Heart disease is Brooklyn’s leading cause of death according to a report by Downstate Medical Center. Stephanie Chan, 30, has been living with heart disease for the past six years.

An entrance to the city's first Slow Zone in the Claremont section of the Bronx. (Cristabelle Tumola / The Brooklyn Ink)

A turn off the busy lanes of Southern Boulevard in the Bronx promptly takes a driver off that roadway onto the mostly residential streets of Claremont. Two months ago, drivers barely took their feet off the gas pedal as they made the turn. Now, however, they are greeted by hard-to-miss 20 mph signs and large white numbers painted on the street’s asphalt. If those signs don’t catch drivers’ attention, the speed bumps will.

The New York City Department of Transportation (DOT) launched a Neighborhood Slow Zone program this fall that reduces speed limits from 30 mph to 20 mph and adds safety measures, such as speed bumps, within a select area. The first and currently only existing Slow Zone in the city was created in the Claremont section of the Bronx in late November. A 20 mph zone program in London has already proven to reduce vehicle speeds and accidents by as much as 40 percent. Now several neighborhoods in Brooklyn are applying for their own Neighborhood Slow Zones, hoping for the same results.

“Apparently there is a practice among drivers to drive more than the speed limit suggests is legal. One of the ideas is that if we lower the speed limit to 20 then maybe people will adhere to that or at least recognize that they’re in a residential area,” says Ben Petok, communications director for Brooklyn Councilman Stephen Levin, who is supporting the Slow Zone applications of three Brooklyn neighborhoods—Boerum Hill, Park Slope and Brooklyn Heights.

The New York City speed limit is 30 mph, but reduced speed zones exist directly in front of schools. The Slow Zone program, however, creates a whole area, around a quarter of a mile (approximately five by five blocks), where the speed limit is 20.

Drivers know they are entering a Slow Zone with standard speed limit signs, as well as gateways. Speed bumps also decrease vehicle speed, calm traffic and remind drivers that they are in a 20 mph zone, says DOT press secretary Scott Gastel.

In addition to 20 mph signs, Slow Zones also feature speed bumps, like this one in front of a Claremont elementary school. (Cristabelle Tumola / The Brooklyn Ink)

New York City has reduced the number of traffic fatalities by 35 percent compared to 2001, according to the August 2010 New York City Pedestrian Safety Study & Action Plan. But the city wants to lower them even more.

In order to make its streets even safer city officials looked towards another major international city, London. A study that measures the effect of 20 mph traffic speed zones on road injuries in London from 1986 to 2006 found that 20 mph zones led to approximately a 40 percent reduction in road accidents and fatalities, and the number of serious injuries or deaths in children were reduced by half.

Using the British program as a model, the DOT selected an area in the South Bronx as its first Slow Zone because of its crash statistics, community interest and easily definable borders, says Gastel. He adds that at this time it’s still in an evaluation period.

But in a little over two months, residents are already seeing its impact.

Joanne Morales, who has a young daughter and lives in a building just inside the zone, says the Slow Zone is definitely making a big difference, and now cars slow down and stop instead of speeding.

“It helps since we’ve got kids crossing and coming out of schools,” says Ruben Cadet, who also lives in the Claremont Slow Zone. But he adds that the speed bumps are the measure that is really slowing down drivers rather than the 20 mph signs.

Anna Rivera, a driver who resides in the Slow Zone, admits that she is now driving slower because of the speed bumps, and notices that there are fewer accidents and speeding cars.

Her friend Jimmy DeJesus agrees with her, but adds that the zone hasn’t stopped every driver from speeding. Still, he is happy with the results.

Other areas in the city, including four in Brooklyn, submitted applications last week for their own Slow Zones. Any neighborhood can apply, and the DOT will consider factors such as crash data, proposed borders, presence of schools, senior centers, daycare centers and small parks in the zone, and letters of support.

“Why these specific neighborhoods would be good homes for Slow Zones is really because they are family neighborhoods with a lot of parents with small children, with school-aged children who walk to their local schools and it’s a safety hazard to have cars speeding through,” says Petok.

The aim of Slow Zones, in addition to lowering the number of accidents, is to reduce noise and traffic in residential neighborhoods, says Gastel. Cut through traffic—cars taking short cuts to avoid busier streets—have plagued some Brooklyn neighborhoods, such as Prospect Heights, which are near major Brooklyn roadways and the Atlantic Yards construction site, the future home of the Barclays Center.

A busy Atlantic Avenue intersection that borders several residential neighborhoods in Brooklyn. (Cristabelle Tumola / The Brooklyn Ink)

“Given our location surrounded by major arterial roads, Prospect Heights experiences substantial cut-through traffic and, with our long blocks, drivers often speed in order to make it through the next traffic light before it turns to red,” says Tom Boast, vice president of the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council and head of the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Slow Zone Application Committee.

