One of those developers could be Alexandria, Va.-based AvalonBay Communities, which has filed a bid for the first 1,000-unit phase at Hunters Point. “AvalonBay has really been no stranger to pretty large-scale buildings, and in terms of capital deployment and long-term strategy, we are very fond of these multi-phase deals,” says Fred Harris, the REIT’s senior vice president of development. “These developments capture where people want to be today. [Testament to that] is the surprisingly low interest and relatively small requirement for parking spaces at a lot of these buildings. It tells you that people are really looking at some of this as a lifestyle choice.”
A Sense of Community
Indeed, even while faced with recapitalization woes, tenant/landlord feuds, huge operating budgets, and disgruntled neighbors, the developers, civic leaders, and financiers behind megacommunities continue to stress their relevance, particularly when it comes to placemaking and community building in an increasingly socially fragmented and detached society.
“These kinds of communities allow people to have a more well-defined sense of place,” Cestero says. “Whether you are talking about [New York’s] Battery Park City or Starrett City or Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village, there is a very strong sense of community that residents are attracted to. You get that less so with infill, scatter-shot development. There is a softer side to why we do this, and it is creating that sense of place and that sense of community that people can gravitate to and connect to in a really important way.” Affordability will factor largely in the success of current and future megacommunities, in part to ensure the placemaking ventures of the few can be experienced by the masses, particularly those who work in and serve the communities in which they live. Forest City has committed 2,250 of Atlantic Yards’ 6,430 units to that end, and Gilmartin pledges the affordability rollout will be aggressive and consistent.
“It’s not as if we will wait until the latter years to produce the levels of affordability that we expect to produce here at Atlantic Yards,” she says. “We expect that the very first building will have a generous amount of affordability associated with it, in large part because it is our commitment to the community that we will build affordable housing. If we do our jobs well, this can become a model for how it can be accomplished here in New York City and in other places. We’re excited about it. We believe in it. And we take the responsibility very seriously.”
