It's hard to keep one "part" of LIC straight from the next, but there is this big and massively empty part that's north of the Queensboro bridge. It's car repair garages, warehouses, and of course the Queensbridge neighborhood of buildings. But it has a vast emptiness quality to it that South LIC (the part between Citibank and the waterfront Condos) is starting to lose.

The Times reports on the agitation there to make things happen. And indeed, browse back through the archives of LICNYC and you will find similar prognostications (from 2005 Feb).

The news you can use, if you have a real estate demanor, is that they are debating rezoning the place. That was the magic dust that turned "long hailed LIC" into "fast developing LIC". What the NYT said:

Residents of Dutch Kills have also seen the new residential buildings sprouting along the Long Island City waterfront, and they want their share. Working with the City Planning Commission, they have developed a plan that would allow buildings of 5 to 7 stories on the widest local avenues and 8-to-12-story buildings on Northern Boulevard, the area’s southern border. Buildings on the side streets would be restricted to three or four stories.