Arverne by the Sea

Case Study Summary: Arverne by the Sea is a 120-acre planned community on a previously vacant redevelopment site located adjacent to the Atlantic Ocean on the Rockaway Peninsula of Queens in New York City. The community is situated next to an A-train transit station and will include 2,296 residential units in a variety of building types, including both multifamily condominium buildings and attached two- and three-story structures; many of the units are designed and sold as two-family stacked units—one for the owner to live in and the other for the owner to rent. The community was designed to be resilient in the face of increasing hurricane risks and rising sea levels. The developers brought in more than 500,000 cubic yards of fill to raise the level of the entire site by an average of eight feet, developed a special drainage system to reduce flooding risk, and used a variety of construction materials and design techniques to improve the resilience of the buildings.