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This summer an alien force will move into Flatbush: bulldozers preparing the way for a condominium complex on a block of vacant land.
"It's been a long time since this part of Brooklyn has seen any residential construction," says Cathryn Wylde, a vice president of New York City Partnership Inc., a nonprofit group overseeing the 75-unit project at Synder and Lot streets.
"Usually we're the first to go into an area," she adds, "and others follow right behind -- with lots of private investment."
'Tremendous' rise in values
Already, smart money has begun to flow into Flatbush, which is directly south of Prospect Park and encompasses about three square miles. Co-op converters are turning profits on older apartment buildings. Chain stores are moving back onto the streets after a decade hiatus. And commercial real estate brokers are enjoying brisk business.
"It's gotten to almost a frantic pace," declares Timothy D. King, manager of Fillmore Real Estate Ltd.'s commercial division in Brooklyn. "There has been a tremendous increase in values."
The surge of activity almost has erased memories of the 1970s, when real estate values sank lower than anyone ever predicted. Block-busting, arson and neglect ravaged this quintessential Brooklyn neighborhood, where Art Deco apartment buildings share the streets with pillared mansions and tidy bungalows.
Trading on fears of the area's predominantly white residents, real estate operators did a volume business. "People saw blacks moving in, and a lot of them started to run," recalls Toby Sanchez, executive director of Junction-College Development Corp., which concentrates on a small section of Flatbush. "There was a lot of disinvestment. Housing went into a literal shock."
Census statistics illustrate the flight. In 1970 Flatbush was 89% white. Within a decade, whites made up only 30% of the population.
Merchants and service companies followed fast behind. "It was no-man's land," Mr. King of Fillmore Real Estate says. "Shuttered stores and gutted stores."
And empty theaters. A half-century ago one of the city's grandest movie palaces, Loew's Kings, opened...