The Durst Organization last month bought a large, L-shaped development site in Long Island City from investors who had run out of resources to build what would have been a 914-foot-high, 70-story luxury-condo tower.
Although Durst does not intend to build as high, its Queens Plaza North project is only slightly less ambitious. It seeks to capitalize on a sustained boom in the area, where low-slung warehouses are being replaced with office and apartment towers. The 102-year-old, family-run firm, whose holdings include 4 Times Square, 1 Bryant Park and a major stake in 1 World Trade Center, wants to build 1,000 rental apartments—not luxury condos as the previous owners planned—with a tower that could rise 750 feet into the air, enough to make it the city’s tallest building outside Manhattan.
Regardless of what is built, one distinct feature will remain: a landmarked, art deco clock tower constructed in the late 1920s for the Bank of Manhattan.
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At 14 stories, it was the tallest commercial building in Queens until 1990, when 1 Court Square opened just south of Queensboro Plaza. Despite the surge in high-rise construction, including a 42-story building in the works at 29–40 Northern Blvd., the 50-story commercial Court Square tower, owned by Citigroup, remains the tallest in the outer boroughs—for now.
