East Flatbush corners the parasite apartment building market

New York Gentrification Watch

 I live in East Flatbush and every once in awhile, I’ll take a bike ride out to the Flatbush-Nostrand Avenue Junction. Bike rides can run the gamut from exhilarating to boring. In the case of these trips out to the Junction, they’re usually a delight. The reason? Much has been made of so-called 

“Victorian Flatbush” but on the other side of Flatbush Avenue is “Suburban” East Flatbush, for lack of a better term. Here, you’ll find an eclectic mix of wood-frame and brick houses running the gamut from Queen Anne and Mediterranean to Italianiate and colonial. They’re by no means as impressive as the sprawling houses in Victorian Flatbush but every so often you’ll come across a house full of character.
 
On my previous bike trips through this area, I always made a mental note to grab my camera and do a photo tour of the houses there on a nice summer day. However, things being what they were, I never did and this mental note started turning into a kind of running joke, like something out of a sitcom. I’d hit the bike, sigh wistfully as I rode past the houses, then tell myself once again to make sure and take a photo tour in the future.
 
Well, in January 2020, the joke finally turned sour. Why? Because instead of seeing the usual mix of quaint brick and wood-frame houses, I saw this on New York Avenue:


 

As you can see in the above photos, parasitic development has made further inroads into East Flatbush. Thanks to predatory real estate home buyers, one of a kind wood-frame and brick houses are being destroyed to make way for ugly modernist apartment buildings that will only be affordable to those who can’t afford Manhattan. And, true to parasitic development, the new buildings are being placed and designed in such a way as to both irrevocably change the character of the area, as well as infuriate neighboring home owners into selling out.

Mayor de Blasio's affordable housing scam presents parasitic building in Jamaica with apartments going for $2,100 a month

Jamaica Patch

 Three new "affordable" apartments are up for grabs in Jamaica, but households need to earn at least $72,000 a year to apply.

The two-bedroom units at 170-19 89th Ave. rent for $2,300 a month, records show.

Households that earn between $72,000 and $138,710 are eligible to apply.

The brand new building has an elevator, recreation area and laundry room.

 It says $2,100 a month on this. But the actual area median income of renters in that area is $42,800. 30,000 less than those who can qualify. Interesting that the window for higher income applicants is about $40,000 to $64,000, this is how the city is redefining affordability. Affordable for the wealthier only.

Gentrification brazenly by design.

The funniest parasitic apartment buildings you will ever see (so far)

NYC Gentrification Watch


 In June 2018, I noticed–much to my crushing dismay–that developers had succeeded in buying out and destroying several old Italianate townhouses on New York Avenue off Church Avenue.

I don’t know the exact date of when these townhouses were built. NYCityMap dates them to 1910; however, it seems to me that the site dates any really old house of unknown origins to that year so as far as we know, they could’ve been built many years–if not decades–before.

Fast forward to July 2019. I was passing through the area and decided to go back to New York Avenue to see how the development was going. This is what I found:


Hey! What happened? Oh, someone refused to be bought out. No biggie. Let’s just build one part of the building on the lot of the first house that sold, skip over the house that didn’t sell, then continue onto the next two houses that did. That won’t look awkward at all!

The Kew Gardens Crap Mahal is late for opening

The building of this 8-story monstrosity on the steep hill of 116th St. in Kew Gardens was permitted by the city back in 2016 and expected to open for sales this year.

Apparently, something got in the way of it's completion and now it's just sitting in parasitic development limbo. And from the looks of it, probably for a while now...

...and definitely for a while longer.

No wonder they gave themselves a two year window for completion (May 2017-May 2019!)

See ya later.

The Chutulu Tower of East Flatbush

NYC Gentrification Watch

Last summer when I rode down Linden Boulevard, I was shocked the see the usually quiet, tree-lined street of wood-frame houses, row houses and 1920s apartment buildings had become one gigantic construction site. Literally dozens of men in hard hats and yellow vests were walking every which way, and cement trucks and materials lined the street on either side. As I explored further, to my shock and dismay, I saw several of Linden Boulevard’s signature low rise town and wood frame houses getting replaced with fugly generic modernist boxes. But just when things couldn’t have gotten worse, I encountered this huge, sprawling hulking monstrosity, right off Rogers Avenue:

The date? July 22, 2018.

The thing was so huge, so massive, I almost passed out. I couldn’t believe it. It took up of what looked like the place of three large apartment buildings, and could’ve have been more out of scale. But a hopeful part of my brain tried to see a silver lining in what looked like a very dark cloud. I thought, 

“Well, this is bad, but at least it’s not overshooting the local area buildings too much. What’s it gonna be? Ten, twelve stories? That’s bad, but it could be worse.”

