The location of a two-day techno festival has brought to the fore local resentment towards gentrification and community cohesion in one of New York’s most ethnically diverse neighbourhoods.

Time Warp, a German-based electronic music festival, switched locations with less than a week to go before its slated start date of 20 November. The change was made after Crown Heights residents objected to the festival being held in an 108-year-old armoury that’s become the flashpoint for tension between the local community and city officials.

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The festival – whose headliners include Ricardo Villalobos, Jamie Jones and Seth Troxler – was supposed to be taking place at the Bedford-Union Armory in the Brooklyn neighbourhood of Crown Heights on 20 and 21 November, but the event organisers announced on Friday it will now be taking place at the 39th Street Pier in Sunset Park.

In a statement posted on their website, Time Warp said it is moving the festival “out of respect to the community of Crown Heights and the concerns expressed by its leaders”.

Evelyn Tully Costa of the Crown Heights South Association, one of the residents’ groups which called for the festival to be moved, said that while her personal objection to the event was the noise pollution, the weekend-long dance party represents a bigger issue the Crown Heights neighbourhood is currently battling.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The interior of Bedford-Union Armory in the Crown Heights. Photograph: Alamy

“This isn’t about the rave,” Tully Costa said. “This about the continued misuse of the space.” Tully Costa, who lives a few blocks away from the armoury, is working with other local residents on a proposal for the space to be turned into a recreational centre with sports, education and cultural facilities.

The armoury is currently owned by the Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS), the agency that manages New York City’s property. Tully Costa said she and other local residents’ groups feel the city accepts proposals for one-off events, and also property development, without consideration to the needs of the community.

She said: “This was the tip of the iceberg for a community that is not as well organised as it should be, facing down a billion-dollar real estate free-for-all and a piece of architecture that really should be used with the community in mind.”

Tully Costa and other residents took up their concerns with assemblyman Walter Mosley, who pressured DCAS and the New York mayor’s office to move the event five miles away to Sunset Park, the site of last year’s event.

I went to Studio 54 when I was young … I just don’t want to be kept up at night Tully Costa, Crown Heights resident

A representative for Mosley’s office said: “The assemblyman is relieved, but also he understands that the community came together and pushed for this. [He] is not against cultural festivities and things of that nature but it was the issue of the location in a residential area and in a site that was not built to be a venue.”

Jennifer Lyons, co-founder of the Brooklyn Electronic Music Festival and founder of MeanRed Productions, said that the situation Time Warp is facing isn’t new or unique. “Underground promoters in New York have been dealing with task forces and residential challenges for many years,” said Lyons, who has been running the annual weekend dance music festival in Brooklyn along with Katie Longmyer since 2008. She said that over the years she’s worked in nightlife in the city, she’s seen residents have more say in whether these events can happen or not.

“This is not a bad thing, but there has been an inability to find a balance between arts, culture, commerce and the residents, and a lack of any entities to mediate this dialogue. New York was a very different city 20 years ago, when you could create an adventure for 3,000 to 6,000 people, easily, now there are many challenges in doing this,” Lyons said.

Tully Costa also said it’s not the event itself she’s against, rather that it’s being held in a venue not suitable for loud gigs. “I went to Studio 54 when I was young and made merry and whoopie,” she said. “So it’s not that, I just don’t want to be kept up at night.”

The way events have unfolded has raised a question over how the festival was approved in the first place. Time Warp told DNAinfo “they [had] received all proper approvals from DCAS before beginning sales for the event”. DCAS, however, said that the application was still under review by the agency when the city, along with the organisers themselves, decided to move the event to the 39th Street Pier. Time Warp did not respond to requests for clarification.

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Mosley’s office said the venue is close to several houses of worship and would have caused disturbance to the congregations coming and going to religious services over the weekend. Other groups that raised their concerns to the assemblyman included the First Baptist Church of Crown Heights and the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council. The armoury is occasionally used for religious meetings of the local Jewish community, including the 5,000-person six-day International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries at the beginning of November.

Mosley’s office also added that the Bedford-Union Armory was not designed for large concert events, as it has no ventilation or demarcated emergency exits. “There’s the Barclays Center, which is about 10 or 12 blocks up the street, which is an actual stadium that they could have had this in,” the spokesperson said.

In an online forum discussing the festival, however, other residents expressed their support for the event. Many said the event was a good use of a disused space and would bring money into the neighbourhood.

“It’s easier to get up in arms and demonize than to be informed,” one commenter wrote. “Time Warp is one of the most prestigious electronic music festivals in the world with a trajectory of success dating back over 20 years. I live [in Crown Heights] and I would love to see half of the projects proposed for the Armory be as coherently organized.”

Michael O’Leary, 28, who is from Syracuse in New York state and is planning to attend both days of the festival, said he is not put off by the venue change. “It’s only five miles away from the original location, so it’s not a deal breaker,” he said. “Plus I heard good things about last year’s Time Warp spot.”

O’Leary added that he did think Time Warp could have done a better job of communicating the venue change to ticket holders. He found out about it through Twitter, but did not receive an email or other direct communication from the event organisers.

Pushback against property development plans has been bubbling throughout the neighbourhood in recent months. At a demonstration on Tuesday, artists and community activists protested against the Brooklyn Museum’s decision to host a real estate summit for property developers.

The sentiment is echoed across the borough, as rapid economic and social transformations have altered the makeup of Brooklyn over the past 20 years. In a deep dive into one Bed-Stuy block, New York magazine reported that houses bought in 70s and 80s were worth less than a tenth of their current value. Polish small business owners in South Slope have moved out of the neighbourhood not because they can’t afford the rent, but because they feel they no longer belong. And in Crown Heights, between 2000 and 2010, the black population fell to 70% from 79%, while the white population nearly doubled to 16% and the number of Asian and Hispanic residents also grew.

This month’s event is the second time Time Warp, which started as an annual dance music festival in Mannheim in Germany in 1994, has forayed into the US. Last year’s festival, held over the Thanksgiving weekend, also had a venue change at the 11th hour. The New York Daily News reported that Time Warp had not obtained the correct permits to hold the event at the Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx and ended up moving the party to the 39th Street Pier.

Lyons added: “These underground events are no longer underground and are much bigger, so the issues they are facing are in the public eye. It’s an indicator of the strain between what New Yorkers and commerce want and need for the city.”