For 15 years, residents of the Village of Great Neck Plaza and the neighboring Village of Kensington have watched with dismay as a complex of brick buildings on Bond Street and Nassau Drive that once housed the Kensington-Johnson Elementary School fell into decay.

Crumbling walls and boarded windows are all that remain of the public school, which opened in 1921 and served the two communities for 60 years until falling enrollment prompted the Great Neck school district to close it in 1981.

Redevelopment proposals ranging from converting the existing buildings into 90 condominium apartments selling for as much as $1 million each, to knocking them down a building a hotel, all failed to materialize.

In the late 1980’s, the property fell into the hands of a consortium of banks headed by Fidelity New York, of Floral Park. The banks found a buyer in 1994 in Maple Plaza Development, a subsidiary of the Nassimi Corporation, a residential and commercial development group with offices in Manhattan.

Now the 3.6-acre site, which is in the heart of an affluent residential area just minutes from Middle Neck Road, Great Neck Plaza’s main shopping street, and from Great Neck train station, is finally being readied for new construction.

Maple Plaza’s proposal for a 68-unit condominium that would include a 31-unit four-story apartment building and 37 single-family attached and semi-attached townhouses received its final approvals from the Village of Great Neck Plaza on November 20th.

"This is the last very large developable piece of land in the Plaza, and the village has taken a lot of time with this project to make sure all of the environmental factors were covered and that it would become a "showplace" said the village mayor, Robert J. Rosegarten.

The village not only wanted to make sure that a pleasing transition from the commercial downtown hub to the residential streets of Kensington was achieved, but also got involved down to such details as what caliber of trees would be planted, the mayor said.

The Nassimi Corporation has been active primarily in residential and office construction in New York City - their buildings include 10 West 46th St in Manhattan - and with shopping center development in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. But the Great Neck Plaza property presented an opportunity for the principals, the Nassimi family, to build in their own hometown.

"We’ve been looking at this property for the last ten years because we live here," said Mike M. Nassimi, the company’s vice president, who lives around the corner from the site.

Demolition of the school buildings will start this month, with ground breaking for the new structures and the start of sales both scheduled for February. Construction of the $15 million project, to be called Portico at Great Neck, is expected to take 18 months.

The Portico is the village’s first new multifamily residential development since the late 1980s, when a building boom transformed Cutter Mill Road north of the Long Island Railroad tracks, and Great Neck Road to the south, into an enclave of modern condominium buildings designed for young professionals and older couples who wanted the convenience of apartment style housing.

But after the stock market collapsed, sales at the new buildings faltered. Some, like the 31-unit Plaza 100 at 100 Great Neck Road, were turned into rentals though they have now resumed sales. Another, the Sussex, at 30 Cutter Mill Road, was never completed and was transformed into the 85-Room Inn At Great Neck Hotel, which opened in 1994.

The Portico Developers say they now see reviving interest for new multifamily residential development in the Great Neck Area.

One segment of the market they hope to attract consists of older couples with large houses who want to scale down but it is not the only one.


Young professionals and couples who want to live in the area but who cannot afford single-family house prices are also potential buyers, Mr. Nassimi said.

A marketing study prepared for the developers by the Ford Phase II Realty Corporation of Floral Park found that very little new housing was available in the Great neck area. For example, of Great neck Plaza’s 3,612 mostly multifamily housing units, 65 percent were built before 1960, and only 405 new units were built since 1980.

Apartment prices at the Portico, are expected to start at $200,000 for a 900-square foot one-bedroom and rage up to $400,000 for an 1,800 square-foot three-bedroom.

The 37 town houses will range in size form 1,800 square feet to 2,600 square feet, and will have three to four bedrooms. All will have basements and balconies. Prices for these are expected to range from $450,000 to $750,000.

An existing 103-car underground garage built by a previous developer who pulled out will provide parking that is directly accessible from the apartment house. Some of the town houses also will have access to the garage from their basements. The other town houses will all have one-car garages.

To provide a transition between the more urban scale of Great Neck Plaza and the single-family residential character of the neighboring Village of Kensington on which the site borders, "We took the approach of placing the higher density apartment building on the southern boundary and stepping down to the lower-scale town house units where the property abuts Kensington," said Gregg W. Shoemaker, the projects’ architect. He is a partner of Nielson & Shoemaker Architects in Albertson.

The semi-attached town houses will be placed along the perimeter of the property and will face out to Bond Street and Nassau Road. Houses placed along interior roads will be built in rows of up to eight units.

The traditional architecture will reflect elements of the area’s existing apartment buildings and single-family house, Mr. Shoemaker said. Brick veneer, wood trim ad stucco accents will be used, along with bay and arched windows and arched entryways, pitched roofs and gables.

Flowering trees, large masses of perennials and even trailing plants descending from the apartment house terraces are part of the landscape design by the Sear-Brown Group of Garden City. The interior gardens will include a sculpture garden, and trees will be placed in large containers in areas above the garage where they otherwise could not grow.

The project will have a perimeter fence and the entrance on Bond Street will be manned around the clock.

Because of deep community ties to the former school, two elements of the old buildings - a limestone portico and plaque containing the name of the school - will be saved and placed next to a pedestrian exit leading to Middle Neck Road.


The new project will also further bolster retail activity along Middle Neck Road, Mayor Rosegarten said. The shopping strip has already experienced a turnaround, he noted, with vacancies dropping from about 40 four years ago to three today, plus a half-dozen in a building undergoing renovation.

Other new residential construction is coming to Great Neck Plaza, in the form of assisted living facilities - one a licensed adult home, the other a residential hotel with health care services available through an outside provider.

The 144-unit adult home is being developed on great neck Road by a partnership consisting of Armstrong Management of Garden City, R.D. Management of Manhattan, and the Kapson Senior Quarters Corporation of Woodbury. The 144 units will consist of a mix of studios and one and two bedroom residence, that, with meals and health services included, will rent for an average of $3,500 a month.

The residential hotel will be developed on Cutter Mill Road, on the 1.5-acre site of a marble yard. The 148-unit project, where residents can receive on-site health services from North Shore University Hospital, will have one and two bedroom apartments.

The developer is a partnership of Hasset Belfer Senior Housing of Great neck and Carematrix of Needham, Mass. Carematrix will manage the facility, where monthly rents, not including health care but including meals, are expected to be in the $3,000 to $4,600 range.