Thoughts on 'the twin plagues of vacancy and the mall-ification' of NYC

The Architect's Newspaper takes a deep dive into a popular topic in a post titled "What’s being done — or not — to save Manhattan’s small businesses from Amazon and big box competition."

To some excerpts...

High rent, high taxes, regulations that favor owners over tenants, and plain old capitalism — the incentive for owners to seek their property’s maximum value, and the consumer’s desire to acquire goods at the lowest price — all contribute to the twin plagues of vacancy and the mall-ification (national chains displacing small, local businesses) of Manhattan. Stakeholders, though, disagree on what should be done to solve a growing crisis at street level.

And...

It’s not only high rents and taxes that are driving businesses to close. Online shopping is slaying retailers big and small, in Manhattan and the suburbs and beyond. Right now, unchecked real estate speculation and limited protections for small-business owners mean that there is little protection against ultimately having a national bank and pharmacy on every corner.

Find the article here.

H/T The Lo-Down!

High-rent blight: Senator's report finds nearly 10% vacancy rate on parts of 1st and 2nd avenues

[2 storefronts for rent on 1st Avenue between 13th and 14th]

Last week, State Sen. Brad Hoylman released the findings of a new report examining the growing specter of vacant storefronts in Manhattan.

Per a release on this report:

Combining on-the-ground data collection with firsthand accounts from small businesses, "Bleaker on Bleecker: A Snapshot of High-Rent Blight in Greenwich Village and Chelsea" looks at the causes and impacts of storefront vacancies and recommends solutions to address the problem.

The New York Times (here) and Jeremiah's Vanishing New York (here) reported on some of the findings.

The data Hoylman's office collected includes commercial sectors in the East Village:

· 18.4 percent vacancy rate along Bleecker Street from 6th to 8th Avenues

· 9.8 percent overall vacancy rate along First Avenue from 10th to 23rd Streets, Second Avenue from 3rd to 14th Streets, Eighth Avenue from 15th to 22nd Streets, and Bleecker Street from 6th to 8th Avenues

"Bleecker Street serves as a cautionary tale of how high rents in the Village and Chelsea are pushing out longtime independent business. We can’t simply allow market forces to run roughshod over our community any longer," he said.

His report provides a few solutions to address the growing problem of small business vacancies:

· Creation of a New York City Legacy Business Registry: The registry would track and maintain a list of small businesses that have been in operation for at least 30 years. This would enable New York State to recognize important businesses that in the future could potentially merit historic preservation tax credits and other benefits.

· Creation of Formula Retail Zoning Restrictions: This legislation would enable New York City to place limits on national chain stores.

· Phasing Out Tax Deductions for Landlords with Persistent Vacancies: Though landlords who leave retail storefronts vacant cannot deduct lost potential rental income, they are able to receive deductions for depreciation of property and operating vacancies. This proposal would disincentivize vacant storefronts by phasing out these deductions for building owners who leave retail spaces vacant over a year.

·Eliminating the Commercial Rent Tax: The Commercial Rent Tax (CRT) is an onerous and outdated burden on many small businesses. The tax only applies to commercial tenants in buildings below 96th Street in Manhattan, putting them at a distinct disadvantage compared to businesses elsewhere. State legislation could prevent the city from levying the Commercial Rent Tax on small businesses.

"I hope the ideas in my report will ignite a conversation about how we can assist small businesses before — not after — they face the seemingly inevitable reckoning of enormous rent increases," he said.

You can access a PDF of the report here.

On this topic, Community Board 3's Economic Development Committee is hosting a public forum next Wednesday night to discuss a proposed special district in the East Village "to encourage retail diversity and promote small and independent businesses."

Find the details here.

Survey: East Village residents are spending 56% of their incomes on market-rate apartments

A new Streeteasy survey suggests that NYC could be nicknamed the Big Rent Burden. Per the survey on market-rate rentals:

As a classic rule of thumb, a rent-to-income ratio of 30 percent or lower is considered “affordable,” meaning that renters spend 30 percent or less of their monthly income on rent – freeing up the majority of their income for other costs of living and savings. Even when considering that residents of large cities will typically spend more of their incomes on rent than in less amenity-rich areas, New York is in a league of its own. The median asking rent in New York City is expected to reach $2,700 in 2015, amounting to a staggering 58 percent of median income in the city according to StreetEasy estimates. High rent prices are only half of the picture, though. Stagnant income growth, short supply of rental units, and rapidly increasing rents is making New York City one of the most expensive and challenging rental markets in the country. According to census data, New York City rent prices grew at almost twice the pace of income between 2000 and 2013, meaning that over time rent has taken up a much larger piece of New Yorkers’ incomes.

