Gowanus, the southwestern Brooklyn neighborhood named for the toxic canal that snakes its way through it, doesn’t sound like a hot destination. But this neighborhood is thriving — small businesses, artists, and tech startups are moving into the area in droves, taking advantage of the neighborhood’s relatively low office rents and fundamentally changing its character.
Genius, a website that annotates music lyrics, literature, and news, made headlines in July when it announced the team would be moving to an extensively renovated warehouse building in Gowanus.
Could this industrial neighborhood, currently undergoing a Superfund cleanup, be the next frontier for New York City tech companies? We headed to Brooklyn to find out.