Michael Moshan bought his first condo in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in 2003. A few years later he persuaded his girlfriend, Shana Liebman, to move there from the West Village. She was skeptical — she didn’t want to be surrounded by 20-somethings just out of school. But over the years the neighborhood, with its restaurants, bars and galleries, grew on her.
They were married in October 2006, the same month they closed on a condo on Roebling and North Seventh Streets for $725,000. To their surprise, they found a building filled with families. Now they can’t imagine raising their 15-month-old son, Nate, anywhere else.
“If you look at child-friendly parts of Brooklyn — Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn Heights, Park Slope — those neighborhoods are beautiful and safe and the schools are great and that is good for our kids,” Mr. Moshan said. “But is that good for us? We thought, if Williamsburg could mature into a neighborhood where kids can grow, then you’ve won.”
Families are discovering that Williamsburg is much more than a playground for the postcollege, skinny-jeans set. The neighborhood has a few private preschools; several indoor play spaces; art, movement and music classes; and a number of children’s stores, some of which were started by neighborhood parents. Many of the condo buildings rising all over the neighborhood feature playrooms, pools and other family-friendly amenities.
Mr. Moshan, 41, a lawyer and a partner in Gold Scollar Moshan, and Ms. Liebman, 36, a freelance writer, are among the converts. Ms. Liebman has found plenty to do with Nate. There’s Play, an indoor play center that opened this fall, with its movement and art classes for kids. Nate also loves the children’s shows on weekend mornings at the Knitting Factory, the concert hall. Ms. Liebman has met other parents through the Brooklyn Bambino e-mail group. They get together for play dates, coffee, even happy hour.
For the Moshans, their building has been the most surprising resource. The five multifamily town houses in the development run side by side for most of a block. In the Moshans’ town house, three of the four apartments are occupied by families. They share a nanny and watch one another’s children if someone has to run an errand. In the summertime the kids have the run of the sidewalk. And Ms. Liebman has come to know many families in the other town houses.
“You can go out in the neighborhood on a Friday night and feel sexy and single-ish,” Ms. Liebman says with a laugh. “And then wake up next morning with the kid and take him to the farmers’ market and the play center.”
Many younger single people have been priced out of the neighborhood. The new condo buildings rising on block after block of Williamsburg’s north side are a steal compared with Manhattan real estate, but hardly cheap. According to the appraisal firm Miller Samuel, condos in Williamsburg and neighboring Greenpoint sell for an average of $600 a square foot, half the going price of condos in Manhattan.
In some of the neighborhood’s most expensive buildings, like the Edge, developers are getting as much as $1,000 a square foot for some units. Despite all of the new inventory hitting the market, there is still plenty of demand, said Jonathan J. Miller, the president of Miller Samuel.
“Larger units were developed here as an alternative to higher-priced Manhattan,” Mr. Miller said. “Now that the smoke has settled, people can obtain larger living spaces for off-peak prices.”
Often those spaces appeal most to families.
Daniel Lamblin and Jenni Sohn used to live on the Lower East Side in a cramped apartment above a sign shop. It was dark, the kitchen was tiny, and the rooms were often filled with fumes when workers were cutting plastic signs below. With a daughter on the way, they wanted more space, more light, a decent kitchen and fewer toxic fumes.
Ms. Sohn, a multimedia producer for The Associated Press, followed a friend to an open house at Warehouse 11, a development on Roebling and North 11th Streets. She was taken instantly by the corner unit’s views of McCarren Park. “I was so sunlight-deprived, I couldn’t believe it when I walked in here and saw floor-to-ceiling windows,” she said.
She and her husband, an engineer at Google, closed on June 28, and their daughter, Sophie, was born the next day.
The couple have already met several parents in the building and noticed a few pregnant neighbors. To accommodate these families, the developer plans to wall off part of the oversized lobby to make a playroom.
Alex Signer, 47, the director of client services at Harkess-Ord, a brand implementation firm, and his wife, Ayumi Konishi, 45, the owner of Beige Creative, a design and video production studio, were also looking for more space to raise their twins, Miu and Teo. Then living in the financial district, they considered Park Slope, but Mr. Signer was turned off by the brownstone-lined streets and child-friendly restaurants. “Williamsburg is more industrial, it’s closer to Manhattan and we knew people here,” he said.
In August they moved into a $980,000 three-bedroom at 80 Metropolitan. Through his living-room window, Mr. Signer can see the Domino Sugar factory and the Williamsburg Bridge, partly obscured by the steel beams of new construction — just the industrial feel he wanted. Miu and Teo share a bedroom and have a separate playroom. Mr. Signer and the twins have met a number of the families at the building’s indoor pool. There is talk of starting a swim class for children.
Developers are adjusting to these changing demographics.