Streeteasy's interactive map shows you the percentage of income residents are paying in rent by neighborhood. In the East Village, it's 56 percent ... with the Lower East Side checking in at 81 percent. As The Wall Street Journal notes, "The report offers a glimpse into one aspect of the much-studied question of affordability in the city, looking at the median income of people who live here compared with the more than 140,000 listings that StreetEasy analyzed from its site." You can read the whole survey here.

Some facts and figures to depress you about rent

The Furman Center at NYU released the annual State of New York City's Housing and Neighborhoods report yesterday... a sprawling mass of data on rent, rent regulations and many other things to do with rent... as well as demographic statistics...

Here are a few sobering passages straight from the report's news release:

In the six years since the recession, data paint a mixed picture of New York City’s recovery...

The city’s housing market showed signs of recovery — including sustained employment growth, rising home sales, and increased housing prices—but also showed increasing affordability challenges for New York City renters.

Since the recession, stagnant incomes and rising rents have led to an increase in rent burdens. In 2011, 24 percent of New Yorkers were moderately rent burdened (spending 30 to 50 percent of their income on rent) and 31 percent of New Yorkers were severely rent burdened (spending 50 percent or more of their income on rent), according to the report.

Between 2007 and 2011, a period when house prices citywide fell by 20 percent, the median monthly gross rent citywide increased by 8.6 percent, from $1,096 to $1,191. During that same period, median household income decreased 6.8 percent, dropping from $54,127 to $50,433.

The report for Manhattan is broken down into 12 community districts, with the East Village presumably landing in the Lower East Side/Chinatown bracket. (Find that PDF here.)

A few stats from that report...


[Click image to enlarge]

You can find a PDF of the report for Manhattan here.

Infographics help illustrate how expensive rent is in New York City

Some info from the EV Grieve inbox via Zumper, an apartment rental listings site...

Here's some info that we've gathered:

Top three most expensive neighborhoods to rent a one bedroom:

• Tribeca ($4,180)
• Greenwich Village ($3,550)
• Garment District ($3,535)

Alternatively, here are the three most expensive neighborhoods to rent a two bedroom:

• Tribeca ($6,275)
• Battery Park ($5,650)
• Soho ($5,545)

We also found the neighborhoods where splitting a two bedroom with a roommate can save you the most money (versus each renting a one bedroom on your own):

• Greenpoint - Save 47.5% or $1,425 per bedroom ($3000 for a 1 bed vs. $1575 per bedroom for a 2 bed)
• Williamsburg - Save 43.3% or $1,220 per bedroom ($2820 for a 1 bed vs. $1600 per bedroom for a 2 bed)
• Murray Hill - Save 37.7% or $1,036 per bedroom ($2750 for a 1 bed vs. $1714 per bedroom for a 2 bed)

Here are the three neighborhoods where you'll save the least by adding a roommate:

• Battery Park - Save 15.7% or $525 per bedroom ($3,350 for a 1 bed vs. $2,825 per bedroom for a 2 bed)
• Soho - Save 20.8% or $728 per bedroom ($3500 for a 1 bed vs. $2,773 per bedroom for a 2 bed)
• Chelsea - Save 24.63% or $838 per bedroom ($3,400 for a 1 bed vs. $2,563 per bedroom for a 2 bed)

Finally, some overall stats so you can see how the East Village fares in all this. To the graphs!



For instance, one-bedroom apartments are less expensive here than in Greenpoint and Williamsburg...



...and two bedroom apartments almost seem like deals (!!) compared with other neighborhoods... only Murray Hill and the Lower East Side have (slightly) lower rents in the parts of Manhattan that Zumper surveyed for two bedrooms...

Rent rally tonight

From the EV Grieve inbox...

Tonight at 6, tenants and advocates from across the five boroughs will be rallying on the steps of City Hall to show their support for renewing and strengthening New York's rent-stabilization and rent-control laws.

Approximately 2.5 million New Yorkers depend on these laws, which are set to expire on June 15.

