Nadia and Benoit Busseuil’s 2014’s arrival in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, is typical for the burgeoning neighborhood. The recently married couple was ready to start a family and on the hunt for an affordable house with personality.
“We didn’t want some investor-renovated place,” Nadia says. They settled on a corner property with three apartments and a commercial space at 83 Saratoga Ave. — it was a deal, but it needed serious TLC.
The renovation took three years and a few contractors, a headache the couple found wasn’t uncommon for homeowners tackling historically sensitive restorations in the neighborhood, which boasts one of the highest concentrations of Victorian properties in all of New York City.
During the project, it became apparent to Nadia that “the community needed a sit-down place,” she says. “I had a daughter in a stroller and nowhere to go with her.” So they opened MacDonough Cafe on their ground floor this summer, with plenty of seating and a menu that focuses on fresh, healthy food, another thing they felt was lacking in their corner of the neighborhood.
It’s the still-gritty eastern chunk of sprawling Bed-Stuy, called Ocean Hill, with Bushwick to the north and Crown Heights and Brownsville to the south, and East New York to the east.
But the Busseuils’ cafe, which hosts storytime for children and comedy nights, “shows a sign of what’s to come,” says Nadia, who is ready for more growth but wants to preserve Bed-Stuy’s strong emphasis on community. The couple has caught the neighborhood in a time of flux, in which a strong real estate market, quickly rising prices and new commercial offerings spell a new future for the old area.
A building boom in the 1870s kicked off the neighborhood’s transformation from a rural area to an urban enclave for upper- and middle-class home-buyers. African Americans began moving here from Harlem in the 1930s, establishing the second-largest black community in New York. Throughout white flight and city disinvestment in the neighborhood from the 1960s through the 80s, homeowners took care of the historic brownstones, many of which were chock full of fireplaces, elaborately carved mantels, parquet floors and stained glass.
There have been a few cycles of neighborhood gentrification, according to Bed-Stuy resident and Halstead broker Morgan Munsey. “There was a wave of black gentrification in the 70s and 80s which brought high numbers of African American homeownership,” he says. Munsey arrived during the second wave, in the early 2000s, which brought many young black professionals. Residents fought for more landmark protection, and in 2013 achieved an expansion to the neighborhood’s only historic district. This December, the city designated the new Bedford Historic District, protecting 800 more buildings.
Today, though, “gentrifiers are mostly white,” Munsey said.
The demographics of the neighborhood are indeed changing: according to census data, the number of white residents have increased from 2.4 to 15 percent between 2000 and 2010. And prices are rising, too: the median price for Bed-Stuy homes jumped from $575,000 in 2013 to $890,000 in 2015, according to StreetEasy. The median asking rent has also increased from $2,150 two years ago to $2,395 a month.
Munsey says that well-maintained townhouses on prime streets are now commonly priced over $2 million. An extreme case: the extravagant mansion at 247 Hancock St. is on the market for $6 million — currently the most expensive home in the neighborhood.
Still, as Munsey points out, Bed-Stuy real estate is cheaper than just about any other brownstone-filled neighborhood in Brooklyn. It also proves appealing for buyers looking to design their dream home. When Talia Braude, one of the founders of Brooklyn-based Braude Pankiewicz Architects, started house-hunting nine years ago, she didn’t know much about the neighborhood.
“But I fell in love with the brownstones and decided to focus solely on Bed-Stuy,” she says. She found a brownstone on a landmarked block that had been used for single-room occupancy and needed a gut renovation: the perfect opportunity for her to build out a “bright, clean and simple modern space,” as she puts it.
After Braude moved in, she quickly discovered that “people in the neighborhood look after each other.” Residents concur that’s one of its biggest draws. “This community is tight,” says Ban Leow, a Halstead broker who works with Munsey. “As brokers who live in the neighborhood, we tell new buyers that they have to be a part of the community — that your neighbors will take care of you,” Leow adds.
That tight community, however, is in flux. “Bed-Stuy is not as friendly as when I first moved here,” Munsey says. “I do worry about this becoming a place where people don’t look out for each other.”
But one change that all denizens tend to welcome is all the new retail filling previously shuttered storefronts. Leow helped bring L’Antagoniste, an upscale French restaurant, to 238 Malcolm X Boulevard.
“Yes, the pricing is higher and the ambience is different, but it offers something different to the block,” Leow says. Locale Village Shop, a boutique that opened last year to vend lots linens, knickknacks and bath products, now offers yoga classes.
The mostly historic architecture is also changing, with an influx of new rental and condo projects. Hello Living, a prominent Brooklyn developer, is building a 50-unit luxury rental at 1520 Fulton St.
Hello Living founder Eli Karp says he was drawn to the location because of the “massive influx of businesses opening on Fulton.”
Also on Fulton Street, the Slave Theater, a derelict neighborhood landmark that was once a headquarters for civil rights activism, sold this November for $18.5 million to developer Eli Hamway. He promptly applied for a permit to demolish the building, which has 160,000 buildable square feet. Hamway did not respond to requests for comment, but speculation has centered on his putting up a residential building in the theater’s place.
At new condo development 171 Lexington Ave., five two-bedroom units priced from $760,000 to $990,000 sold less than five months after sales launched. “Our primary pool of buyers were Brooklynites currently renting and priced out of their current neighborhood,” says Aleksandra Scepanovic, managing director of Ideal Properties Group.
Former aptsandloft.com president, and now executive vice president of new developments, Brooklyn and Queens for Citi Habitats, David Maundrell is focused on “tons of projects” in the neighborhood, including the 14-unit condo at 1188 Bedford Ave., and a 41-unit building under construction at 691 Marcy Ave. The firm recently sold out a project at 1192 Bedford. “Bed-Stuy attracts people who like a sleepy, historic, tree-lined neighborhood,” he says. “This is not Williamsburg or Downtown Brooklyn.”
In the vein of those pricey predecessors, though, Maundrell estimates prices will continue to rise so long as buyers “continued to restore historic buildings to their former glory.”
“The whole landscape of the market has changed,” says Leow. “This is not [Notorious B.I.G.’s] ‘Do or Die’ Bed-Stuy anymore… now we say it’s ‘rent or buy.’ ”