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The New York Times

Unease Lingers Amid a Rebirth in Crown Heights

By: Liz Robbins
Published: 1/31/2012Source: The New York Times

Young Brooklynites gather on Franklin Avenue in Crown Heights, often waiting an hour on weekends to get into Barboncino, a stylish and spacious four-month-old pizza restaurant named for a toy poodle.

But up the block at JamRock Kitchen, a narrow Jamaican take-out place catering to the neighborhood’s dwindling Caribbean population, business has been sporadic since it opened four years ago.

These are two divergent snapshots of a remarkably refashioned commercial strip that 20 years ago was marred by drug dealers and dilapidated storefronts in a neighborhood torn apart by racial and religious violence.

Now Franklin Avenue is the epicenter of a renaissance, the next subway stop on Brooklyn’s gentrification express. But unlike the transformation in Park Slope or Williamsburg, this story is different — and far more complicated — because it is set on scarred earth.

The riots that exploded between blacks and Hasidic Jews in August 1991 stigmatized Crown Heights as violent and intolerant.

It has taken two decades for the tensions to ease, and now the neighborhood is absorbing a new jolt to its still-fragile dynamic: the influx of mostly white artists, young professionals, families and entrepreneurs seeking affordability. Beneath the pulsing energy on and around Franklin Avenue, there is an undercurrent of unease, suspicion and resentment from some longtime residents, a legacy of the riots.

“There’s not a hostility amongst these groups, but, being an old timer, I don’t see that warmth and neighborliness kicking in yet because folks are still strangers,” said John Flateau, 62, a Crown Heights native and chairman of the department of public administration at Medgar Evers College. “There’s a social cohesion gap right now.”

One Hasidic landlord posted a complaint on a local news Web site about the immodesty of the new “yuppies,” rallying his neighbors to take back Crown Heights. Some wary African-American and West Indian residents, including those who complain of being priced out of the area, expressed fears that the demographic change would force people who have endured the neighborhood’s worst moments to move.

For years, Crown Heights has been a diverse and divided community with West Indians, Caribbeans and African-Americans concentrated in the northern part and Hasidic Jewish groups in the southern part. But the white population in the area around Franklin Avenue has increased 15 percent in the last 10 years, according to the 2010 census.

The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in the neighborhood increased 36 percent in 2011, according to a rental market report by a brokerage firm, and two-bedroom apartments renovated with luxury touches now start at around $1,800 per month, a local real estate agent said.

Three new apartment buildings are either fully rented or sold. A one-family town house just off Franklin Avenue was listed at nearly $1.1 million recently, a sum that no one could have begged for, let alone asked, two decades ago.

With a heavier police presence along Franklin Avenue, crime has dropped significantly in the past decade, but is still an issue, and some black business owners say they have been harassed by the police. And, some of those owners said, the influx of newcomers has not translated into more customers.

“I thought I would be doing a lot better being so close to the subway, but new people rotate in and out of the neighborhood,” said Conrad Hunter, 36, the owner of JamRock Kitchen. Many of his target customers — West Indian and Caribbean residents — are leaving the neighborhood. “You’re just floating to keep your head over water,” he said. “Is it bringing new revenue? It’s not.”

Martha Williams, 65, who has lived in her building on Lincoln Place for 31 years, scoffs at how the “kids” in the renovated apartments have so little trust that they put four locks on their doors. She is resigned to the changes, saying she has seen it all: “Good, bad and indifferent.”

A corner grocery at Lincoln Place and Franklin where Ms. Williams shops, Bob and Betty’s, is now selling organic food, mostly to young newcomers, and giving away cardboard boxes to older residents moving out. Tony Fisher, who took over the store his father, Bob, opened 31 years ago, remembers when holdups on the block were routine. While thrilled with the change, he is also a bit resentful.

“I look at all these newcomers and these new businesses on Franklin Avenue and I think they are jumping on a bandwagon,” Mr. Fisher said. “Where were they 25 years ago?”

Linda McKenzie, 50, took advantage of the new climate to open the thriving Veggies Natural Juice Bar, persuaded by a relative living in Crown Heights that Franklin Avenue was changing. “But I did not expect it to go in this direction so quickly,” Ms. McKenzie said. The juice bar attracts a mix of old-time Jamaican residents and newcomers.

Evangeline Porter, 79, who founded the Crow Hill Community Association 25 years ago, remembers chasing drug dealers off Franklin. Her group planted trees on the block 10 years ago, and they are finally blooming.

“Franklin Avenue is my baby,” said Ms. Porter, who recounted a recent conversation with one landlord. “He said to me, ‘You’re letting these people come in and take over.’ I told him, ‘I am.’ ”

Ms. Porter, who is black, criticized African-American merchants for being complacent in rebuilding the neighborhood years ago and praised many of the “young Caucasians” for attending community meetings. “They saw the potential of the neighborhood and said, ‘What can we do to help?’ ” she said.

Kevin Phillip, 40, grew up in Crown Heights and started a T-shirt business 13 years ago. Now with his wife, Garnett, he owns the Candy Rush, an ice cream and candy store on Franklin Avenue, and is bullish about the avenue’s future. “I don’t think anybody really thinks about what happened here,” he said, referring to the riots. “It’s more what’s happening here.”

The riots erupted when a driver from a Hasidic official’s motorcade struck and killed a 7-year-old black boy, which prompted black residents to take to the streets, some calling for revenge. A 29-year-old Hasidic scholar visiting from Australia was attacked and fatally stabbed.

Richard Green, who founded the Crown Heights Youth Coalition in the mid-1980s, said the racial violence occurred in part because blacks and Jews had kept to themselves. “We were never really formally introduced to each other,” Mr. Green said. “That’s a good lesson as we see new groups coming in.”

Despite the transformation of the northern part of Crown Heights into a vibrant neighborhood filled with handsome 19th-century brownstones, the recent past is hard to shake. Real estate brokers last spring tried to rebrand the neighborhood ProCro, a hybrid of the names Prospect Heights and Crown Heights.

Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries, who represents the area, saw it as an unvarnished attempt to increase the neighborhood’s appeal by blurring its name.

“I was offended,” said Mr. Jeffries, who grew up in Crown Heights. “The collective efforts of the black and Jewish neighbors are what made Crown Heights the destination and the attractive neighborhood it is today.”

Copyright © 2012 The New York Times Company. Reprinted with Permission. 

 

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