Oceana Condominiums

Rank #10
Cost: $250 million

Luxury has returned to Brighton Beach.

The Oceana Condominium and Club offers 850 luxury condominiums, indoor and outdoor pools, a clubhouse, a one-acre park, private and valet parking and a complete health club.

Beyond that, the developers, Muss Development Co. and the Carlyle Group LLC, built an entirely new streetscape and infrastructure system for the gated community.

Oceana, which broke ground in 1999, was completed in phases and delivered as each of the 12 buildings was completed. The project was awarded the "Best For Sale Housing Community in America" in the National Association of Builders 2003 "Pillars of the Industry" awards.

Now, with each of the units sold between $410,000 and $1.22 million, the $250 million project is lauded as one of the most successful for-sale projects in the five boroughs of New York.

This is no small feat for a development in what used to be one of the more blighted areas of Brooklyn. The project, bounded by Brighton Beach Avenue and the Boardwalk and Coney Island Avenue and Seacoast Terrace, was built on the 15-acre site of a former public recreation facility that had been falling into disuse for several years and finally went out of business in 1997.

Much of Brighton Beach was similarly emptied. Originally a summer resort after the American Civil War, bathhouses and theaters replaced amusement parks and boardwalks in the early 1900s. It first became a year-round community in the early 1920s, with the development of apartment buildings along Brighton Beach Avenue drawing Russian immigrants from around the world.

Oceana has its roots in that history. Isaac Muss was a Russian-born Brooklyn contractor, and it is his family - through Muss Development - that acquired the former Brighton Beach Baths and began planning the redevelopment of the area. An attempt to build high-rises on the site in the late 1980s failed.

Then in 1999, with designs by San Francisco-based Sandy & Babock Architects and New York-based Schuman, Lichtenstein, Claman & Efron Architects, Muss Development finally broke ground on Oceana.

One key to its success the second time around was low-rise buildings, five to 12 stories tall, that would meet waterfront zoning regulations. Another was a classic design of gabled roofs and balconies.

Muss and Carlyle were also able to secure a 15-year tax abatement on their development, abating their taxes fully for the first 11 years and rising 20 percent each year for the next four.

Many of the buyers at Oceana have been second-generation Russian families who wanted to be close to the ocean as well as to their history on Brighton Beach.

"It really is a lifestyle that people are buying into," said Jason Muss of Muss Development.

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