Bloomberg administration chose Arverne's projects to receive $16 million in federal stimulus financing.

EE&K's Design, Arverne by the Sea, Offered Stimulus

New neighborhood gets the supermarket of its dreams; rare residential success.

In an era when big residential real estate projects have stalled all across the city, one of the biggest of the lot—Arverne by the Sea, in Rockaway, Queens—is motoring ahead briskly.

Four of the planned six “neighborhoods” on the once-desolate 308-acre seaside stretch have been completed, their 800 condominium units sold off and occupied. A fifth is nearly sold out, at prices starting at $599,000 for a two-family home.

But five years after it all began, Arverne still lacks that most important neighborhood ingredient, a supermarket. A huge Stop & Shop has long been planned. A lovely rendering of it has graced the development’s Web site, but there was no financing available to turn that drawing into a produce/meat/deli reality.

Last month, that finally changed when the Bloomberg administration chose Arverne’s 55,000-square-foot supermarket and adjacent 21,000-square-foot shopping mall project to receive $16 million in federal stimulus financing.

Crains New York, September 30, 2009