East Williamsburg, a Brooklyn neighborhood best known for warehouses, truck routes and an industrial zone that has never had anything you could honestly call a “downtown,” just landed $20 million from New York State to go build one. Governor Kathy Hochul named the neighborhood the New York City winner of the ninth round of the Downtown Revitalization Initiative and the fourth round of NY Forward on June 3, according to the Governor’s office. The catch: to even apply for that money, the city had to prove it is still building more housing.

The $20 million is two separate pots of $10 million, one from the Downtown Revitalization Initiative, one from NY Forward, per the state announcement. Each of New York’s ten economic regions got the same split this round, $200 million statewide, on top of a program that has now pushed roughly $1.4 billion into downtowns since it started. East Williamsburg is the single New York City winner.

The application was not written by City Hall. It was led by two neighborhood business improvement districts, the Graham Avenue BID and the Grand Street BID, working with Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso’s office, the Grand Street BID said in its own announcement. Those two BIDs were established in the 1980s and represent 395 businesses between them, mostly the locally owned restaurants, salons, groceries and pharmacies that line Graham Avenue and Grand Street, Greenpointers reported.