Strong support for these zones from residents, community groups and local politicians was evident at a January 21 informational meeting held in Park Slope ahead of the DOT’s Feb. 3 Slow Zone application deadline.

Eric McClure, president of Park Slope Neighbors, one of the community groups that sponsored the meeting, says that “overwhelming the people [at the meeting] who thought it was a good idea felt that it would make the streets safer and that they consider vehicle speeds an issue of concern in the community.”

The Brooklyn Paper recently reported that some residents in Greenwood Heights are against a Park Slope Slow Zone because they believe once vehicles leave the 20 mph area and enter their neighborhood they will start speeding. But the earlier mentioned study on London’s 20 mph zones found that no evidence of road fatalities migrating to adjacent areas, and that traffic deaths in those places fell by an average of 8 percent.

McClure has encouraged Greenwood Heights to apply for their own 20 mph area. “It would be nice if we were just on big contiguous neighborhood Slow Zone,” he says.

A rendition of what a deck over the BQE trench might look like. (Image courtesy of Dland Studio)

The bright sun was perfect for a bit of shopping. Bundled up in a coat and scarf, Heather Roslund joined the Saturday crowd that was walking the gauntlet of stalls on Union Avenue that comprises the McCarren Park Greenmarket.

McCarren Park is the only public green space of any size in North Brooklyn, but activists like Roslund are working hard to get the City to create new areas.

Union Avenue runs north into the park and dead-ends into Driggs Avenue, cutting off a small recreation area—on maps, a green triangle—from the rest of the park. But each Saturday, this part of Union Avenue hosts the local farmers’ market. The section of blacktopped road between the intersections with 12th Street and Driggs Avenue, normally accessible to automobiles, is blocked off with cones. Up and down the street, vendors sell seasonal produce, free-range eggs and grass-fed beef.

Although the market will remain, before long the road itself will be gone—literally wiped off the map. When that happens, this stretch of Union Avenue will be rezoned as parkland, and a space that is currently available for public use only for a few hours each Saturday will become permanently open.

Eventually, the blacktop will be torn up, but rezoning must precede any physical transformation of the land. A lot of paperwork remains to be done before the road can be demapped, as the procedure is called, but Roslund, who is chair of the Land Use Committee for Brooklyn’s Community District 1, can already envision uses for the open space to come.

“The idea of having it be a plaza space is really nice, which is the idea I’ve heard put forward most often. It could be really useful [even] without literally being more grass,” she said.

The transformation of Union Avenue is one of several initiatives currently being pursued by local officials, non-profits and citizen activist groups to address the severe lack of open space in this historically park-poor community. These initiatives range from the renovation of a vacant lot owned by the Parks Department to the construction of an ambitious elevated park over the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway that will reunite a long-sundered Williamsburg.

According to an open space study conducted by the Greenpoint Waterfront Association for Parks and Planning, a non-profit coalition, Brooklyn’s Community District 1, which encompasses Williamsburg and Greenpoint, has only 0.6 acres of open space per 1,000 residents. The Department of City Planning suggests an open space ratio of at least 2.5 acres per 1,000 residents.

In Community District 6, which includes Park Slope, Red Hook and Gowanus, 6.1 percent of the total land area is set aside for open space. District 1, with Williamsburg and Greenpoint, is far more populous with far less open space—only 4.4 percent of the land area.

Every open space project in North Brooklyn proceeds in the long shadow of Bushwick Inlet Park—a park that exists mainly in the realm of political promises.

In 2005, Mayor Bloomberg made the promise—that the City would build a 28-acre waterfront park—to pacify opposition to the controversial rezoning of North Brooklyn. Bushwick Inlet Park was intended to revitalize the waterfront and provide more open space for the increased numbers of residents attracted by the rezoning. As envisioned, the park will be a series of open spaces and private developments linked by an esplanade, and will extend all the way from the Williamsburg Bridge to the tip of Greenpoint.

Six years later, however, Bushwick Inlet Park still has not materialized.

Roslund says it may take another 10 years or more for the new park to become a reality. At the time of the 2005 rezoning, six entities owned the land that that would make up the park. So far, the city has been able to buy out only three. On two of these properties, no ground has been broken for the park development.

“It’s been six years since the rezoning, and they’re only working on the first parcel,” said Roslund, who is also the president of 2plus3 Architects.

As progress toward Bushwick Inlet Park’s completion drags on, alternative open space projects become increasingly attractive.

