Luxury apartment buildings in New York City are offering their luxury tenants the chance to mingle on “adult excursions.”
Although these pre-planned excursions are billed as a perk, the chance to spend the weekend with the neighbors is described by some as “miserable.”
The exclusive events invite renters to meet their neighbors while participating in wine tasting, apple picking and sailing. reported the New York Post.
Among the building operators offering such trips is The Brodsky Organization, a developer with more than 50 residential buildings in New York.
Brodsky began offering the service to its residents last fall in partnership with outdoor activities company Sourced Adventures.
One of the successful excursions was a trip to Pennings Orchard in Warwick, where residents mingled while picking apples and pumpkins.
Residents will still have to pay for the trips, but at a significant discount from the list price.
The trip to Pennings Orchard, where the building arranged round-trip transportation, cost $70 per person, compared to Sourced Adventures’ usual price of $115.
Luxury apartment complexes plan outings such as apple picking for their tenants
Joe Porritt, Brodsky’s director of leasing and marketing, said the event sold out almost immediately, showing how much demand there is for such a service.
However, some say the trips “sound miserable.”
“Call me old fashioned, but in my day we used to ignore our neighbors until we all suddenly got mad at the building management about the heat going out,” Clio Chang from Curbed wrote.
‘If the building manager invited us to go apple picking, we would think it was a trick! And it turns out to be kind of a trick,” she said of developers admitting it’s a way to stay competitive without lowering rents.
“The goal of these trips is to create a community for our residents that you don’t get as good of a sense of with the amenities in the buildings,” Porritt told the New York Post.
“The residents on these trips are there because they want to be social,” he added.
Brodsky’s other excursions include a tour of three wineries on the North Fork of Long Island.
Other luxury properties offering a similar excursion service include Gotham Organization’s One Park Point in Brooklyn and RXR’s Maven at Mott Haven in the South Bronx.
Other excursions include a tour of three wineries on the North Fork of Long Island
The Lower East Side’s Suffolk is one such luxury building that organizes outings for its residents
Residents of The Suffolk, meanwhile, took a sailboat tour of Manhattan, chatting with their neighbors over drinks against the backdrop of the city’s financial district.
“They have become a cornerstone for us,” Gotham Organization marketing director Natasha Mazeau told the Post.
One Park Point, a luxury residential building in Brooklyn, has partnered with Prospect Park Stable to host outdoor rides for residents to enjoy together.
“Excursions are a nice perk when you live in a building,” said Deepti Mittal of Douglas Elliman about the rise of such building-wide activities.
“Given how expensive renting is, people are shopping around more than they normally would before making a decision.
“Rather than lowering the price, developers are trying to stay competitive by giving you more benefits.”
According to Realtor.com, the average rent for apartments in four New York City boroughs – Manhattan, Queens, the Bronx and Brooklyn – was $3,425 in August.
In the US as a whole, the average monthly rental payment is just over $2,000.