Demand for new retail and office space is rising across Brooklyn, from tony waterfront neighborhoods like Williamsburg to middle-class immigrant enclaves in the southern part of the borough. Down on Kings Highway in Sheepshead Bay, a five-story retail and office development is in the works.
New building applications were filed for the 89,000-square-foot commercial project at 1713 East 13th Street, just off Kings Highway and Quentin Road and two blocks from the Kings Highway Q train stop. The building would reach 91 feet into the air on a through-block lot that runs from East 13th Street to East 14th Street. There would be retail on the first two floors, followed by three floors of office space.
This project was made possible by an rezoning in 2006, which boosted the density along Kings Highway and certain residential blocks while downzoning more traditional blocks dominated by single-family homes. At the same time, the neighborhood just north of there, Midwood, was largely downzoned. The aim, of course, was to prevent the construction of new apartment buildings on blocks filled with one- and two-family homes.
This little slice of Sheepshead Bay is often called Homecrest. Many of the long-term homeowners are Russian, Ukrainian, Italian, or Scotch-Irish, but there burgeoning communities of Indian, Chinese, Mexican, and Pakistani immigrants, according to census data.
The developer is Infinity Group, a real estate investment firm headquartered near Times Square in Midtown. They’ve tapped SoHo-based Zysovich Architects to handle the design.
A 60,440-square-foot parking garage currently occupies the property, and demolition plans have not yet been filed to knock it down.
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That is not Sheepshead Bay. Back in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, my friends, family and I referred to that area as “Kings Highway” but it’s basically Midwood, close to Madison. (I graduated Midwood HS in ’68, my brother graduated Madison HS in ’72; both are on Bedford Avenue, a dozen blocks east, Madison on Quentin Road (essentially Avenue Q), Midwood on Glenwood Road (essentially Avenue G). Homecrest is around Avenue U, where the Homecrest post office station is.
Neighborhood boundaries are debatable, of course, and change over the years, but ask people on Quentin Road or Kings Highway between Ocean Avenue and Coney Island Avenue or East 16th Street (where the Brighton line) is, and few people even today would say Sheepshead Bay.
I think of Sheepshead Bay as much further south, closer to, um, Sheepshead Bay (the body of water).
The Fillmore Realty site says this: “Sheepshead Bay is located in the southeast corner of Brooklyn, next to Gravesend and Marine Park. It stretches from the Emmons Avenue waterfront north to Avenue T, and from Knapp Street to Coney Island Avenue. Sheepshead Bay includes the smaller neighborhoods of Gerritsen Beach and Plumb Beach.”
Wikipedia seems to agree with you but says this: “Madison is a purely residential subsection of Sheepshead Bay, located just south of Midwood. Named after its own James Madison High School, its borders are Kings Highway to the north, Avenue U to the south, Ocean Avenue to the west, and Nostrand Avenue to the east. Madison uses the ZIP code 11229. The area is served by Brooklyn Community Board 15.”
A 1982 New York Times real estate article says this: “Sheepshead Bay, roughly two-and-a-half square miles in size, is situated above a narrow inlet directly north of Manhattan Beach, a smaller, more affluent community on Brooklyn’s southern shore. Many residents say its boundaries are Coney Island Avenue on the west, Emmons Avenue on the south, Avenue U on the north and Knapp Street on the east, although Assemblyman Daniel Feldman, Democrat from Brooklyn’s 45th District, says Kings Highway is the proper northern boundary.”
A more recent Times real estate “Living in…” (2011) says this: “The busiest commercial strip — livelier than Emmons Avenue — is Sheepshead Bay Road near the subway. In all, according to census figures, roughly 80,000 people live in the two-square-mile area bounded by Ocean Parkway to the west, Knapp Street to the east, Avenue U to the north and the bay to the south.”
Many mixed-race in Sheepshead Bay, put different people together but one community with rezoning.
I thought they were putting Target there?? Not that that is a good location for it either.