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declined to comment on development and zoning on Staten Island.
Not far from Staten Island, the
Rockaways, too, have boomed —
with new construction catering
to a younger, hipper crowd excited by the chance to live on the
ocean a subway ride away from
midtown Manhattan.
The largest new development
there is Arverne by the Sea, a 117acre complex of townhomes and
condos built to house 13,000 residents in what was previously an
urban wasteland.
The project, which broke
ground in 2003, was the brainchild of the New York City Department of Housing and Urban
Development, which sold the
land to Benjamin-Beechwood
LLC after a bidding process for
$1,000 per housing unit. The
goal was to revitalize mostly
empty and torn-down urban
blocks with affordable, attractive
housing. Federal stimulus dollars
even helped bring a grocery store
to the neighborhood.
Yet here, as in beach communities around the region, planners
appear to have paid little attention to the risks involved in build-
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