Two-family units shield against downturn

Home sales fell more precipitously in Queens in the past year than in any of New York City’s other four boroughs. One major exception to Queens’ drop-off has been brisk sales activity in Arverne by the Sea, a 127-acre mixed-use development that has been under construction for the past five years.
In June, the Dunes, the latest residential portion of the $1 billion development, was begun. By mid-September more than 50 two-family units in the Dunes had been sold, at prices ranging from $569,000 to $995,000, according to The New York Times. The rapid sales pace at Arverne by the Sea reflects, among other things, “the resiliency of the two-family home and the value of good urbanism,” says Eric Fang, who was senior urban designer and project architect for Arverne when Ehrenkrantz, Eckstut & Kuhn Architects (EEK) was designing it for developer Benjamin-Beechwood LLC.
Fang, who left the firm for Street-Works LLC in 2005 and moved back to EEK recently, says that in New York, neighborhoods composed of two-family houses are usually marred by too many conspicuous driveways, curb cuts, garages, and parking pads.
At Arverne, each two-family unit reads like a rowhouse on the outside; it shares party walls with its neighbors. In many of them, the owner occupies the first and second floors, and a tenant lives on the third, providing $1,500 or more in monthly rental income for the owner. Quite a few duplexes have their 2,800 to 3,400 sq. ft. divided in other configurations, so there’s considerable variety in how much square footage the owner gets and how much the tenant must pay. “It’s good for people trying to buy into the housing market,” Fang says.
Arverne’s principal thoroughfares radiate from a subway stop (served by the A train) to the Atlantic Ocean. The wider main streets carry the traffic to and from the beach, while narrower side streets are designed to be more comfortable for pedestrians. By completion around 2010, Arverne will have 2,300 houses, apartments, and condominium units, plus a shopping area. A charter school opened in September.
The development, 15 miles (about an hour by subway) from midtown Manhattan, occupies land on the Rockaway Peninsula that once held a seaside resort but which fell prey to crime and deterioration when the city concentrated large public housing complexes nearby. Because Arverne is in an urban renewal area — the largest in New York — homeowners receive 20-year property-tax abatements.