WHEN Kirsten Sharett met her husband-to-be, he was living in an industrial area in Long Island City, near a raw and rat-infested waterfront.
“He worked at the United Nations, so it was really convenient,” Ms. Sharett recalled. “But I just thought it was desolate and miserable.”
That was almost 17 years ago, and never in her wildest dreams did Ms. Sharett conjure up a future in which she would be living with her husband and 3-year-old daughter in a sleek rental building on that same waterfront.
“I never even considered Long Island City,” she said. “It was like, why? It was never even in my frame of mind.”
A significant reason why, of course, is that Long Island City, which has shed much of its grittiness and is now home to almost 30,000 people, has six subway lines just one stop from Midtown Manhattan. That convenience has drawn Manhattanites seeking cheaper rents.
Ms. Sharett, who recently moved into a two-bedroom apartment at 47-20 Center Boulevard, said that now that she had made the mental shift, she realized she was in the perfect neighborhood.
Particularly down by the waterfront, with new restaurants and shops moving in, Ms. Sharett said, she has everything she needs within walking distance.
“They’ve built a compound here, where my daughter’s preschool, the drugstore, the grocery, the park are all one block away, and the soccer field is right in front of us,” she said. “We could not live like this in Manhattan.”
It was in 1997, when the Citylights co-op was built, that Long Island City’s waterfront began the long hike from neglected industrial wasteland to serene residential area.
Until 2003, when the Avalon Riverview opened, Citylights was the lone tower taking advantage of breathtaking Manhattan views. Since the early 2000s, a half a dozen more towers have been built, primarily by TF Cornerstone, adding both condominiums and rentals.
Christine Ezeogu, a United Nations employee, has lived in a one-bedroom in Avalon Riverview North for almost five years. She said that she had thought the global financial recession would lead to a lowering of rental prices, but that except for a renegotiation in 2009, it hadn’t. Since then her rent has gone up by about 20 percent.
“I haven’t seen the prices go down in the neighborhood,” she said. “In fact, they seem to be going up.”
One of several factors in the strength of rental values could be the transformation of the waterfront — 12 acres of it so far — into Gantry Plaza State Park, which has four piers, garden, a mist fountain, and several playgrounds and ball courts.
Part of the project has involved restoring Long Island City’s signature gantries, which once loaded barges and rail car floats. The park is still being expanded, in both directions.
And more development is planned. Besides two towers it is currently renting out, TF Cornerstone is building an 820-unit rental tower at 45-45 Center Boulevard and plans a 586-unit rental tower at 46-10 Center. The area, called East Coast, is clustered around the giant Pepsi advertisement that has long been a signature element of Long Island City’s skyline. Just to the south, at Hunters Point South, the city is planning 5,000 housing units, 60 percent of them affordable to middle-income families. The first phase of construction there should finish in 2014.
Residential development is also moving inland, brokers said. That includes the Queens Plaza area, as well as the Court Square section around the 50-story Citigroup tower. One of the area’s largest projects is under construction in the latter area: LINC LIC, being built by Rockrose Development, has a 709-unit rental tower that is almost complete.
WHAT YOU’LL FIND
Boundaries are often subject to disagreement, but those generally accepted for Long Island City stretch from the waterfront north to 36th Avenue and east to Northern Boulevard, down to Queens Boulevard and Van Dam Street.
There are two main residential sections: one sometimes called Dutch Kills, north of Queens Plaza and merging with Astoria; the other, Hunters Point, south of the plaza. Predominant housing has historically been two-family homes — wood frame or brick — which began appearing around 1910.
In the more recent developments, the one kind of housing in short supply is the three-bedroom, according to brokers. Despite the groups from Astoria, including mothers and children, commuting into Long Island City, some of them daily, to take advantage of the waterfront park, said Eric Benaim, a resident who heads a brokerage called Modern Spaces, his developer clients still consider three-bedroom apartments a bit of a risk.
Mr. Benaim says he is advising developers to lay out their apartment buildings so that two smaller units can be easily combined.
