Almost 500 homes nearly completed in 1,600-unit Kiryas Joel condo complex
1,600-unit complex awaits infrastructure improvements
Chris McKenna
Times Herald-Record
KIRYAS JOEL - The first several hundred units are nearly finished in a condo complex that will eventually house more people than some entire towns in Orange County.
The 1,600-unit Veyoel Moshe Gardens project has been taking shape on a hillside overlooking Route 17 since 2018, filling part of a 70-acre peninsula of Kiryas Joel that used to be woods. As many as 700 units in all are under construction and up to 500 are almost done, the project's planner told the Times Herald-Record.
Several hurdles still must be cleared before any completed condos can be occupied.
Construction continues on housing in Kiryas Joel by Nininger Rd. June 15, 2021.
One is the completion of a new sewer main that was needed to handle the increased wastewater, which is piped through Monroe to a treatment plant in Harriman. Workers had already installed the wider pipe in Monroe and were preparing to bore under Route 17 to connect it to mains on the Kiryas Joel side of the highway.
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Robert Gray, the Orange County official who oversees the county-run sewer system serving that area, told the Times Herald-Record last week that the sewer work is expected to be done by Sept. 1 and will cost $4.3 million, all borne by the developer of Veyoel Moshe Gardens.
Almost 500 homes are nearly completed in a 1,600-unit condo complex in Kiryas Joel, seen here on June 15, 2021.
In addition, workers must finish burying underground gas and electric lines, pave roads and install two traffic signals at the project entrances on County Route 105 and Nininger Road, said Joel Mann of Brach & Mann Associates, the planning firm for the project. The signal at Route 105 and Bakertown Road is set to be installed within a couple weeks.
Mann said the condos will range in size from 1,200 square feet to 2,800 square feet. No prices have been set. One of two planned synagogues is also under construction.
The project is the largest by far out of several that are being built in Kiryas Joel to meet housing demand in the ever-growing Satmar Hasidic community. Planners estimated during the environmental review for Veyoel Moshe Gardens that it ultimately could house as many as 9,000 people, or roughly one-third of the nearly 27,000 residents the village was estimated to have as of mid-2019.
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Booming populations
That would make the condo complex more populous than both the city of Port Jervis and the village of Monroe - each of which had an estimated 8,600 residents in 2019 - as well as seven towns in Orange, such as Wawayanda and Mount Hope.
Kiryas Joel recently got state approval for two new wells in Monroe and Woodbury that will enable it to serve the initial occupants of Veyoel Moshe Gardens, removing what could have been another obstacle to their moving in.
The new wells boosted the village's overall water supply to 2.8 million gallons per day as an interim step while the village continues building a 13.5-mile pipeline to tap New York City's Catskill Aqueduct. That $94 million project, meant to secure a long-term water source for Kiryas Joel, has been underway since 2013 and is more than halfway done.
Veyoel Moshe Gardens is being built on land that a businessman from Mount Kisco seized in a mortgage foreclosure in 1989 and held for nearly three decades, allowing its value to soar as more of Kiryas Joel was developed and land grew scarce.
Orange County property records show Irving Bauer finally sold his 70 acres for $100 million to Kiryas Joel businessman Akiva Klein in 2019, after construction had already started on Veyoel Moshe Gardens. Klein is the developer of the project.
Other big housing projects under construction in Kiryas Joel include 543-unit Acres Point, 482-unit Forest Edge, 457-unit Acres Enclave, 250-unit Golden Towers and 191-unit High End on Forest.
The completion of those projects will require larger pipes to be installed for the village's two sewer trunk lines. The developers are expected to pay for that work as well.
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