Excavation is set to begin at 27-48 Jackson Avenue, the site of a potential 811-foot-tall skyscraper in the Court Square district of Long Island City, Queens. No architect, developer, or building function has been revealed yet for the project, which YIMBY first covered last March after Federal Aviation Administration obstruction evaluation permits were filed due to its proximity to LaGuardia Airport. Alternatively addressed as 43-01 Queens Street, the rectangular plot is located between Orchard and Queens Streets and formerly served as a 25,000-square-foot open-air parking lot owned by Building Orchard LLC.
Despite the lack of clarity on the project, work appears ready to commence at the site. A number of excavators and dumpsters sit across the plot behind metal fencing, and large detached excavator buckets await their use in ripping up the asphalt. It would be no surprise to see this become another residential building, perhaps with some ground-floor commercial retail space.
27-48 Jackson Avenue. Photo by Michael Young
27-48 Jackson Avenue. Photo by Michael Young
27-48 Jackson Avenue. Photo by Michael Young
If built to the specified height, 27-48 Jackson Avenue would eclipse the 778-foot-tall pinnacle of Hill West Architects‘ Skyline Tower at 23-15 44th Drive, which currently holds the title of the tallest structure in Queens and the second-tallest building in the Outer Boroughs after The Brooklyn Tower at 9 DeKalb Avenue. Skyline Tower currently anchors the westernmost part of Long Island City’s cluster of new glass high rises, and 27-48 Jackson Avenue would stand along the eastern section of downtown. Once the superstructure begins to rise above street level, the best vantage point to observe its progress would be from across Sunnyside Yards by the intersection of Thomson and Skillman Avenues.
The nearest subways to the site are the G and 7 trains at the Court Square station and the E, M, and R trains at Queens Plaza.
A start and completion date for 27-58 Jackson Avenue has yet to be announced.
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It’s Long Island City, so let’s not put our expectations too high. But, hopefully this building will still be nice.
I hope it will be nice too. Nice and polite.
In fact, I hope it will be a poignant symbol of the prominence of Queens in the NYC skyline, the rise of Queens own skyline, place making and memorable the way that the EPS and Brooklyn Tower, Bank of NY and Chrysler Building now do…..
Where I can put in a application for 1 apt bdrm.
Not until 2023 for this building…..
It will be another glass box.
What’s wrong with LIC? They are building the best in condos in the city ?
Glass boxes look nice welcome to the future
Nyc is disgusting lic looks like a modern modern city
There is a Real Deal article on this if YIMBY bothered to do any research. If Perkins Eastman is still the architect, then yes, it will be a dull glass box.
Perkins Eastman? That’s unfortunate.
Who cares if it’s glass or not, people seem to have a weird hate fetish for it. As long as it’s mixed use with commercial on the ground floor it can be far from dull. This is the important part. Every building is otherwise “souless” without that key aspect imo.
Will this permanently kill James Turrell’s Skyspace at MoMA ps1? That would be tragic.
This isn’t near it.
It seems obvious but not mentioned in the article, that they are preparing to tear down the warehouse currently on the site.
It is time now for LIC warehouses to move further east and leave the skyline areas near the city for a residential locality!