If you were in Brooklyn underneath the Manhattan Bridge five years ago, you’d have seen a very different neighborhood than you see now. Then, as, now, the neighborhood was called DUMBO, which stands for Down Underneath the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. The acronym is a self-conscious reference to Soho. But just five years ago, DUMBO was pretty edgy. That’s when WNYC’s Andrea Bernstein starts this story of the displacement of artists in New York City.
» In Ratner's Shadow: Karl Nussbaum, Part 1
» In Ratner's Shadow: Karl Nussbaum, Part 2
» In Ratner's Shadow: Caroline Glemann
Reporter: I first met jewelry designer Caroline Glemann in 2001. When I walked to her loft apartment on Water Street in Dumbo, trash was piling up on the streets, which were otherwise completely empty. At night, she told me, it was worse.
Glemann: The street lamps are flickering and dark at night it’s completely isolated.
Reporter: The high-end art galleries, the restaurants, the West Elm Department store – all lived in the imagination in 2001.
Glemann: It’s a walk to anywhere. We have the F train, but the post office any services, food, clothing, cleaning, supplies, anything is a good 15 20 block walk
Reporter: When Glemann moved to Dumbo, she was looking for a place where she could live and work, where the rent wouldn’t be too high.
Glemann: The people who came here like myself were motivated by need. We couldn’t find what we needed somewhere else. There was a situation here there were landlords who had these buildings and they could not find anyone to rent them. No businesses wanted to come here.
Reporter: In those days, she says the neighborhood most memorable for its garbage transfer stations.
Glemann: Which meant that in the summers you could not open windows because you would have flies like you could not believe.
Reporter: But as the whiff of garbage receded, the smell of higher real estate values wafted in. And so -- on a cold and rainy December night, officials from the city department of buildings came banging on the door of the sister building to the one where Glemann lived.
Glemann: And we didn’t know they weren’t coming here. We were terrified. We were sitting here with the lights out and I was on the roof looking over and I was like oh my God, they’re making people leave they’re going out in the street.
Reporter: The building inspectors claimed the building was unsafe. They told the inhabitants they’d have to leave that very night, and threatened to use battering rams to break down their doors if they refused. The residents immediately suspected they were being pushed out to make room for real estate development. Under mounting pressure, many DID move out for good. Caroline Glemann was one of them. She moved to an old fur factory in Prospect Heights. That’s where I found her again, quite by coincidence, last May. She showed me her new loft.
Glemann: And very bright so you wake up very early in the morning, because this is east and that’s north so I get really beautiful light in here.
Reporter: Glemann designed her jewelry here, but the whole space had the quality of an art gallery. Above our heads was an arrangement of branches.
Glemann: They were grape vines, actually grapevines from up in the country, they were so beautiful, some people were cutting them down and I took them and hung them up.
Reporter: Glemann had lived here comfortably for five years. And then, she realized, she was getting pushed out again.
Glemann: My very first learning of it was a very frightening one. It was under these words “eminent domain.”
Reporter: The building Glemann had moved to, 475 Dean Street, is right where Forest City Ratner wants to build a basketball arena and several high rise towers. If the developer gets the necessary approvals, it can force building owners to sell. But many aren’t waiting for that to happen. Fearing their buildings will be knocked down no matter what they do, they’re selling to Forest City Ratner now. And tenants like Glemann are being forced to leave.
Back in May, Forest City Ratner Vice President Jim Stuckey maintained the tenants would be made whole.
Stuckey: We will bring their tenants back into the project into legal premises and we’ve also said we will find them interim housing,
Reporter: But even with that promise, Glemann felt off balance.
Bernstein: Did you think: “I can’t believe this is happening to me again?” Glemann: Yes, that’s exactly what I thought. When I came out of the Dumbo situation, which really ate up so much of your life, to go through this -- I mean it gets in your dreams, you dream about it. You wake up in the night, you’re anxious. It affects your work life because during the day is when you have access to offices that have information.
Reporter: The non-profit Center for an Urban Future recently issued a report on the importance of the creative sector. The report’s co-author, Robin Keegan, says artistic communities like Soho and Dumbo are a vital part of New York’s economic engine. But the amount of time these communities are available to artists before they arouse the interest of real estate developers is getting shorter and shorter.
Keegan: The clock is running faster. Soho took a much longer time; the real estate market was also very different at the time that Soho was happening. As we’ve gone into a period where the real estate market has just increasingly been hot, these neighborhoods are under great pressure.
Reporter: Seven months after I first saw her Prospects Height loft, on a snowy day in December, I went to see Glemann again. She was polishing a wedding band. When she first learned she’d have to leave 475 Dean Street, Glemann didn’t think she’d want to move into one of the new towers. But now that she’s been looking for several months, she’s changed her mind. It gives her the one thing she hasn’t had, ever – stability.
Glemann: That’s one of the things you really crave when you’re facing displacement.
Reporter: Still, Glemann was telling me that wintry day, even if she lands on her feet, she fears others may not be so lucky.
Glemann: Everyone wants artwork up on the walls and everybody wants a nice gallery up on their block showing the artwork and beautiful handmade things to wear. But then you need to have the type of neighborhood where you can afford to have these people live here as well.
Reporter: The Center for an Urban Future’s Robin Keegan is worried too. She says she learned from her research that even in the days of modems and email, artists are most productive when they work in clusters.
Keegan: These are face to face businesses. The creative process really depends on taking in information, from colleagues, from the streets of the city itself.
Reporter: In the middle of January, I went see Glemann on her last day at 475 Dean Street. She’s playing the piano to calm her nerves. Boxes are neatly stacked in one corner of the loft. The branch installment over head has been removed. The mover arrives, and he’s upset.
Glemann (sighs) How’re you doing? Mover: Why didn’t you tell me the elevator wasn’t working? Glemann: I just found out.
Reporter: It’s just a couple of days before the vacate deadline, and this building is engulfed in a frenzy of moving. The old elevator just gave way.
Glemann runs down five flights of stairs to get the number of the emergency elevator repair. On the way, she runs into Cliff Black, a musician who’s lived here 23 years.
Black: How’s it going? Glemann: How are you? Black: Ah I’m trying, I’m trying.
Reporter: With his wife, Kelly, an actor, Black is loading up a blue van. He tells me he’s leaving the city for good.
Black: It’s a sad thing. I’m going to miss this place. Bernstein: What made you want to decide to leave the city? Kelly: It wasn’t by choice. Bernstein: Having this place, we didn’t feel like we could find what we had here you know.
Reporter: This dislocation of artists is extremely troubling to Robin Keegan.
Keegan: The myth of the pioneering artist is over. We have to realize these are our creative workers; they are generating our creative economy, which is one of the strongest sectors within the city. If we really look at the places this creative community can move next, there are very few neighborhoods left that are wide open markets.
Reporter: In a way, the residents of 475 Dean Street know they’re lucky. They didn’t end up on the street. Forest City is subsidizing a new loft for Glemann until their hoped-for high rise is built. It’s back where I first found her – on Water Street, in Dumbo. For WNYC, I’m Andrea Bernstein.