Assessing the Over-Gentrified Bowery 2.0

The marauding forces of gentrification are advancing the troops down the Bowery with heavy force, leaving a path of destruction known as Bowery 2.0.  Galleries, hotels, glass boxes, and unaffordable boutiques have already paraded south of East Houston. And the real estate industry is eating it up. The New York Post has a sprawling trends piece in today’s paper which covers the issue, employing broad-strokes to address the controversial upscaling we’ve discussed on Bowery Boogie these last three-plus years.  The explosion in change is maddening.

Chair Up on the Bowery

There are some updates on the following developments:

• The second (Hot) Karl Fischer building at 255 Bowery won’t see daylight until the second half of 2013.
• The in-progress 250 Bowery won’t top off for another month or so. Condo units here will be between $700,000 and $2.7 million.
• EMM Group did sign the lease for 199 Bowery after all, and will bring more annoying trendy nightlife to the neighborhood.

If your blood isn’t boiling enough at this point, feast on these select bytes:

The appeal is not necessarily the Bowery itself, but “it’s more about the popularity of the bordering neighborhoods — Nolita, the East Village, the Lower East Side and Chinatown.”

“I ended up [on the Bowery] one summer in an NYU dorm,” says Jay Solomon, who also lives at Avalon Bowery. “I asked to live in a different dorm. I didn’t want to live around there.”

But just since 2007, “the area really changed,” he says. “There were younger people, more artists, more models, more fashion, more design people.”

“You see those buildings all down there?” asks Azoulay, pointing to the row of kitchen-supply stores. “All these places are moving to Brooklyn or Queens.”

Don’t fuck with Globe Slicers…