A tree has already grown in Brooklyn. The next step is a retail and garden development going up in a complex of mixed-use buildings near the congested intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues.
Developer Barbara Koz Paley’s project, Atlantic Gardens, will transform eight buildings into shops with glass walls that will line the project’s main draw: a 3,000-square-foot garden with cafeacute; and restaurant seating, in addition to open space for shoppers and residents. The street facades will remain consistent with the historic architecture of the three-story buildings, she said.
The project, near the planned Atlantic Yards development, builds on the migration of upscale retailers on the 11-block retail strip running from the East River to Fourth Avenue, where Paley wants Atlantic Gardens to emerge as a retail destination. On the block where Atlantic Gardens will be located are an insurance office, medical facilities and several ethnic food and apparel shops.
By marrying historical and modern elements, Paley said she can draw Brooklyn’s burgeoning creative professionals.
“It’s been my experience that someone has to come in and establish their concept — and become the destination,” Paley said.
Paley is aiming for rents in the $65 to $70 range and recently landed a contemporary American-style restaurant to occupy a 2,325-square-foot space. When completed, the project will have more than 12,000 square feet of retail space and be home to three to five retailers, she said.
The nearby Brooklyn Academy of Music and Mark Morris Dance Group will give Paley’s Atlantic Gardens a boost, as will new upscale residential developments in adjacent Fort Greene and Boerum Hill.
One block west, Atlantic Gardens has company in upscale retail space. Storefronts between Third Avenue and Nevins Street feature eye-catching windows and clean, modern décor, including a contemporary furnishings store, a children’s clothing store and an importer of Turkish rugs.
Between Bond and Hoyt Streets, pricey boutiques like Butter sell $70 designer T-shirts and $1,100 European boots to a willing clientele.
The trend toward more upscale retail on this eastern stretch of Atlantic began in the mid-1990s and picked up steam in recent years, said local realtor Sal Cappi of Fillmore Real Estate. The antique stores, upscale bistros, snazzy home furnishings shops and art galleries lend the Bond-Hoyt block a fashionable flair that’s expanding to the surrounding area.
Head just two blocks west and the avenue’s character changes considerably. The Smith and Court Street shopping corridors to the north of Atlantic still have room for development.
Developers Mark Chemtov of Renaissance Realty, David Walentas and Shaya Boymelgreen are each developing mixed-use buildings whose larger footprints promise to lure in national chain stores.
“A lot of the chains are going to leave Montague Street for Court and Atlantic, where they get far more exposure and where there’s better transportation and parking,” predicted Walentas.
Walentas said either Urban Outfitters or a Loehmann’s department store will take over the first two floors of the Independence Savings Bank, which Walentas is converting to a mixed-use property. Just down the street at the 75 Smith Street project, Boymelgreen is said to be leaning toward leasing to a high-end national restaurant chain to complement the building’s 93-room boutique hotel.
And with more new people moving in, said Chemtov, it only makes sense to bring in a national furnishings chain such as Restoration Hardware or Pottery Barn. Chemtov’s project, a seven-floor luxury building on the site of a former Mobil station between Smith and Boerum Place, will have roughly 12,000 square feet of retail space and is expected to break ground in the next four months.
Rents average $50 per square foot on the western portion of Atlantic Avenue and, in a few instances, clipped the $100 range in the Court Street area, said Cappi of Fillmore Real Estate.
Cara Sadownick of Harbor View Realty said the residential and commercial development on this portion of Atlantic Avenue is having a ripple effect on the outlying areas near Nevins Street and Third and Fourth avenues.
“Barbara Paley has vision, but I’m interested to see if she’s able to attract those higher rents,” Sadownick said.
But talk of national chains and escalating rents worries small retailers such as Wayne Miles, owner of the environmentally friendly cleaning supply store Go Green, which lies on the slower-developing part of Atlantic between Nevins and Third Avenue.
Miles, who owns the building in which his business has been located for the past eight years, said meager weekday foot traffic remains a problem. He’s encouraged by increased residential development, but sees rapidly rising rents outpacing the reality on the street.
“Business is not so great right now, and if I had to pay $4,000 a month in rent, I’d need considerable financial backing to grow,” he said.
Charles Sahadi of the specialty food shop Sahadi Importing Company recalled how small retailers have been forced out of Montague Street. “Now it’s only big retailers,” said Sahadi, a neighborhood fixture who enjoys talking about his customers and community-building events such as the annual Atlantic Antic Festival.
Sandy Balboza, president of the Atlantic Avenue Betterment Association, said she welcomed the new projects but expressed concerns about the Atlantic Yards project, which many say promises to tie up traffic and make Atlantic less pedestrian-friendly, and the need for maintaining existing 19th century building facades.
“We are a community and we have to support the businesses and restaurants that are here,” said Balboza.