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Earlier this year, Miguel Sanchez decided he wanted out of Manhattan. So he uprooted his digital creative agency to an Internet incubator in a restored red-brick building with a sleek, modern design. For a few hundred bucks a month, Sanchez, who has recently done work with brands like Belvedere and Mercedes-Benz, joined a community of entrepreneurs who share ideas and get advice on nitty-gritty start-up matters. He just recorded his best month of billings ever.
Adam Davidson translates often confusing and sometimes terrifying economic and financial news.
This may sound like another Brooklyn success story, but Sanchez is operating out of Sunshine Bronx, an ambitious new development in Hunts Point, a neighborhood known for unemployment and rampant prostitution. There’s no Ping-Pong table, but Sunshine is nevertheless trying to make entrepreneurs feel as though they’ve left the South Bronx and stepped into Silicon Valley.
This may seem overly ambitious, but Ruben Diaz Jr., the borough president, reminded me that the Bronx is home to nearly a dozen colleges and universities and the research arms of the New York Botanical Garden and the Bronx Zoo. (“There are so many scientists here,” he said.) Diaz, like many officials I spoke to, claimed that the area’s problems are largely based on perception. This may be partly true, but nearly a third of its residents over age 25 lack a high-school diploma. Only 17 percent have finished college.
The Bronx’s inability to catch up with the rest of the city’s phenomenal economic growth has been disconcerting. In the early 1970s, the Bronx and Brooklyn had similar average household incomes. Since then, though, the gap has grown significantly. The average Brooklyn resident is now around 23 percent richer than the average Bronxite; people in Queens are roughly 32 percent richer. (Manhattan residents are 265 percent wealthier; Staten Island residents, by the way, are 55 percent richer.) What happened?
“It’s not an accident,” says Dart Westphal, a former community developer who has lived in the Bronx for decades. Brooklyn and Queens were once collections of independent towns whose homegrown economies were rooted in Long Island agriculture, not Manhattan mercantilism. Local elites built expensive town houses on tree-lined streets. These neighborhoods fell on hard times during the 1970s, but their expensive stock was perfectly positioned for revitalization as the Manhattan boom of the past few decades pushed young professionals across the river. The Bronx, however, never developed its own economic drivers. It became, by the late 19th century, a haven for immigrants attracted to (but unable to afford) Manhattan. The borough developed far fewer wealthy areas, and many neighborhoods became devoted to less-gentrifiable housing units.
As a result, the most productive parts of the Bronx’s economy have long come from industrial-size activities that rely on Manhattan. Sunshine Bronx is located near the Hunts Point cooperative market, which supplies fresh produce, fish and meat to essentially all of the region except Hunts Point. Though pretty much all fresh food in every New York supermarket comes from there, the area currently doesn’t have a single supermarket itself. “Finding lunch in the neighborhood is a big problem,” says Sanchez, who spends much of the week meeting clients in Manhattan anyway.
After spending an afternoon in Hunt’s Point with Sanchez, I realized that he and his colleagues, just like the cooperative, are, economically speaking, barely in the Bronx at all. Manhattan is where their income comes from and where they spend their money on contract employees, computer supplies, even lunch. Though Borough President Diaz spoke with hope about a revival led by tech jobs, the economic triumphs that he ticked off were more redolent of a small Rust Belt town — a new BJ’s Wholesale Club and an indoor mall that could bring 2,000 construction jobs and 1,700 permanent positions. The borough is hoping to lure a luxury hotel near Yankee Stadium so that visitors will spend the night, and more of their money, in the Bronx. Diaz also boasted of the $600 million for new housing developments — partly government funded — for senior citizens and low- or moderate-income families.
These sorts of projects may contain little of the thrill of a tech boom, but they are “at least serving the real, immediate needs of residents,” says Bruce Katz, director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. The Bronx may look troubled when compared with Brooklyn or Manhattan, but comparison with a Rust Belt city is probably more appropriate. “It looks good in comparison with Buffalo, Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis,” says Kenneth T. Jackson, the renowned New York City historian. Indeed, the borough has recovered remarkably from the 1970s, when the buildings were famously burned, and it still fulfills a crucial role in the city’s economic cycle. It remains the place, Jackson says, where many ambitious immigrants can “get started on the ladder of life and success.”
So perhaps the Bronx shouldn’t try to become a more affordable Greenwich Village (like parts of Brooklyn) or an enclave of the young, hip and ambitious (like parts of Queens). For economic inspiration, Katz suggests, the Bronx should look outside New York. Pittsburgh lost its steel industry, but the city — home to Carnegie Mellon, Pitt and other research institutions — redefined itself as a solid second-tier educational and research center. The Bronx, Katz says, is also strong in the highly coveted “eds and meds” sector. “It boggles the mind,” he says, how much hospitals and universities spend. As a result, they offer extensive potentially valuable service jobs without degree requirements.
