Exactly who "saved" Brooklyn?
From The Brooklyn Paper
Credit where due
It was nice to see former Borough President Howard Golden on Monday night at a Brooklyn Historical Society reception kicking off the new exhibition about the borough’s rise to greatness that began in the 1970s.
Speaker after speaker celebrated Golden’s visionary role in the Brooklyn “renaissance,” ticking off a laundry list of development projects that began or were completed during his 24 years as borough president.
There’s no question that Golden, who was borough president when the office had real power, played a role in spurring development, but our interpretation of the origin and cultivation of the “renaissance” differs from that of the monied interests and power-brokers who run Brooklyn today.
Brooklyn’s rebirth during the Golden era was spearheaded by two main trends:
• Waves of New York-bound immigrants who settled in Brooklyn neighborhoods that the white middle class had abandoned in favor of a suburban fantasy. Those hard-working immigrants revitalized their communities, instilling in their children the notion that hard work and self-respect can make even the newest New Yorker a part of something great.
• “Brownstoners,” who invested their sweat, and risked their equity, in swaths of the borough that had been redlined by banks and insurance companies. It may be hard to believe in today’s real-estate market, but in the 1970s, loans were hard to come by, even in areas like Park Slope and Carroll Gardens, despite their being filled with the brownstones that everyone craves today.
Those lenders and insurers changed their policies only through the efforts of preservationists like the late Evelyn Ortner and her husband Everett — whose activism inspired elected officials like then-Congressman Hugh Carey and business leaders like those at the old (and locally run) Brooklyn Union Gas.
“Homesteaders” like the Ortners also created a grassroots groundswell that began to change the very tone of urban living. By encouraging would-be suburbanites to stay in Brooklyn — and then invest in their communities — the Ortners played a huge role in saving this borough.
That’s when developers like Bruce Ratner decided that Brooklyn was a good bet for projects like Metrotech — and even then he demanded (and got) huge subsidies and handouts to build here.
It’s amazing to think that today — when Brooklyn’s real-estate values are soaring and developers are making countless millions — the pattern is still playing out.
To encourage Ratner to build Atlantic Yards — where he will walk away, even by his own estimates, with hundreds of millions of dollars in profits — the state and city are underwriting him with more than $1 billion in direct and indirect public subsidies.
He is building on the shoulders of true giants — and using your money to do it.
©2007 The Brooklyn Paper