Fast forward almost a year later, and this…thing…has topped out at 27 stories. It is so huge that the once open skies of East Flatbush and other surrounding areas have been forever blotted. As of June 2019, it is now visible from at least a 3 mile radius in every direction.

 Seeing this thing in photographs, it’s very hard to gauge just how obscenely large, out of context and out of scale it is. But trust me–this thing is so huge, so obnoxious that it is the biggest F*** YOU by developers I have ever seen since the proposed development for Two Bridges

She's not kidding. I went there myself and it's literally a hideous daylight devouring monster certain to cause displacement of the residents of those rowhouses and the neighboring apt. buildings and homes down the boulevard.

Also like to add that it's also the derelict mayor de Blasio's biggest fuck you to the people he swore to help in the still developing "tale of two cities" (pun intended).

Check out those precarious balconies too.

The cause and effect of the parasitic apartment buildings pathogen

NYC Gentrification Watch

If you’ve been driving in and around NYC’s outer borough neighborhoods, you may have come across a strange phenomenon–a brand new building that looks radically out of place with everything around it. For example, it might be a minimalist grey box plunked amidst a line of delicate wedding cake-style cast iron buildings or a five story glass box wedged right in the middle of a block of two-story Italianate-style row houses.

Back when these types of buildings started going up, people used to blame this as oversight or arrogance on the part of architects. They’d say it was either a case of a new generation of architects not understanding how to build structures that were contextual, or of celebrated starchitects who were so egotistical, they cared more about designing buildings for their own gratification than considering the community they were being built for. These early critics might have been right. However, I believe that there is a third reason for this type building–a psychological warfare tactic being pulled by Big Development that I call Parasitic Development.

 
Parasitic Development is the act of erecting a structure within a neighborhood that not only visually clashes with surrounding buildings and its character, but is placed in such a way that is intrusive and in some ways obnoxious. Below is a perfect example of parasitic development.  A tall, 15 story gray box has been wedged in between a row of apartment brick houses built from around the 1920s and 1930s, disrupting an otherwise uniform area filled with similar structures no more than a few stories high:


Why do I call these developments parasitic? Because much like a living parasite, the new structures immediately begin to destroy the neighborhood from the inside out. Over time, structures around the development begin to fall one by one in a domino effect. Before long, the entire area has been redeveloped in the style of the parasitic development and most of the residents driven out to make way for new ones from a completely different and more affluent demographic.
 
How does parasitic development work and why does it work so well? Well, as you’re probably aware, a large part of gentrification is about supplanting one demographic in a neighborhood with another more affluent demographic. However, as you can imagine, pushing people out that have been living in an area for decades could never be that easy. They’re going to fight long and hard to stay where they are as long as possible, even if it means passing on lucrative buyouts from developers.
 
Because of this issue, something has to be done to get these stubborn residents to give up their fight. One way to do that is to strike at their Achilles heel–i.e., the very reason why they want to fight so hard to stay put. The reason can be any number of things– a love of local area architecture, the lack of high rises allowing for open sky, or some other characteristic that makes residents want to stay put. But whatever the case may be, there’s usually something special in terms of environment, appearance or character that residents have grown attached to and don’t want to lose.

This overlooked excellent post is from November of last year and it's definitely the best prognosis on all the hideous inappropriate out-of-scale buildings (what I call "tower pestilence") that have and will continue to infect city blocks. Especially in, of course, Brooklyn. An essential must read.

Shout out to the author who thanked this blog for the Kings County Politics story a few weeks ago.

Seven story aparment building development will squeeze onto Astoria block.

YIMBY

Permits have been filed for a 70-foot tall residential building at 25-22 30th Drive in Astoria, Queens. Located between Crescent Street and 29th Street, the interior lot is two city blocks west of the 30 Avenue subway station, serviced by the N and W trains. Salvatore Lucchese is listed as the owner behind the applications.

The proposed seven-story project will yield 27,452 square feet, with 21,927 square feet designated for residential space. It will have 31 residences, most likely rentals based on the average unit scope of 707 square feet. The concrete-based structure will also have a cellar, 10 on-site parking spaces, and six off-site parking spaces.

Gerald Caliendo of Caliendo Architects is responsible for the design.

Yeah you know those guys, QC readers. And it's the little house on the right.

 I have an analogy for this: One of my favorite scenes from the Simpsons is where Stan Lee shows up to Comic Book Guy's shop and bothers a kid who was about to purchase a batmobile for his batman doll. Stan yanks the car away and takes a doll of The Thing and forces it into the car, telling the kid it will fit perfectly. Stan did manage to squeeze it in but the toy car is ruined.

When the kid whined that he broke it, Stan replies "broke, or made it better"

That is the mindset of these developers and the city departments responsible for approving these parasitic buildings.