This post appeared in a previous blog and is here for posterity’s sake.

Long Island City Powerhouse, originally uploaded by plemeljr
One of my favorite buildings in Long Island City is being torn apart. The Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) Power House is being picked apart to make way for condos. The iconic smokestacks are being dismantled, as is the wop floor window galleries. What’s best worst about this are the yuppie gloating going on:

• The smoke stacks are coming down. No ifs ands or buts. 3 months give or take
• It will be condos, aprox 400 units averaging 1,000 sq ft
• There will be retail and community space (art gallery, most likely)
• There is and will be no landmark of those buildings
• It was NOT designed by Mckim, Meade and White (if you have proof it was, email me, otherwise, lets drop it) (ed: he is so wrong)
• It will retain the majority of the plant
• There WILL be a section on QueensWest.com for the building once I get confirmation on the name of the building.
• It will, in my opinion, be a great edition to the area

Besides being highly illiterate, using the worst commenting software known to man, and being generally assy, they are dead wrong about the building not being built by McKim Mead & White. Apparently my quick analysis of the development of the property wasn’t far off. The developer, Cheskel Schwimmer – vice president of Brooklyn-based CGS Builders, has pegged the cost to be around $100 million. I estimated around $60-70 million and the profit to be not substantial – but I could be wrong – they are using much more of the building then I assumed (four times more).
The New York Times also had a story about the smokestacks:

Despite the hubbub over the apparent demise of the smokestacks, the developer of the project said on Friday that he had no such plans. “We have no intention to take down the smokestacks,” said Cheskel Schwimmer, vice president of CGS Builders, a Brooklyn firm. “We want to try to preserve the smokestacks as much as possible.”
The intention behind applying for the permit, he said, was to get permission to remove small pieces of the smokestacks and incorporate them into the design.
To that end, Mr. Schwimmer and the architect he hired, Karl Fischer, have produced a rendering that includes a cube of glass resting on top of the existing building and attached to the smokestacks, which would actually become part of the new building and be equipped with windows. “We will both reinforce the smokestacks and create good living space within the building,” Mr. Schwimmer said.
For the time being, he and Mr. Fischer, who was the architect for the renovated Gretsch Building in Williamsburg, are working with the city’s departments of buildings and city planning to get the cube design approved. In the meantime, it seems that the smokestacks, beacons of Queens past, will continue to point their brown spires into the sky.

Yes, is is that Karl Fischer, the architect who is overseeing the conversion of the Gretsch Building in Williamsburg. So I’m not really hoping for the best. So I guess it is still inconclusive whether or not the stacks stay, I guess we will see in the next 3-6 months.