Shebam! Pow! Blop! Fizz!

In the recession years of the early 90s Harlem’s real estate was in much better shape compared to that of the East Village simply because of Upper Manhattan’s excellent subway access, something people on Columbia Street in Brooklyn are realizing today:

Two years ago Freddy Saint-Aignan and his wife, Angelika, found the perfect location for their fledgling bar/restaurant, the Sugar Lounge: Columbia Street in Brooklyn.

The building was just the right size, had a spacious backyard garden and sat beside Upper New York Bay. The city had big plans for the area: green space and parks, cruise ship piers a few blocks away

The Columbia Street Waterfront District, as it is called, was going to be resurrected to its past stature as a social and commercial hub. It was going to rival Smith Street in Boerum Hill, which had gone through a renaissance, attracting high-end boutiques and specialty stores, restaurants and a steadily swelling flow of shoppers and diners.

But that was two years ago, and instead of a silver lining along the Manhattan skyline, which the Saint-Aignans can see from the lounge’s front window, they see the outstretched arms of backhoes, cranes and industrial containers. Where there was to be a park across the street there is shredded earth, construction vehicles and exposed sewer pipes. The sidewalk is dirty and ragged, and aside from the occasional dog walker, jogger or in-line skater (along smoother stretches) there is very little foot traffic.

At night, the street outside the lounge is dark, the street lights dimmed by damage and disrepair. The promises of better days for Columbia Street have crumbled like the sidewalk in front of the Sugar Lounge, Mr. Saint-Aignan said yesterday.

“Smith Street has everything,” Mr. Saint-Aignan said from his cozy lounge, pointing out the contrast with Columbia Street. “With all the construction, there is no place for parking. We have no access, no subway, no buses. At night we have no lights.”

The Columbia Street corridor has struggled to propel itself into the orbit of the Brooklyn revival. Depending on whom you ask, the Columbia Street commercial strip is in Cobble Hill or Carroll Gardens or — more recently — Red Hook. It is bordered on the west by New York Bay, on the east by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, on the north by Atlantic Avenue, and on the south by the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel.

Mr. Saint-Aignan, formerly the general manager of Bar Tabac on Smith Street, said he had had to take on two other jobs to stay afloat.

The wishful thinking about Columbia Street’s being the new Smith Street goes only so far. The magical combination that makes one street hot and another tepid can seem elusive, but not here, where the reasons for the stalled revival are painfully clear. Continuing construction, a sense of geographic isolation and waning buzz continue to hush the “pop” that speculators had predicted.

For a while, “everyone wanted to come,” said Frank Manzione, who owns a real estate company on Columbia Street. “There were new condos being built, more people were moving in. A lot of the stores that were closed up started to get rented.”