossman Farms, sibling to the store on Third & 26th.

And the sheer pleasure of the names: Rita's Clothing, Ed's Shoe Repair, Meyer's Liquors, Jimmy Candy, Sam's Laundry, Benny's pizza, & of course, the incomparable Bunny Martel.  (Bunny Martel!  I've been whispering that name ever since I set eyes on the place.)

As I passed another parlor, Forever Young, a car drove by, windows down for warm weather, & this was the song that played on the radio.  It seemed perfect..

McDonald

The Avenue N station was early-afternoon quiet.  An orthodox mother & her daughter were standing on the platform.  The girl wore winter clothing that made the word "serge" spring to mind - a fabric stored in my head from an E.Nesbit childhood or something - and a hair bow bigger than her head.  A guy paced back & forth, talking rapidly into his phone.  He was early middle-aged, in plaid pants sharply creased and an ugly brown jacket.  The pants were a little too short. Back & forth he walked, back & forth, and each time he neared me I caught fragments of his conversation.  "So basically you want me to beat up his daughter?" "So I'm gonna strip the Bronco & resell it ..."  Then something that sounded so much like a Coppola movie than it hardly seemed credible.  It was tantalizing, and at one point I edged closer, but it didn't help because he never stood still for a second.
It felt so peaceful up there on the elevated platform.  It was a perfect spring day, the air sweet & mild,  & finally some sun on our skin.  Despite the pacing & the lurid rhythm of conversation, life seemed leisurely.  You could see into the distance for miles, across Washington Cemetery & beyond, all the way to a faint trace of Manhattan, with a tiny Freedom Tower.
Those lands to the north were a whole other world away

Finally Some Action at 487?

This banner went up at 487 Fourth Avenue within the last couple of days.  487 has been a mystery lot for years, handed over (it seemed) by the city to Mercy Housing in 2011, to build a home for the developmentally disabled.   I had heard rumors from residents on the block that the city wanted to develop housing at this site in conjunction with Mercy (taking over higher floors of a future building) but that Mercy was opposed to this. Well, it was a rumor, so I tried to find out more about this from Brad Lander's office over the summer & after a couple of enquiries there finally got a response in February, with this quote from CB6's Sixth Sense:

 Congratulations Sister Kay Crumlish, and the entire Mercy Home family! It's been nearly 2 decades in the making and on February 5th, they finally closed on the HPD property at 12th Street and 4th Avenue. This former community garden site will be developed as a home for 8-10 frail developmentally disabled adults and will include space for a future community garden too. Win-win.

No confirmation from the Landers office of any other housing going up here in conjunction with this. As one who works with the developmentally disabled, I know what a critical shortage of housing there is for this population, so I'm glad this particular development finally seems to be happening. There's currently a Stop Work Order in effect at 487.

An earlier post on this site, with an 80s photograph of its community garden days:

http://www.onemorefoldedsunset.com/2013/09/so-whats-going-on-at.html

Mi Tierra

A taste of Queens!  Thanks to the reader who sent this in.