Million-dollar condos in Mineola's The Bridge to bring latest change to village's downtown

A new nine-story condo development is moving forward in Mineola, marking the latest effort to reshape the skyline in a village that has approved new housing at a rate 15 times greater than Long Island as a whole.

The Bridge, a 101-unit building steps from the Long Island Rail Road, hopes to attract a mix of empty nesters seeking to shed their home maintenance responsibilities and wealthy young professionals, developers Scott Burman and Adam Mann said. The building will create a new for-sale option in an area that has mostly seen rental development.

"As we saw there is a lot of competition [in rentals], we realized quickly that high-end condominiums are nonexistent," Mann said. "We thought there was a market to tap."

The condos will start around $1 million when they open in 2028, the developers said, raising questions about whether longtime residents and the local workforce will benefit the from new construction that will bring more wealthy residents to the area.

More than 1,100 rental apartments have opened in Mineola since 2010, and the population downtown has swelled by more than 1,700 as of 2024, according to an analysis by the Long Island Regional Economic Development Council. But even as new options have emerged it remains an expensive place to live.

However, Mineola Mayor Paul Pereira is optimistic that locals will benefit in other ways. The Bridge will include 10,000 square feet of ground floor event space, offering an option for evening events that he said the village lacks. Pereira, who was reelected in March to a second term, said he has a vision for downtown Mineola that doesn't end on Friday evening when workers at medical and law offices clear out.

He pictures a downtown where people flock for brunch or after-work drinks at sidewalk cafes and spill on to the streets during summer festivals.

"My vision is a walkable downtown that has nightlife but isn't crazy. That has events. That a family can come to for a great steak dinner and then go for an ice cream cone afterward," he said.

Pereira, a history teacher at Mineola High School for the past 33 years, said the population in the village remains below its 1970 peak of 21,845, even after new apartments have brought a wave of tenants since 2010, according to census data and an analysis by the Long Island Regional Economic Development Council. The population in 2024 was 21,305.

He takes the strong market for single-family homes in Mineola, where the median home price was $800,000 in the first half of 2025, as evidence development hasn't negatively affected home values.

"We're still predominantly and overwhelmingly a single-family home, suburban community that is 30 minutes from Manhattan," Pereira said. "We're not upstate New York."

But the condos will price out many, including local medical workers earning $40 to $50 an hour, said Joel Garcia, 29, a cardiovascular technician at nearby NYU Langone Hospital — Long Island. 

"It's impossible to live over here and afford it," Garcia, who lives in Elmont, said recently while on his lunch break. "I would say we make a good amount of money in what we do, and you still can't afford something like the new condos."

Long-running plan

The Bridge, at 212-214 Third St., sits adjacent to a seven-story NYU Langone office building and parking deck and borders Mineola's station plaza. NYU Langone Hospital — Long Island is directly across the railroad tracks, giving the site a valuable combination of proximity to express trains and major employers.

The plan for housing on the site dates to 2010, when developer Ross Levine assembled several of the lots between Mineola Boulevard and Third Avenue and later proposed building 119 rental apartments. An LLC managed by Mann and Burman acquired the roughly three-quarter-acre property last year for $19 million.

The Bridge will include a mix of one-, two- and three-bedroom units, with two-bedroom condos making up the majority. Amenities will include a rooftop pool, a dog walking and washing area, a bar, a library and a catering kitchen.

The condo building received tax benefits from the Nassau County Industrial Development Agency last month. They include a nearly $2.8 million sales tax exemption, property tax exemptions valued at nearly $2.4 million and a roughly $360,000 exemption from mortgage recording taxes.

The property tax benefits for the residential portion of the building cover only the construction period, with condo buyers paying full taxes after purchase. The project would not have been feasible without the county IDA assistance because of the cost of land and construction in the region, said Burman, principal at Burman Real Estate.

"Without the IDA assistance, a project like this would be very difficult, maybe impossible, to build," he said.

Burman said the condos' concrete-and-metal construction and high-rise amenities will stand out from existing condo communities made up of two- to three-story buildings with wood construction. 

"If you look at what it would cost to buy one of those units today and bring it up to modern standards, the pricing will be in line with what we're going to charge here," Burman said.

The median condo price in Nassau County was $815,000 for the 12 months ending in February, data from OneKey MLS shows.

Nicole Xu, an educational consultant, lives in a one-bedroom apartment in one of the newly constructed buildings in downtown Mineola with her husband, who's a physician at the nearby hospital. The couple pays $4,300 a month — more than double what she had previously paid for a large studio apartment in Philadelphia, which she said offered easier access to parks. While she's frustrated by the high prices, she said she appreciates there will soon be an option to buy.

"I think it's smarter to invest in something," she said.

Mineola's building boom

On a recent Monday morning, downtown Mineola hummed with construction activity. Drills whirred, saws buzzed and a demolition excavator tore into a former medical office as crews worked on three future apartment buildings all within several blocks between Mineola Boulevard and Willis Avenue.

The village has gained a reputation as one of the Island's most supportive of new development, earning recognition from the state as a pro-housing community and a $4.5 million New York Forward grant for downtown development. The creation of a master plan in 2005 and a downtown overlay district that allows for housing in exchange for community benefits have helped push projects forward through three mayoral administrations.

"In a lot of the small villages on Long Island, it would be very difficult to build a project like this," Burman said. "Mineola is one of the villages that is allowing for it and because of that, it's starting to gentrify in very positive ways [with] a lot of new restaurants and new retail popping up."

The pace of building in Mineola has outpaced Long Island as a whole. The village issued building permits for housing at a rate of 27 per 1,000 people from 2015 to 2022 compared with 1.7 per 1,000 on the rest of Long Island, according to a recent analysis by the Regional Plan Association.

Mineola has a mix of attributes that support new housing, including the necessary infrastructure and policies that allow for building, said Maulin Mehta, RPA's New York director. There's also been support from multiple past mayors including state Sen. Jack Martins and Nassau Legis. Scott Strauss.

"The political will is really critical," Mehta said.

Still, the RPA's analysis showed Morristown, New Jersey, which is close to Mineola in population and distance to Manhattan, issued about 2.5 times as many building permits during the period than Mineola.

"Mineola is doing great in the Long Island context," Mehta said. "When it comes to the regional context, it's a different story."

Given Long Island's limited supply of undeveloped land, redevelopment of blighted properties, as in the case of The Bridge, is often the best chance at creating new housing near transit, said Mike Florio, president of the Long Island Builders Institute.

The high prices at The Bridge reflect the cost of acquiring and developing land, including labor, materials, insurance and interest on construction financing.

"All this contributes to the high cost of housing here," Florio said. "It's very difficult to find starter homes or affordable housing because your cost to build a unit is extraordinarily high."