Unlike former industrial cities that are struggling to find a new economic logic, the Bronx also happens to be a short train ride away from the financial capital of the world. And that might just be the borough’s real challenge. Manhattan is filled with so many clever businesspeople that it can suck up any great value created in its proximity. Can the Bronx somehow take advantage of its presence in the Manhattan economic orbit without being lost in it?
I thought of this as I talked to Theodore Livingston, better known as Grandwizzard Theodore, the creator of “scratching” and master of the needle drop. As a kid in the 1970s, he and a small group of friends pioneered hip-hop in the South Bronx. It was a movement, he says, that could have been born only in that natural incubator. In the South Bronx, Grandwizzard says, there was a mix of James Brown’s political songs, conga-beat drumming and the lyrical music played by new immigrants from Jamaica. “We all lived in the same building,” he said. “We all intertwined.”
Hip-hop, of course, made billions of dollars worldwide, but not a lot of it stayed in the Bronx. Now Miguel Sanchez and his colleagues are hoping that the borough’s unique mix of diversity and low-cost real estate will again make it an entrepreneurial playground. Only this time they need to prevent Manhattan from swallowing up the profits.
Adam Davidson is co-founder of NPR's “Planet Money,” a podcast, blog and radio series heard on “Morning Edition,” “All Things Considered” and “This American Life.”
Interesting article but the title is very misleading. Why can't the Bronx be more like Brooklyn? Well...let's put it in perspective: Why can't you be more like your brother? Why can't you be more like your sister? Why can't you play basketball like your cousin? Why can't you be as pretty as your neighbor? Why can't you be as tall as your father? Why can't you be as curvy as your mother?
Answer: BECAUSE I AM NOT ANY OF THOSE PEOPLE, NOR DO I EVER WANT TO BE. I AM ME. If you want someone like my brother, go hang with my brother. If you want someone like my sister, go hang with my sister, etc.
The Bronx, like every other place or person, should be aspiring to be the greatest place/person it is, not more like a random other place or person someone feels you should be like. While Brooklyn is busy trying to clone itself into Manhattan, that's great for the brokers/real estate interests who are getting rich off of it. Is this good for Brooklyn though? Only if you believe the Manhattanization of the borough is a good thing.
So why would the Bronx simply want to copy somewhere else which is simply copying Manhattan? That is a poor lead to follow and doomed to fail. As the article states, the Bronx is home to the most educational insitutions and top medical facilities in NYC, the Bronx Zoo and Botanical Gardens, and all the talent and innovation that comes with it. For the Bronx to move forward, it needs to leverage all these institutions into economic engines which spur further innovation, attract talent, develop infrastructure to accomodate and expand these facilities, and incentives to retain them all in the Bronx.
None of which has happened, and will not happen under the current "we rather not have jobs" Ruben Diaz leadership. His economic answer is simply more lower/working class housing and low wage jobs, assuming he wants anyone to work them of course. Under his "leadership", the Bronx is moving 1/2 step forward, while every other borough moves 2 steps forward....because everyone else isn't pinning their economic hopes on low wage jobs and housing.
The Bronx has all the potential to be a uniquely successful and dynamic borough, but our leadership is either incapable or purposely ensuring it doesn't happen. Until that changes, the Bronx will "move forward", but the reality is it is being left behind. When you cross the Willis Avenue bridge it is like going through a time warp to 1995, a time when Brooklyn was starting to see some gentrification although still plagued with violence....this is not where the Bronx should be in 2012. And by 2025, the Bronx will be like Brooklyn was in 2002 AT BEST...and at worst it will be like Brooklyn in 1997..see the problem here?
Interesting article but the title is very misleading. Why can't the Bronx be more like Brooklyn? Well...let's put it in perspective: Why can't you be more like your brother? Why can't you be more like your sister? Why can't you play basketball like your cousin? Why can't you be as pretty as your neighbor? Why can't you be as tall as your father? Why can't you be as curvy as your mother?
Answer: BECAUSE I AM NOT ANY OF THOSE PEOPLE, NOR DO I EVER WANT TO BE. I AM ME. If you want someone like my brother, go hang with my brother. If you want someone like my sister, go hang with my sister, etc.
The Bronx, like every other place or person, should be aspiring to be the greatest place/person it is, not more like a random other place or person someone feels you should be like. While Brooklyn is busy trying to clone itself into Manhattan, that's great for the brokers/real estate interests who are getting rich off of it. Is this good for Brooklyn though? Only if you believe the Manhattanization of the borough is a good thing.
