A gently sloping park facing west gave the Brooklyn neighborhood Sunset Park its name, but it’s a new wave of developers who are trying to take advantage of that panorama with high-end condos.
Sunset Park, the third of New York’s Chinatowns, has drawn a slew of young professionals amidst its concentration of Asian immigrants, and the increase in building activity has gotten the city’s attention.
The Department of City Planning in March agreed to consider height limits for more than 100 blocks in a possible rezoning of the area, which spans from the Brooklyn waterfront to Ninth Avenue between 24th and 65th streets. The boundaries are still a bit vague — many people consider the northern dozen blocks of the neighborhood to be Greenwood Heights, named after the Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn’s highest point.
Regardless of its confines, such a move may affect a steady trickle of building activity. “The administration recognizes the importance of our low-density neighborhoods, as well as the importance of looking for opportunities to house our growing population,” said Jennifer Torres, a spokeswoman for the Department of City Planning. “We expect to have draft recommendations by the end of this year for Sunset Park.”
The city initiative was spurred by outcry over the plans of one development group to build a 12-story tower at 420 42nd Street, which would have blocked the view of the harbor and the iconic spire of St. Michael’s Church for park-goers.
In March, the developer capitulated to community demands and reduced the building’s height to five-and-a-half stories. It will be completed in two years, said William Chiu, a spokesman for the development group 420 42 Street Realty LLC and chairman of the American Fujian Association of Commerce and Industry.
“We want to develop more in that area,” he said. “Rezoning could be good because this kind of conflict won’t happen in the future.”
Developers may try to rush in and build high to take advantage of current regulations before new ones are passed.
“We know from the northern end of the district how quickly development can take place,” said Jeremy Laufer, district manager for Brooklyn’s Community Board 7. “Developers know the loopholes and how to grandfather things in, so that was really a trial by fire for us when we got the northern part of our district rezoned. We want to be prepared for that now.”
Currently, other condominiums are going in along Seventh and Eighth avenues in the 50s, brokers said.
Stan Gerasimczyk, a vice president with the Corcoran’ Group’s Park Slope office, said he’s seeing lots of condominium conversions of rental buildings, especially along Sixth and Eighth avenues in the 50s. Currently, a condominium conversion at 4610 Sixth Avenue with four units is on the market, ranging in price from $150,000 to $450,000.
“With the pricing here and the low common charges, it’s an alternative to Park Slope,” Gerasimczyk said. “What you can buy a one-bedroom for in Park Slope will get you a two-bedroom in Sunset Park.”
Renee Giordano, the executive director of the Sunset Park Business Improvement District, which represents Fifth Avenue, said that many buildings are seeing added floors.
“We really didn’t have a lot of vacant lots, but it seems a lot of the smaller buildings, which mostly were two or three stories, are getting another story,” she said. “Or if they took the building out, the next building will be three or four stories. I’ve noticed a lot of signs saying ‘condos,’ even if there are only about four apartments.”
But many residents support restricting building heights. That’s because the neighborhood, though architecturally diverse, currently has few buildings over three or four stories, said Bryan Miller, a resident of one of a row of pale brick cooperative buildings lining the north side of the park, which were originally built in the 1920s by Finnish immigrants. Seven years ago, he paid $72,000 in cash for a four-room apartment with a view of Manhattan, where he now lives with his wife and two children.
“They’re tearing down three-story places and building up these nine-unit [buildings],” he said.
Miller said another apartment in his complex, a replica of his but without a view, recently sold for $289,000.
Besides the finely crafted, Finnish-built co-ops, Sunset Park is also known for its streets lined with rows of brick, brownstone and limestone prewar townhouses, mostly located between Fourth and Sixth avenues. They draw buyers priced out of so-called Brownstone Brooklyn as well as Manhattan. The community has the largest Federal Historic Housing District in the country, Giordano said.
While most brownstones with original detail sell for somewhere in the $700,000 or $800,000 range, a three-family brownstone at 443 45th Street is breaking new ground by asking $1.1 million — and is attracting heavy interest, said Mayra Ortiz, a broker with the Corcoran Group. Corcoran sold the house, one block from the park and the R train station, a year ago for $900,000, she said.
“There is demand in Sunset Park for these homes, and not many of them come on the market,” said Ortiz, who has lived in Sunset Park for more than two decades and has owned her own home there for 15 years. “Now maybe there’s more because the value is there, and people are finding it worthwhile to sell.”
The three-family townhouse has original hardwood floors and period details including well-preserved tin ceilings and etched wood window and door trimmings, Ortiz said. Also part of its allure is that the ground floor, which has a renovated kitchen and bath along with garden access, is already rented and earning $1,750 a month for the owner.
Average rental rates for apartments in townhouse properties in Sunset Park are between $1,600 and $1,700 for the top floor, and about $1,400 for the parlor floor, Ortiz said.
Much of the rest of the housing stock in Sunset Park consists of two- and three-family attached homes, typically frame or brick. In a neighborhood traditionally populated by laborers, the early Irish, Scandinavian, Polish and Italian residents were soon outnumbered by Latino immigrants after World War II. Now Latino residents — a population that includes Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Dominicans, Salvadorans, Cubans and Ecuadorians — are a majority in the neighborhood.
However, a trickle of Asian immigration, primarily from China, beginning in the 1980s has recently become a deluge.
“Sunset Park has become a third Chinatown in New York City, besides Manhattan and Flushing” in Queens, said Raymond Chan, the manager of Fillmore Real Estate’s Sunset Park office on Eighth Avenue. Laufer said he believes the population of Sunset Park’s Chinatown has surpassed that of Manhattan’s.
Eighth Avenue, one of Sunset Park’s main shopping arteries, has myriad Chinese restaurants, bakeries, hair salons, groceries, newsstands and other shops, all with signs in Chinese and English. There are also a number of Malaysian and Vietnamese restaurants.
There is even a system of cheap van transportation initiated by the Chinese community that travels between Sunset Park, Manhattan’s Chinatown and Flushing, Chan said.
Anne Stokkeland, a retired school secretary who purchased her two-family brick home on 51st Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues in 1981, said she has been engulfed by the Chinese immigrant community, and her house has appreciated more than 20 times its original price. Stokkeland said she rents the second apartment in her home to a tenant.
“Some Chinese people are in the process of finishing up a four-story house right next to me,” said Stokkeland, who originally emigrated from Norway 50 years ago.
There are also several cooperative buildings with about 40 units each between Seventh and Ninth avenues in the low 40s, said Anita Luo, a salesperson with Fillmore Real Estate’s Bay Ridge office on Fifth Avenue.
“For a two-bedroom co-op, the going rates are around $250,000,” she said.
Other customers are generally looking for homes between Fourth and Sixth avenues, which is where most of the brownstones are found, Luo said. That area includes Sunset Park’s other main shopping strip, Fifth Avenue. Besides Sunset Park’s diverse Latino and Asian populations, about 15 to 20 percent of the community is white, Luo said. Fifth Avenue is replete with restaurants, hair salons, dress shops, five-and-dime stores, bodegas and small grocer’s markets to serve the community.
“It’s great that someone could be in the mood for dim sum and go to Eighth Avenue or want a tamale and go to Fifth Avenue,” Ortiz said. “All within walking distance.”