11-Story 70-32 Queens Boulevard, at Border of Maspeth and Elmhurst, Now Stands as Area’s Tallest
Some of the most densely populated neighborhoods in Queens are nestled along its eponymous central arterial roadway, 7.2-mile-long Queens Boulevard. However, around its midsection, between Grand Avenue/Broadway to the east and Greenpoint Avenue/Roosevelt Avenue to the west, the subway temporarily veers north of the 200-foot-wide the thoroughfare. This portion is much less developed than neighborhoods on either side. Apart from a dense residential cluster in central Woodside, almost all of this stretch is decidedly anti-pedestrian and thinly developed, replete with low-slung commercial properties, such as auto shops and parking lots. The 11-story, residential Elmhurst Building, on which construction is wrapping up at 70-32 Queens Boulevard, now stands as the tallest on a two-mile stretch of the boulevard between Rego Park and Woodside. Although modestly-sized by the standards of the city skyline, the solitary stack towers like a Saguaro cactus over a desert. However, change is in the air as a wave of development is sweeping the area. Enabled by a 2006 neighborhood upzoning and fueled by an acute housing shortage, the new projects will transform the barren district into the urban neighborhood that it ought to be.
