Gowanus Gentrified?

Gowanus Gentrified? Community Responses to Gentrification and Economic Development in the Shadow of the Superfund Michael Spitzer-Rubenstein Senior Thesis for the Urban Studies Program Barnard College, Columbia University Submitted April 18, 2012 Thesis Advisor: Meredith Linn Abstract Gowanus is an industrial neighborhood changing into a gentrified area, but it faces such severe pollution that the EPA designated the Gowanus Canal, which bisects the area, a Superfund site in 2010. The industry still in Gowanus includes a mix of traditional industrial businesses, craft industries, and artists, but they might disappear if developers build luxury condos in the neighborhood. This study looks at the clash between activists over how the community has and will change, focusing on the pro-development Gowanus Canal Community Development Corporation and the preservationist and pro-Superfund Friends and Residents of Greater Gowanus. Many local activists embrace the vision of Gowanus as a place for making things and hope to maintain industry. Even though industry left the neighborhood polluted, most do not connect the two. The Superfund seeks to clean up the neighborhood but it may pave the way for environmental gentrification, which is the pollution cleanup causing gentrification. However, fears of the Superfund harming home prices do not appear to be true; GIS analysis shows that land closest to environmental hazards increased the most in value. Residents also hope to avoid the experiences of other New York neighborhoods, which saw gentrification cause displacement. More than residential displacement, though, activists worry about the culture of Gowanus disappearing and hope to save it. Their remedies such as historic preservation and zoning Gowanus for mixed use may not be effective or viable, though. Both major groups seem to accept the idea that attracting the creative class is crucial to economic success, and that they should make efforts to attract creatives to the area. However supporters of industry extend the definition of creative class from white-collar professionals to include blue-collar workers manufacturing custom-made designed Spitzer-Rubenstein ii products. Because of a lack of government involvement or a unified community forum, there is no clear path for resolving those differences and planning for the future, but a system of participatory planning could help resolve conflicts and develop plans to permit changes in ways that don’t destroy the Gowanus community. Spitzer-Rubenstein iii Table of Contents Abstract ii Table of Contents iv Acknowledgements v 1. Gowanus and Its Issues 1 2. Gowanus Residents and Their Perception of History 25 3. The Superfund Cleanup will Reshape Gowanus 39 4. Gentrification in Gowanus 64 5. Economic Development Strategies to Create a New 86 Gowanus 6. Participatory Planning for Gowanus 101 Works Cited 117 List of Figures Figure 1. Gowanus in New York City. 23 Figure 2. Gowanus and nearby neighborhoods. 24 Figure 3. The Gowanus Canal Corridor Study Area and some 57 potential influences on land value. Figure 4. Change in Assessed land value 2003-2010. 58 Figure 5. Area within 500 or 1000 feet of a coal plant. 59 Figure 6. Area within 500 or 1000 feet of a CSO discharge 60 point. List of Tables Table 1. Various factors affecting land use in Gowanus along 61 with the average increase in assessed land value from 2003- 2010. Spitzer-Rubenstein iv Acknowledgements This study of Gowanus could not have happened without the support and advice of so many people. Meredith Linn offered guidance and constructive criticism throughout this process and made this much stronger and better written. Mical Moser, Owen Foote, and Ben Aufill helped introduce me to the issues at play in Gowanus. Sasha Chavchavadze, Owyn Ruck, and Jon Bunge discussed the feelings of artists in the area. Eymund Diegel and Bette Stoltz exposed me to opposing sides of the Gowanus community and Howard Graubard’s blog posts added another, more historical view on the neighborhood’s politics. Bill Appel, Ray Howell, and Buddy Scotto provided one set of perspectives on the neighborhood. Linda Mariano, Katia Kelly, Diane Buxbaum, Marlene Donnelly, and the members of Friends and Residents of Greater Gowanus offered a very different view. Toby Snyder, Leslie Boyce, and Brian Merlis contributed their insight as non-residents connected to the neighborhood. David Von Spreckelsen, Chris Grace, Kevin Kelly, and David Meade all helped fill in gaps towards the end of the project. I especially want to thank my parents, Steven Rubenstein and Laura Spitzer, and my sister, Jessica Spitzer-Rubenstein, for their support and encouragement. Taking long walks with their dog, Bagel, helped develop my thinking on these issues. My friends have uncomplainingly endured