A Tower’s Tale: The Quiet Reaches of LIC

It’s just after 8 a.m. in Long Island City, and I’m hunched over a cup of lukewarm coffee in Tony’s Delicatessen on Vernon Boulevard. The fluorescent lights flicker as an old TV hums half-heartedly in the corner. Tony, the owner for as long as anyone around here can recall, watches the news with a mild scowl. This morning, they’re talking about the Skyline Tower — a $650 million real estate deal, the biggest in Queens this year. ‘A big number,’ Tony says, shaking his head.

Tony, like the deli, has been a fixture here through the waves of change that have swept through LIC. His deli’s front window, with its collage of sun-faded flyers, looks out onto the skyline that’s been growing steadily taller, one concrete and glass behemoth at a time. ‘Used to see the Pepsi sign plain from here,’ Tony remembers, gesturing toward the direction of the river.

These towers, he tells me, sprouting all around 3 Court Square, are the new face of this neighborhood. Once a canvas of warehouses and low-rise industrial buildings, LIC has become a playground for high-rise developers and those with pockets deep enough to partake. The 67-story condo, now mostly sold, is just another chapter in this story of transformation.

It wasn’t always like this. Tony’s been here through it all — the decrepit factories, the first artists to stake cheap studio space, the slow influx of cafes and bars trying to catch the overflow from Williamsburg. He shakes his head, remembering the gradual shift from industrial to post-industrial, from barren streets to bustling avenues.

‘It’s funny,’ he says, slicing pastrami for the morning rush. ‘All these buildings went up, and yeah, they bring people. But those people? They don’t come in here much.’ He gestures around the deli. ‘Not their kind of place, I guess.’ Tony’s regulars are the lifers — sanitation workers in fluorescent vests, the mailman whose route has stayed the same for two decades, and the teachers from the nearby public school popping in for coffee before the first bell.

In the evenings, when the deli’s slow and the day’s news has gone stale, Tony sometimes talks about the past. There’s a picture behind the counter, yellowed and torn, of the street from maybe twenty, thirty years ago. It’s a snapshot of a different time, with parked sedans and stoop-sitters, kids on bikes weaving through open fire hydrants. ‘This was our slice of the city,’ he says. ‘Not just mine, everyone’s. Families, working folks, people who’d been here for generations.’

But the city’s always been this way — a place in constant flux, shuffling its residents like cards. For every high-rise that punctures the sky, there’s a small story anchored in the streets below, of what’s gained and what’s lost. Even these towers, with their sky-high prices, are a part of it all — the inevitable pulse of progress.

As the day rolls into afternoon, and the deli’s chatter gives way to the quiet hum of the late-lunch lull, Tony steps out to the sidewalk. The skyline looms large, casting long shadows across Vernon Boulevard. ‘You know,’ he says, ‘I get it. The city can’t stay the same. But sometimes, I just miss the old view. No offense to the new one.’

The Skyline Tower deal is done, another chapter closed, and Tony’s deli soldiers on. Outside, the Q train rattles past, a constellation of commuters bound for the next stop. The light shifts, and the towers cast their gaze down on the streets, where the stories of Long Island City continue to unfold, one corner, one deli, one morning at a time.

— Frank Donovan · Columnist