What: Candlelight Vigil to Save Our Rent Protection Laws

When: Tonight, Monday, January 3, 2011

Time: 6 p.m.

Where: City Hall Steps

East Village rents fell in 2009

In his Mixed Use column this week at The Villager, Patrick Hedlund summarizes 2009 in rent...

The East Village and Lower East Side experienced the steepest residential rent drops of any Downtown neighborhoods last year, making them among the most desirable areas across Manhattan for discount-driven renters. According to the Real Estate Group New York’s year-end rental market report, the East Village and Lower East Side saw average decreases of 5.98 percent and 6.25 percent, respectively, for all doorman and non-doorman unit types combined in 2009. Doorman studios led the downward trend in both neighborhoods, with such units falling by 12.1 percent in the East Village and 22.4 percent on the Lower East Side over the past year. Over all, the East Village recorded drops for each one of its unit types, while the L.E.S. saw modest gains for non-doorman studios and two-bedrooms only (up 1.1 percent and 1.7 percent, respectively).

So can we say now that rent is just really expensive instead of unfucking-believably expensive?

Rent increase proposed; tenants are disappointed

From the Times:

The board that oversees rents for New York City’s one million rent-stabilized apartments proposed a range of rent increases on Tuesday, disappointing tenants and their supporters, who say the recession warrants a rent freeze.

In a preliminary vote, the city’s Rent Guidelines Board proposed increases of 2 percent to 4.5 percent for one-year leases and 4 percent to 7.5 percent for two-year leases. Last year, the board approved its highest set of rent increases since 1989 — 4.5 percent on one-year leases and 8.5 percent on two-year leases. The board will hold two public hearings, on June 15 and June 17; it is to take a final vote at a meeting June 23.

Tales from the rent-is-falling front

“Probably somebody who’s relocating would still be surprised today: ‘This is the size of apartment I get for this price?’ ” said Caroline Bass, an associate broker with Citi Habitats. “But New Yorkers think this is great right now. Maybe you appreciate it more if you spend more time here.” (The New York Times)

Recession causing retail landlords to be sort of nice and humane

To the Times!

Back in the mid-1990s, when a stretch of Ludlow Street in Manhattan was dominated by boarded-up buildings and wholesale fruit and nut vendors, Terri Gillis’s boutique, TG-170, was one of the magnets that drew intrepid shoppers to the Lower East Side.

That area is now one of the city’s liveliest late-night strips, which made it particularly painful for Ms. Gillis to receive an eviction notice last month because she owed $13,556.26 in back real estate taxes. But in a sudden change of heart, her landlord recently offered to let Ms. Gillis stay for two more years, and even proposed paying part of her future real estate taxes — which retail tenants normally pay.

In this troubled economy, the building manager, Arwen Properties, decided it would rather hold onto a good tenant.

“We’re working with her and trying to compromise,” the lawyer for Arwen Properties, Joel Bernstein, said. “The landlord has got an incentive, naturally, to keep cash flowing.”

Many landlords he advises are coming to the same conclusion, Mr. Bernstein said. Just a year ago, the owners of New York’s most coveted retail and restaurant spaces held almost unassailable power to dictate the terms of their leases. But the recession is changing that equation, as rapidly rising vacancy rates and bankruptcies are making it hard to find new tenants.

Sure, the Hotel Carter may be the dirtiest hotel in America, but it sure is photogenic!

Been meaning to pay a visit to the Hotel Carter on West 43rd Street in Times Square. Yesterday, Gothamist had the roundup on the Carter being named the filthiest hotel in America by the voters at TripAdvisor. Woo-hoo! You're No. 1! So what seems to be the problem(s)? Ah, the usual. Rats. Mold. Dust. Dangerous electrical outlets. Dead bodies. That kind of thing!

So why do I want to pay the Carter a visit? The photo opportunities! Just look at some of the shots I found by typing in "Hotel Carter" on Flickr...(And check out Ken Mac's post on the Carter at Greenwich Village Daily Photo.)


(Photo by fantaz)


(Photo by Bob Jagendorf)


(Photo by 24gotham)


(Photo by Strange Red)


(Photo by Jeffrey Docherty)

Anyway, how bad could it be?



Previously on EV Grieve:
Checking out the Vigilant Hotel: "Perfect for the bored with responsibilities of maintaining a traceable address"

Elk in the City

At the Hotel Edison: An appreciation

Power to the renter?

