“When I came back I barely recognized the place,” said McFadden, 49, who was sitting on her stoop in the sun on Spencer Place. “There are so many new restaurants and stores and places to go out and places to shop.”
These are the signs of change: juice bars, vegan diners and soul-food eateries springing up all around Bed-Stuy; bike shops, cat-grooming parlors and organic pet-food stores joining liquor stores, tax-prep businesses and check-cashing joints.
When Margot Hughes, the owner of Installation Brooklyn, a clothing boutique on Nostrand Avenue, bought the building 11 years ago, “it was a little dicey at first,” she said. “I would sometimes hear gunshots at night, and sirens.”
Now she worries that the next generation won’t have many homeowners as prices in the neighborhood soar. She opened her store a year ago, and as she stands out front, nearly every passerby says hello. Many know her by name.
“I always felt like it was a wonderful welcoming neighborhood,” she said. “It’s a real community.”
Gang Wars
Around Los Angeles, real estate investment is radiating into areas that made headlines for gang wars and race riots, such as the city’s South Central district.
Rudy Martinez, a real estate investor and former star on the reality TV series “Flip this House,” began focusing on buying fixer-uppers in 2013 in areas such as South Central after gentrification drove up prices in neighborhoods like Echo Park, where he bought his first home in 1993.
“I like South L.A. because it’s affordable and there’s opportunity,” Martinez, who estimates he has traded 300 homes for $100 million in his career, said as he drove his Audi Quattro down streets tagged with gang graffiti. “There’s so much opportunity if you look.”
In the neighborhood setting for such gritty films as “Boyz n the Hood,” Martinez is building a duplex with two five- bedroom units. After factoring in rent from the second unit, a family could live there for about $1,250 a month with a $500,000 mortgage at today’s low rates, he said.