Article: "A Renaissance Comes to 'The Alamo' of Bed-Stuy" - June 5, 2006 - The New York Sun

The New York Sun has this timely article about Bed-Stuy's continuing renewal and rebirth, which the article attributes heavily to the dramatic drop in reported crime in the neighborhood's 79th and 81st precincts.

In the last four or five years, advocates and real estate experts say that market forces and a lower crime rate has sparked a renaissance driven by real estate and increased private investment. With buyers being priced out of Manhattan and even out of Brooklyn's more tony neighborhoods, Bed-Stuy's stock of more than 4,000 brownstone buildings are in increasing demand, and prices have been rising steadily.

A community leader, Colvin Grannum, who heads the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, said, "We haven't seen this level of private sector investment probably 70 years."

Much of that improvement, Mr. Grannum said, is from a precipitous decline in crime. Statistics from the two police precincts that cover the neighborhood show a drop in crime by about 70% since 1990, a percentage that is in line with a citywide crime reduction over that time period.

Link: A Renaissance Comes to 'The Alamo' of Bed-Stuy - June 5, 2006 - The New York Sun.