Sunset Park

Brighter days ahead

By Denisa Superville | Special to amNewYork

November 30, 2006

Felix Soto, a longtime Sunset Park resident, was flying his kite in Sunset Park, the neighborhood's crown jewel and namesake. He stopped and gestured toward the harbor.

"Look at that view," said Soto, 43, who grew up only a few blocks away from what he considers his backyard. "I wouldn't trade it for a million bucks."

Ahead of him were the skylines of Manhattan, Staten Island and New Jersey and a silhouette of the Statue of Liberty. In the forefront were the smokestacks, conspicuous reminders of the area's industrial past and present.

Sunset Park was once a booming waterfront community of Norwegians, Finnish, Danish, German and Irish immigrants, with Third Avenue serving as the heart of the neighborhood.

Freight trains ran along Second Avenue, carrying cargo unloaded from busy Bush Terminal.

The construction of the Gowanus Expressway, over Third Avenue, basically led to the decay of the neighborhood. It drove a wedge between the residential and industrial parts of the neighborhood and led to an exodus of residents, Brooklyn borough historian Ron Schweiger said.

For decades, Sunset Park struggled with the loss of manufacturing jobs along its waterfront piers, crime, drugs and gang violence.

Many of the homes that were left behind when the Norwegians, Italians and Irish left were boarded up.

Today, both industrial and residential Sunset Park are on the mend, many say.

Now that parts of DUMBO and Williamsburg have been rezoned for residential use, Sunset Park's industrial zone, which has a vacancy rate of 1%, has a new and vital role in New York City, said Phaedra Thomas, the executive director of the Southwest Brooklyn Industrial Development Corporation.

"These companies, if they don't operate in Sunset Park, would have to truck in from New Jersey every day just to serve New York City," Thomas said.

On the residential side, an influx of Asians in the 1990s added to the already vibrant and predominantly Hispanic mix of the neighborhood's Latino cultures.

"It started to turn over when the Asians started to show interest in the neighborhood," said Mayra Ortiz, a real estate agent with the Corcoran Group, who has lived in Sunset Park for more than 20 years. "There was a lot of purchasing by the Asian population. That's when I started to see the change."

Find it

Sunset Park is bordered by Park Slope to the north, Bay Ridge to the south, Borough Park to the east and the New York Harbor to the west.

The exact boundaries are debatable, but Ron Schweiger, the Brooklyn borough historian, estimated that they are from 35th Street in the north to 65th Street in the south, Fort Hamilton Parkway to the east and the waterfront to the west.

Some residents, however, give the borders as beginning as far north as 15th Street, into territory now referred to as Green-wood Heights and Park Slope South.

To eat

Restaurants are concentrated along Fifth and Eighth avenues, with the former offering Latin-American food (most of the region is represented in some form or the other) and the latter providing a mix of Asian cuisine, including Chinese noodle shops, seafood restaurants on almost every block, bakeries and Malaysian and Vietnamese cuisine. Vendors also set up colorful stands along both streets to sell homemade desserts.

Eclipse