The Bronx’s best-kept secret isn’t lion cubs at the zoo, rare blossoms at the botanical garden or Italian restaurants on Arthur Avenue. It’s a neighborhood called City Island that takes up less than half a square mile in the borough’s northeastern corner.
New Yorkers are flocking to the nautical nabe, known primarily for its seafood restaurants and marinas, for affordable real estate and a quaint community vibe. New residents — or “mussel suckers,” as natives (“clam diggers”) call them — include young families moving from Brooklyn and Manhattan looking for bigger homes, as well as empty-nesters downsizing from tonier locales in Westchester or Long Island.
Take Alexander Linzer and Beverly Jones, attorneys who were squeezing their son, Wyatt, and three rambunctious dogs into a one-bedroom apartment in trendy Williamsburg.
“We were out of our minds! We were looking for more space in an area with good schools that was in our price range,” Linzer says of the couple’s 2014 house hunt. Then Zillow’s listings app suggested a City Island property. “We were impressed with what you could get for the money.”
Indeed, in October 2014, the couple purchased a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house on Schofield Street with a back yard, a front yard and an above-ground pool for $450,000. Their taxes are $4,500 a year — compared to $10,000 or $15,000 in Westchester, Linzer says. Wyatt, now 4, will attend the local public school, which has a good reputation.
“[City Island] has a character all its own,” says Linzer, 39, who has a typical commute: an hour and 20 minutes each way via an express bus and the 6 train. “We moved to one of the only neighborhoods with a selection of restaurants that can rival Williamsburg.”
Among their favorites is Archie’s Tap & Table, opened last summer by chef and fellow mussel sucker Alex Pertsovsky. (On an island of 4,500 people, new eateries don’t open every day.) Following his parents and sister, who relocated from Queens and Long Island to neighboring townhouses on City Island, Pertsovsky moved to join them 12 years ago after graduating from culinary school in Manhattan.
“I fell in love with how quiet and peaceful the island actually is during the wintertime, and how close it is to the city,” he says.
At first, he traveled to jobs at Jean-Georges Vongerichten restaurants in Manhattan. But when his wife, Lee, and their now-2-year-old, Asher, entered the picture, he decided to work closer to home.
“To open a restaurant in Manhattan, you literally need millions of dollars,” says Pertsovsky. “But owning a restaurant is about creating a staple in the neighborhood. I wanted to work inside the community I lived in; most of my customers are my neighbors.”
The Pertsovskys recently bought a three-bedroom, 3½-bathroom at On the Sound, the first new real estate development on City Island in more than a decade. Thirteen of 43 units on the waterfront site, which have access to a gym, a clubhouse lounge, a pool and an outdoor esplanade, are still available, according to Jill Preschel, vice president of marketing of On the Sound developer Greystone. They range from $770,000 to over $1 million.
“When I wake up and walk the dog and go down to the diner, it feels like I am on vacation,” says Laura Clemente, an agent with McClellan Sotheby’s International Realty. She not only sells On the Sound properties but also moved there in July with her husband — giving up a larger house in Westchester’s Pelham Manor.
New developments like On the Sound are rare in the enclave, where real estate listings are dominated by resales of charming older houses: bungalows, Victorians, cottages. For example, an adorable green-and-yellow two-bedroom at 369 City Island Ave. is on the market for $459,000, repped by broker Teddy Montee of DJK Residential — a mussel sucker himself as of 2014. There are swankier properties, too, like a two-bedroom duplex condo with updated appliances in a gated community at 3 Deepwater Way, asking $625,000, from Douglas Elliman’s Charles G. Brophy.
In June, the median asking price on the island was $599,021, according to StreetEasy data. Meanwhile, in Williamsburg, it was $1.19 million. Since 2012, real estate prices have been climbing; median sales price totaled $350,000 then and rose to $410,000 last year. Most industry experts still maintain it’s a good time to buy. Controversy has delayed the completion of a new bridge — the island’s only (and easily clogged) access point from the mainland — and there’s also unwanted noise from Rodman’s Neck, a police training facility with a firing range.
More supply would help keep prices low. Local developer Haim Joseph says he is reviving his long-in-the-works plan to erect 22 two-family homes on the site of the old Royal Marina in a new development called Harbour Pointe Court. Joseph expects to start construction on that project in the spring, after permits are approved. He’s also plotting six new two-family homes on Tier Street with a similar timeline. Sales for both projects will start from $470,000 for 1,300-square-foot units and run up to $600,000 for larger homes. Meanwhile, a 32-apartment development called Seabreeze at 173 Marine St. is also reportedly in the pipeline, though city permits do not show any concrete action pending.
Local enthusiasm belies City Island’s tiny size and slow pace. Residents’ votes made it real estate website Curbed NY’s 2014 neighborhood of the year, beating such hot spots as West Chelsea and Tribeca. Pride runs deep — and spans generations.
Clam digger Dan Treiber, who runs a company selling vintage toys, postcards and other bric-a-brac called Dan’s Parents’ House, bought his actual parents’ house in 2010. (Yes, where he grew up.)
Then, in March, he bought a 150-year-old building at 239 City Island Ave. and transformed it into 239 Play, Dan’s Parents’ House’s first brick-and-mortar store. His wares are also currently a staple booth at the weekly Brooklyn Flea Market in Fort Greene and Dumbo.
With his wife, sculptor and artist Reina Mia Brill, Treiber is raising twins, Waverly and Thora. The kids swim every other day in the summer.
“I have a beach on the end of my street,” Treiber says. “Eventually, I don’t want to go to Brooklyn anymore. The goal is to walk the three blocks to the store. I have 4½-year-old twins, and I want them to grow up in the store.”
Serene waterfront life proves irresistible to everyone, from children to grownups.
After 22 years living part- and full-time in East Quogue, on Long Island, Cathy Moore and her partner James Daly decided to sell the house they’d outgrown and purchase a one-bedroom, 1½-bath condo on Schofield Street last fall.
“City Island is known as the sanctuary,” says Moore, who works as a real estate agent at Living New York in Manhattan. “It is extremely quiet. I’ve never slept so well in my life.”
Even long-time residents aren’t yet disenchanted.
“It is a small town in a big city. People who move here understand that,” says Barbara Burn Dolensek, a resident of 40 years who administers the nautical history museum, works with the civic association and edits the monthly newspaper. “How long does it take to walk to the post office? It can take an hour if you run into people you know. It really is a pretty special place.”
Here is the one island in New York you’d never want to visit: