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Brooklyn landlord to Oberlin grads: we don't want you here

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Brooklyn landlord to Oberlin grads: we don't want you here

This may be one of the only buildings in Brooklyn turning hipsters away.
A Brooklyn-based construction company with deep roots in a now-trendy neighborhood is planning to erect an office building with manufacturing space. On paper, it’s a hipster honeypot, but in practice, the family-owned business wants little to do with the liberal arts grads, especially those from the Midwest, who flood the borough after each graduation cycle.

Owners of Adams European Contracting want working-class Brooklynites to sign leases, not just “Oberlin students who have just moved to Brooklyn like an hour ago,” according to the project’s lawyer.

Brooklyn’s Marvel Architects is designing the nine-story building, at 79 Bogart Street in East Williamsburg, with commercial and manufacturing space. The owners are seeking a zoning variance for the building so they can add a video game room, wine bar, and showers, amenities to appeal to artists, ad agency employees, and “drone designers”—again, this building is not just for Midwest liberal arts transplants…

“We’re competing for talent,” the lawyer, Ken Fisher, told DNAinfo. “We think that the density will create a community in the building and will give it a sense of destination.” His client plans to move their offices to the new building once it’s finished.


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