Residential vs High-Rise
Downtown Brooklyn’s (specifically Brooklyn Heights’s) main residential area spans from Court Street, Adams Street and others. On those streets, people walk their dogs, greet each other and sit on their buildings’ door steps giving outsiders a view of a friendly and well-rounded neighborhood. However, digging deeper into Downtown’s history and upon the horizon awaits a repetition of history, where once again, Brooklynites will have to scramble for a place to live. Those streets are the ones considered part of ‘affordable housing’ ( via Downtown Brooklyn ) with the median household income at $87,000 (via Wikipedia ). After the rezoning of Downtown Brooklyn, new residents have made this area their home and with the atmosphere, never seem to want to let go, however the threat of real estate shifting the market to better profits threaten the current residents.
Buildings like 300 Ashland, 388 Bridge Street and City Tower are all attracting new residents used to a new kind of luxury in life such as the charm of a ‘brownstone’ coupled with ‘elevators and a doorman’. These residents are simpler, and the community is confined within the glass windows of the buildings. Moving from Manhattan into Downtown has allowed the high rise residents to still have the pleasure of the city with all the stores and the attraction without the loud hustle-and-bustle, and also without the price that hurt the wallet. Residents like Andy (Refer to Interviews) cannot compete with the upcoming projects in real estate. Those projects cost millions and take years to finish, however people like Helene Epstein are not deterred.
By 2020, Downtown Brooklyn will have fully transcended into the economic and residential mecca real estate aspires it to be, and even more people will get attracted to its new buildings and commercial stores. Such transformation can be seen as inevitable by others however, simply because Downtown Brooklyn has a deep history with aspiring change and has since then held the beacon for the power of hope and change in its community.
