Brooklyn’s worldwide brand is at a new high water mark. We’ve always been international, of course; Russian and Israeli money is deep in residential, we have Little Odessa, our own Chinatown and the hemisphere’s largest West Indian city.
LuluLemon’s luxury cotton apparel touched down on Smith Street last month, hailing from British Columbia – the cool part of Canada on the West Coast – and rounding out the clothing store boom in Cobble Hill and environs. Forward-leaning Milanese developer Estate 4 acquired a huge Red Hook warehouse for an exotic commercial development still taking shape, while London money is buying around Barclay’s Arena.
This is why we are so real estate hot.
And now Brooklyn is seeing the big, glamorous and wildly ambitious money, not only the ‘under the table’ bucks, but the massive, floral centerpiece mega bucks placed not gently on the mahogany. The very rich, the office developers priced out of Manhattan by condo builders, the foreign investment funds with tens of millions of dollars to park, the children of the wealthy, the newly fashionable, the chefs to all of the above; they all want a piece of us.
This is why Brooklyn is so hot.
Brooklyn is now truly globalized. Following in the footsteps of the small island across the East River, the cool borough on the big island is now globalizing. Hit hard in the last twelve months by a monster tsunami of cash – by those seeking safe returns in the best place to visit and hang out – our Brooklyn will never be the same again.
Trying to buy a building? Get in line. A townhouse? Fuggedaboutit. As the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce says, ‘Brooklyn goes Global’.
