By Dennis Holt
Brooklyn Daily Eagle

DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN -- It is probable that two years from now, more people will be living in the Downtown Brooklyn business district than in Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens or the DUMBO area. This surprising assertion is arrived at by adding up the announced new residential projects, where they are to be located, and assigning an arbitrary number of three people per residential unit. The answer comes out to more than 15,000 people.

It is also possible, using the same formula, to arrive at a total number of new residents of almost 46,000, but this includes the 24,000 expected to populate the Atlantic Yards development, the construction of which will spread out over about 15 years.

All of the building projects, except for Atlantic Yards, have come about because of the rezoning of Downtown Brooklyn in 2004. The goal of this rezoning was to make it easier to build office buildings, but it also made it easier to build tall apartment buildings, which have become very appealing and very popular.

This past year, several of the major real estate firms serving Brooklyn have concluded that Downtown Brooklyn has become a residential favorite in its own right, not just because it costs less than comparable space in Manhattan.

One of the major inducements, which seemed to have come as a surprise, is that the Downtown area offers stunning and varied views hard to find any more in Manhattan, and that it is close to Manhattan. The Downtown Brooklyn leadership is confident that the congregation of new residents will encourage new businesses to locate here, a reverse of the dynamic most had expected.

During the public review process of the rezoning plan, there was frequent reference to making Downtown Brooklyn a 24-hour town, and a lot of people seemed bemused at that thought.

But that is where it all is heading. It is not an accident that the Downtown colleges and universities are building dormitories for student housing, since living in the area has more appeal now than it did when nothing was happening here.

Because there have been so many developments announced, it can be confusing to try to make some sense of it all unless one thinks in terms of distinct neighborhoods. Six are now possible. The old Downtown business core is one — Livingston to Tillary, Court to Flatbush. Announced for that core are six projects with almost 3,000 housing units, which will probably include the two tallest buildings in Brooklyn.

The new Downtown area is another — a block or two east of Flatbush and south of Tillary to Fulton. This will have a total of more than 2,100 new residential units. There are five projects north of Tillary with more than 600 new housing units. This can be called Tillary North.

Two other parts of town will also have their own identity — the BAM Cultural District and Atlantic Yards. The BAM area is slated to contain almost 400 new units, but that number will surely grow. The Atlantic Yards project would dwarf everything else, with more than 6,400 projected new housing units. That number is bound to fluctuate.

The sixth area drawing development attention is south of Livingston Street and all 11 of its new projects are in Boerum Hill. There are supposed to be more than 1,100 new residential units, with more expected to be announced this year. Somewhat of a surprise is that more than 800 hotel rooms are expected to be created in this area.

These areas, with the exception of Atlantic Yards, are not far from each other — about the farthest apart are slightly less than a mile away from each other.

© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2007
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