In fact the patios, ranging in price from $40,000 to $150,000 (depending on size, location and time of purchase) have sold faster than the condos.

Of the 157 luxury units at 1450 Washington Street — some of them penthouses with attached outdoor space — two-thirds have sold, said John McCullough, an assistant vice president of Toll Brothers City Living. Of the 15 private terraces, only two remain.

For those gravitating to North Jersey’s waterfront — whether it be families leaving New York City in search of more space, or 20-somethings looking for better job and social prospects — having private access to the outdoors has become an expectation, and cost does not really seem to be an issue. Increasingly, this holds true despite the buildings’ more-or-less suburban location, in easy proximity to public green space of various kinds. Developers have responded by providing not only access, but also full-scale open-air social and entertainment centers, with lap pools, grilling stations, fire pits, playgrounds, jogging paths and dog runs at many of the newer upscale waterfront developments.

“I don’t think they can truly be competitive without having some type of outdoor offering,” said Chris Krasas, the chief financial officer of Let It Grow, a landscape and construction company in River Edge that has built several outdoor spaces in Hoboken, Jersey City and New York City. “The need to bring nature into these mostly concrete structures and for people to have a place to interact with the outdoor environment is very important.”

Traditionally these outdoor amenities have been available to the residents of a building as common space, but Toll Brothers has gone a step further. In addition to the private terraces, its newer buildings have two common areas: a second-floor courtyard garden surrounded by park benches, and a rooftop area with lounge chairs, barbecue grills and a two-sided glassed-in fire pit. Mr. McCullough said the idea was to offer tenants a choice.

“If you can afford a unit with a private outdoor space attached, that’s gold,” he said. “Or you might buy a relatively lower-priced unit, then take that money you saved to buy outdoor space.”

The private terraces range in size from 450 to 750 square feet. Five are on a seventh-floor rooftop, and 10 are on the top of the 12-story building. Each comes with gas, water and electric hookups; two lounge chairs; and an outdoor dining set. The two 550-square-foot patios still for sale are on the roof; each is listed at $80,000. Owners also have the option of reselling their terrace spaces to other residents. Toll Brothers offered a similar product in 2008 to residents of Harborside Lofts; all 11 private rooftop spaces on offer sold, at prices ranging from $50,000 to $200,000.

The kind of outdoor space being offered at 77 Hudson, a 420-unit luxury condominium in Jersey City built by K. Hovnanian Homes, is more traditional: 44,000 square feet of shared amenities, half of which are outside. An 11th-floor roof above the garage has a lap pool, hot tub, lawn, park, barbecue grills and fire pit, as well as a fitness center.

“I’ve heard people say it’s like living on a cruise ship, or South Beach on the Hudson,” said Scott Waldman, the president of Hovnanian’s brokerage division, noting that the building holds zumba and yoga classes, movie nights and other activities that have brought homeowners together. Along with the utilities, the amenities and activities are included in the monthly maintenance fees, which range from $590 to $1,270, Mr. Waldman said. Asking prices for units in the 49-story glass tower are $524,000 to $2.6 million, and so far about three-quarters have sold.

Elsewhere in Jersey City, Crystal Point, a 42-story condominium built by Fisher Development Associates, has a deck on the sixth floor equipped with a pool, a spa, fire pits and barbecue grills. All but two of the 269 units in this building have sold, at prices ranging from $650,000 to $1.495 million, according to George Cahn, a spokesman for the project.

North Jersey’s luxury rental market also has outdoor amenities. At one big project, Xchange at Secaucus Junction, there is even a rolling meadow, available to tenants as well as the public in Secaucus. Outdoor space makes up about 20 of the project’s 60 acres along the Hackensack River — which, when built out, will include 2,035 units. Included in that outdoor space is an amphitheater fronted by a 2.5-acre great lawn, its flat topography regraded by the project’s developers, Atlantic Realty Development in Woodbridge, to give it an undulating slope. Here, the project’s managers have staged concerts, movie nights and a holiday light show that drew an audience of more than 1,300 last November.

“We feel we’re neighbors with everybody in Secaucus,” said Jeremy Halpern, a vice president of Atlantic Realty, one of the developers of Xchange, “and we wouldn’t want to exclude them from this incredible property.”

