New Look Fourth Avenue: Development Boom is Rolling

Looked around once forsaken Fourth Avenue between Atlantic Avenue and Ninth Street lately? Gowanus Lounge highly recommends it as a way of getting a sense of what an avenue in transition looks like. A walk down this stretch, which was once reserved for tire shops, warehouses, cab company offices, auto repair places and the like, revealsalmost a dozen sites that are in some stage of development. (Forget where you are, and there are so many blue-painted plywood construction walls that you might think you were in Williamsburg.)

The building boom is concentrated in the Gowanus-Park Slope stretch of the avenue. (Fourth Avenue--both sides--is usually claimed by Gowanus in most definitions of the nabe.) The projects range from the Leviev Boymelgreen apartment building (a rendering of which is pictured, above right) between Third and Fourth Streets and another residential midrise going up at Second Street (to the right) to the Con Edison development across the street and about a half-dozen sites recently cleared or in the process of demolition. (The south side of Second Street, between Fifth and Fourth Avenues--which is part of Park Slope--has been remade into an almost entirely new street in the last three years.)

Needless to say, the avenue was rezoned last year to permit development of up to 12 stories.