With the rising cost of housing, the economic ascent has generated its share of detractors in a borough where 56 percent of the residents in 2012 were black or Hispanic.
In a rant that went viral on the Internet, filmmaker Spike Lee railed against the changing character of neighborhoods where he grew up and where poor and middle-class blacks and Latinos are getting pushed out.
Spike’s Take
“So why did it take this great influx of white people to get the schools better?” he said during a February talk near his company’s headquarters in Fort Greene. “Why’s there more police protection in Bed Stuy and Harlem now? Why’s the garbage getting picked up more regularly? We been here!”
Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of Uprose, a community organization based in Sunset Park, recalls how she just turned up the volume when a new neighbor complained about the salsa music blaring from her apartment.
“A community that has struggled for services for years suddenly gets all these amenities just as its longtime residents of color start getting pushed out,” she said. “It’s not about us resenting the new arrivals; it’s about us being excluded.”
The new arrivals will keep coming, and complaints about gentrification are unlikely to stem the flow, according to business owners who say the borough remains increasingly attractive to entrepreneurs.
“The innovation economy” is how it’s described by Andrew Kimball, chief executive officer of Industry City, a 30-acre complex of 16 buildings in Sunset Park where he expects 15,000 will be employed in another 10 years, up from 2,400 now. Its micro-manufacturing businesses include 3-D printing, commercial kitchens, fashion and industrial design, clothing, video production and computer programming.
“The artist wants to be near the woodworker next to the tech firm next to the fashion designer,” said Kimball, 49. “It’s harkening back to an idea of Brooklyn where you can walk or ride your bike to work and recreate the sense of the old industrial community.”