| Creedmoor
site to be gated nabe Builders Leslie Lerner and Michael Dubb of the Beechwood Organization, which bid $7 million for the site, are demolishing 11 buildings that once housed hospital staff to make room for the development. Within 10 days of opening a sales office in early January, 20 homes were sold and 50 prospective buyers placed deposits. Country Pointe at Alley Pond, the two-family attached and semi attached homes will be built in clusters of four to eight homes. Prices for the combination brick and siding homes range from $359,000 to the mid-$400,000 range, Lerner said. Each of the 100 homeowners also will own the lot. The Empire State Development Corp. put the site up for bids in April as part of the state's plan to divest itself of excess portions of Creedmoor. Three schools -a 650-seat elementary school, a 900-seat intermediate school and a 1,000-seat high school- are to be built on 32 acres at Creedmoor, 78- 70 Grand Central Parkway. The developers expect their typical buyers to be middle-class Queens residents looking to upgrade their homes and have rental income from the attached apartment. Stephanie Darsaklis, 30, of Bayside is buying her first home as an investment. "I like the fact that it is an en- closed community with a security guard for someone like me who is single. That is a big issue," said Darsaklis, a human resources manager who plans to use the rent from the second apartment to help with her mortgage payments. "This is the housing type that makes homeownership affordable to most middle-class people," Lerner said. "You get to buy a house and have a tenant pay sometimes up to three-quarters of all your living expenses on the house." Two-bedroom apartments should rent for about $1,400 and one-bedrooms for about $1,000 a month, he said. Beechwood is offering two models, each with a three-bedroom apartment on the second floor and a cellar. One model will have a two-bedroom apartment on the first floor, the other a one-bedroom and a garage. Common areas, such as the gatehouse, the roads and a center grassy area will be jointly owned through a homeowners association. "We created the lots in such a way so that what would look like the front yard of each house is not privately owned by the homeowner but is part of the association common area," Lerner said. That way, he said, "there would be a consistency as you drive through the development in how the front of the houses are maintained." The first homes are to be completed around Thanksgiving, and the final homes should be ready in June of next year, Lerner said. The
Beechwood Organization has built 1,000 two-family houses in the
boroughs and 2,000 more homes on Long Island. "As we are building
these luxury communities on Long Island, we are always building
two-family houses in the city because it is a different market and
a very large one," Lerner said. |