From today's Wall Street Journal:

As the housing downturn deepens, rental rates are falling in many major U.S. cities, including New York and Los Angeles, and tenants are finding they have greater leeway to renegotiate their leases.

Fear of losing a good tenant is often enough to make landlords reconsider their rent. Jenna Carpenter, a 28-year-old living in a $2,000-per-month one-bedroom apartment on New York's Lower East Side, didn't plan to renegotiate her contract. But once she told her landlord she didn't plan to renew her lease in March, he offered to lower her rent. They are now negotiating a cut of between $300 and $400 a month.

Noted

"Priced out of Brooklyn? You might want to try Manhattan. Many neighborhoods in Brooklyn are now more expensive to live in than Manhattan neighborhoods (and I'm talking below 90th Street here), according to data compiled by StreetEasy.com for October 2008." (Daily News)

Now we're dealing

This is the first flier I've seen since the Great Depression of 2008 started in which potential tenants are being offered something for free...like one month's rent.

An end to the real estate boom

Excerpts from a Times piece titled "Failed Deals Replace Real Estate Boom:"

After seven years of nonstop construction, skyrocketing rents and sales prices, and a seemingly endless appetite for luxury housing that transformed gritty and glamorous neighborhoods alike, the credit crisis and the turmoil on Wall Street are bringing New York’s real estate boom to an end.

It is hard to say exactly what the long-term impact will be, but real estate experts, economists and city and state officials say it is likely there will be far fewer new construction projects in the future, as well as tens of thousands of layoffs on Wall Street, fewer construction jobs and a huge loss of tax revenue for both the state and the city.

After imposing double-digit rent increases in recent years, landlords say rents are falling somewhat, which could hurt highly leveraged projects, but also slow gentrification in what real estate brokers like to call “emerging neighborhoods” like Harlem, the Lower East Side and Fort Greene.

“Any continued impediment to the credit markets is awful for the national economy, but it’s more awful for New York,” said Richard Lefrak, patriarch of a fourth-generation real estate family that owns office buildings and apartment houses in New York and New Jersey.

“This is the company town for money,” he said. “If there’s no liquidity in the system, it exacerbates the problems. It’s going to have a serious effect on the local economy and real estate values.”

New York has lovely skylines, stylish and diverse people, great art galleries, and we're really expensive and not too fucking friendly

According to Travel + Leisure's annual America's Favorite Cities list...New York received the most No. 1 ratings -- 11 in total! We're tops in classical music, theater, diversity, style, people-watching, skyline/views, art galleries, local boutiques and luxury boutiques. That's only nine. Whatever!

And NYC was dead last for "peace and quiet" and "relaxing retreat" and — shocker! — "affordability." And NYC was 24 out of 25 for "friendliness." That's fucking bullshit! Fuck you!

Staying put on East Third Street

Residents at 176 E. Third Street have been offered up to $125,000 apiece to move out of their rent-stabilized apartments. They declined. As the Post notes:

The residents charge that the buyout bid by Icon Realty Management, owned by Terrence Lowenberg and Todd Cohen, would destroy the building's sense of community.
"They offered me $120,000," said Carolyn Chamberlain, 65, a secretary who pays $400 for her two-bedroom apartment in the six-story, prewar building.
"I told them I would only be interested if it was middle-six-figure offer. It's outright harassment," she said.
Alexander Camu, a bartender, said he turned down a $125,000 offer.
"I moved here when the neighborhood was crap," he said. "I turned down the offer because I'm being paid to leave my life."

Bob Arihood has been covering this story at Neither More Nor Less. Read his coverage here.

"The old Hollywood sense of lawless New York is rearing its ugly head"

Julia Vitullo-Martin, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, wrote an op-ed in today's New York Post titled "Revenge of the Bad Old Days."

She begins:

Does it feel some days as if New York-- wealthy, successful, seemingly at the top of the world -- is slipping back into the bad old days of crime, noise, dirt, rudeness? Like pentimento rising from an old canvas, the traces of New York's previous misery are appearing on the streets and in the subways -- graffiti, aggressive panhandling, open drug dealing, filthy public areas, ear--splitting noise, screeching sirens, a sense of disorder we thought was gone. It's not "Soylent Green" again, but the old Hollywood sense of lawless New York is rearing its ugly head.