Toll Brothers, similarly, has given the public in Hoboken access to various outdoor improvements. As part of its development agreement with the city, the company employed Let It Grow in building Maxwell Place Park and Pier, both of which were turned over to the city upon completion, according to Mr. McCullough. The properties include a sandy beach with a kayak launch, a boathouse and a raised peninsula that juts into the Hudson River.

More or less adjacent to these public spaces, Toll Brothers has three major projects in the works: the four-phase condo plan that includes 1450 Washington Street and Harborside Lofts; the Hudson Tea Building, a condo conversion of a former Lipton Tea plant; and Maxwell Place on the Hudson, 554 luxury condos that Mr. McCullough described as the company’s “premier product in New Jersey.”

Callingthe Maxwell Place Park and Pier “fabulous amenities for the city,” Mr. McCullough noted: “They’re not private to the residents of Maxwell Place on the Hudson. But obviously, they have a front row seat.”

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It was a rusting railroad yard and some sagging warehouses on the decaying west bank of the Hudson River. The LeFraks started building there in 1986.

Now, Richard LeFrak and his sons — his father died in 2003 at 85 — are embarking on the last phase of what has become known as Newport, a 600-acre neighborhood that already has 8 office buildings, 13 apartment towers, 2 hotels, a marina, schools, a retail mall and parks.

To put Newport in perspective, it has six times as much land as Battery Park City in Lower Manhattan does, and dwarfs the 26-acre development planned for the rail yards on the West Side of Manhattan. Over the past quarter-century, the LeFraks and their partners have invested billions of dollars in Newport. It is not easy to imagine a single real estate family ever building anything so ambitious again in the United States.

“Newport is truly extraordinary,” said Vishaan Chakrabarti, director of the Center for Urban Real Estate at Columbia University. “It’s getting harder and harder to do something this big. But this is the right kind of dense, transit-oriented development.”

On Thursday, the LeFraks and Gov. Chris Christie are to formally open a gently sloping 4.5-acre park at the north end of Newport, near Hoboken Terminal. The first of what will be seven more apartment towers surrounding the park is rising quickly. And there are plans for one or two more office buildings on a pier about a mile away, at the south end of Newport.

“I originally thought it would take 20 years, not 35 or 40,” Mr. LeFrak, 66, said. “It’s changed so dramatically since we started. At this point, the project is successful. What you’re really doing now is ensuring that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.”

With Jersey City only one mile from Lower Manhattan, the Newport development, as well as other office towers on the waterfront, have often been viewed by New York officials as a threat to New York’s hold on the financial services industry. Lured by lower real estate costs and tax breaks, JPMorgan Chase, UBS, Cigna and other companies moved parts of their operations to Jersey City.

But it has also become apparent that New York retains its allure, at least for high-powered executives. In 2004, traders at Goldman Sachs revolted against plans to move them to the company’s new $1.3 billion tower in Jersey City. Still, New Jersey continues to offer generous tax incentives to companies willing to cross the Hudson.

For many years, Newport was a series of isolated residential and commercial towers looming over a lot of vacant land. The buildings were unremarkable, and the apartments filled with tenants looking for a cheaper alternative to Manhattan, or a way station before heading to the suburbs.

Today, residents and visitors dodge baby carriages along Newport’s pathways, and at the large playground that is part of the newly built park, which includes a playing field and a sandy beach. In recent years, the LeFraks say they have focused on better architecture and filling in gaps between buildings with schools and shops.

“It was a real estate investment, and now it’s a neighborhood,” said Mr. LeFrak’s son, Harrison, who has worked at the family business since 1997.

The LeFraks have had some missteps. After a jury trial last year, they were ordered to pay millions of dollars in compensation to 16 residents of the Shore Club tower. The tenants, who argued that they had been promised “breathtaking” views of the Hudson, sued after the LeFraks erected a 32-story apartment tower in front of their building.

Like many developers, the LeFraks have often criticized elected officials who, in their view, can impede progress with zoning or environmental regulations. Even so, Newport has enjoyed government support in the form of a $40 million federal grant in 1983 for sewers and streets, a 15-year tax abatement for the shopping mall, and tens of millions of dollars in tax breaks from the state to help lure financial companies from Lower Manhattan to Newport’s office buildings.

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