The doormen cometh.
The number of doormen across Queens is skyrocketing as new luxury developments rise up across Astoria and Long Island City, drawing in a wave of sharply dressed concierges to the front desks of gleaming new condos and apartments.
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“Every new building in Long Island City has a doorman,” said Rick Rosa, manager of Douglas Elliman Real Estate’s Long Island City office. “It’s very important to have that, because the clientele we’re getting from Manhattan want to have the luxury lifestyle.”
With new buildings — like the five massive waterfront towers on Center Blvd. and a 44-story apartment building opening later this year on Crescent St. — lobby staffs have spiked borough-wide. The ranks of doormen, porters and supers have bulged by 100 in Queens over the past six months alone, according to SEIU Local 32BJ, the union that represents building workers.
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With more than 3,500 women and men working in such positions boroughwide, Queens is becoming a destination for luxury that used to be off the grid.
“Everyone seems to get lost or not know there’s mass transit around,” said Keith Rodriguez, 26, a concierge at The Maximilian, a nearly completed apartment building in Long Island City and a former doorman in Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
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New residents and delivery drivers from as far off as Canada, and as close as other parts of Queens, have a difficult time finding the 188-unit building on 47th Ave., where rentals are listed between $2,180 for a studio and $3,935 for a two-bedroom.
The rents may sound like Manhattan, but service from the front desk means novel responsibilities in Queens.
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“A resident asked if I could go in the apartment and dispose of a banana peel because he had left on vacation,” said Dorissa Figueroa, 28, who has held down the front desk at the Avalon Riverview for six years.
Further inland, Tom Loughlin, a doorman at the 42-story, 709-unit Linc LIC, began suiting up in a company-issued Nehru jacket just four months ago after being laid off from a project manager position at Citigroup, where he worked for 26 years.
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He now works the second shift of the day from 3 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. at the building with a roof deck, fitness area and cushy lounges where rents start at $2,150 for a studio.
“We try to convey as professional an atmosphere as possible in the front lobby here,” said Loughlin, 54. “People pay a lot of money to live here, so we want to make sure they enjoy it.”
Manhattan transplant John Dodes knew the front desk staff by name at his Long Island City condo building. The 68-year-old dentist says the help he gets carrying in groceries from Costco reminds him of his former apartment across the East River.
“The service is just as good as a white glove apartment on Park Avenue,” Dodes said.
