About Us - Recent Press | Halstead Property

Neighborhood Update – Gowanus Canal

As the water gets clean, developers follow

For decades, the Gowanus Canal was a punch line.  But the polluted Brooklyn estuary is finally getting a long-delayed clean-up.  Halstead Property’s Bill Ross, who heads marketing in Brooklyn, remembers when the canal was so polluted “it got to the point where you couldn’t throw dead bodies in there; they wouldn’t sink.”

As the smell of raw sewage recedes, developers are noticing the long-neglected area.  With the city rezoning large portions of land along the canal from manufacturing to residential, a whole new neighborhood is beginning to take shape, anchored by the much anticipated 2009 opening of a Whole Foods market.  Ross believes the area benefits from its proximity to built-out Carroll Gardens, Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill and Park Slope.  “The only place left to expand is the canal,” he explains.  “Three years from now there will be well over 1,000 units.”

Problems, however, remain.  The canal is flowing more freely, but a smelly backwash occasionally returns.  Some of the land is brownfields that will require expensive environmental scrubbing.  And the G subway line is consistently rated the systems worst.

But that isn’t keeping away players like Hudson Companies, mega homebuilder Toll Brothers and Shaya Boymelgreen (who helped create DUMBO) from buying up property.  Among upcoming projects are a townhouse style condo and a cluster of 10 story loft buildings.

What is there now are townhouses and a handful of rental apartments.  Some of the owners of old factories are trying to cash in on the new cachet by renting out loft spaces – legally or not.  Ross advises caution.  “I’ve seen illegal move-ins lose their homes,” he says.  “It seems cool and urban but it’s not safe.”  He recommends waiting for the new developments which will probably be priced at least 20 percent below Brownstone Brooklyn.

As for the much maligned canal itself, “There are already mussels growing there,” Ross notes.

Post Date: 6/11/2008

> Return to Recent Press List