So far, the Open Space Alliance, a local conservancy group, has spent about $50,000 on consultants and feasibility studies for the Union Avenue project. The rezoning process is a long and arduous one that winds its way through numerous city agencies. Before the community board’s Land Use Committee can approve the measure, it has to be certified by the Department of City Planning.

Another property under development is a vacant lot at 50 Kent Ave., once the site of a Department of Sanitation truck depot, which the City demolished in 2009. Now the Parks Department is turning the property—located on an industrial street a block from the East River—into open space.

An empty lot at 50 Kent Ave. that is mapped to become a part of Bushwick Inlet Park. (Photo by Brian Eha / The Brooklyn Ink)

Unlike Union Avenue, 50 Kent is already mapped as parkland—it will eventually form part of Bushwick Inlet Park—but it’s not currently useable by the public. The lot where the sanitation garage once stood is now a vast stretch of asphalt surrounded by a chain-link fence. Considerable imagination is needed to see it as a public space where people will want to hang out.

“Zoning-wise, it’s parkland. We just have to do some things to it to give people a reason to come and use it,” Joe Vance, a board member of OSA, said.

According to Stephanie Thayer, executive director of OSA and the Parks Department administrator for North Brooklyn, the Parks Department doesn’t have the funds to turn 50 Kent into a green park, so in the short term OSA is planning to turn the site into a space for concerts and other community events.

Roslund is excited by the possibilities, but wants more than rock concerts in the new facililty. “OSA has been working to move the focus away from just rock concerts to more varied programming. If the diversification is successful, that could be a really good thing for the community,” she said.

Vance cautioned, however, that remediation of the land may be necessary before anything new can be developed. There is a possibility that toxins from the sanitation plant leached into the soil. Still, the timetable for renovation looks good.

“More than likely the concerts will be held there next year,” he said.

The most ambitious open space proposal under consideration in North Brooklyn will do much more than provide opportunities for recreation: it will reconnect two halves of Williamsburg. The plan would create a green park to “deck over” a trench section of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway between Broadway and Grand Street, thus undoing the bifurcation of that part of Brooklyn that occurred decades ago in one of the grand undertakings of famed urban planner Robert Moses, then chairman of the Tri-Borough Bridge and Tunnel Authority.

The hope is that the new elevated park would reduce air pollution, end the division of Williamsburg’s Southside, ease the overuse of other recreation spaces, such as McCarren Park, and provide a draw, if not additional real estate, for commercial activity in the area.

The plan has political support, including from Councilwoman Diana Reyna (D–34), among other local politicians. Her deputy chief of staff, Bennett Baruch, called the BQE a “blight,” and drew a connection between the high rates of obesity and asthma in North Brooklyn and the lack of park space.

Parks already exist on either side of the BQE, and the goal of any new development, he said, will be “joining those spots and making it a more active and enjoyable experience for people.”

Ever since the construction of the BQE, residents on both sides of the highway have referred to those on the far side as being from “the other side”—a habit of speech that has become an ingrained and alienating attitude toward their ostensible neighbors.

Architecture firm Dland Studio has produced a conceptual plan for bridging the divided community. The plan breaks down into stages what will surely be a monumental and expensive undertaking. The first stage calls for the planting of trees on streets bordering the BQE and for the addition of greenery to the trench walls. Ultimately, a park would bridge the below-street-level trench, providing air-cleaning vegetation and much-needed recreation space.

There is also talk of providing space for residential or commercial buildings on a platform over the expressway. “This could be potentially very beneficial economically for this area,” Baruch said.

As for the expansion of McCarren Park, that little green triangle—which includes a dog run and a picnic area—may not be isolated for much longer. Once Union Avenue is rezoned, Vance said, the sidewalks will be taken up and the fences separating the former roadway from other areas of the park will come down. But people will be able to start enjoying the new space even before these changes take effect.

“We have physical changes we would like to see made. But the reality is, we can put up barriers [to block off the street] and it’s instantly usable by people,” he said.

Vance said that OSA has kept the plans for Union Avenue quiet until now because the organization doesn’t want to get people’s hopes up in the event the proposal might fall through. But signs are positive, and residents of Williamsburg and Greenpoint may find themselves with new parkland inside of a year or two. The big question remaining is what to do with the space.

“As soon as it’s certified and we’re sure it’s for real, we’ll start a public process to get ideas and start designing what it could be,” Vance said.

Irene LoRe and her partner Pat Kelly opened Aunt Suzie’s in 1987. There were just a few restaurants in the area at the time. Crime was a part of life for those who lived in nearby brownstones. Aunt Suzie’s was a warm light at the end of a dark street.

