Despite falling Manhattan rents, creative businesses are staying in Brooklyn. Some are moving back. In November, Spike Lee's advertising agency moved from Madison Avenue in Manhattan to Dumbo after a poll of the agency's employees found that they all wanted to stay in artsier, hipper Brooklyn.Over the past decade, as Manhattan became a gilded playground for the rich, Brooklyn became the city's creative center. Artists, designers, novelists and musicians flowed into Brooklyn, settling in resurgent working class neighborhoods like Cobble Hill, Fort Greene, Dumbo and Williamsburg.
Now, with Manhattan real estate prices dropping, Crain's New York Business wonders if Brooklyn will lose its status as a destination for the young and trendy. During the first quarter of this year, the number of Brooklyn real estate transactions fell 57% against the same period in 2008—the biggest drop for any borough. In Manhattan, where declining rents have slowed the number of Manhattanites fleeing to Brooklyn for affordable rents, that number was 48%.
Long-time Bay Ridge resident Kathryn Wylde, CEO of the Bloomberg-friendly Partnership for New York City, predicts that the yuppie tide flowing into Brooklyn will now reverse. Although Brooklyn rents are still cheaper, some, citing long commmutes, are returning to Manhattan.
Will Brooklyn fall back to outer boro status? Unlikely, with so much of the arts scene now in Brooklyn. Between 2000 and 2006, Brooklyn saw a 33.2% increase in self-employed interior, industrial and graphic designers, writers, artists, architects and producers. During the same period, Manhattan posted just 6.5% in growth.
As music venues have disappeared from Manhattan, new ones have opened in Williamsburg. Chanterelle has opened a restaurant in Greenpoint. For many families, Park Slope is the new Upper West Side.
With more creative businesses emerging in Brooklyn, commuting to Manhattan may become a thing of the past. All of the 85 employees of Brooklyn Industries, a hip clothing company with 10 stores nationwide, live in Brooklyn.
The city's creative workforce is Brooklyn-based. In Park Slope, Cobble Hill, Red Hook, Dumbo and Fort Greene, among others, more than half of residents have bachelor's degrees or higher, and many work in graphic design, architecture and software development.
Brooklyn has become the place where "things are invented and trends are born".
Joe Chan, president of the Brooklyn Downtown Partnership, finds the fact that so many creative people live completely Brooklyn-centric lives, spending all of their time and money here, to be a stabilizing factor for the borough.
The article from Crain's New York:
http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20090517/SMALLBIZ/305179969#
