The gentrification playbook: artist Mike Perry at "Sunset Yards"

Rendering from web site

A former garment factory and warehouse in Sunset Park, at 3rd Avenue and 39th Street, has been dubbed "Sunset Yards" by its new owners, who are thus pursuing "floor-to-ceiling renovations... modern industrial-style finishes and state-of-the-art infrastructure," according to the web site.

States the owner:

Uniquely positioned between the subway and the expressway, and standing adjacent to open rail yards, the building enjoys 360 degrees of unobstructed views and sits around the corner from Industry City’s six million square feet of retail, workspace, and amenities.

In other words, what was once a sort of isolated building is in the thick of things. It certainly looks different from the visual in the building's digital brochure, pictured at left.

The "Yards"

Any project with the name "Yards" appended inevitably recalls Atlantic Yards, now Pacific Park, which came after the successful sports facility development in Baltimore called Camden Yards.

So there's a bit of a playbook at work.

Another playbook: the artist



As developer-friendly New York YIMBY reported in an exclusive this week, "Celebrated muralist and animator Mike Perry recently completed an enormous new mural spanning the first floor entry and communal areas of Sunset Yards."

Remember, Perry was the "artist in chief" for the August 2015 #artwashing block party that put colorful, distracting, inoffensive art on the giant green wall that impeded Dean Street during construction of two towers.
It's hard to call this #artwashing, since this work is internal (unlike, say, the temporary Haring-esque squiggles on the exterior of the to-be-demolished 80 Flatbush site, which, to be fair, artist Katie Merz invokes various Brooklyn icons).

But it does "position" Sunset Yards as part of a trend. The photo below, according to YIMBY, delivers a  called Park Sunset, "described as a mash-up of New York City’s 'urban chaos' and incorporates swirls of abstracted buildings, flora, and playful figures meant to represent the city’s kinetic energy."

Of course. Meanwhile, a lot is going on in Sunset Park, notably a controversial proposed rezoning at Industry City.