A New Gated Community – in Brooklyn – Is Set To Welcome Residents

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

Patrick Falletta said his new condominium complex reminds him of planned communities in Boca Raton and Boynton Beach, Fla. There’s a clubhouse, a lap pool, a fitness center, a sauna, a private library — and even a gate along the property’s perimeter.

Yet Mr. Falletta’s new home, at a condominium complex called Mill Harbor, is not in South Florida, Southern California, or the Sun Belt, which are known for such private communities. Mill Harbor, a 208-unit complex on six manicured acres, is in the Bergen Beach section of Brooklyn. “You have the New York atmosphere 20 blocks away, and still you have a taste of the suburbs,” Mr. Falletta, a 58-year-old funeral director, said.”It’s a good thing — like you’re living in two worlds.”

New Yorkers are well acquainted with doormen and concierges — not with gates and guardhouses. Mill Harbor, which will welcome its first residents early next spring, is the city’s newest gated community.

In a city of more than 8 million inhabitants, and where square-feet, let alone land and lots, are coveted, private, gated communities are rare.

The oldest is Seagate — a heavily Jewish neighborhood founded 97 years ago on the century on the Western tip of Coney Island.

In Queens, there’s Breezy Point, a private Rockaway beach community founded a half-century ago, and thought to be home to one of the nation’s largest concentration of Irish-Americans. There’s also the Magnolia Court Condominiums, which opened about three years ago on a three-acre swath of the middle-class Queens neighborhood of Ozone Park.

More than 80% of the 65 one-, two-, and three-bedroom residences in the first phase have sold, according Parkmore Development LLC, the real estate firm behind Mill Harbor. Units, which will be ready for occupancy in February, have been scooped up by a mix of young families and empty nesters, who have paid anywhere from the low $400,000s to the mid-$700,000s.”One of the things that drew them was the idea of living in a gated community,” a managing member Parkmore Development, Sean Lavin, said. “We wanted to create something similar to a garden-style complex you’d see in Florida or Virginia.”

The second phase, just now hitting the market, will be ready by late spring, Mr. Lavin said.

“The idea of closing yourself off from the public is nothing new in urban areas,” a researcher for the National Housing Institute, Alan Mallach, said. “Historically, it was done with doormen. The ParkAvenue apartment building is a version of a gated community. In lower density urban areas, though, you can follow the suburban model.”

That is, a gated community with actual gates and for-residents-only communal space. Why would someone choose to live behind gates?

“Sometimes it’s literal, physical safety,” Mr. Mallach said. “But a lot of times, it’s more about a social or psychological comfort levels — like many retirement communities. The risk of an invasion might be small, but people choose to self-segregate. The want to live with others who are similar.”

A professor of environmental psychology at CUNY’s Graduate Center, Setha Low, took on the allure of gated communities and their pitfalls in her 2003 book “Behind the Gates: Life, Security and the Pursuit of Happiness in Fortress America.” She said that while most Americans cite safety as a reason for choosing gated communities, her research showed that the crime rates in gated communities were almost indistinguishable from the non-gated areas in the same general neighborhood. “Most people say they’re moving there for security, but it could be anything from wanting your children to be safe on the street, to wanting to recreate the type of neighborhood they grew up in,” she told The New York Sun.

It was, indeed, Mill Harbor’s roundthe-clock security — “there’s a guard house, and only one way in,” he said — and the range of communal amenities on the grounds that attracted Mr. Falletta, who now lives in a free-standing twofamily home nearby. Plus, he said, there’s the advantage of having a yard that you’re not responsible for keeping up. “There comes a stage in life when you just get tired of shoveling snow,” he said.


The New York Sun

© 2025 The New York Sun Company, LLC. All rights reserved.

Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. The material on this site is protected by copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used.

The New York Sun

Sign in or  Create a free account

or
By continuing you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use