So why would the Bronx simply want to copy somewhere else which is simply copying Manhattan? That is a poor lead to follow and doomed to fail. As the article states, the Bronx is home to the most educational insitutions and top medical facilities in NYC, the Bronx Zoo and Botanical Gardens, and all the talent and innovation that comes with it. For the Bronx to move forward, it needs to leverage all these institutions into economic engines which spur further innovation, attract talent, develop infrastructure to accomodate and expand these facilities, and incentives to retain them all in the Bronx.
None of which has happened, and will not happen under the current "we rather not have jobs" Ruben Diaz leadership. His economic answer is simply more lower/working class housing and low wage jobs, assuming he wants anyone to work them of course. Under his "leadership", the Bronx is moving 1/2 step forward, while every other borough moves 2 steps forward....because everyone else isn't pinning their economic hopes on low wage jobs and housing.
The Bronx has all the potential to be a uniquely successful and dynamic borough, but our leadership is either incapable or purposely ensuring it doesn't happen. Until that changes, the Bronx will "move forward", but the reality is it is being left behind. When you cross the Willis Avenue bridge it is like going through a time warp to 1995, a time when Brooklyn was starting to see some gentrification although still plagued with violence....this is not where the Bronx should be in 2012. And by 2025, the Bronx will be like Brooklyn was in 2002 AT BEST...and at worst it will be like Brooklyn in 1997..see the problem here?
When I read the title, I thought oh hell no here we go...lol... a certain bronx poster is gonna blow a gasket..lol
This article appears to bash but raises a good point. Most of nyc's crap is in the bronx and I received threats from ppl there. Many places in brooklyn are fun to go to. Staten island is like a bedroom part of nyc while brooklyn and lesser extent queens have many points of interest and more than te bronx. A third over 25 don't have a high school diploma is just pathetic. However Bronx has fordham which is lively. But travel to Northern NJ is hardest from the bronx. Due to no fast way to the bus terminal GWB. PABT is just not practical as its out of the way. NYC is a transit city so that doesn't sit well with NYC's theme. The bronx is behind and can catch up.
Some issues that Brooklyn has had to deal with in the last few years: it's popularity, which has led to its rise in prices (supply and demand). Along with that popularity comes the over-development. I saw this in Park Slope before I left in 2007. And that over-development now culminates with the finishing of the Barclays Center, which will induce major traffic and noise.
My mom has been a resident of the Junction neighborhood for 25 years (Nostrand and Flatbush). The construction of the Target has led to an increasing amount of foot and vehicle traffic and noise! Trust me, from my observation, it HAS affected that neighborhood! My mother wanted me to buy in her building years ago. I am glad I didn't! Now, my mother is getting tired of the noise!
Meanwhile, my block in Parkchester is very quiet, and very affordable!
Last time I was in Brooklyn we stopped at a diner - nothing fancy, came out with a bill of almost $70 for two adults and two kids (without the tip). Let Brooklyn be Brooklyn.
Earlier this year, Miguel Sanchez decided he wanted out of Manhattan. So he uprooted his digital creative agency to an Internet incubator in a restored red-brick building with a sleek, modern design. For a few hundred bucks a month, Sanchez, who has recently done work with brands like Belvedere and Mercedes-Benz, joined a community of entrepreneurs who share ideas and get advice on nitty-gritty start-up matters. He just recorded his best month of billings ever.
Adam Davidson translates often confusing and sometimes terrifying economic and financial news.
This may sound like another Brooklyn success story, but Sanchez is operating out of Sunshine Bronx, an ambitious new development in Hunts Point, a neighborhood known for unemployment and rampant prostitution. There’s no Ping-Pong table, but Sunshine is nevertheless trying to make entrepreneurs feel as though they’ve left the South Bronx and stepped into Silicon Valley.
This may seem overly ambitious, but Ruben Diaz Jr., the borough president, reminded me that the Bronx is home to nearly a dozen colleges and universities and the research arms of the New York Botanical Garden and the Bronx Zoo. (“There are so many scientists here,” he said.) Diaz, like many officials I spoke to, claimed that the area’s problems are largely based on perception. This may be partly true, but nearly a third of its residents over age 25 lack a high-school diploma. Only 17 percent have finished college.
The Bronx’s inability to catch up with the rest of the city’s phenomenal economic growth has been disconcerting. In the early 1970s, the Bronx and Brooklyn had similar average household incomes. Since then, though, the gap has grown significantly. The average Brooklyn resident is now around 23 percent richer than the average Bronxite; people in Queens are roughly 32 percent richer. (Manhattan residents are 265 percent wealthier; Staten Island residents, by the way, are 55 percent richer.) What happened?