The restaurant menu has been largely unchanged and still serves the classic Italian fare that LoRe’s mother (Aunt Suzie to nearly everyone in her life) liked to make. Meals here often include a heaping plate of pasta, large pours of wine and a giant slice of cake to finish things off. It’s comfort food before that was a trend.

When LoRe decided to open a restaurant in Park Slope she saw the crime and “drug dealers holding court on every corner.” But she also saw beautiful brownstones and “a very strong core of middle-class working people who wanted,” she said, “to see things change.

It was not easy in the early days. “The drug dealers were using the public telephones as their offices,” said LoRe. There was a particular drug dealer using the phones on the corner of 5^th Avenue and Carroll Street, right near the restaurant. LoRe marched down to Leopoldi’s Hardware and purchased hedge clippers. She paid her busboys $5 for every phone cord they clipped. The plan worked, at least for the dealer holding court at the restaurant’s corner. “We put him out of business,” said LoRe.

“A well-used city street is apt to be a safe street. A deserted city street is apt to be unsafe,” wrote Jane Jacobs in The Death and Life of Great American Cities. “Stores, bars, and restaurants, as the chief examples, work in several different and complex ways to abet sidewalk safety.” she wrote “small businessmen are typically strong proponents of peace and order themselves.”

In the mid-80s “the neighborhood was ready for a restaurant,” she said, sitting in her restaurant, which is decorated for the last time for the winter holiday season.  She’s interrupted often to help plan a holiday party for current and past employees, and to speak to nearly every customer who walks in.

Those customers have lots of dining options these days. “Now we’re on to 100 (restaurants). People have discovered what we discovered 25 years ago,” LoRe said. The heavyset woman laughs wearily at this.

LoRe looks out for many of those new restaurants as the director of the 5^th Avenue Business Improvement District, a position that she will continue after closing Aunt Suzie’s. LoRe hasn’t welcomed all of the area’s additions, though. She’s fought adding bike lanes and allowing food trucks to park in the area.

She has other complaints too. There’s the city’s increasing bureaucracy— “a government who has become ferociously active.” The fines for restaurants are enough to stifle a small business, she said. “It’s time to retire.” The bureaucracy, the recession, the new restaurants and the fact that she’ll be turning 70 soon all play a role in that decision.

It’s a brave new Brooklyn, and LoRe and all the people her restaurant has touched are trying to navigate it.

There are employees like Tiffany Bricker, who has worked at Aunt Suzie’s as a waitress for seven years, and is now struggling to find a new job. “There are less jobs and more people looking,” she said. There is also more competition. There aren’t many people who are fulltime servers, like her, she said. The wait staffs in local restaurants, she added, are now “people who are professionals who had to get the job.”

Like Leopoldi’s hardware, LoRe got much of her more traditional restaurant supplies from local vendors.  Brooklyn Beer is on tap. The coffee comes from D’Amico Foods, a small family-owned business that’s been in Carroll Gardens since 1948. The meat comes from A. Stein Meat Products, which has been around for 60 years.  Aunt Suzie’s pasta comes from Queen Ann Ravioli and Macaroni, pasta producers in Bensonhurst since 1972. The owner, George Switzer, often volunteered to make deliveries to Aunt Suzie’s himself when things were busy at work. The restaurant was among many small businesses he used to work with. The restaurants he sees doing well now are part of big companies. “It seems you have to partner up to survive,” he said.

Switzer can “count on one hand the amount of small restaurants” that he works with now. Soon the count will be one fewer.

A vacant lot on Fourth Avenue that will be renovated in the coming months. Maane Khatchatourian/The Brooklyn Ink

If all plans are finalized by the borough president, one of Brooklyn’s major thoroughfares will become unrecognizable in the coming years as it evolves from an accident-prone access road to a pedestrian-friendly commercial district.

A vision plan announced this summer calls for safety, beautification and commercial efforts to make Fourth Avenue more inviting. Long denigrated as the borough’s eye-sore and one of its most dangerous and congested traffic zones, the plan is intended to make the area comparable to Park Slope’s thriving Fifth and Seventh Avenues.

Josh Levy, chair of Park Slope Civic Council’s FORTH onFourth subcommittee, said the projects are also intended to correct problems arising from a 2003 rezoning law that resulted in residential buildings without ground-floor retail space.

“In 2003, there was a rezoning of a large swath of Fourth Avenue,” Levy said. “It allowed for large developments to occur. Starting in 2004, 2005, a lot of buildings went up … with disregard, reckless abandonment for the streets. Instead of getting retail at street level, interesting boutiques, cafes, stores, even professional offices — anything really — all we got were parking lots, empty walls, not anything that would grow the thoroughfare, encourage patronage.”

