Alanna Schubach
Contributing editor Alanna Schubach has over a decade of experience as a New York City-based freelance journalist. She has written about real estate for Brick Underground, Mansion Global, and Barron's. She has also contributed features, essays, and op-eds to The Nation, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and The Village Voice. She won a National Association of Real Estate Editors’ silver award in 2018 for her Ask an Expert column for Brick Underground. She is also a fiction writer and a creative writing teacher, and currently lives in Brooklyn.
Posts by Alanna Schubach:
For those willing to venture to that mysterious region of the city that lies beyond the subway, Glen Oaks, Queens, offers a haven of affordability—and friendliness. The neighborhood is in eastern Queens, right at the Nassau County border; to the west is New Hyde Park, and to the south are Floral Park and Bellerose.
New Yorkers know that when you find a great building, you stay put—which makes the prevalence of NORCs (Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities) not all that surprising. Typically, NORCs are apartment complexes—or occasionally, entire neighborhoods—where residents have “aged in place,” meaning they’ve lived there for decades, well into senior citizenship. The massive Co-Op City complex in the Bronx is one such example; another, Penn South in Manhattan, was the first in the city to have a NORC program, and still does to this day.
This renovated co-op in the heart of SoHo has all the bells and whistles you’d expect of a luxury loft—especially one that’s asking $6.25 million (with a $4,095 monthly maintenance fee). Listed by Prime Manhattan, the four-bedroom was designed by the architect West Chin, whose famously minimalist approach contributes to the sense of spaciousness here.