“It’s not an accident,” says Dart Westphal, a former community developer who has lived in the Bronx for decades. Brooklyn and Queens were once collections of independent towns whose homegrown economies were rooted in Long Island agriculture, not Manhattan mercantilism. Local elites built expensive town houses on tree-lined streets. These neighborhoods fell on hard times during the 1970s, but their expensive stock was perfectly positioned for revitalization as the Manhattan boom of the past few decades pushed young professionals across the river. The Bronx, however, never developed its own economic drivers. It became, by the late 19th century, a haven for immigrants attracted to (but unable to afford) Manhattan. The borough developed far fewer wealthy areas, and many neighborhoods became devoted to less-gentrifiable housing units.
As a result, the most productive parts of the Bronx’s economy have long come from industrial-size activities that rely on Manhattan. Sunshine Bronx is located near the Hunts Point cooperative market, which supplies fresh produce, fish and meat to essentially all of the region except Hunts Point. Though pretty much all fresh food in every New York supermarket comes from there, the area currently doesn’t have a single supermarket itself. “Finding lunch in the neighborhood is a big problem,” says Sanchez, who spends much of the week meeting clients in Manhattan anyway.
After spending an afternoon in Hunt’s Point with Sanchez, I realized that he and his colleagues, just like the cooperative, are, economically speaking, barely in the Bronx at all. Manhattan is where their income comes from and where they spend their money on contract employees, computer supplies, even lunch. Though Borough President Diaz spoke with hope about a revival led by tech jobs, the economic triumphs that he ticked off were more redolent of a small Rust Belt town — a new BJ’s Wholesale Club and an indoor mall that could bring 2,000 construction jobs and 1,700 permanent positions. The borough is hoping to lure a luxury hotel near Yankee Stadium so that visitors will spend the night, and more of their money, in the Bronx. Diaz also boasted of the $600 million for new housing developments — partly government funded — for senior citizens and low- or moderate-income families.
These sorts of projects may contain little of the thrill of a tech boom, but they are “at least serving the real, immediate needs of residents,” says Bruce Katz, director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. The Bronx may look troubled when compared with Brooklyn or Manhattan, but comparison with a Rust Belt city is probably more appropriate. “It looks good in comparison with Buffalo, Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis,” says Kenneth T. Jackson, the renowned New York City historian. Indeed, the borough has recovered remarkably from the 1970s, when the buildings were famously burned, and it still fulfills a crucial role in the city’s economic cycle. It remains the place, Jackson says, where many ambitious immigrants can “get started on the ladder of life and success.”
So perhaps the Bronx shouldn’t try to become a more affordable Greenwich Village (like parts of Brooklyn) or an enclave of the young, hip and ambitious (like parts of Queens). For economic inspiration, Katz suggests, the Bronx should look outside New York. Pittsburgh lost its steel industry, but the city — home to Carnegie Mellon, Pitt and other research institutions — redefined itself as a solid second-tier educational and research center. The Bronx, Katz says, is also strong in the highly coveted “eds and meds” sector. “It boggles the mind,” he says, how much hospitals and universities spend. As a result, they offer extensive potentially valuable service jobs without degree requirements.
Unlike former industrial cities that are struggling to find a new economic logic, the Bronx also happens to be a short train ride away from the financial capital of the world. And that might just be the borough’s real challenge. Manhattan is filled with so many clever businesspeople that it can suck up any great value created in its proximity. Can the Bronx somehow take advantage of its presence in the Manhattan economic orbit without being lost in it?
I thought of this as I talked to Theodore Livingston, better known as Grandwizzard Theodore, the creator of “scratching” and master of the needle drop. As a kid in the 1970s, he and a small group of friends pioneered hip-hop in the South Bronx. It was a movement, he says, that could have been born only in that natural incubator. In the South Bronx, Grandwizzard says, there was a mix of James Brown’s political songs, conga-beat drumming and the lyrical music played by new immigrants from Jamaica. “We all lived in the same building,” he said. “We all intertwined.”
Hip-hop, of course, made billions of dollars worldwide, but not a lot of it stayed in the Bronx. Now Miguel Sanchez and his colleagues are hoping that the borough’s unique mix of diversity and low-cost real estate will again make it an entrepreneurial playground. Only this time they need to prevent Manhattan from swallowing up the profits.
Adam Davidson is co-founder of NPR's “Planet Money,” a podcast, blog and radio series heard on “Morning Edition,” “All Things Considered” and “This American Life.”
The Bronx has no real downtown as an economic driver (especially as LIC, northeast/downtown Brooklyn, and Jersey City have more accessible office space for Manhattan backoffices) and its neighborhoods generally have pretty poor transit to the higher income employment centers of midtown and downtown manhattan compared to the gentrified parts of Brooklyn and Queens. It's pretty reasonable for it to not take the same kind of development pattern as those boroughs, so I'm not sure why anyone would even assume it would develop the same way.
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