Carlo Scissura, the project task force chair for the borough president’s office, said the Fourth Avenue facelift will revive the district’s unique flare and unify the borough’s differing communities.

“It’s really such an important thoroughfare in Brooklyn,” Scissura said. “It brings [together] a group of diverse neighborhoods from downtown Brooklyn — from Park Slope, Sunset Park, Bushwick and Bay Ridge.”

Elected officials, community groups and task force committees are currently brainstorming potential courses of action. The ideas will be pooled together and passed on to Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, who will compose a more concrete development strategy by this summer then seek funding for the project from city agencies.

P.S. 133 is under construction, one of the many development projects part of a Fourth Avenue facelift. Maane Khatchatourian/The Brooklyn Ink

According to Levy, the development efforts will consist of planting trees, creating street-level retail space, addressing community-wide traffic and safety concerns and enhancing subway lines.

“It’s going to be a long-term project — eight to 12 years,” Levy said. “It’s not a quick fix to transform a boulevard.”

The first step is to plant a few thousand trees and planters up and down the street, especially from 39th to 15th Streets, Joan Botti, chair of Community Board Seven’s Fourth Avenue Task Force, said.

One Fourth Avenue beautification project, the reconstruction of the Ninth Street subway station, is already underway.

For the first time in 40 years, Levy said the subway’s east station house is being opened for retail space.

“It will become the nicest and most renovated subway station outside of Manhattan, with the exception of [the station on] Atlantic Avenue,” Levy said.

Botti said the Fourth Avenue venture was born out of an older Ninth Street station rehabilitation effort. Markowitz allocated $2 million to refurbish the shopping area in the subway station, prompting Park Slope’s Civic Council to conceive the idea of the beautification of Fourth Avenue.

Other measures include installing elevators and security cameras in the R subway stops lining the avenue as well as improving the train schedule, Botti said.

“One of the items that has been coming up constantly is the lack of service or the tardiness, I should put it that way, of the N and the R train,” she said. “That’s one of the goals of the transportation committee, this committee and the task force itself to [decrease] the time between the R train and the N. What do they say, ‘rarely for the R and never for the N’?”

While plant life will make the street more environmentally friendly and aesthetically pleasing, the remodeled subway station with elevators will increase access for the elderly and handicapped and commercial businesses will promote economic growth, safety measures are developers’ primary concern. Proposals include increasing street signage, expanding medians between cross lights and alternating traffic patterns. Countdown timers were recently installed and traffic lanes reduced on Fourth Avenue.

Lifelong resident Duane Jackson attributed the increased development efforts to the other major construction initiative near Fourth Avenue — the Atlantic Yards project.

“The [Barclays Center] stadium has a lot to do with what’s happening,” Jackson said. “[The city] wants to make sure the area’s nicer to promote the stadium. That’s why I don’t understand the complaints, aside from being displaced. … I’m all for beautification.”

As Brooklyn neighborhoods become increasingly gentrified, concerns over displacement surround new development projects.

Local organizers said they would ensure that the area doesn’t turn into a sea of luxury high-rises that drive out lower income and rental tenants from the neighborhood.

Read more at BrooklynPaper.com.

Christie’s Jamaican Patties employee Miguel Rosas rings up a customer. Photo by Maane Khatchatourian/The Brooklyn Ink

Various Park Slope institutions crumbling under the weight of fiscal woes have closed in the last month, potentially altering the neighborhood landscape.

Two neighborhood staples, Aunt Suzie’s Italian restaurant and Timboo’s dive bar, have announced they plan to shut their doors by the end of the year, joining the ranks of other businesses that were shuttered within the last couple months. A third restaurant, Christie’s Jamaican Patties, struggles to keep its doors open in this volatile economic climate. The three institutions have collectively been in business for a total of 112 years.

As small businesses close, residents fear that larger chains will take their spots and strip Park Slope of its unique flare.

Judith Lief, an associate broker and recording secretary of the Park Slope Civic Council, said rents have increased substantially, especially in Park Slope’s two major commercial districts, Fifth and Seventh Avenues.

“It’s a free economy so landlords can charge whatever rent they want,” Lief said. “It’s very hard for small businesses to make a living if you’re selling a small commodity and your rent is $10,000 a month. How much can you charge for that item to keep your business afloat?”

Aunt Suzie’s opened on Park Slope’s Fifth Avenue in 1987 when the area was known more for high crime than for baby strollers. It will close on New Year ’s Day.

According to owner Irene LoRe, who is also director of the Fifth Avenue Business Improvement District, Fifth Avenue is oversaturated with restaurants. The overly competitive market, coupled with high city inspection fines, has prompted LoRe to close her business and retire.

