Sure Beats the ‘Ka-Ching’ of Queens; Pair Bids City Prices Goodbye

By KATHLEEN LYNN, STAFF WRITER

When John and Bonnie Pavone decided they needed a bigger place than their Kew Gardens, Queens, co-op, they first looked around Queens.

"But we felt that everything in New York was overpriced," said Bonnie Pavone, 37, an executive assistant who works in midtown Manhattan.

Then they looked across the Hudson River, and ended up buying a two-bedroom condo at the Ambiance, a new five-story building on Polifly Road in Hackensack.

"Ambiance was the best bang for the buck," Bonnie Pavone said.

The Pavones are typical of many of the buyers at the Ambiance commuters who need to get into New York easily. Highland Park-based Kaplan Companies chose to build in Hackensack because of its public transportation and highway networks, according to President Jason Kaplan.

"We look for sites that have easy access from a transportation standpoint, with getting on and off the highway," Kaplan said. The Ambiance is close to Routes 80, 17 and 46.

It’s also just three blocks from the NJ Transit commuter train station on Essex Street a neighborhood that Hackensack has targeted for redevelopment. Among other proposals, the city is considering building new municipal offices and a parking deck near the train station.

"There’s a concerted effort now to take that Essex Street corridor and revitalize and redevelop it as best we can," said Hackensack City Manager Stephen Lo Iacono. Along with the Ambiance, the neighborhood also has two new bank buildings. In addition, a new office building is planned for the site of an abandoned gas station at Essex and Polifly.

New Jersey has been encouraging mixed-use residential/office/ retail development around train stations, because it increases pedestrian traffic and use of mass transit. The state Department of Transportation has designated 17 so-called Transit Villages, including sites in Rutherford and Morristown. The Transit Village developments are eligible for assistance, funding and grants from the state.

Hackensack is not a Transit Village, but Lo Iacono said the city is looking into the possibility of applying for Transit Village status.

"There’s a lot going on in this city," Lo Iacono said. "This city has, I think, really turned the corner. It’s going to be really transformed in the next five to 10 years."

Along with the Essex Street plans, a number of residential projects are in the pipeline for River Street, along the Hackensack River. And the city is looking at a possible mixed-use redevelopment of Main Street, which was a regional retail center decades ago, before the malls began drawing away customers.

Kaplan Companies is marketing the Ambiance condos to empty- nesters who are tired of home maintenance, and to people like the Pavones, who currently live in New York City or Hudson County. Ads and marketing brochures for the building feature the glittering New York skyline and play up the eight-mile commute to New York.

Sales agent Wendy Weissman said buyers choose the Ambiance because the apartments offer more space for the money than is available in new construction in New York or the Hudson River waterfront in New Jersey. The two-bedroom, two-bath apartments range from 1,200 square feet to 1,590 square feet; some have dens in addition to the bedrooms. Prices run from $365,000 to $511,000. The 54 units are expected to be ready for occupancy this summer; about 80 percent are already sold.

"It’s about supply and demand and cost," Weissman said. "You used to be able to get something affordable in Brooklyn or Queens; now those areas are so expensive."

Bonnie Pavone expects her commute to be similar to her old 45- minute commute from Kew Gardens to midtown. She and her husband look forward to settling into Hackensack: "We’ve lived in Queens our whole lives," she says. "It’ll be exciting to try something new."

Kaplan Companies, a 55-year-old company, traditionally built on so-called greenfields that is, previously undeveloped land. But the state is now steering builders back into older towns and cities, as a way to both revitalize those areas and to prevent construction in environmentally sensitive zones, such as the Highlands.

Kaplan has another project in Hackensack: an 88-unit town-home development, called Anchorage Cove, on 4 acres on the Hackensack River. Construction on that project, on South River Street, is scheduled to start in 2008.

"We’ve made a strategic decision over the last five years to get more involved in urban redevelopment," Kaplan said.

E-mail: lynn@northjersey.com

(c) 2007 Record, The; Bergen County, N.J.. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.