Construction
In the past ten years there has been a substantial increase in commercial activity in Astoria centered around the N and W station on 36 Avenue. Here are some examples of the changing landscape in Astoria.
The largest project being built is a part of Kaufman studios on 34-11 36th street, Queens. The new building will be a 4 story office building with 2 new stages and a parking garage with over 100 spaces. Kaufman Studios used to be the center of silent film in America with over 100 silent films being made there. The movie business in Astoria thrived up until the mid 1940s with the start of the second World War, when it was under operation by the government. The studio’s presence has been growing slowly since it was reopened in 1982 after being owned by the city. In the past ten years, the studio has grown tremendously partly because of Netflix, which films 5-6 different shows at Kaufman studios. Now that Kaufman is expanding, it is easy to see that there will be an impact on the area. Along with Kaufman studios, in 2008, the Museum of the Museum Image received a $67 Million redesign and expansion that opened in 2011.
Another sign of Gentrification is the opening of a WeWork location. The new business office space is on 3537 36th street in Astoria. On the WeWork website for the building, they provide a description of the area that reads “Our office space in Studio Square occupies four floors of an industrial-style building in a happening Queens neighborhood. There’s always something going down in this cool part of Astoria, usually revolving around fashion, food, film, or some combination of the three.” WeWork is often marketed towards young professionals and startup companies that can afford to work in a modern shared office space. The presence of a WeWork in an area also comes with more small businesses in the area.
Within 1 block of the 36 Av Washington Avenue station there are 3 buildings under construction. A dollar store is being taken down and being replaced with a Market and Cafe space with large glass windows and doors. Right next to the train line there is a 7-story residential building being built with underground parking. The new residential and commercial buildings going up in the area are very different in size and style than the older houses in the neighborhood. Just in the past year, a plan to build a Target, a Marshalls and Paris Baguette has been put in place along 31st street under the Subway line.
Local business owners said that chain restaurants like Subway, Papa Johns and Dunkin Donuts have been showing up in the neighborhood over the past 10 years. The increase in wealthier citizens in Astoria is greeted with mixed reactions to the store owners. Some see the population change as an exciting chance to increase profits from more visitors to their neighborhood. Other store owners see their usual customer base shrinking as minorities are leaving the area but they still are not worried about losing their business and have a positive or indifferent view on the gentrification in the area. A Greek Restaurant in Astoria called “Greek Captain” has been in the neighborhood for 30 years and they don’t seem worried about the gentrification in Astoria affecting their business.
Gentrification Trends
Astoria is the 11th most Gentrifying neighborhood out of the 55 neighborhoods in New York City according to a report by the NYU Furman Center. The Furman Center identifies gentrifying neighborhoods “as areas that were relatively low-income in 1990 (among the bottom 40% in the city), but then experienced higher than median neighborhood rent growth in the following 20 years” (NYU). The report examines the economic changes that occurred in in both gentrifying and non-gentrifying neighborhoods throughout the Five Boroughs.
One interesting part of the report states that newly available rental units have become less affordable to lower income households, especially in gentrifying neighborhoods. In 2000, the median household could afford to live in 20.2 percent of the recently available units but in 2014 that has fallen to 13.3 percent. The largest decrease in affordability has occurred in neighborhoods that are classified as gentrifying.
The report breaks down many topics by what they call “SBAs” or sub-borough areas. In our project, we refer to these areas as neighborhoods. Astoria is included as one of the sub-borough areas that are being Gentrified the most. This chart from the report shows that all of the gentrifying neighborhoods have experienced steep increases in rent from 2000 to 2014.
It is interesting to note that between 1990 and 2000, almost one-third of the neighborhoods listed had a decrease in rent prices rather than a steady growth. The sudden growth in rent prices in these areas could be attributed to a variety of factors but since all of these areas are classified as gentrifying neighborhoods, there is a strong correlation between the gentrification and increase in rent prices. Between 1990 and 2000, Astoria only had a 0.7% increase in average rent prices compared to 27% increase between 2000 and 2014.
A part of the report that I found interesting was that there did not seem to be a strong correlation between the change in average household income in the neighborhoods that are considered “gentrifying neighborhoods.” While some of the gentrifying neighborhoods had a large increase in average household income, like Central Harlem and Greenpoint/Williamsburg, many other neighborhoods had a slight decrease in average household income, like Sunset Park and Brownsville.
The two statistics that had the most correlation to neighborhoods that were gentrifying are changes in educational attainment and the percentage of Non-family households. In every single neighborhood that is considered gentrifying there has been an increase in the percentage of the adult population with a college degree. Out of all the Gentrifying neighborhoods, Astoria has the 4th highest percentage of adults with college degrees. From 1990 to 2000, only 24% of the adult population in Astoria had college degrees, but from 2000 to 2014 the percentage grew to over 40% of the adult population. There has also been an increase in the percentage of non-family households in gentrifying areas. The increase of non-family households is not as dramatic but there is still a positive trend in all of the listed neighborhoods. Between 1990 and 2014, the percentage of non-family households grew from 40% to 48%.
These statistics from the NYU Furman Center study factually shows some the positive and negative effects of gentrification that have been discussed by our class. The increase in educational attainment across the board surprised me considering that there was no correlation between average household income. This may be because many poor households do not leave the neighborhoods being gentrified. The percentage of people living below the poverty line has decreased slightly between 2000 and 2014 but has increased in greater numbers in higher income neighborhoods between 1990 and 2014. I believe it is important to note that the study also found that neighborhoods that are gentrifying experienced an increase in White population even though the city as a whole has experienced a decrease. The opposite goes with the black population in gentrifying neighborhoods, which has decreased in a larger amount than compared to the rest of the city. Something that our class had discussed in regards to gentrification was whether it was connected to race. The evidence from the report shows that there is a correlation between change in the ethnic makeup of a neighborhood and whether a neighborhood is undergoing gentrification.
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