"The voodoo of the Barclays Center": transformation on Atlantic and Nostrand avenues (plus other factors)

In the recent edition of the promotional supplement Brooklyn Tomorrow, Community News Group offered "Atlantic overtures," subtitled, "Buildings from Bklyn Heights to Bed-Stuy are changing the face of the avenue."

From the article:

Two residential buildings at 927 and 1007 Atlantic Ave. in Clinton Hill, where auto repair shops still line the thoroughfare, are under construction and will add another 63 rentals to the neighborhood when finished — a sign of transformations to come, according to locals.
“You’ve got a lot buildings going up since Ratner started Barclays,” said Glen Johnson, who works at Ultimate Auto Repair and Sales, a body shop at 858 Atlantic. “Eventually all these auto shops and dealerships, they’re going to go out of business.”

Those sites are between St. James Place and Grand Avenue, and between Grand Avenue and Classon Avenue. (The latter has 20% affordable units.)

Indeed, the auto shops are not long for this area, as has long been predicted. The arena is surely a significant factor, though not the only one.

Moving on out

From the article:

And as towers rise around the stretch of Atlantic Avenue that touches Boerum Hill, Fort Greene, and Clinton Hill, signs that the road’s transformation will continue as it heads toward Queens are popping up in the form of new projects on blocks once considered hard to gentrify.
For instance, a new La Quinta hotel at 1229 Atlantic Ave. — which sits along a mile-long stretch where Long Island Rail Road trains rattle by above ground on tracks over the road — caters to out-of-towners bound for Downtown and beyond, according to a local real estate expert and community board member.

I'm not sure a La Quinta just west of Nostrand Avenue and noisy Atlantic means gentrification so much as more revenue than what's otherwise possible in a commercial district.

The Nostrand effect

That said, an 8/2/17 article from The Bridge, Nostrand Avenue: Why It’s the New Gentrification Flash Point, describes turnover and rising rents among commercial businesses on Nostrand Avenue (though to my observation it's especially between Eastern Parkway and Atlantic Avenue):

Lindiwe Kamau, the president of the Nostrand Avenue Merchants Association, owns a storefront pottery business, Expression in Ceramics, that has been in business for 20 years. She doesn’t like to dwell on the word gentrification, but says the impact on rents is inescapable.
...So what changed so rapidly? Braithwaite has an idea that nobody traveling up Atlantic Avenue could miss. “I call it the voodoo of the Barclays Center,” said Braithwaite. “The moment Barclay Center talk came, it became an excuse for property owners to immediately jack up their rents.”

That's partly true, but, as writer Madison Gray observes, it's not the only factor, given new residential development nearby and the saturation of Franklin Avenue to the west, which has gone through enormous change, positionws at an express subway stop on Eastern Parkway (2/3/4/5).