In crowdsourced maps, border between Prospect Heights/Crown Heights shifting east of Washington Ave., amid gentrification. New spotlight on rezoning?

On Monday, I wrote (link) about how new crowdsourced maps, according to the New York Times, placed all of Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park, excepting Site 5 (which is across Flatbush Avenue) in Prospect Heights, not Downtown Brooklyn, as the original developer propounded.

The Times package, An Extremely Detailed Guide to an Extremely Detailed Map of New York City Neighborhoods, also takes a close look at Prospect Heights:

Seeing them together, you may notice that people who say they live in Prospect Heights increasingly draw their neighborhood’s borders eastward, beyond Washington Avenue. But people who say they live in Crown Heights almost never push west.

Note: the 2004 book The Neighborhoods of Brooklyn places the eastern border at Washington Avenue. But, as the map and responses suggest, the border is pushing east, in part because new construction and rising values inspire some living in--or marketing--residences beyond Washington to claim Prospect Heights.

Between Washington and Grand avenues, Prospect Heights gains a slight majority, while between Grand and Classon avenues, Crown Heights prevails slightly.

Screenshot from NY Times: block includes 1010 Pacific Street

Reasons for the shift

The Times cites reader comments on the changing border:

Crown Heights wasn’t a desirable neighborhood when I moved here, so things were sometimes described as Prospect Heights. Now it’s more desirable so the boundaries seem squishier.

The eastern border is certainly up for grabs, particularly by those with an interest in real estate value.

The socioeconomic lines between Prospect Heights and Crown Heights began to blur. Crown Heights became more gentrified, with boutique shops, restaurants and cocktail bars replacing sneaker shops, empty storefronts and psychics.

As the Times notes, the gentrification is accompanied by racial change: "In 2000, nearly 80 percent of the area’s population was Black. Now, just over 40 percent is."

The Times notes that different real estate postings locate the same listing in both Crown Heights and Prospect Heights.

Looking back at "ProCro"

Remember the awkward real-estate neologism "ProCro," which, as the Times reported in April 2011, outraged then-Assemblymember Hakeem Jeffries such that he aimed to "punish real estate agents for inventing neighborhood names and for falsely stretching their boundaries"

The problem is that the city isn't a great arbiter of names, either. 

Brownstoner founder Jonathan Butler suggested that the zone might "deserve its own name because it shares elements of both Prospect Heights and Crown Heights," which stretches significantly east-west and, like some other large neighborhoods (see, for example, Williamsburg), does have several subzones.

Looking forward, with rezonings

Turns out that ProCro may not be needed, since Prospect Heights is, at least in some cases, is what promoters choose. 

Consider: 1010 Pacific Street, the product of a spot rezoning a block-and-a-half east of Washington Avenue, between Grand and Classon avenues, is judged by only a small margin of respondents to be Crown Heights rather than Prospect Heights.

Meanwhile, it's classified by StreetEasy as in Crown Heights--but the developer calls it Prospect Heights and, mindlessly, "Brooklyn's trendy Prospect Park neighborhood." (Of course, there's no "Prospect Park neighborhood," because the park doesn't have housing. Prospect Park South is below the park.)

Going forward, the steady gentrifrication points to the risks, and opportunities, in rezoning formerly fallow industrial blocks for high-rise residential development in spot rezonings and the pending Atlantic Avenue Mixed-Use Plan, or AAMUP.

The trend vaults the value of property, as well as buildable square footage. As some in the Crown Heights Tenant Union have warned, only if the upzoned properties contain significant below-market "affordable housing" can the trend be tempered.

Meanwhile, it's a reasonable guess that more than a few new properties coming online east of Washington Avenue will be marketed as Prospect Heights. The name may make less of a difference than whether the public gets commensurate value for the increased value provided to landowners and developers.