In December, developers closed on $30.3 million in financing for the first phase of Arverne East, a master-planned community and revitalization project within a 116-acre oceanfront site in the Arverne and Edgemere neighborhoods in Queens’ Rockaway Peninsula. Led by real estate firms L+M Development Partners, the Bluestone Organization, and Triangle Equities, the project will be New York City’s first net zero community.

Funding for the first phase was provided by the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD). This stage will see the development of a 35-acre nature preserve between Beach 44th Street and Beach 56th Place, aiming to restore and promote native ecology. It will include a 6,000-square-foot, fossil-free building featuring a welcome center, park ranger office, comfort station, and a community center owned and operated by RISE, a non-profit organization that provides civic engagement and youth development programs for the greater Rockaway community. Starr Whitehouse, a Women Business Enterprise (WBE), is the landscape architect for the nature preserve and fellow WBE, WXY, is the architect for the nature center. 

Designed to face the threat of climate change, especially as the Rockaways continue to recover from the impacts of Hurricane Sandy in 2012, Arverne East will achieve its net zero status through a number of strategies. The architects will utilize passive house construction, geothermal technology, and an extensive photovoltaic array to meet the energy efficiency and sustainability goals of the project. 

In addition, the development will be elevated to protect against sea surge, bay surge, and groundwater flooding. Water management strategies also include the use of rainwater for on-site irrigation, and indigenous plantings to create storm buffers for the area. 

The Arverne East development, as a whole, will include 1,650 units of housing, in which 80 percent will be set aside for formerly homeless, low-income, and middle-income families at below-market rates. A retail corridor will connect the 36th Street A train subway station to the beach, anchored by a full production brewery and restaurant operated by the Rockaway Brewing Company as well as a beachfront hotel. The project will also include a community center and numerous public open spaces. Urbane, a Minority Business Enterprise (MBE), will serve as a development partner, promoting the growth of new and existing local, small businesses.

Plans for this revitalization project were originally approved in 1968 then regarded as the Arverne Urban Renewal Plan. It was organized to facilitate the removal of structurally substandard housing for the development of new low- and moderate-income housing. In the early 1970s, the city acquired and cleared most of the area for redevelopment, however, since then the site has sat mostly vacant and underutilized. The project received Uniform Land Use Review Procedure approval in 2003. 

“In moving forward with this long-envisioned plan for Arverne East, we are ushering in a more resilient and inclusive future for the Rockaways community,” said HPD Commissioner Louise Carroll. “More than 1,300 affordable homes will follow this nature preserve, breathing new life into a site that has gone undeveloped and unused for decades. We’re proud of the hard work and ingenuity from our development partners and staff that went into making this possible.”