From the NYTimes story

New York Times article on the effects of the blockbuster Mattisse/Picasso show on LIC and the prospects for life after the MoMA heads home to Manhattan.

"Everyone in Long Island City, of course, knows that the Modern's charmed visit to Queens will end. But they still wonder whether the museum will leave anything enduring behind. Will it help reshape a raw Queens neighborhood, known for its factories and warehouses and the gridlock around the Queensboro Bridge, into the next SoHo or TriBeCa?

Cultural institutions have long been seen as a shrewd way to invigorate neighborhoods. Lincoln Center transformed the decaying West Side of Manhattan. Newark is betting on its performing arts center to bring foot traffic back to a devastated downtown.

Long Island City, whose seven other scattered museums have allowed it to style itself as a museum district just a 15-minute subway ride from Times Square, hoped for a similar jolt of electricity from the Modern. But museum officials made clear from the beginning that the world-class collection was just passing through. Its royal blue building in Queens, in a revamped Swingline stapler factory on Queens Boulevard and 33rd Street, was intended for storage and study. Its use as an exhibition hall began last summer and is supposed to last for only two and a half years, until the museum's headquarters on West 53rd Street are refurbished.

For the moment, the Modern has indisputably enriched the surrounding industrial streets, particularly since the "Matisse Picasso" exhibition opened on Feb. 13 and doubled attendance to more than 4,000 people a day. The hot-dog vendors and fruit peddlers arrayed alongside the lines of visitors as well as the restaurants a few blocks east in Sunnyside are making far more money. Manna from heaven, they might call it. "

Later in the article, the MoMA director puts the chances of staying very succinctly: "very highly unlikely".