By Katy Gagnon
But it's just one of the newly remodeled units in the Towers at Water's Edge, a private community looking over Little Neck Bay. The Towers is a project where a group of 180 apartments is being drastically remodeled to bring high-style city living to Bayside.”There's nothing like it in the five boroughs,” said Myles Horn, principal of MJH Birchwood, the project's developer, who grew up in Bayside. “It sort of knocks people's socks off.”Each renovated apartment will include a view of either Manhattan, Little Neck Bay or the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge, Horn said. Future tenants will enjoy gourmet kitchens, maple floors and lavishly remodeled baths. Horn and his developers are revamping the community's common areas to include a swimming pool, five tennis courts, a shopping arcade and a fitness center.And with a 27-minute commute to Manhattan on the Long Island Rail Road and a price of roughly $795,000 for a three-bedroom apartment, buyers from all over the city are coming out in droves. About 40 percent of the units have sold so far, Horn said.”So many people are being priced out of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Long Island City and Astoria, and basically our price point and the value sort of come together perfectly,” he said.In fact, about a quarter of Horn's buyers include families with children coming for School District 26, the city's highest performing district.Built in the 1960s, the towers were converted to a co-op in the late 1980s. About half of the tower's apartments were sold while the rest, Horn said, remained as rental units until they were purchased by Horn in 2007. Of the 231 apartments Horn now owns, 50 are rent-stabilized, but the remaining units will be put on the sales block once the lease expires. Then Horn will move in with his team to do the remodeling.Horn, who now lives with his family on Manhattan's Upper West Side and develops property all over the city, welcomes the experience of working in Bayside, where he lived for most of his childhood.”It's exciting to give back to Bayside, which gave a lot to me,” he said. He was a child when the Towers were first built and remembers them as being extraordinary structures. Ironically, his mother now lives across the street from the Towers.”I like to think of myself as a Queens boy who's come home,” he said. “At least that's what my mom tells everybody.”Reach reporter Katy Gagnon by e-mail at news@timesledger.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 174.
