WITH one hand on the steering wheel, David, a middle-age, slightly weathered, born-and-bred New Yorker, navigates his 17-foot motorboat along the once-putrid Gowanus Canal.
Beneath the Third Street Bridge, as his 4 1/2-year-old son Sam keeps pirate-watch, a large watersoaked teddy bear floats by in the debris.
“All the dead people come up at this time of year,” David tells his passengers, adding he once saw a deceased woman floating in the canal.
As obstacles to neighborhood revivals go, dead bodies rank pretty high. But New York real estate being what it is, a few soggy corpses aren’t enough to scare people away from what could be the next hipster haunt. Though it sounds ripe for a joke (and smells ripe, too), the Gowanus Canal is the next frontier of gentrification – a place where the displaced artists and musicians of Williamsburg and DUMBO already are taking refuge in the refuse.
“For years this was my private driveway. People come here and feel the magic,” David says, sailing past a scrap-iron barge and a garbage transfer station as he slips into the open beauty of New York Harbor.
“Soon it will be just another place where you get up at 8 a.m. and scramble to get bacon on the table.” Big developers are poised to change the landscape from a foulwater wasteland into a sea of high-cost residential housing.
“It’s not a question of what should or shouldn’t be developed. It will be,” says Robert Suskind, host of blog Gowanus Lounge and contributor to real estate blog Curbed.
“The developers clearly think there is significant money to be made, and ultimately they’ll be proven right.” Developers Leviev Boymelgreen, who has ground-breaking plans for a 450-unit Gowanus Village, and the Toll Brothers, luxury home builders from Horsham, Pa., already have acquired blocks of property along the canal.
Whole Foods is expanding to the neighborhood, although construction on its Third Avenue site has been delayed due to the area’s toxicity.
It’s also started the classic New York neighborhood battle – with artists, preservationists, developers and longtime residents battling over the transformation.
FROGG (Friends and Residents of Greater Gowanus) focus on environmental issues and the Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club think the polluted area – once dubbed “Lavender Lake” – could be reborn “as a habitat for birds and aquatic life, and public space for boating activities.” The Gowanus Canal Community Development Corp. (GCCDC), meanwhile, is finalizing an ambitious plan, which suggests mixing retail, industry and housing while preserving the significant historical structures and maintaining the artistic community.
But the first priority for all is the cleanup.
“We’d like to turn one of the worse pieces of property in the country into one of the greenest areas of the country,” says Michael Ingui, chairman of GCCDC.
The Gowanus Canal began as the Gowanus Creek, which was widened in 1869 to create a waterway for maritime and commercial activities. Industry – such as paint and ink factories, oil refineries and chemical plants – thrived in the South Brooklyn area, as working-class neighborhoods grew. As it became an industrial dumping ground as well as an outlet for raw sewage, it was notoriously discolored and polluted within 20 years of its opening.
Those who live there now take advantage of the canal’s run-down history.
A thriving community of more than 120 artists already lives in ramshackle buildings such as the Old American Can Factory (which hosts a summertime, rooftop film festival). Another spot, a onetime box factory built in 1900 and home to the gallery/reading room Proteus Gowanus, was bought by 16 artists to save it from the wrecking ball.
“It would have gone to the developers,” says Sasha Chavchavadze, a visual artist and Proteus Gowanus founder.
But not all artists and small manufacturers will have the success of the box factory gang – and they know it.
“We’re only here until the bulldozers come,” laments Suzanne Fiol, founder of Issue Project Room, an arts venue in a renovated silo-like container on the bank of the canal.
Unlike some other burgeoning neighborhoods, the environmental issues are a huge concern.
“There’s significant remediation that’s got to be done before any development,” Gowanus blogger Suskind says.
“You’re dealing with centuries of heavy industrial use of that land.” And there’s the rub.
While artists and other current residents may not want the Gowanus Canal zone to be filled with midrise glass condos, developers would have the cash for the much-needed cleanup – their own superfund.
But, once the canal is cleaned up, it will be more difficult for these pioneers – the artists and small manufacturers – to afford the area.
“It would be an interesting investment. No place in New York City is going to remain undeveloped – especially on the water, stinky or not,” says Jen Frantz, who owns the Coffee Den cafe on the edge of Carroll Gardens.
The canal has vastly improved, but its hardearned reputation as the dumping ground for industries for 130 years, hasn’t quite – yet.
“It may be a hot tip on real-estate blogs, but it’s still a stinky river,” sniffs Jason, a thirtysomething Brooklynite. “It smells, and the banks are nasty.
There’s a sheen on it.” More sensitive to environmental issues since recently becoming a father, Jason likes to visit the neighborhood but wouldn’t want to live there.
“I like that it’s industrial and gritty, but a little gentrification couldn’t hurt if it involves detoxifying the place,” he says. “There’s urban grit, and then there’s hazmat country.” Urban blight aside, many New Yorkers are surprised that any neighborhood within a 10minute walk to either the F and R trains hasn’t already been taken over.
“It’s amazing how close it is to Carroll Gardens and to Park Slope, and how undesirable it is,” says Nick Baily, who lives in Brooklyn Heights. “And it’s amazing that Red Hook has gotten all the attention when that area is equally disgusting and infinitely more inaccessible.” Even though the canal has its bad days, some days it looks downright pretty – late 19th-century red brick buildings are graced by bright sunlight, purple flowers and wide-open sky.
“The canal’s so much better than it was,” says Chavchavadze. “There are birds chirping and flowers. I saw a white swan.” Says café owner Frantz, “It would be interesting to watch the neighborhood grow and afford to get out when it got really annoying with condos with granite kitchen counters.” There’s no question the neighborhood is on the rise, but change won’t happen overnight. There’s no genie in a bottle at the bottom of the canal.
“We’ll come back in 10 or 20 years and it will be hard to recognize,” says Suskind. “Will they do it right? That’s the $100 million question.”
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Next hipster haven (street map graphic)
Current renovations
1) The Box Factory: Sixteen artists who for years had studios here, at Union and Nevins streets, bought the circa 1900 building to save it from developers.
2) The Empty Vessel Project: This salvaged WWII rescue boat, at the end of Second Street, now houses floating art events, parties, movie nights, concerts and bbq.
3) The Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club: At the bottom of First Street, this group wants to upgrade from its trailer to build a boating and recreational facility, and even a café.
New developments
4) Gowanus Village: Leviev Boymelgreen’s green-certified housing mix of 450 units, between Carroll Street and Second Street to stretch from Third Avenue to the canal (Park Slope Side).
5) Toll Brothers: High-end residential buildings from McMansion builders on South (Carroll Gardens) side – on Bond between Carroll and Second streets.
6) Whole Foods: The organic supermarket has broken (toxic) ground at Third Avenue and Third Street – may not open until 2008.
7) New housing: Twelve-story mid-rises along Fourth Avenue, including one by Boymelgreen.