Miami-Style Luxury Condo Building Comes to the Jersey Shore
From Realtor.com
By Kiri Blakeley
July 23, 2025
Alittle more than an hour outside of New York City lies Monmouth County, NJ—and it's putting itself on the map.
It's where Netflix broke ground on its new $1 billion film studio in May, and a few towns over, a luxury condominium complex will be built right along the Atlantic Ocean.
"Good luck ever finding another site like this in your lifetime," real estate developer Roy Stillman recalls thinking when he first locked eyes on the 4 acres with 400 to 450 feet of frontage on Ocean Avenue North that his firm snapped up in 2023.
The Atlantic Club at 390-392 Ocean Ave. N in Long Branch, NJ, was inspired by Miami's white-washed buildings, especially the Fontainebleau Miami Beach hotel.
By Q1 2027, the current construction pit will be the site of a gleaming white luxury condo building more Miami than Jersey Shore—which is still mostly known for the scads of partying college kids who descend every summer.
"There is nothing like this around here," says Stillman of the new building, The Atlantic Club.
The Atlantic Club
The building will have 132 one- to five-bedroom condos, almost all with direct or partial ocean views (two will have what Stillman jokingly refers to as "unobstructed sunset views"). The units start at about $1.3 million and go up to $6 million for the two penthouses.
The $6 million penthouse is already sold. All of the units come with outdoor space—with some of the terraces nearly as large as the interior.
Each unit has oodles of outdoor space—either terraces or balconies, and some of the terraces are almost equal in square footage to the interior.
"Lots of outdoor space was consistently the feedback we got that people wanted," Stillman tells Realtor.com®. And a "COVID-era lesson" he learned in design—put in a den so that people can work at home.
The building was inspired by the white coastal look of the Fontainebleau Miami Beach hotel, the lobby of the flagship Chanel boutique in Paris, as well as various museums.
The lobby was inspired by the Chanel boutique in Paris.
Moving panels in the lobby will reflect the exquisite golden-toned hues of sunset, with paint eschewed in favor of textured wallpaper.
"The lobby is the crowning artistic feature of the building," says Stillman. Artistic indeed. The lobby was curated by contemporary designer Cristina Grajales with art by Parisian artist Christophe Come and Colombian atelier Herchizoo.
While children and teens are more than welcome—the residence's amenities include kid-friendly features like a children's playroom, a virtual reality room, and even a music practice room—there is no public restaurant or bar to attract the beach party crowd.
Amenities include a yoga studio, movie screening room, billiard and poker lounge, pet spa, fitness center, business center, private event room with a kitchen, business center, and a grand lounge overlooking the ocean.
Then there's the pool deck with sun beds, fire pits, and grills—perfect for entertaining.
With 40% of the units sold, including the two penthouses, who's doing the buying?
A grand lounge overlooks the pool deck and ocean.
The typical buyers
"What we're mostly seeing in buyers is older people who want no more maintenance and taking care of their single-family homes," says Teresa Minnick, a broker with Christie's International Real Estate Group, which is exclusively handling sales. "They're selling their large homes and moving here. They want all the amenities, and then the beach right outside their door. It's like a country club by the sea."
Buyers put down a 20% cash deposit to reserve their unit, but can later get a mortgage for the remainder. She says about half of buyers will pay all cash after selling their single-family homes in well-off areas of Monmouth and Bergen counties. Others will keep their main homes and use the Atlantic Club as a vacation pad.
Some units enter onto the pool deck, which overlooks the ocean.
Eighty-five percent of buyers are from the tristate area (New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut).
One of these typical buyers is Michele Kersten, co-founder of iStrive Community, a local nonprofit that offers services and support to the special-needs population, and a mom of two from Fairfield, NJ.
Last summer, she happened to pass The Atlantic Club signage while bringing her son to summer camp and was immediately struck with the feeling that this is where she belonged. After a week of drive-bys and internet searches, she walked into the sales center.
"My gut was telling me this is going to be a fabulous development and to get in with pre-construction pricing," she tells Realtor.com.
She sold her four-bedroom home and plunked down the deposit for a $1.79 million two-bedroom with a den on the main level. It overlooks the pool deck with an ocean view.
The condo building comes with a pool, of course. But the Atlantic Ocean is only steps away.
Kersten says she wasn't in the market to buy a new place. She just couldn't help herself. Her kids had graduated, and school districts were no longer a consideration. While the extra bedroom means her kids can visit—now it's her time.
"I look forward to using the pool as well as relaxing on my deck overlooking the beach and ocean," she says.
She notes that she "upended my whole life" for a piece of The Atlantic Club, and is currently living in a rental while waiting for the development to open.
It's in the details
But what is it about living next to the ocean when the Nantucket coastline is disappearing, Southern California estates are sliding toward the Pacific, and insurers are abandoning Florida?
Stillman points out that the condo building is not in a flood zone. It also complies with the Coastal Area Facility Review Act, which means the building met the criteria set by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, including a 2-foot setback for each foot of elevation.
Minnick says that, despite the ocean in their front yard, homeowners should have no problems getting insurance with an HO-6 policy, typical for condos.
The common areas such as the lobby and pool deck are covered by a master policy that's included with the homeowners association.
Given the building's oceanfront location, Stillman says the mist and salt spray were factored into the design for everything from the self-leveling compound on the concrete slabs on the decks to the marine-grade engineered wood flooring made from Baltic birch plywood and A-grade select French white oak.
In the early days of vetting potential subcontractors, he says they had to dismiss one who tried to slip in some cheaper gypsum into the self-leveling compound, which, if it got wet, would have caused mold.
"We could have saved many hundreds of thousands of dollars, and no one would have known, but we avoided that opportunity for mold," he says.
Another vendor wanted to use eucalyptus plywood in the flooring, but Stillman says humidity would cause the plywood to delaminate and lift.
"Everything we've tried to accomplish in the design of The Atlantic Club is oriented to one goal—to design and build the finest residential building ever set upon a piece of land in New Jersey," he says.
Developer Roy Stillman says he chose porcelain for the kitchen countertops, saying it is more durable and easier to care for than marble.
The area
With a population of about 30,000, Long Branch is sleepier and less touristy than Jersey's better-known Wildwood, Asbury Park, Seaside Heights, and Stone Harbor.
But with miles of pristine beach (voted the No. 5 best beach in the state by U.S. News & World Report in 2023) and a boardwalk, and only 90 minutes from Manhattan by car or train, and a half-hour drive from Princeton, the area has been attracting a lot of attention from developers and buyers—in addition to streaming behemoth Netflix.
The entertainment company's new 500,000-square-foot film studio, which the streaming giant describes as being a "premiere East Coast production hub," will sit on a 292-acre former U.S. Army installation only 5 miles away from the new residential building. The studio broke ground in May and will feature 12 cutting-edge soundstages.
The new studio will "create thousands of jobs for New Jersey residents, billions of dollars in economic output, and many other cultural benefits to the region and state," said co-CEO Ted Sarandos in a statement.
The area has seen a surge of new restaurants, shops, and wellness options in the area, many concentrated in Long Branch's quaint oceanfront Pier Village, a 10-minute stroll from The Atlantic Club.
"This area already has so much to offer," says Minnick. "Now it's just getting the word out to people."
