![]() ![]() Maybe it’s getting older, but I feel like being in a band, opening a DIY venue or art gallery, these things should be done by the people who need to do them. Friends of mine around the world are making great music it’s their life passion. I haven’t played in a band since my venue closed and that’s OK. I’ve spent much of the past two years making this film and it’s been both rewarding and cathartic to have the chance to make something positive out of a painful time. It was painful and destructive on many levels but I was able to make a movie about the experience and the utopia we lived in called Goodnight Brooklyn- The Story of Death By Audio. I’m not the first creative person to lose their home in this city, but the irony was visceral and frustrating: Vice Media, a company that built its brand selling advertisers access to underground culture, counter-normative ideas, sex, drugs, music, art, and youth took over our building and forced us out. We also had a recording studio, photo studio, workshops and bedrooms. ![]() For years it served as a music venue called Death By Audio. I lost a warehouse I called home just over two years ago. A glacier moving through your bedroom might seem slow from 10,000 feet away but when it’s your home, your favorite restaurant or community center, your kid’s favorite park, the speed of development and destruction happens fast. This city changes at a glacial pace, the pendulum swinging through neighborhoods of prosperity and tearing them down into poverty, erasing their memory and building something new. But what will a New York City without creative poor and working people look like? From the perspective of real estate owners and businesses that cater to the upwardly mobile, it’s a great thing. My friends skew more towards artists and musicians, and I can safely say that that demographic is leaving this city faster than I can remember. Maybe it’s the fertilizer that feeds new generations of immigrants. Bars, restaurants, bodegas and bagel shops close and change hands. Other businesses also join Vice Media’s move to Dumbo- Flocabulary and Equinox are also slated to occupy space in 55 Washington.People come and go. The move is a marked upgrade for Carrot Creative, which was already based in Dumbo but only had around 5,500 square feet at 45 Main Street, another Two Trees Management building. Etsy will be moving to nearby Dumbo Heights at 117 Adams Street and 55 Prospect Street later this year. VIce’s new locale is only made possible by the move of e-commerce business Etsy’s, which currently occupies around 80,000 square feet in 55 Washington but has outgrown the space. Alongside its new digs, Vice will be keeping its original headquarters in its current location, according to the New York Post. After acquiring beauty and fashion brand development firm Starworks Group in July, the company has been looking for a bigger space. In 2014, Vice outgrew its space in Williamsburg and took over local performance venue Glasslands at South 2nd and Kent Avenue. The 109-year-old building has 448,300 square feet available. ![]() The lease details are unavailable, but according to CoStar group data, the average asking price for commercial space at 55 Washington is $46 per square foot. The media company signed a lease for 30,000 square feet and Carrot Creative, Vice’s creative advertising agency, will take a 43,700-square-foot space, according to the Commercial Observer (h/t TRD and NYP). Only two years after moving its headquarters to Williamsburg, Vice Media has announced it will be expanding to a 74,000 square foot space in Two Trees Management’s 55 Washington Street in Dumbo. ![]()
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