Civic News

A Thoroughfare of Uncertain Direction: What Route Next for 4th Avenue?

4th Avenue feels marginal to the rest of our neighborhood and not simply because our western boundary takes in only the east side of the street. Park Slope has a strong sense of place, meaning that it is defined as much by its appearance and character as by its geographical limits. Large swaths of 4th Avenue, by contrast, look like any multi-lane urban thoroughfare carrying too many cars and trucks past chain stores, fast food outlets, auto repair shops and non-descript apartment buildings.

In fairness, there is more character to 4th Avenue than is often conceded. In its northern reaches near Flatbush, and heading south toward Sunset Park, new restaurants and bars have been added to an increasingly vibrant storefront mix in intact blocks of rowhouses. Interesting gems are scattered all along the avenue, even in the stretches that look least appealing. Some of the long-established car repair shops can claim their own sense of place and should be acknowledged for their contributions to the local economy.

How much of this character will survive the coming decades, however, is very much up in the air—12 stories up, to be precise. Bluntly put, 4th Avenue was sacrificed when Park Slope was rezoned in 2003 and South Park Slope in 2005: in exchange for restrictions in height and bulk in the interior of these neighborhoods, developers were given the right to put up 12-story buildings along more than 30 blocks of 4th Avenue.

Put them up they did, in a flurry of demolition and construction: by the time the recession hit in 2008, 15 large projects between Warren and 24th Streets were either completed or under way, with several more lots readied for construction. Work has slowed drastically since, and real estate blogs like Brownstoner report high vacancy rates in many of the new condo and rental units that have come on line in the last two years. Many people on and around 4th Avenue now wait to see what happens next considering a host of variables, including how much the economy recovers, whether massive development does or does not occur at the Atlantic Yards site just off the avenue’s northern terminus and how the city decides to rezone the Gowanus area to the west of the avenue.

André Aoun, for one, predicts that “more building is going to happen.” Aoun sells tires out of his cousin’s L&B Auto Repair shop on 4th Avenue between Carroll and President Streets. He used to have his own tire store a few doors south at the corner of Carroll, but that space is now occupied by an odd-looking high rise, 20 feet wide and 9 stories high. Before the recession hit, said Aoun, developers came by all the time making offers to buy L&B’s building.

“We’re here today,”  Aoun shrugged, “but tomorrow, who knows? In my opinion, it’s only a matter of time before it’s all tall buildings, all along 4th Avenue. They say it’s going to be another Manhattan. Big buildings, big dollars. Who’s going to stop it?”

Steve Kouimanis, who has operated the Station (formerly New College) Diner at the corner of Union and 4th since 1984, agreed. He quoted Borough President Marty Markowitz, who famously announced a few years ago that 4th Avenue would become Brooklyn’s Park Avenue, and said that, for him, the development has been mostly good news.

“People were running away from here when I opened up,” he said. “It was all industrial and commercial back then—working people during the day then they’d go home and the junkies would move in. Nobody from Park Slope walked down the hill to 4th Avenue.”

The Station Diner is now open all night on weekends, and three years ago Kouimanis replaced the restaurant’s security-conscious front entrance and brick front wall with a glass door and floor-to-ceiling glass panels overlooking the R train’s Union Street station.

As two young Asian women wheeling suitcases entered the diner, Kouimanis shook his head at the thought that there are three hotels a short walk away. “I never could have imagined 25 years ago that some day tourists would be coming in here,” he said. “This neighborhood is so much better now—150 percent better.”

Kouimanis conceded at the same time that 4th Avenue will never become another 7th or 5th Avenue, “not with all this traffic. Do I wish it were different? Do I wish the new buildings were better looking? Sure. But this is New York and everybody’s got to live.”

Two blocks south of the Station Diner, Root Hill Café co-owner Michelle Giancola was less charitable about the new buildings, even if they will eventually bring more business. Root Hill is across 4th Avenue from the narrow tower that replaced Aoun’s tire shop—a building widely derided as one of the least attractive of the new high-rises. Caddy-corner to Root Hill is 255 4th, a 12-story building that has been under construction—and that has closed off the sidewalk on south side of Carroll—for more than four years. The project has been plagued by building violations, numerous stop-work orders and changes in architects and owners. After a long lull, work seems to have resumed.

“They’re destroying the character of what was a low-rise urban neighborhood,” said Giancola. “We can’t see the sky anymore. I like to see the sky.”

Eighteen blocks further south, Rosalinda Rosario expressed similar views. “We have these small houses,” she said, “and then they put up these humungous buildings. We all screamed about it around here, but I guess our opinion doesn’t count.”