“The environment in this city is tough to run a business, the economic environment is tough,” she said. “When I started there was only one restaurant, now there’s 120 in 30 blocks.”

The neighborhood has become a major foodie destination in the last decade.

Unlike the case of LoRe, who owns the building that houses her restaurant and plans to lease the space to a retail shop or another eatery, most closures have been caused by high rent prices.

Christie’s Jamaican Patties fights to stay afloat after 45 years of business. Photo by Maane Khatchatourian/The Brooklyn Ink

The owner of Christie’s Jamaican Patties, which has two locations on Flatbush Avenue in Park Slope and Sterling Place in Prospect Heights, announced that he would close shop about two weeks ago, but has now decided to fight to keep his 45-year-old business alive.

Owner Paul Haye has fallen behind on two months of rent and the building’s owner Lina Feng has sued him for non-payment.

Haye plans to collect $25,000 to give Feng and urge her to reconsider the restaurant’s fate. He hopes business will pick up in the coming months.

“I’m trying to raise a lot of funds to give her a lump sum of money,” he said. “Hopefully, that sum of money will change her mind.”

Customer Mark Ventura said the restaurant serves authentic Caribbean food — a novelty in Park Slope. Its closure would compromise the value of the neighborhood, he said.

“It’s a shame,” Ventura said. “I’m here 45 years. This place has the first beef patties anywhere. I’m now buying food for a group of friends who said you can’t get good Caribbean food anywhere in the city. … Take away the mom and pop value of the neighborhood, then you … who will want to live here?”

Timboo’s dive bar on the corner of 11th Street and Fifth Avenue has been open since 1969 and is known for its relaxed atmosphere and affordable drinks. It will close in December.

Younger businesses, including Babouche — a Moroccan restaurant on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Lincoln Place — have also closed recently. Babouche shuttered at the beginning of last month because it was unable to pay rent. Ozzie’s Coffee, which opened in 1993, closed in September. The cafe’s second location on Fifth Avenue, on the other hand, has leased half of its space to a Beauty Bar to save money. Additionally, Oko, an environmentally-friendly frozen yogurt shop also on Fifth Avenue, closed a few weeks ago.

Lief said she is afraid that small businesses will be replaced by chains, like Petco, which recently opened on Seventh Avenue between Berkeley Place and Union Street.

“I think people’s concern is that the commercial strips of Park Slope not look like a strip mall,” she said. “If the only stores that can afford to come in are the big stores that can be found in every mall, of course it changes the uniqueness of Park Slope. It makes it generic.”

Resident Robin Cohen said her daughter was devastated when La Taqueria on Seventh Avenue between Lincoln Place and Berkeley Place closed earlier this year.

“There are enough restaurants that yuppies can eat without having to cook, but what I’m afraid is that the new places opening are the kinds of chains that detract from the neighborhood community feel.”

Correction: This article originally reported that Triangle Sports recently closed. The shop is actually still open for business. The Brooklyn Ink regrets this error.

For me, Brooklyn became a neighborhood one steamy August night in 2003. It was the night of the great Northeastern Blackout. In Park Slope, volunteers were out directing traffic at every intersection, even if the drivers laughed at them and zoomed past. Other Brooklynites shared phones and flashlights, or helped the elderly down dark stairwells.

As night fell, the texture of the city changed. The street lamps were out, and people strolled about with flashlights and lanterns. There was a bright white moon high above the city competing with the red glory of Mars, the warrior planet, which hadn’t been so close to Earth in 60,000 years. The ancient Brooklyn tradition of stoop-sitting enjoyed a sudden revival.

Read more of Suketu Mehta’s poignant essay here.

The historic value and aesthetic appeal of brownstone row houses contribute to Park Slope’s steep apartment rental and home sales prices. (Maane Khatchatourian / The Brooklyn Ink)

Dotted with brownstones and 19th century Romanesque mansions, Park Slope houses evoke the urban landscape of 1950s Brooklyn, but boast a modern-day price tag.

The median sales price of homes has increased 41.7 percent from the same quarter last year and escalated by 19.3 percent over the last five years, according to trulia.com — a residential real estate search engine that tracks market trends. A home that cost $300,000 10 years ago sells for $1.3 million today.

Additionally, Park Slope houses cost 145.28 percent more than the median sales price in the general Brooklyn area.

Judith Lief, a senior vice president and associate broker for Warren Lewis Realty, said this year’s market was “healthy and active” in February and March, sluggish in June and July and currently marked by a “flurry of activity.”

Lief said the housing market in Park Slope was growing upwards of 15 percent annually before the 2007 recession. Prices dropped five to 10 percent overall, she said.

