The four bedrooms in Karen Rosen’s Centre Island home are decorated with antique furniture and animal-skin rugs.
A spiral staircase leads from the third-floor master bedroom suite to a cupola overlooking Oyster Bay. Rosen turned one second-floor bedroom into a home office, with a modern desk and a cabinet made from wood screens inherited from her mother.
But the 69-year-old interior designer said she never uses it. She works at her kitchen table, with coffee nearby and fabric samples strewn across a billiards table in the adjacent living room.
Those are the only three rooms in which she and her husband, Tom, spend time. And as they age, it’s getting harder to maintain the house and its plot of land.
“It got to the point where it was starting to feel like excess,” Rosen said.
About a year ago, they found the Ritz-Carlton Residences in North Hills. After touring what was then an active construction site, they decided to downsize to one of the 124 condominiums there.
While the Rosens won’t move for another year as they try to sell their Centre Island Victorian for $2.89 million, others have moved in and the project’s first phase will mark its grand opening May 2, nearly nine years after it started.
But it’s “halftime” for the developer, Uniondale-based RXR Realty, Vice President Development and Asset Management Frank Haftel said — the firm will present revised plans to the Village of North Hills Board of Trustees on May 18 for phase two, expected to open in 2018.
“It’s great to be so close to our goal, but at the same time, it’s like you just finished a race but you know you’re going to run another one tomorrow,” Haftel said.
RXR bought the land off the Long Island Expressway’s South Service Road in 2007 and has since worked to develop it with the internationally renowned hotelier.
The high-end condominiums range from $1.2 million to $5 million in price and 1,533 to 3,824 square feet in size, Haftel said.
On the high end are 14 units formed from two smaller condos combined into one, Haftel said, the subject of a brief disagreement with the Village of North Hills last year.
Many buyers come from nearby areas such as Manhasset and Roslyn, RXR Sales and Marketing Project Manager Emily Bock said, and others are drawn by the quality of the Great Neck school district. Some had followed the project for seven years, she said.
On top of the space and location just 20 miles outside New York City, Bock said, they’re paying for amenities and personal service on the level of any Ritz-Carlton hotel, including valet parking, concierges and 24-hour security.
“There isn’t anything like this on Long Island,” she said. “There are a lot of gated communities in North Hills, but there’s nothing like the Ritz-Carlton.”
Both phase-one residential buildings have their own parking garage, full gym and lounge area with a bar.
A clubhouse has another gym, multiple bars, indoor and outdoor pools, event spaces, a movie theater and an indoor golf simulator.
“It’s as private or as social as you want it to be, and that’s a draw for a lot of people,” Bock said.
When it’s done, the Ritz will be the most densely populated of North Hills’ 29 subdivisions, Village of North Hills Mayor Marvin Natiss said.
RXR had to pay the village $21 million in lieu of amenities to get a zoning exception for the density, but it does not affect the village’s “appearance and integrity,” Natiss said.
“I think it will really enhance the reputation of the village as a high-end residential community,” Natiss said.
The Ritz is likely one of the last subdivisions ever built in North Hills, Natiss said — the only remaining undeveloped land is the former site of the Inisfada Retreat House, where the Manhasset Bay Group wants to build 46 houses.
Haftel said the project helps fill a dearth of high-density housing on Long Island, particularly for older people who want to “simplify their lives without giving up their communities.”
“It’s a very smart way of living larger than necessarily just … the place where you sleep and eat every day,” he said.
Karen Rosen was chosen to design the Ritz’s model units.
She knew she was designing for people who would be downsizing at the Ritz, she said, and as she put designs together, downsizing “was starting to look like a destination instead of a tragedy” for her.
“I was just really focused on creating a look that would be my signature, but a function that would help them sell more product by taking all the objections out of the equation,” she said.
Richard and Leslye Radutzky also were not looking to downsize when they first toured the residences, but they thought the condos could be an “interesting alternative” to their East Hills home, recently sold for $1.65 million.
