If you were to visit Sunset Park, speak to a local involved in community politics, and ask them: Who is Sunset Park’s biggest threat of gentrification? The immediate answer is Industry City.

Beyond its modern architecture, Industry City reflects gentrification through its visual and linguistic choices, favoring minimal English signage and corporate branding that neglects the multilingual and rich cultures that characterize the neighborhood.

Figure 1. Courtyard event at Industry City, Brooklyn. Thrillist, photo courtesy of Industry City, taken by Eliza Dumais, 28 Nov. 2017, https://www.thrillist.com/lifestyle/new-york/brooklyn/things-to-do-industry-city-brooklyn. Accessed 30 Mar. 2025.

For nearly a decade, Industry City, a luxury development center located on 3rd Avenue and 36th Street, has posed a threat to local working-class businesses throughout Sunset Park. In recent years, they have attempted to execute a rezoning project that would close immigrant-owned businesses in favor of investors. Despite promises to increase employment, locals recognize that the development’s signage, aesthetic, and language choices will not reflect or include them. English-only signage, minimal storefront language, and corporate visuals form a clear in-and-out group, with the out group clearly being Sunset Park’s vast multilingual and working-class population. Fortunately, the proposal has been shut down thanks to grassroots organizations and many strikes.

While the most well-known area of gentrification is not the only threat to Sunset Park, 8th Avenue and 61st Street have also begun to show similar signs of luxury development. Most recently, this includes the grand opening of the Insignia Hotel Brooklyn, which features English-only signage, and Teso Life, a modern store that uses primarily English and Mandarin, rather than the Cantonese still commonly heard on 8th Avenue.

While there have not been many news reports regarding this, as someone born and raised in Sunset Park, this parallels the development of Industry City and represents a first step towards gentrifying Chinatown, Brooklyn.

Additionally, within the neighborhood, residents have shared concerns about corporations or real estate investors potentially buying out the entire block in an attempt to commercialize it and attract wealthier clientele, similar to the playbook used by Industry City.

Figures 2 and 3 are directly across from Figures 4 and 5. Insignia Hotel Brooklyn, Ascend Hotel Collection, and Teso Life exemplify blatant gentrification. Even in terms of size, neither fits within a single camera frame. Insignia Hotel Brooklyn and Teso Life fall into the category of “Distinction-Making Signage.” It is a modern building, lacks a lengthy description of services, has a singular language, English, despite being in a Latine-Asian neighborhood, alienating these communities and clearly targeting English speakers — signs of gentrification. In contrast, the businesses across from them cater to Sunset Park’s Chinese population, with fewer signs in English.

When we investigate the Insignia Hotel Brooklyn and Teso Life, there is confirmation of them being a part of larger corporations or having multiple locations, with the Insignia Hotel Brooklyn being a part of Choice Hotels International, one of the largest lodging franchisors in the world, and Teso Life, while more recent, expanding beyond their 8 New York locations. Typically, when corporations open up locations in low-income neighborhoods, they can employ locals, but they often do not, as they do not align with their corporate aesthetic, hiring people outside that neighborhood and attracting other franchises.

When a community has endured displacement and fought to shape its own landscape through local businesses, multilingual signage, and loyal clientele starts to see efforts to erase that work, it will respond with visual retaliation. This comes in the form of signage that asserts their identity, even if only bilingual. Rather than catering to an outside clientele that likely only values culture when it’s packaged for corporate appeal. This is something I explore further in the next section on how bilingual signs and culture demonstrate resistance.