Rosario was offering her own opinions and also translating for her mother, Rosa Martinez, who was prepping for lunch behind the counter at J&R Restaurant at 16th Street and 4th Avenue. Martinez has operated Puerto Rican restaurants in Park Slope for some 50 years and has been at her present location since 1984, at the end of a block of two- and three-story rowhouses. Just across 16th Street, a similar row was demolished for an 80-unit, 12-story building slowly nearing completion.

“We look so tiny by comparison,” said Rosario, “and there’s no view anymore. We hope it’s for the best, but we see the material they’re putting into all these new buildings and we can see it’s not good quality.”

Rosario said the avenue is in desperate need of trees and green space, and the whole neighborhood lacks affordable housing. Her mother added that many of the restaurant’s long-time Hispanic customers have moved to East New York because they could no longer afford to live in the surrounding blocks.

Housing advocates criticized the Department of City Planning (DCP) for failing to leverage its 2003 gift to developers to get affordable housing included in new development along 4th Avenue—a mistake it tried to rectify when the new zoning was extended from 15th to 24th Streets in 2005. South of Park Slope, builders can go to the full 12 stories only if they include some affordable units. Also, developers previously got generous tax breaks, known as 421a, just for building on 4th Avenue, but now they must include 20 percent affordable housing to qualify.

DCP has also been criticized for allowing builders to decide whether to include street-level retail space. The result, Ben Fried wrote in Streetsblog, is that  “instead of transforming 4th Avenue into Brooklyn’s next great neighborhood, these new developments turn their back on the public realm, burdening the street wall with industrial vents, garage doors and curb cuts.” A DCP spokesperson acknowledged in a subsequent post that “the lack of retail storefronts along 4th Avenue is a missed opportunity.”

One resident of the Novo, one of the largest and more criticized new buildings along 4th Avenue, hopes those shops and restaurants eventually come. “Look at 5th Avenue, which used to be a wasteland,” said the woman, who asked that her name not be used,  “and look at what’s happening further north on 4th. There’s a lot of potential for different kinds of stores around here.”

In the meantime, the woman, who has children ages one and three, admitted that there is now virtually nothing to draw her or her young family to the busy thoroughfare that runs in front of her building. Instead, they go out back to play in the adjacent Washington Park, to activities at the Old Stone House or to hang out on 5th Avenue.

The woman, who said she has spent her whole life in Park Slope and moved to the Novo in July 2008, described a vibrant community inside the building. She said that it is filled with families with young children and that the gym, lounge and playroom are in constant use and the frequent site of impromptu children’s parties. She also staunchly defended the Novo from its critics. “Of course our building would be out of place elsewhere in the neighborhood, but 4th Avenue is different. What was here before was much more offensive: an old warehouse for plumbing supplies. And the Novo certainly isn’t as bad as some of the other buildings that have gone up.”

Eric Richmond, for one, wishes that the architectural standards were higher for all the buildings that have gone up along 4th Avenue and attributes their general lack of attractiveness to “old-school Brooklyn development: build to the largest size you can legally build, sell and get out. Most of the building has been done by flippers who don’t care what happens to the neighborhood in the long run.”

Richmond has owned the Lyceum since 1994 and has slowly transformed the historic bathhouse at the corner of 4th Avenue and President Street into a venue for a wide variety of offerings and events. He knows what it means to be invested in 4th Avenue as well as anyone, and he’s convinced the lack of such personal involvement is a major part of the problem.

“There was lots of hope initially,” observed Richmond, sitting in the Lyceum’s café, “but what you have is a lot of sterile-looking buildings, big blank walls that turn their back to the Avenue. It would have been nice if builders would have been willing to take a point or two less in profit and hire decent architects, but that would have required developers with a long-term, symbiotic relationship with the neighborhood. What you got instead was a lot of speculators.” Richmond noted that not all the news is bleak, pointing to the many interesting new places that have opened to the north of his building and on the side streets between 3rd and 4th Avenues. He then described what, as an admitted “foolish idealist,” he would like to see in a perfect world: a lane of traffic in each direction replaced by a trolley line. “Make it easy to get somewhere and ‘boom,’ shops, restaurants, galleries everywhere. And why not? There must be a quarter-million, maybe half-a-million people living within a mile of 4th Avenue. That’s more than a lot of cities.”

Richmond may be hoping for more sense of place than 4th Avenue can possibly deliver. On the other hand, the young mother who lives in the Novo pointed out that there are many, many new families calling both 4th Avenue and Park Slope home and who are now contributing to the life of the community. The question going forward is whether ways can be found to make the buildings they live in and the street they live on feel like part of the community, too.
–Ezra Goldstein