page_title: Bergen Beach, Brooklyn
section_title: Redevelopment
hierarchical_section_title: Bergen Beach, Brooklyn / History / Redevelopment
caption_attribution_description: English: Looking north at boats docked at Hudson River Yacht Club Inc.
context_page_description: Bergen Beach is a residential neighborhood in the borough of Brooklyn, New York City. It is located on a peninsula abutting Jamaica Bay in the southeastern portion of the borough, and is bordered by Mill Basin and the neighborhood of the same name to the south and west; the neighborhood of Flatlands to the northwest; Paerdegat Basin and the neighborhood of Canarsie to the northeast; and Jamaica Bay and the Belt Parkway to the east. Bergen Beach contains a sub-neighborhood named Georgetown. The vast majority of residents are white, and the neighborhood generally has a suburban quality.
  Bergen Beach was originally an island. The Canarsie Indians who occupied the area referred to it as Winnipague. The island was renamed Bergen Island for early settler Hans Hansen Bergen. From 1896 to 1919, Percy G. Williams and Thomas Adams operated an amusement park in the area. Bergen Beach was connected to the rest of Brooklyn via landfill by 1918, although development did not come for many years. In the 1960s, a housing development called "Georgetowne" was proposed for Bergen Beach, but it was never built due to opposition from local residents.
context_section_description: After the failure of the amusement park, Bergen Beach was redeveloped.  In 1925, real estate developers Max Natanson and Mandlebaum & Levine bought Williams and Adams's former amusement park for close to $2 million (equivalent to $29,157,000 in 2019). At the time, they planned to develop Bergen Beach's 3,200 lots as a residential area with an entertainment district. There would have been a beach and an amusement park similar to Williams and Adams's park. However, this plan never materialized, and by 1926, the lots were sold off piece-by-piece to different people.
  Bungalows and vacation houses were built on the coast of "Flatlands Bay", around Bergen Island, before World War I. However, city records from 1909 to 1915 do not indicate where exactly these houses were erected. In 1927, the New York City Department of Docks began leasing lots and bungalows on Bergen Beach. As of 1930, the yearly rates for these lots ranged between $10 and $240 (worth between $153 and $3,673 in 2019). Bergen's house itself was demolished during the construction of Belt Parkway, also known as the Shore Parkway, in the 1930s. When the parkway opened in 1936, though, it did not spur development in Bergen Beach. The 1939 WPA Guide to New York City mentions that the area comprising present-day Mill Basin and Bergen Beach was the residence of "pathetic communities of squatters, who live in makeshift houses, and eke out a living by fishing and scouring the near-by city dumps for odd necessities". At the time, the southern shore was still marshland. Although fourteen single-family houses were built in the 1940s, much of the neighborhood retained a rural character through the 1960s.
  Starting in the 1950s, a series of suburban waterfront communities were being rapidly developed in Southeast Brooklyn, including in present-day Bergen Beach, Canarsie, and Mill Basin. By 1963, a new 69th Precinct building for the New York City Police Department, as well as the South Shore High School in Canarsie, had to be constructed to accommodate the growing population. The neighborhood had some of the most expensive houses in Brooklyn by 1972. Bergen Beach only became popular as a suburban neighborhood toward the end of the 20th century. Further development did not come until the 1980s, when more of the marsh was filled in. From 1983 to 1988, prices of residential lots in Bergen Beach increased fourfold. At the time, one developer was constructing two- and three-bedroom apartments with prices ranging between $115,000 and $243,500. The last city-owned sites along Paerdegat Basin were sold to private developers between 1980 and 1990.
  In the 2010s, a combined sewer overflow (CSO) facility for Paerdegat Basin was built in Bergen Beach. It was completed in August 2011.
caption: Marina in Bergen Beach
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