If you remember the recent topping out of 23-10 Queens Plaza South as the second tallest building in Queens, hearing of another contender usurping its place so quickly might give you a sense of déjà vu. In a testament to Long Island City’s dizzying pace of development, the title passes to Tower 28, previously known as 28 on 28th.
Looking west from Dutch Kills Green. Tower 28 is on the left, behind Gotham Center. 23-10 Queens Plaza is in the center. 432 Park Avenue is on the distant right
42-12 28th Street will rise 647 feet and 58 stories to become the city’s tallest residential tower outside of Manhattan. Upon completion, its 477 luxury rental units will place it among the largest apartment buildings in the Court Square district, second only to the 709-unit Linc LIC two blocks southwest.
Linc LIC is in the center
Looking west from Northern Boulevard
In mere months, Tower 28 has already made its presence felt across the borough and beyond. The building rose rather fast, averaging more than seven floors per month. It passed the ten-story mark by July 2015 and climbed above the halfway point in September. As we mentioned earlier this week, concrete pours for the highest mechanical levels are almost finished, with only a couple dozen feet of rooftop bulkhead left to go.
East facade
Looking west from Sunnyside. October 2015
February 2016
The 658-foot-tall One Court Square four blocks southwest was the city’s tallest skyscraper outside of Manhattan starting in 1990. It stood as the uncontested king of Queens until just a few years ago, when a mid-rise skyline between Queens Plaza and Court Square rose to compete with the Hunters Point waterfront. Tower 28 is the first to stand in the same league as the old record holder. While the reigning champ will maintain a slight height advantage, the new tower by Queens Plaza holds eight more floors.
Looking southwest
The two mark the focal points of central Long Island City, anchoring the rapidly rising skyline. They will maintain their dominance for at least several years, though taller buildings are already planned for the vicinity.
Looking northwest from Brooklyn
The project’s design came from Goldstein, Hill & West. The architecture firm is reshaping the Court Square skyline with other projects as well, such as the three-tower, 1,789-unit development underway at 23-15 44th Drive four blocks to the southwest. If constructed as planned, the building will become the borough’s tallest at 963 feet.
Base and pinnacle renderings as seen on the project board
The 398,702-square-foot Tower 28 project straddles a 200-foot-long, through-block site between 27th and 28th streets, just 70 feet south of Queens Plaza. In the past, the site was occupied by a parking lot on 27th and an unremarkable, two-story, red brick commercial building on 28th. Most of the 17,500-square-foot lot sits on 28th, where the main tower spans a 125-foot front. On 27th Street, a nearly 100-foot-tall, rectangular wing will house a secondary entrance and garage access. The resulting “courtyard” atop the two-story base in between will be sheltered from three sides. When weather permits, its landscaped deck will open to the third floor pool via operable glass walls.
Base construction at 27th Street
The skyscraper soars straight from the sidewalk as a sleek glass surface. Its shape is stacked as two rectangular sections. The smaller segment stretches to the sundeck situated at the 44th story on the south side. The second setback sits at the 58th story, supplying spectacular skyline scenes from one of the highest open air spaces in the city. Although glass facades are something of a standard for Long Island City skyscrapers, the structure’s slender, single setback silhouette is surprisingly singular. The turquoise façade is accented with a distinguishing staggered pattern.
Looking south from Queens Plaza
27th Street facade
The building’s floor-to-ceiling windows and upper level terraces and balconies offer some of the most breathtaking vistas in all of New York. A virtually complete lack of obstruction offers 360-degree views of the skyline from Lower Manhattan to Midtown to the Hudson River Palisades to the vast expanses of the boroughs to the north, east, and south. Even incoming competition will, for the most part, stand far enough to ensure minimal obstruction. However, the building already stands within the densest skyscraper cluster in Queens, and in a few years its lower floors will face other tall buildings in nearly all directions.
Looking northeast from Crescent Street
Before proceeding with the erstwhile 28 on 28th, Heatherwood Communities LLC developed a slender, 27-story luxury rental tower on an adjacent lot to the west, at the intersection of 27th Street and 42nd Road. 
South facade
Great but how are all these new people going to squeeze onto the subways????????????????
How ugly LIC is becoming. Ditto what the other poster said, how are all of these people going to fit on the trains? They’re crowded enough as it is. It all needs to stop.
Wow NIMBY explosion!