Everything here radiates from Taffner Field House on St. John's Queens campus at 8000 Utopia Pkwy, not from Manhattan. The smart play for a Red Storm athlete is to live in the leafy, low-key pockets just east and south of campus, Jamaica Estates, Fresh Meadows, and Forest Hills, where a five-to-fifteen-minute drive to practice buys privacy that Manhattan never will. When the night calls for the city, the LIRR and E/F trains put Midtown twenty-five minutes away without the commute defining your life.
Queens' most prestigious residential pocket, winding tree-canopied streets of detached Tudor and brick mansions on oversized lots, immediately south of campus.
Leafy, residential, family-oriented blocks of single-family homes and garden co-ops directly east of campus, with quick parkway access.
A storied, privately maintained Tudor-village enclave with its own security patrol, cobblestone streets, and the most exclusive address in central Queens.
Northeast Queens neighborhood of well-kept detached homes, top-rated schools, and a lively Bell Boulevard restaurant strip near the water.
The neighborhoods above sit inside a twenty-minute drive of Taffner Field House. But many athletes prioritize lifestyle, privacy, and prestige over commute — these are the areas across New York where athletes most often buy and rent, even though they’re a longer drive from the facility.
A tiny gated-feeling enclave of fewer than 2,000 residents perched above the Hudson in Bergen County, with multi-acre mansions, a median home price near $6M, and a long roster of athlete and celebrity homeowners. Patrick Ewing, CC Sabathia, Johnny Damon, and Ilya Kovalchuk have all lived here, and Tom Brady once shopped the town.
Connecticut's marquee old-money town, where backcountry enclaves like Conyers Farm average north of $13M and gated estates list as high as $49.5M. Generations of New York athletes — Mark Messier, Mike Richter, Mark Teixeira, Frank Gifford, Tom Seaver — have settled here alongside Hollywood and finance names.
For athletes who want the city itself, Tribeca's discreet full-floor lofts and the glass towers of Hudson Yards (15 and 35 HY) are the prestige picks. Rob Gronkowski bought at 35 Hudson Yards and Tom Brady kept a Tribeca pied-a-terre at 70 Vestry, the same buildings that draw finance and entertainment elite.
Westchester's celebrity enclave of horse farms and wooded estates, where listings run up to roughly $15M on lots stretching to 100 acres. Long favored by entertainers and executives — Drew Barrymore and Ian Schrager among them — for its rural calm an hour from Midtown.