REVEALED: New Renderings of PMG’s Queens Plaza Park, the Future Tallest Tower Outside Manhattan
Here’s a closer look at Property Markets Group and the Hakim Organization’s upcoming Long Island City skyscraper dubbed Queens Plaza Park. Slated to soar 70 stories-plus into Queens Plaza’s burgeoning skyline, the 915-foot tall building will contain a whopping 800 units, and will be, by far, the largest and tallest residential building outside of Manhattan.
Positioned at the forefront of transit-accessible Queens Plaza, the project will encircle and incorporate the 88-year old Manhattan Bank Building (affectionately dubbed “the clock tower”). The joint-venture acquired the building for $31 million last November, which itself was once the tallest building on Long Island, and is now calendared to be designated an official city landmark.
The project site was once planned to give rise to a modest-sized 16-story Starwood Aloft Hotel whose developers went bankrupt during the economic downtown. In 2011, the site was snapped up by Steve Cheung for $8.3 million when he proposed a 30-story, 205,000-square-foot condo tower. Late last year, Cheung sold the 17,000-square-foot parcel for $46.3 million (six times its original purchase price) to the current development team led by Kevin Maloney and Karman Hakim. Since the purchase, the project scope has grown to nearly 900,000 square-feet, after amassing 478,000 square-foot of development rights through a $56 million transfer deal with the MTA.
We already know that the Manhattan skyline is the greatest in the world, but soon the individual skylines of Downtown Brooklyn, Long Island City, and Jersey City may also put other U.S. cities to shame. It seems every corner of the city is on its way to building its tallest, biggest, or most ambitious project to date. Long Island City has been no exception, with three high-density corridors that may one day merge into a cohesive and bustling business district (or at least high-density bedroom community for Midtown).
L to R. Queens Plaza esplanade, Clock Tower Building, One Court Square Images by CityRealty
There are nearly a dozen skyscrapers taller than 500 feet planned for largely low-slung neighborhood, at least two of which seek to best the borough’s current title-holder, the 658-foot Citigroup Building at One Court Square. Still standing relatively isolated, the 52-story building designed by Skidmore Owings & Merrill was completed in 1990 and is distinguished by its emerald green glass, ziggurat-like top and “Citi” logo emblazoned on each of its four sides.
The design by residential rationalists SLCE Architects offers a bit more than the typical reflective-glass extrusion common around the city. Their design seems to hearken to 1 Court Square’s notched corners and its crescendo-ing massing. The tower is an improvement on another SLCE-designed rental tower at 388 Bridge Street, which also happens to be Brooklyn’s current tallest finished building. While the street system of Queens may come off as confusing to some, the skewing street angles result in interesting sight-lines, with buildings revealing themselves at new angles. Here, SLCE’s tower is bale to hide its massive size when viewing it from LIC’s primary entry point.
Queens Plaza Park is slated to be complete in 2019. While full plans have yet to be filed with the buildings department, the project’s occupancy diagram hints at the usual barrage of amenities. A rendering looking south along 41st Avenue reveals that the building will have a large backyard equipped with kids’ play-sets and some green-colored material at grade level, foreign to LIC, but commonly known as grass.
See more images and follow updates at CityRealty Queens Park Plaza page.
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