For years many have been predicting that Bed-Stuy will be the next target of full-blown gentrification in Brooklyn. But despite all the talk, the neighborhood is still a work-in-progress.
The New York Times takes the recent opening of T-Cup Cafe, which launched three months ago on Throop Avenue, to show how Bed-Stuy, with its more affordable rents and rash of independent coffee shops, is still a place that can’t seem to shake its old reputation. There’s been a recent spate of crimes, including a shooting of a 14-year-old boy and a bus driver stabbed to death.
Perhaps what will push Bed-Stuy towards becoming the next Park Slope will not be new families fleeing higher rents in other parts of Manhattan or Brooklyn, but rather old Bed-Stuy residents returning to fill the neighborhood’s retail gaps, with a desire to strenghten the community they grew up in. The Times article features two such examples, and that’s precisely the reason Crystal Bob-Semple gave me back in the summer about why she opened up Brownstone Books, a successful bookstore that features African-American titles.
Most people from Manhattan or even parts of downtown Brooklyn hear Bedford Stuyvesant they think of the area that is full of desolate abandoned buildings and crime. As a new home owner of the SH section of BS when I invite my friends to my place they are taken back at the architecture. Once they walk around the corner from Fulton Street and see how beautiful the streets are and instantly talk to me about home prices and safety. I would love to see the area become gentrified with better services and people that will add to the community. I don’t want to see long time residences get kicked out rather the people that don’t care about the community can leave. The area dose need new life from other places so that we can learn from each other and not be a close minded community. What made Ft Green a great place is the diversity of that community, I would love to see that happen to Bedford Stuyvesant.