The real estate market is in flux in Brooklyn’s Greenwood Heights according to the Wall Street Journal. In the last few years, condominium and rental buildings have been substituted for wood-framed houses in the area, which is between Park Slope and Sunset Park. And Sixth Avenue, a previously quiet residential area, has morphed into a relatively trendy bar and restaurant scene.

The swift redevelopment comes as a result of an influx of young professionals in the last decade, the Journal said, after that demographic was priced out of longed-for Park Slope properties. The median listing price of a property in Park Slope is $673 per square foot, whereas a similar property can be snapped up for only $536 per square foot in Greenwood, according to data from Streeteasy.com. [more]

Brooklyn Cohousing — an organization hoping to establish a cooperative community of private residences with communal space — is disbanding after three years, according to the Brooklyn Eagle. Beginning in September 2007, the group started making plans to locate its community on three different sites in Brooklyn, hiring architects and assembling a construction team, in an effort to become the first cohousing project in New York City. In May 2009, Cohousing came closest to realizing its vision with a former factory and warehouse site at 1901 Eighth Avenue in Greenwood Heights, a three-story building which was to be retrofitted as a 30-unit apartment building containing studios and one-, two- and three-bedroom units, plus communal areas. At the time, the group had 16 committed households, according to spokesperson and founding member Alex Marshall. But financial difficulties prevented the project from moving forward. “Attempting to build a physical development during the worst financial crisis of the last half century simply proved too much for us,” organizers wrote to members in an email. “Cohousing will surely come to Brooklyn someday, but it won’t be through Brooklyn Cohousing.” [Brooklyn Eagle]

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September marked the opening of the public school system in New York City, which included 23 new school buildings with more than 13,000 seats. The new construction, along with 18 new school buildings opened last year, brought the most ever new school classroom seats online in a two-year period since the School Construction Authority was created in 1988. For the decade ending in 2012, the Department of Education is on track to construct more than 110,000 new school seats across the city, with more than 82,000 seats already completed — 28,323 in Queens, 19,394 in Brooklyn, 19,268 in the Bronx, 9,434 in Manhattan and 5,619 in Staten Island. [more]