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In the past four years, the area across the street from MeadowWood known as Sprng Creek has been transformed by the Related Companies Gateway Center shopping mall. Target, Home Depot, Best Buy and a large supermarket have become weekend destinations for locals who eat at the Red Lobster and Olive Garden. This is an area that welcomes chains, which bring jobs, health care and stability to retail stretches. The project brought 4,400 construction jobs and 1,400 retail jobs to the struggling neighborhood.

"At first, retailers found it difficult to commit because of the uncertainty of the neighborhood," says Related Retail's President Glenn Goldstein, who plans to double the size of the shopping center, adding more retail in the next phase of the project. "The success of Phase 1 was an impetus to begin work on the expansion."

Across from MeadowWood's East campus and directly behind the Gateway mall, the Nehemiah Housing Complex is in Phase 1 of a five-phase construction project, bringing 2,000-plus middle-income housing units to the area. The red, white and gray single- and multifamily homes add a low-density village to a neighborhood requiring new streets, sewers, schools and day-care facilities.

Homes start at $158,000 with $46,000 subsidies for low-income families. The 227-acre mixed-use site, in partnership between Related, a coalition of Brooklyn church-related organizations and HPD, will be known as the Nehemiah Spring Creek Houses at Gateway Estates. Total completion is expected in 2013 with HPD lotteries for the remaining available homes kicking off in 2010. (Go to "Apartment Seekers" at www.nyc.gov/hpd for information on how to register for the lotteries.)

"We're creating a vibrant community where working-class families can be proud to live," says Wendell Walters, HPD's assistant commissioner of housing production, who noted that standard HPD policy ensures that 50% of the lottery winners come from the local community. "There'll be 150,000 square feet of outdoor recreational space."

Detractors point to the neighborhood's former reputation as neglected, dangerous and abandoned, or that it's too far from midtown Manhattan. Residents disagree. Mable Elliott will take the BM1 Express bus to Manhattan every day for $5 each way. It takes less than 40 minutes. The L train from the Canarsie stop to Union Square is a 32-minute ride. Another resident drives 25 minutes from MeadowWood to downtown Brooklyn. Parking at the development costs only $20 per month.

"We try to make everything easy for the buyers here," says Fillmore's Ho. "We are part of the rejuvenation of a community. If good things happen here, we all do better."

Apollo Urban's Jim Simmons, who has pioneered similar developments in the Bronx, L.A. and Newark, says projects like these are not all about money. "You're not looking for obscene profit margins," says Simmons. "This was no picnic when we took over. These are long-term investments that you hope pay off for your investors and the people who purchase homes."

Harlen Reid bought a studio for less than $100,000 in late January. He fixed his credit after filing for bankruptcy a few years back, by changing his spending habits. "Owning my own apartment gives me a feeling of tremendous personal security," says Reid. "Anyone can put their credit back together. I have an 18-year-old daughter. I need to leave her something before I leave this earth. Now I feel confident I can."