Douglas Steiner, the developer of 80 Metropolitan, has already combined several apartments to make six three-bedroom units for buyers, and he can create another seven if need be.
The change should not be surprising, said David Maundrell, the president of aptsandlofts.com, which is marketing Warehouse 11. Developers first sought singles and couples in their late 20s and early 30s. Many of those people, he says, will eventually have children, and developers are responding with amenities to appeal to them.
The high-end rental building at 184 Kent Avenue has a playroom, as do its high-rise neighbors Northside Piers and the Edge. Mr. Maundrell says that interest in two- and three-bedroom apartments is increasing. Buildings are staging events for parents. For example, 80 Metropolitan is planning a seminar on baby-proofing your home and a talk by Joyce Szuflita, a Brooklyn school consultant. She’s finding plenty of business in Williamsburg these days.
The influx of families can be seen in the growth of Williamsburg Northside Preschool, which opened as a day care center in 1999. By 2002 there were eight classrooms of children. In 2009 it added two classrooms for children 3 months to 2 years old. Now they’ve expanded to five daycare classes and have a wait list. The school, which now goes through the first grade, plans to expand through the fifth grade and to grow into a third building by 2013.
“I never thought that we’d be able to inhabit two buildings and be full and have a wait list,” said Amy Warden, the school’s director. These days, she says, the parents of her students are more affluent than they were. Years ago, nearly all the preschool’s graduates went on to local public schools. Now, nearly half go on to private school.
Ms. Szuflita says that neighborhoods like Park Slope and Carroll Gardens have had good public schools for decades, and that Williamsburg’s schools are improving, in part because parents are becoming increasingly involved.
In Park Slope, at the highly regarded Public School 321 in the school year ending in 2009, 92 percent of the fourth graders tested met standards in English and 95 percent in math. At P.S. 132 in Williamsburg, 85 percent met standards in both English and math. At P.S. 34 in Greenpoint, 86 percent met standards in English and 97 percent in math. These numbers compare with statewide averages of 77 percent in English and 87 percent in math.
Eve and Rich Kessner left the West Village for Park Slope with their daughter, Avi, last March. But after six months, they found themselves looking for a new place to live.
“It felt really suburban to me,” said Ms. Kessner, 29, a jewelry designer and blogger. “Park Slope has puppets and guitar strumming for kids. In Williamsburg, it is like rock ’n’ roll for kids.”
The couple bought a two-bedroom corner unit in the Edge, two towers on Williamsburg’s waterfront, and moved in at the end of December. They have already become accustomed to the building’s long list of amenities for adults and children: a full-size indoor basketball court where Avi likes to kick balls around with Ms. Kessner; a swimming pool and a separate shallow pool for children (another of Avi’s favorites); a screening room; a gym; and a large playroom.
On a recent morning at the Kessners’ new place, two workers were busy moving the couch and side tables into place while Avi brushed ink on a piece of paper and, almost instantly, onto the rug. A barge could be seen from the window, making its way up the East River.
“We really felt like this was the right spot, with all the bars and restaurants,” said Mr. Kessner, 29, the owner of New York Floorman and New York Paintman, home improvement companies. “We love it.”
That mix works for many parents. Ms. Sohn says that galleries have welcomed her and baby Sophie. Mr. Signer says that he is glad not every restaurant is child-oriented. He goes out to eat for the quality of the food, he said, not to take a census of how many highchairs a restaurant owns. For Ms. Liebman, the constant stream of good new restaurants has been an important part of what makes the neighborhood work.
“There are so many restaurants and bars,” Ms. Liebman said. “Every time you open Time Out we’re like, really? Another restaurant?”
Of course, there is a flip side. Not every restaurant has room for strollers and highchairs. The area’s bars and clubs can rock into the wee hours. Mr. Moshan says that the residents of his building are not happy with a bar that plays loud music in the summer.
Not that a place like Williamsburg shuts down for the winter. Late one recent night, Mr. Moshan heard the sound of people shoveling snow in the yard of a row house behind his building. They were clearing a space so that they could go outside to drink and smoke. Mr. Moshan worried that they would wake his sleeping son.
“I’m staring at them,” he said, “thinking how can I get them to stop? Then I think, what the hell happened to me? Am I that guy that wants the kids to get off his lawn?”
A little noise now and then is the price you have to pay, Mr. Moshan said. “That’s the neighborhood. It’s not Park Slope.”
Written by Jin Renden of the New York Times.
In your search for the right home, you will likely be doing a lot of footwork and analysis. Before you begin looking at actual homes, it is wise to determine how much home you can afford and the level of maintenance you desire. In doing so, you may find that the new home that best fits you is not a traditional single family house, but instead a home in a planned community or a condominium.