Both 52, they have spent 18 years there after first moving to Roslyn from Manhattan’s Upper East Side when the first of their three children was 2 years old. He’s now 25.
“It was sort of the stars aligning, because as we were looking — because it was an interesting project and obviously the Ritz-Carlton name attached to it — we thought it would be kind of a nice change,” he said. “And at the same time, our neighborhood had more and more strollers.”
The Ritz’s second phase will hold 120 luxury condos in two buildings, Haftel said.
RXR has submitted plans to the Village of North Hills to put a temporary sales office in the clubhouse and build a playground for visiting grandchildren, among other changes that are small compared to those the project has previously seen.
Haftel came to RXR in early 2008 and worked to finalize the first designs until the U.S. financial crisis hit that September, drying up investment.
The recession was a “blessing in disguise,” Haftel said, letting developers undertake a redesign that opened the floor plans, created popular first-floor outdoor terraces and doubled the amount of amenities.
“We had a little bit of a luxury of time to talk to people and find out what potential clients, even people who had approached us before in the original plans, and talk about … what improvements they would make to the project,” Haftel said.
In 2014, the $110 million project got a $3.6 million tax-break package from the Nassau County Industrial Development Agency in which it will make payments in lieu of taxes for 20 years and be exempt from mortgage taxes and sales taxes on building materials and supplies. Construction started in March of that year.
The tax breaks were based on the project’s economic impact — phase one was to create 300 construction jobs, between 27 and 30 permanent staff jobs and allow for $1.25 million to $1.5 million worth of services such as housekeeping and laundry, Haftel said.
But they led to the first of two disagreements between the village and RXR in a relationship both Haftel and Natiss said has been generally good.
“They want to see this project getting done, they want to see it getting done right, and we may sometimes … not completely agree on what’s the right way to do it, but I think it’s always been respectful and they’ve never just arbitrarily shut the door on modifications,” Haftel said.
Natiss said he didn’t think residential projects should qualify for IDA tax breaks, and he didn’t like that RXR wanted 60 of the condos to be available on a rent-to-own basis.
Haftel said RXR wanted that option because people were hesitant to buy up front as the economy recovered.
They agreed those units would come on the village tax rolls as they were sold outright, Natiss said. Haftel said RXR ended up selling all of them and never rented any.
The second disagreement was a “question of interpretation,” Natiss said.
RXR wanted to count each of the 14 large combined units as one. But trustees maintained that they should still count as two toward the total of 244 units approved before RXR bought the property, Natiss said.
The board allowed the combinations but decided the larger ones would count as two.
Haftel and RXR Chairman and CEO Scott Rechler have been “gentlemen” through those disagreements and the rest of the project, Natiss said.
“They’re good to deal with,” Natiss said. “They’re responsive and they run a clean job.”
The Radutzkys said they plan to move into their 2,100-square-foot, $2.65 million terrace-level condo in mid- to late May.
They’ll have to adjust to having neighbors and seeing people in the elevator, they said, but they’ll want to move into a new apartment for a while. The Ritz amenities are “icing on the cake,” Richard said.
But the move is a “positive opportunity to de-clutter” as they make an emotional transition from their house, Leslye said in February.
Their three children, all Roslyn High School graduates, might even like the new place better, she said.
“They’re up for change,” Leslye said. “They’re not looking to see us rot away in our empty nest while they move on.”
Her move is at least a year away, but Karen Rosen looked nostalgic as she looked out the window at the very top of her house.
Tom will miss the “tinkering” that comes with an old house, she said, and she will miss the profound experience of leaving there in the mornings.
“I walk down these stairs and I’m like —” she takes a deep breath. “It’s like yoga. It opens your chest. It opens your lungs.”
But she said she knows being in a smaller space will be safer for them and make it easier to see their Manhattanite children and grandchildren.
Gated communities like the others in North Hills feel “like Army barracks” to Rosen, she said, but moving to the Ritz feels more like a vacation than downsizing.
“You feel like you’re movin’ on up,” she said.