And fast-forwarding past a lot of analysis and stats and what not:

Are we heading backwards? No, but we need to remember our own heritage.

New Yorkers haven't always understood that some ominous trend was beginning. For example, 1958 was the start of what the late Erik Monkkonen, a historian at UCLA, called New York's "rogue tidal wave of violence." Almost no one noticed at the time. It lasted until 1992, when the Dinkins administration, under Commissioner Ray Kelly, began its Safe Streets program. And while Monkkonen was optimistic about New York's future, he warned of the relentless cycle by which, once some "lower level of violence had been achieved, the mechanisms for control and the value of peace get forgotten, and a slow rebirth of violence begins." We can fool ourselves into thinking that the New York of the last few years is the New York that will always be. But our city is and always has been a tumultuous place, in which the miseries of the past don't seem so far away. We need to be vigilant, as we have been since 1992, against the small, unpleasant, menacing intrusions on New York's quality of life.

We know that New York's economic engine, the financial industry, is under immense strain, that the mayor's budget faces severe deficits, and that some businesses are starting layoffs.

Bloomberg has been the right mayor for good times. Now the truly difficult part starts: keeping New York great in hard times.

[Image of the East Village in the 1970s from Litter Bugged via Filthy Mess]

If you're thinking of living in: The East Village

A few excerpts from a Times article from Oct. 6, 1985, titled "If you're thinking of living in: The East Village:"

PROSPECTIVE buyers of city-owned properties are swarming over the East Village, looking for bargains in hundreds of dilapidated buildings and vacant lots.

Among them are developers and people who cannot afford or will not pay the high rents and condominium prices prevalent elsewhere in Manhattan and hope that the East Village will give them every New Yorker's dream - maximum space for minimal outlay.
Indeed, its proximity to midtown Manhattan and Wall Street is catching the eyes of an increasing number of New Yorkers who view it as the next likely alternative to chic Washington Square, the trendy Upper West Side or the East Side.

A walk through the East Village is all that is needed to see its obvious problems:
* Condominium prices and rents for rehabilitated apartments, while lower than in established Manhattan neighborhoods, are rising fast and are likely to keep rising for the next few years.
* Crime, particularly crime related to drug abuse, is prevalent. Drug deals are made openly in Tompkins Square, the neighborhood's only park, and burglaries have risen markedly, according to officials of the Ninth Police Precinct, which serves the area.
* Quality-of-life problems abound. Residents complain that garbage remains uncollected for weeks, graffiti are endemic and the Fire Department says the East Village is among the most arson-prone areas in the city.

Despite its problems, the East Village has in recent years emerged as perhaps the most artistically avant-garde neighborhood in the city. Its boutiques are stocked with kamikaze clothing and its galleries with doomsday art, adding yet another layer of diversity to its traditional ethnic heterogeneity.

The cultural mix has been further enlivened by an influx of an increasing number of students from New York University, Cooper Union and other colleges, as well as young professionals.

'There are bohemians who live here who are only pretending to be bohemians,'' said Alfred Marston, chairman of Community Board 3 at 137 Second Avenue. ''Actually, many of them are the most straight-laced of people who work days in the financial district and want to shed that prim, professional image at night and on weekends.''

UNLIKE other areas of the city, said Mr. Marston, a financial consultant with a doctorate in economics, ''a lot of people who feel they have missed the boat in their private lives head for the East Village looking for a renewed lease on their youth and, obviously, some of them find it because more well educated, professional people keep coming.''

Mark Rudolph, a free-lance video producer, is such a person. Six months ago, he saw an ad in FYI, the Time Inc. house organ, and eventually moved into a two-bedroom apartment in a newly rehabilitated building at 652 East Sixth Street, near Avenue C. His rent is $900 a month.

In the blocks adjoining his building are dozens of lots, some occupied by squatters living in tents and shacks. ''But you've got to live somewhere,'' said Mr. Rudolph, expressing the feeling of thousands who will not live anywhere but Manhattan.

Rehabilitation of scores of buildings is under way and to hear local developers tell it, the sale of condominiums is brisk. The developers of 65-69 Cooper Square, a new building with 37 studios and one-bedroom condominiums, said more than two-thirds had been sold since it opened several months ago. The apartments range in price from $175,000 to $208,000, with typical maintenance of $329 a month.

