Housing developer has his eye on the bigger picture.

Though Peter Fine, co-founder of Atlantic Development Group LLC, has become adept at multi-million dollar luxury projects in Manhattan which feature prominently in the group's residential portfolio, his commitment to affordable housing is what truly grounds his work.

Perhaps that devotion comes from the fact that Fine's life is rooted in these kinds of projects himself. A third generation New Yorker, Fine grew up in a two bedroom apartment in a low income housing project straddling the borders of Flushing and Jamaica Queens, with Eastern European immigrant parents who stretched his yellow cab driver wage to educate their children well.

After studying biology at SUNY Cortland, Fine completed advanced degrees at New York University before entering the social service field. While employed as a street outreach worker, he realized housing was both the most fundamental need for his clients and part of the system he knew how to maneuver.

"My childhood gave me an appreciation of how this town is really set up to incubate immigrants and working class people in housing and schools. Our business is really just an amplification of that," Fine said.

In 1991, Fine, who sought a more effective way of helping people and a more efficient vehicle for his creativity, took a huge risk.

He quit his job and with $1,000 in the bank and a handful of social service contacts, started Fine Consulting and Development, a social service and housing development consulting company. He worked from his living room. Fine's keen knack for organizing gradually earned him more complicated projects that integrated housing and social services, such as mentally ill residential facilities and elderly assisted living homes.

When Fine partnered with colleague, Marc Altheim, in 1996 and started Atlantic Development Group, set their sights on assisted living facilities for the elderly as well as affordable housing projects through which the team could draw on their backgrounds. Their first real project as Atlantic Development was a 72-unit affordable housing project on Hughes Avenue in the Bronx.

Fine admits that the current housing market's skyrocketing construction costs and property taxes makes the creation of affordable housing a tricky endeavor. Yet he has managed to maintain about 65% affordable housing in his projects.

"We are not living in a time period now where the government has a huge public housing engine growing. It is, of course, more difficult to scrape together the money to build working class and middle class housing. It is a challenge that I love," Fine said.

Their past work in affordable housing often helps them secure larger commercial projects, particularly in areas of the Bronx they are heavily vested. They are currently creating the Hub, a 130,000 s/ f mixed use project on 149th street, and the Boricua College, a four-year accredited school that will be part of Boricua Village a 900,000 s/f project that will provide campus apartment and retail space for students and the community in the South Bronx.

A 150,000 s/f mixed use project in Cooper Square Atlantic is currently managing floored Fine because the land had to be carried for three years while the project's 25,000 s/f of retail space and 150 apartments were planned.

"I really would never have thought, when I first started out, that I would be incubating millions of dollars of expense per year in order to build a project," he said. "Today, we have both the financial capability and the management experience to do these types of large-scale developments. It is still a bit strange to me though. Every once in a while I have to pinch myself to believe it."

In the future, the team would like to investigate the possibility of diving further into retail projects--bringing amenities like movie theatres, pharmacies and catering halls to areas of the Bronx that have long been neglected.

They will continue to experiment with new projects, including luxury housing, though Fine maintains they will never stray too far from the ideals that helped shape him.

"We continue to be an extremely vertically integrated company, and concentrate on projects for all New Yorkers. Mark and I both come from social service backgrounds. Even if we wound up building one million square foot malls, affordable housing is always going to be our core," Fine said.