OPTIMIST ON THE STATEN ISLAND SHORE
TWENTY-four Staten Islanders died during Sandy, more than any other borough. Spots on the eastern shore, including New Dorp Beach and Midland Beach, were whacked particularly hard. Some homes were never rebuilt. Hundreds of homeowners opted to sell their homes to the state, which then turned around and sold them at auction for a fraction of the price. Chris Reno saw potential there. He’s a general contractor who also works in real estate, so he’s not averse to a fixer-upper. Reno attended an auction
in 2016 and was able to buy a few lots, including one on Garibaldi Avenue in New Dorp Beach for $285,000 that held a Sandy-ravaged beach bungalow. He decided to tear it down and a build a new home for himself. The main appeal for him — other than the beachy vibes — was a chance to build a taller house than normally allowed by neighborhood zoning laws; something the Department of City Planning allowed in exchange for eliminating flood-prone areas like a basement and first floor.
“It just gave you the opportunities to get a lot more house on any lot than you could almost anywhere else in Staten Island,” says Reno, 50.
His house on the site is 5,000 square feet across four floors with seven beds, five bathrooms and a roof deck; he rents a downstairs unit to his brother. It’s still in what the city lists as a high-risk flood zone, at about 1,400 feet from lower New York Bay.
But Reno says he is confident in its construction. He wishes he had bought more properties at auction; the market cooled in the year after the storm hit, but it’s hot again, he says. The average home price on Staten Island was $336,000 in 2013, according to Zillow. Now it’s $508,000. “A lot of these houses just floated off these foundations. That’s a virtual impossibility right now,” he says. “I don’t know if you could knock this house down with a direct hit from a hurricane.”