listening to me talk about Gowanus but I especially need to thank Carly Silver. She’s watched my love of Brooklyn grow over the last few years and even indulged me in accompanying me on trips to Kings County. She has constantly supported me and this wouldn’t have happened without her. Spitzer-Rubenstein v 1. Gowanus and Its Issues Gowanus is gentrifying despite being bisected by one of “the nation’s most polluted waterways” (Calder 2011). The Brooklyn neighborhood wedged between Park Slope and Carroll Gardens, two wealthier neighborhoods that are already gentrified, is a unique case of gentrification. Unlike most gentrifying neighborhoods, the environmental hazards are not merely incidental but central to its identity today; Gowanus surrounds the Gowanus Canal, a polluted industrial waterway lined with old factories, coal plants, and sewage discharge points. Other neighborhoods face gentrification and some neighborhoods are working to clean up legacies of pollution, Gowanus is nearly unique in trying to do both at the same time. Though most of those factories are now closed and transformed into artists' studios and less polluting industry, the pollution previously created from those factories is still there. As a result, the EPA declared the canal a Superfund site in 2010, meaning that the federal government will fund and control efforts to cleanup the canal and will sue the companies that owned those factories in order to recoup some of the costs. The Superfund designation was expected to both halt real estate development and cause gentrification in the neighborhood, which many residents and stakeholders in the neighborhood feared would destroy the character of the community by displacing artists and industrial businesses that employ thousands of workers. These changes lead Gowanus residents to worry that their community will be destroyed, and their understanding of and response to those changes are the focus of this study. However, their efforts to preserve the neighborhood are likely insufficient due to a lack of proactive community planning, which could result in the disappearance of Gowanus in its current form. Spitzer-Rubenstein 1 Gentrification as a broad concept might best be defined using Peter Marcuse’s explanation (1999) of this process as the movement of upper- and middle-income, white- collar households into formerly poor neighborhoods, displacing the lower-income community that had lived there before. That has happened in other New York City neighborhoods and in communities across the country and world. The newer residents are, in the American context, typically overwhelmingly white, displacing older residents who are typically people of color, though that demographic breakdown is probably less true in the case of Gowanus. Of the roughly 20,000 people living in this Brooklyn neighborhood (see Figure 1) in 2009, almost 60% were white; just 9.3% of the population was black and about a quarter of the population was Latino. 17% of white residents live in poverty, compared to 26% of blacks and 23% of Latinos living in Gowanus. 14% of Gowanus residents are Italian-Americans, the largest single group by ancestry (Social Explorer Tables: ACS 2005-2009). Anecdotal evidence suggests that many of them are older residents. Blacks, Latinos, and older Italian residents concentrate around the edges of the neighborhood, especially in the public housing developments to the north and west, while many of the newcomers are in the southern and eastern parts of the neighborhood. Nevertheless, the general pattern holds true as older residents fear newer residents raising rents and prices and forcing them to leave the neighborhood. Interestingly though, the residents who have lived the longest in the Gowanus area are not the most vocal opponents of gentrification. Instead, the remnants of the old Italian community are generally affiliated with community leader Buddy Scotto’s network of organizations including the Carroll Gardens Association (a neighborhood association), the Independent Neighborhood Democrats (a political club which once Spitzer-Rubenstein 2 promoted reform but is now closely aligned with the Democratic Party establishment), and the Gowanus Canal Community Development Corporation (which promotes development in the area), all of which Scotto founded. These groups work to attract residential developers and provide political support for what opponents see as gentrification. Indeed, one more recent resident who is a member of the Independent Neighborhood Democrats writes, “These days, there’s not a development project Buddy doesn’t support,” (Gatemouth 2012). Much of the opposition to gentrifying development comes from the Friends and Residents of Greater Gowanus (FROGG), an environmentalist

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