“We were one of the last neighborhoods to be hit,” Lief said. “The neighborhood came to a halt in terms of sales. Everyone panicked; they were worried about savings, bonuses. It’s also my perception that we were among the first neighborhoods to rebound.”

Median home sales prices dipped to $750,000 in 2008, spiked in 2009 and slumped again to almost $800,000 in 2010, according to trulia. The prices began increasing steadily in late 2010.

Agent Debbie Fuka of Aguayo & Huebener said Park Slope’s real estate sector fared better than other neighborhoods after the crash.

“There was a slight slowdown in sales, but it didn’t really affect it so much because people still want to move here and are still building new constructions,” she said.

The rental market has experienced the same upward surge. One and two-bedrooms rent for $2,200 and $2,900, respectively.

“The rentals are a little bit more in Park Slope [compared to other neighborhoods in Brooklyn] because of the school system,” Fuka said. “Once you put an apartment on the market, it’s rented immediately. In Prospect Park, it’s probably $300 to $400 less for apartments.”

This reflects a borough-wide trend as home sales in Brooklyn climbed 18 percent in the third quarter of 2011, according to a joint report filed by appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and broker Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate. They reported that 2,219 condos, co-ops and one- to three-family homes were purchased this year, compared to 1,879 in 2010. At $510,000, the median price of homes in Brooklyn also spiked by five percent from last year.

While Park Slope homes out-price those in Boerum Hill, Bedford Stuyvesant and Williamsburg, Lief said they compete with Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens and Brooklyn Heights.

Brooklyn Properties, like other Park Slope real estate agencies, plasters its windows with multi-million-dollar property listings. (Maane Khatchatourian / The Brooklyn Ink)

Despite the persistent growth in market prices over the years, Park Slope continues to attract residents with its open spaces, prestigious public schools and quiet alternative to a Manhattan lifestyle. Young Manhattanites have been fleeing their pricy residences for more affordable housing in Park Slope since the mid-1990s, drastically transforming the neighborhood’s real estate market and social demographics. This trend has forced residents unable to afford inflated rent prices to move to the southern part of the neighborhood.

Park Slope resident Arthur Littman, who moved to the area 30 years ago, said the neighborhood transformed in the 1960s and ‘70s from an Italian and Irish enclave to a primarily low-income African American and Hispanic district.

“The neighborhood was in decline during the late 60s, early 70s — during the economic crisis,” Littman said. “A lot of families moved to the suburbs. Those who stayed bought three-story brownstones cheaply and renovated them, selling them for much higher prices later.”

Littman bought his home for $67,000 in 1981. He suspects that the residence is now worth $1.7 million.

Three-year South Slope resident Brenda Milis, who rents a three-bedroom apartment for $3,300, said people continue to gravitate toward the area because it’s relatively cheaper than similar neighborhoods in Manhattan. Milis said Park Slope’s public school and transportation systems, as well as its parks, restaurants, novelty bookstores and clothing boutiques lure people to the area.

Moreover, Lief said Park Slope is an ideal example of the New Urbanism movement that promotes livable communities with spacious neighborhoods.

“In the suburbs, when two feet of snow fell, people couldn’t get anywhere,” she said. “You can walk under 10 minutes in any direction and get to a train. … The neighborhood is demographically diverse, politically active and has a strong Civic Association. You sit on the stoop, you know the neighbors, the merchants.”

Six-year Park Slope resident Francesca Neville said the neighborhood has retained its romantic mid-20th century spirit.

“It has reinvented itself back to the way it looked in the 40s and 50s,” Neville said.

While gentrification forced some people to move to different segments of Park Slope, Neville said it displaced others completely.

One-year South Slope resident Billy Weymer said gentrification is more threatening in other regions, including Bed Stuy. Despite its drawbacks, he said the phenomenon could also be rewarding to the population at large in terms of yielding neighborhood beautification projects.

However, 20-year resident Rita Cumming said it’s a saddening trend.

“It’s painful for me to see people coming here from Manhattan and push people away who have been living here for years,” Cumming said. “I feel a lot of guilt.”

Agent William Hendrickson of Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate said the area could become even more gentrified with time.

“I think Park Slope will continue to experience the trend that it’s had for many years to the extent that people move from Manhattan,” he said. “I think Park Slope is a special place. … This is the biggest brownstone neighborhood I think anywhere.”

A diverse group of students play sports at J.J. Byrne Park on Fifth Avenue beside William Alexander Middle School 51. (Maane Khatchatourian / The Brooklyn Ink)

“Maria quiere coffee after class, pero I have to study.”