But prices are not rising uniformly: The owners of a 20-unit apartment house at 82 East Third Street recently lowered their asking price from $575,000 to $515,000.

Rents for apartments, when available, can be high. Studio apartments on East Ninth Street between First and Second Avenues are being advertised at $725 a month, and two-bedroom apartments at St. Mark's Place and First Avenue have been advertised for $1,500 a month.
Condominium and co-op prices vary widely. Sponsors of a new co-op in a building being rehabilitated at 613 East Sixth Street are asking $165,000 for a two-bedroom, two-bath apartment, with maintenance of about $500 a month.

All is well at Stuy Town!

According to the Home Real Estate guide in today's Post anyway.

Says the article:

When it was announced in late 2006, it was one of those deals that knocked the wind out of you: The Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village complex - that beacon of middle-class Manhattan life - was being sold to Tishman Speyer for $5.4 billion. It remains the biggest real-estate transaction in New York City history.
Its residents were worried (68 percent of the 11,232 apartments in Stuy Town are rent regulated) and real-estate watchers wondered what would become of that massive 80-acre plot of land on the far East Side. Would some of the buildings be torn down and new ones go up? Would the place go condo? Would rent-stabilized residents be kicked out?
The short answer? None of the above. For many longtime Stuy Town residents, not much is different since the purchase. But that's not to say that there haven't been changes.
"We're focused on making it better," says George Hartzmann, managing director at Tishman Speyer. "That means focusing on the physical amenities, community activities, upgrading [apartments] and a lot of landscaping."

Yep, nothing but good things here! Keep going about your business!

Oh, well, there's this.

Meanwhile, back to the article. Sure, rents are going up...

"When I moved here, my one-bedroom apartment was $52.50," says Madeleine Sussman, who came to Stuy Town in 1949.
Sussman turned to her husband, Harold, who had moved to the complex a year earlier.
"What did you pay?"
"Fifty-eight dollars."
"Of course, that was a lot in those days," Madeleine adds.
Today, a one-bedroom in Stuyvesant Town starts at $2,950; two-bedrooms at $3,675; and three-bedrooms at $5,400. Peter Cooper Village (which has always had bigger and more expensive apartments) start at $3,250 for a one-bedroom, and $4,225 for a two-bedroom.
And those are the cheap units!

Golly! So what is a tenant to do?

And if the price sounds a bit high, Stuy Town has encouraged potential residents to take roommates.
Jill Durso, for instance, is splitting a one-bedroom with friend Christina Vargas.
"We converted it to a two-bedroom," says Durso. "They arranged to have a nice little wall put up, and we still have enough of a living room for our modest get-togethers."
Luckily, the one-bedrooms in Stuy Town are big. A typical one-bedroom measures around 755 square feet; a one-bedroom in Peter Cooper is around 947 square feet. (Two-bedrooms in Stuy Town average 943 square feet; at Peter Cooper they measure about 1,223 square feet.)
"I go to friends' apartments in the East Village, and they're paying more for the same amount of space," notes Durso.

The article does finally mention the rising rents, new money moving in (why not? they are wine tastings! ski trips! Hamptons shuttles!) and longtime residents getting the heave-ho, but...

That being said, one still gets the feeling talking to residents that the criticisms of Stuy Town are made out of love; longtime tenants are absolutely fanatical about the place - and not all of them object to newcomers.
"It's nice to see the young people," says Madeleine Sussman. "There was a population shift; most of the people who lived here together grew old together. And now it's still a comfortable place."
And new tenants seem to agree.
"I always said, it's the greatest suburb in New York," says Allison Kallish, who moved to a one-bedroom in Stuy Town two years ago. "I saw this parade of Little Leaguers, with bagpipes playing, walking through the [Stuyvesant] Oval back in April. How many suburbs do you see that in?"That being said, one still gets the feeling talking to residents that the criticisms of Stuy Town are made out of love; longtime tenants are absolutely fanatical about the place - and not all of them object to newcomers.
"It's nice to see the young people," says Madeleine Sussman. "There was a population shift; most of the people who lived here together grew old together. And now it's still a comfortable place."
And new tenants seem to agree.
"I always said, it's the greatest suburb in New York," says Allison Kallish, who moved to a one-bedroom in Stuy Town two years ago. "I saw this parade of Little Leaguers, with bagpipes playing, walking through the [Stuyvesant] Oval back in April. How many suburbs do you see that in?"