New LIC Tower Would Make Queensboro Plaza Accessible, Finally

LONG ISLAND CITY, QUEENS — A developer wants to build a 26-story tower next to the Queensboro Plaza subway station — and is offering to include an elevator that would make the heavily-used station wheelchair-accessible.

Developer Grubb Properties filed plans last month for the new building at 25-01 Queens Plaza North, between Crescent and 27th streets. The mostly-residential building would include 413 apartments, as well as ground-floor commercial space — replacing the two-story building that has stood on the site for decades.

It would also include a new elevator and a widened version of the walkway that runs from the Queensboro station into the existing building, according to planning documents.

The proposal takes advantage of a new city rule approved last year, in which developers who pay for improvements to New York's mostly-inaccessible subway system are given the ability to build taller or denser than what zoning rules would otherwise allow.

Last year, before those new rules had taken effect, Grubb had been planning a shorter, 17-story building at the same site. Plans for the new, larger building were spotted by Twitter users this week, as the project begins the monthslong review process for new developments known as ULURP.

About 14,000 daily riders passed through the N-W-7 station on an average pre-pandemic weekday, putting it in the busiest quarter of the city's subway stations. But the elevated platform remains ADA-inaccessible, forcing disabled commuters to take detours to the Court Square or Queens Plaza stations.

In their development, Grubb would build an elevator running from the street to the pedestrian bridge that leads to the station. The staircase leading to the bridge, meanwhile, would be widened from eight to 10 feet.

"The Proposed Project would provide improved transit access to the Queensboro Plaza Station by widening the existing staircase, installing a new elevator, and replacing the existing subway entrance with a prominent civic amenity that improves wayfinding and enhances security," Grubb wrote in documents submitted to the city.

Demolition is already underway at the current building. Once the existing structure is gone, the developers will build a temporary staircase on the street that will connect to the pedestrian bridge until the new stairway is built, according to the plans.

The pedestrian bridge across Queens Plaza North dates to 1961, having replaced a different walkway on the same site that opened in 1929.