These ten simple words meaning “Maria wants coffee after class, but I have to study” sound harmless, but are highly contentious when uttered by a student as Park Slope teachers clash with students and their parents on the role of Spanglish in the classroom.

Unlike previous generations of Hispanic immigrants, parents are increasingly allowing the mixing of the two languages and — perhaps surprisingly — education researchers are celebrating the phenomenon.

Recent research findings conclude that the speech practice — known technically as “codeswitching” — doesn’t harm English language skills and may even boost intellectual development. This means that teachers, preoccupied from K-12 on promoting Standard English, may be the ones who are ill-informed.

Evelyn Lopez, Public School 10’s English Language Learner program instructor, said teachers are stricter especially with older students in terms of speaking “pure English” in class.

According to Lopez, past generations of Hispanic immigrants raised their children to either conform completely to American customs by only speaking English or maintain their cultural identity by only speaking Spanish.

“Sometimes parents don’t want them to speak their native tongue,” Lopez said. “They want their children to assimilate to the larger society. Because parents are coming and learning English themselves, they have become more open to bilingualism.”

Parents apparently made the better choice because studies have found that bilingualism is cognitively stimulating. In fact, multilinguals outperform monolinguals academically.

Illinois Wesleyan University linguist Susan Pollard found in a 2002 study that students who are allowed to codeswitch in class are better able to convey their knowledge of a given subject matter to their classmates and teachers. When codeswitching is banned, children stop themselves mid-sentence or claim not to know the response to a question that they may have otherwise answered if able to use multiple languages.

Park Slope teachers, however, are not ready to buy into the theories. For many of them, the research conclusions are not convincing.

Sonia Murrow, Brooklyn College School of Education assistant professor, said codeswitching can pose a threat to speakers if they don’t recognize their language-shifting habits.

“Kids need to know they’re doing it,” she said. “They need to know that Standard English exists. Kids need to be sophisticated enough to understand that there’s certain spaces where it’s welcome or not.”

However, Kimberly Savilla, a 16-year-old Fort Hamilton High School student, said she often cannot control her tendency to change languages within a single sentence.

“Some teachers discourage it,” Savilla said. “I feel sad when they do it. … Sometimes you don’t know how to say something so use another language to describe it.”

Savilla’s parents, who were born in Honduras, allow their children to codeswitch at home so they can practice speaking English while maintaining their Spanish language skills. Because language is one of the most significant cultural identity markers, Spanish-speaking communities in the neighborhood strive to preserve their native tongue.

Mark Patkowski, Brooklyn College Linguistics Program director and professor, said the general societal consensus that codeswitching stunts language development isn’t based on empirical evidence.

“I would assume that many teachers and administrators [would] not be particularly supportive of the habit, since codeswitching is generally regarded as somehow ‘deviant’ or ‘defective’ by the public at large,” Patkowski said in an e-mail. “Sociolinguists, on the other hand, would typically consider codeswitching as normal, natural and rule-governed.”

Nancy Lester, Park Slope’s Medgar Evers College education teacher training professor, said multilinguals automatically shift between languages to accommodate different social contexts and communicative partners.

“In most cases, using other dialects than the ‘received’ one is frowned upon in both oral and written contexts,” Lester said in an e-mail. “I think codeswitching is completely appropriate and we should be teaching children purpose and audience for language and how language changes as those change.”

John Gonzalez, a 12-year old William Alexander Middle School 51 student whose grandparents emigrated from Puerto Rico, said his linguistic repertoire allows him to tailor his language to the situation at hand.

“I use Spanish when joking around with friends at school, with inside jokes,” he said. “My mom says Spanish words sometimes when trying to get my attention.”

Gonzalez and his friends aren’t allowed to speak Spanish in class, but they do so during breaks in the school day.

Additionally, Patkowski said educators must find a balance between teaching Standard English and encouraging multilingual children to express themselves in different languages.

“One can be neither for, nor against codeswitching,” he said. “It simply exists as a natural occurrence in bilingual/multilingual settings. The goal of educators must be able to find ways to incorporate this fact into their pedagogical approaches, the ultimate aim being to prepare children to function successfully in society. Such success, in my opinion, necessarily entails learning Standard English, but this does not by any means require that the other language varieties … be ruthlessly suppressed.”

Kailin Castillo, a 15-year-old Secondary School for Law, Journalism and Research student whose parents were born in the Dominican Republic, also said teachers need to be more tolerant and understanding.

“Sometimes you’re just trying to look for a particular word and it comes out in Spanish,” Castillo said. “When I was exposed to English, I leaned in a different way. Teachers need to realize that students who weren’t born in an English-speaking home need to be taught differently.”