Bringing Up Dumbo

Since industry left the waterfront, Dumbo — Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass — has variously been a deserted no-man’s-land, a haven for artists, a hip loft destination and a target of upscale developers.

Now the next chapter is being written. In recent years, debates about the neighborhood’s future have brought about designation of a historic district and a rezoning of the eastern end, designed in part to encourage residential growth. Old commercial buildings continue to be converted, and several major construction projects are in the works, including one in the historic district from the giant builder Toll Brothers. Prices and rents in the neighborhood are among the highest in Brooklyn, and the city as a whole.

Dumbo’s indigenous warehouses have become home to advertising, design and creative companies like the online crafts marketplace Etsy, whose young workers have brought activity to the quiet cobblestone streets in the shadows of the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges.

And the waterfront has once again become a destination — not just for commerce, but also for recreation, with the expansion of Brooklyn Bridge Park.

Longtime residents have mixed reactions to the changes. “It was cool in the ’80s,” said Doreen Gallo, the executive director of the Dumbo Neighborhood Alliance, a residents’ group. “It was very cool in the ’90s.” Now, she said, “it’s different.”

Many of the artists who lent the neighborhood its character have been forced to move, she said, and historic buildings have been lost. On the other hand, the rezoning, which many preservationists opposed, has delivered residents, businesses and cultural institutions.

The contention of some critics that the 2007 historic district designation would stifle development has not been borne out. In one prime corner of the historic district, Two Trees Development, which was behind Dumbo’s earliest luxury buildings, has converted an office property at 25 Washington Street to 106 rental units. It opened this month.

Three blocks east, at 205 Water Street, Toll Brothers is erecting a 65-unit condo, the first new building in the historic district. Across the street at 192 Water, Hamlin Ventures and Alloy Development are converting an 1887 tea warehouse into nine loft units. And a few yards away, GDC Properties is making a pair of century-old historic buildings into a 200,000-square-foot mixed-use project with a ground-floor restaurant and 146 rental units.

Finally, around the corner at 37 Bridge Street, and still in the historic district, Halstead Property Development Marketing is selling 45 condominium units called Kirkman Lofts. Carved out of a soap factory, the building has steel silos that were incorporated into the design.

These simultaneous projects have created a wide construction zone at Dumbo’s eastern border, Ms. Gallo said. Referring to the Water Street buildings, she added, “It’s very difficult for the community that it’s happening, but at the same time there’s something really great about these projects.”

In each case, she said, the developers were sensitive to historical concerns, and had worked closely with city preservation officials.

A renovated section of Brooklyn Bridge Park between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges is to open this summer, and another new stretch is planned for the foot of Jay Street. Eventually, plans call for the park to link many isolated areas of Brooklyn’s waterfront.

David Von Spreckelsen, the division president of Toll Brothers City Living, said the company was hoping to develop more properties in Dumbo. He predicted that the growth of Brooklyn Bridge Park would be a “huge factor” in improving the quality of life in Dumbo. “The park will really change it,” he said. “When I moved to the neighborhood 12 years ago, people would still come down Main Street and dump garbage and drive off.”

It can seem that everyone who arrived in Dumbo in the postindustrial period has a tale of urban squalor. Aaron Shapiro, the chief executive of Huge, a digital marketing and design agency founded in the neighborhood in 1999, said that in the company’s early years, security guards escorted female employees to the subway at night.

Now, Huge employs 275 people spread across four floors at 45 Main Street, and Mr. Shapiro said the days when its location presented a challenge were a distant memory.

“Back then,” he said, “there was convincing people to come to the neighborhood. Now, there’s no convincing. People want to come here, and it’s tremendously attractive for employees.”

Many of those employees commute, often by bike, from nearby neighborhoods like Fort Greene and Williamsburg, which makes for a vivid and multidirectional rush hour. Others have made Dumbo their home.

“You have this wonderful flow in the morning, where you have the cultural creatives stomping in, and the residents on their way out to their jobs in Manhattan,” said Mitch Baranowski, a founder of BBMG, a branding firm that moved to Dumbo from Union Square about a year ago.