Builder
& Remodeler July, 2004
Story
& Photos By Denis Sheahan
When
completed, Arverne by the Sea wil include 2,300 residential units
in a mix of one- and two-family homes, mid-rise rental apartment
buildings and condminiums, over 250,000 square feet of retail space,
a YMCA, school, transportation center, and ten acres of parkland.
Benjamin Beechwood, LLC, the development team, paid the city $8.3
million for the land and expects to spend another $100 million on
infrastructure, community facilities and amenities. Purchase
prices for the first 27 homes being celebrated today ranged from
$395,000 to $495,000. They sold through a lottery that gives preference
to Queens District 14 residents. Eight buyers currently reside in
Queens District 14; five, in other parts of Queens; eight, in other
boroughs; and six, in the metropolitan area. Queens Borough President
Helen Marshall, Housing Preservation & Development (HPD) Commissioner
Shaun Donovan, Benjamin-Beechwood, LLC, community and business leaders,
and buyers of new two-family homes along Shorefront Parkway and
Beach 73rd St. joined the Mayor for the ribbon cutting ceremony.
"Today
ends 40 years of dashed hopes and deferred dreams for the Arverne
community, and it opens a bright new chapter in the future of the
Rockaways as we see the first fruits of a successful collaberation
among goverment, the private sector, and the residents of the Rockaways,"
said Mayor Bloomberg. "These new homes in Arverne, and plans
for thousands more, constitute a major element of our adminstration's
$3 billion housing plan initiative to finance the consrtuction or
rehabilitation fo 65,000 units of affordable housing in all five
boroughs by 2008, which will mean homes for almost 200,000 New Yorkers.
We welcome and congratulate the first homebuyers to their new beachfront
homes at Arverne by the Sea."
As
part of the second phase of construction, another 121 two-family
homes are already underway. HPD expects to issue a request for Proposals
for the redevelopment of the 47 acre East End section of the Arverne
Urban Renewal Area at the end of the year, which will add up to
1,500 units of mixed income housing and approximately 600,000 square
feet of commercial and retail space. An additional 200 housing units
are planned for Water's Edge, bringing the total of new City sponsored
homes in the Arverne urban renewal area to up to 4,010.
During
the first half of the twentieth century, Rockaways was an affluent
beach resort, but through the 1950's the area declined until 308
acres along the shoreline were designated an Urban Renewal Area
in 1964 and eventually cleared by city-sponsored demolition. After
a number of unsatisfactory attempts to redevelop the acreage, in
1998 HPD, the Queens Borough President and Community Board 14 formed
the Averne Working Comittee and produced a "concept plan"
that became the basis for a Request for Proposal. Benjamin-Beechwood,
LLC, a joint venture between two experienced builder/developers,
Benjamin Development Co. and the Beechwood ORganization, was designated
by HPD in 2000 as the developer through the competive RFP process.
"We
also thank the award wining firm of Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn,
the master planners and design architects of this beautiful community
and HPD for their guidance," said Les Lerner of The Beechwood
Organization. "With careful planning and community participation,
Averne by the Seais now the premier residential housing community
in New York City." "After my husband died, I thought I
should make a change and buy something, but I didn't wnat to leave
the community wher I'd put down my roots ," said community
resident, Susan Locke, publisher of the Local newspaper, The Wave,
who has been renting on the Rockaway Pennisula since 1975. "I
looked, but anything affordable needed so much work, and I didn't
want to give up my ocean views. Then along came Averne by the Sea.
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