Brooklyn's new website helps Nostrand Avenue renaissance.

Brooklyn Economic Development Corporation has created a new website for Nostrand Avenue, a commercial corridor in the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn, which highlights real estate opportunities, provides facade improvement guidelines for retailers and property owners and promotes products and services available from local merchants.

"BEDC created the website, www.nostrandave.org as part of the Nostrand Avenue Commercial Revitalization Initiative, which BEDC launched last spring in collaboration with the Nostrand Avenue Merchants Association to help businesses attract shoppers and increase revenues," said James Sanford, director of Community Development at BEDC and project manager for the Nostrand Avenue Revitalization Initiative. "The website is designed to inform businesses and property owners of the services available to them through BEDC and other organizations, inform residents and employees of the products and services local businesses offer and provide both groups with updates on beautification efforts."

Sanford said the potential for businesses on Nostrand Avenue to expand and thrive is great because the commercial strip is a half a block away from the SUNY Downstate Biotech Park, which is made up of the new Biotechnology Incubator, an ImClone Systems facility and two proposed bio-tech buildings in a two-block area. New residential development is also planned for the area, where more than 50,000 people live within a half mile radius. In addition, a new school has opened in the community and active churches are located nearby.

The Nostrand Avenue Project website features information on the Storefront Improvement Program that BEDC is coordinating on Nostrand Avenue between Fenimore Street and Lenox Road, BEDC's real estate services and its staff's availability to help local property owners recruit tenants for commercial storefronts, a directory listing addresses and phone numbers for restaurants, grocery stores, markets, cleaners, pharmacies and health care sites, legal and real estate services, beauty salons and barber shops, day care centers and other vital businesses.