Gowanus as "West Park Slope"?

Today's Times notices the changes that have been underway for a while along Third Avenue in Gowanus, particularly on the Third Avenue corridor where restaurants are sprouting. The story lists many of the developments that have been chronicled and even mapped (although they fail to mention the hotels). Here's a sample:

Just before Christmas, he started transforming the old factory into a sprawling pizza and barbecue restaurant, with nearly 300 seats. Mr. Maropakis’s most recent addition is a brick oven he built, which can cook 1,000 pounds of meat at a time. Not everyone in the neighborhood shares his enthusiasm. In fact, about a month ago, when Mr. Maropakis spray-painted the words “Brick oven bar-be-que” on the plywood covering one of the windows, some people who work in the area thought it was a joke...

In the last couple of years, the high-end boutiques, cafes and restaurants that transformed Fifth Avenue have been spilling onto Fourth Avenue. But few residents expected Third Avenue to start going upscale so quickly, and some are already fearful that Park Slope and Carroll Gardens will merge to form one big brownstone Brooklyn neighborhood.

“They’re going to call Gowanus ‘West Park Slope’ or ‘East Carroll Gardens,’ ” Ms. Yurick said with a grimace. “It’s a joke. This is a truck route.”

Well, it's still a truck route, but not such a joke anymore.