“At the Industry, a building we’re representing that’s over 90 percent sold now in the Court Square area,” he said, “we just sold two five-bedroom apartments, where each buyer combined two smaller apartments. One recently closed for about $2.3 million.”
But the area hasn’t yet reached such price heights that no artist can afford to live in it. For many years, artists priced out elsewhere have moved here, though the art scene has never quite coalesced into a bohemia of the likes of, say, Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Still, there are galleries and museums. And the Museum of Modern Art has a branch called MoMA PS 1, which throws summertime Saturday parties for thousands.
Residents also cite the theater scene. The Creek and the Cave, a bar, restaurant and performance space that has hosted the comedians Louis C. K. and Colin Quinn, has been joined by a comedy club, Laughing Devil. A third comedy club is to open in the Court Square area, said Adrian Lupu, a senior vice president of NestSeekers Real Estate. And there are spaces like the Chocolate Factory and the Secret Theater.
WHAT YOU’LL PAY
New-construction studios, which are hard to find, rent for about $2,100 a month; one-bedrooms for about $2,500; and two-bedrooms for $3,100 or more, Mr. Lupu said.
Condos typically range in price from about $400,000, for a studio; to about $550,000 for a one-bedroom; and about $870,000 for a two-bedroom, Mr. Benaim said. There are a few three-bedrooms, in particular at the View on the waterfront, that have been achieving and even surpassing $1 million. As Mr. Benaim put it, “A lot of million-plus buyers are coming out now, which we never really saw before.”
The more reasonably priced apartments, naturally, tend to be in older two-family homes, agents said.
A one-bedroom would rent anywhere from $1,800 to $2,100; a two-bedroom in relatively decent condition would rent for about $2,500, said Rick Rosa, an executive vice president of Prudential Douglas Elliman, who lives in the area.
THE COMMUTE
There are a dozen subway stations in Long Island City; about five of the stations are just a stop away from Midtown. They serve the 7, E, M, R, N and Q trains, among others. Arriving in Midtown can take as little as five minutes, and motorists to and from Manhattan have a choice of the Queensboro Bridge and the Queens-Midtown Tunnel.
There are also a handful of bus lines, including the 103, 102, 69, 100 and 39. Many residents commute on the NY Waterway ferry from the Hunters Point South/Long Island City stop. From there it is five minutes to the East Side, 25 minutes to the financial district. The Long Island Rail Road also has two stops in Long Island City.
WHAT TO DO
Besides the expanding waterfront park, residents like to brag about the trendy new restaurants. A couple of Manhattan spots, Spice and Corner Bistro, recently opened satellites along a block of Vernon Boulevard, the area’s commercial strip. Nearby is a new Elliman branch, as well as another pioneer from Manhattan, the medical group Tribeca Pediatrics.
“On that block, it’s just boom, boom, boom, you see four Manhattan businesses,” Mr. Rosa said. “It really gives people that confidence that things are changing here.”
For the more sports-minded, the Long Island City Community Boat House offers free kayaking. In the Queens Plaza area, the city recently completed a $44 million face-lift, adding a bikeway, a pedestrian walk and a 1.5-acre space called Dutch Kills Green.
THE SCHOOLS
Some schools are overcrowded, particularly near the waterfront, but new facilities are going up. A 662-seat school for kindergarten through Grade 8 is under construction at 46-15 Center. There is also a 1,200-seat intermediate and high school under way in Hunters Point South, where a 22,000-square-foot library is scheduled to open in 2013.
Expecting further growth, public and private schools are expanding. Public School 78Q, which covers kindergarten through Grade 5, has plans for a new facility. Les Enfants Montessori School has expanded to accommodate 100 more students.
The area has a handful of middle and high schools, including Long Island City High School at Broadway and 21st, where SAT averages in 2011 were 412 in reading, 433 in math and 410 in writing, versus 436, 460 and 431 citywide.
THE HISTORY
Colonized by the Dutch in the early 17th century, the area remained rural until the mid-1800s, when it was linked to Manhattan by rail and ferry. By 1898, the villages of Hunters Point, Dutch Kills, Astoria and Ravenswood, which had recently joined to form Long Island City, became part of New York City.
