For years Long Island City, in Queens, has been called the “next hot neighborhood.” Its tantalizing proximity to Midtown (one subway stop on the 7 train to Grand Central), its spectacular views of Manhattan (better than those from Brooklyn), its robust industrial architecture combined with row houses all made Long Island City seem a natural for hotness. Yet only recently has the neighborhood seemed to take off, and it has taken a public authority, the Empire State Development Corporation, in the guise of the Queens West Development Corporation, to make it happen.

The corporation has planned a four-phase project along the waterfront between Anabel Basin (on the line of 45th Road) on the north, Newtown Creek on the south, 5th Street on the east, and the East River on the west. The corporation envisions 16 apartment buildings and four office buildings rising on the 74-acre site by 2012. Of these, five apartment buildings have risen, and Gantry Plaza State Park has opened.

To tour the site, take the 7 train to the Vernon Boulevard-Jackson Avenue stop. To orient yourself once upstairs, look around and walk toward the tall buildings. I suggest taking 49th Avenue east from Vernon Boulevard to 5th Street. Once at the waterfront, take the time to explore Gantry Plaza State Park. The dominant visual features are two gigantic old Long Island Rail Road gantries, which were used in car float operations when this waterfront was a crucial node in the city’s once vast and intricate port and terminal system. These testify to the success of industrial archaeologists in getting us to value artifacts of our industrial past. Here the gantries seem right at home in a 2.5-acre postmodern park consisting of long snaking piers, promenades, the now-obligatory cascading boulders that allow a dip of the toe in river water, and a children’s playground. It’s beguiling in itself, and for its superb views. Right across the river stands the United Nations Secretariat building, and the Chrysler Building stands out from this vantage point as it does from no other. To the right, the lovely Queensboro Bridge warrants dreamy appraisal. Also nice is the preservation of the popular neon Pepsi-Cola sign from an old bottling plant.

Turn around to look inland, and the prospect startles. Five really tall apartment buildings — from right to left, Cesar Pelli & Associates’ Citylights, two Avalon Bay developments by Perkins Eastman, and two buildings by Arquitectonica for Rockrose Development — have risen in the last 10 years. The architecture is better than we might have had, and not as good as it could have been. The scale of these things is eye-popping. And to think it’s merely the beginning!

Right now, there’s plenty to like about the way this has been done. (I write only from an urbanistic perspective that doesn’t address such heated issues as affordable housing, or whether the city has been unwise to dismantle a port and terminal infrastructure that may one day be needed again.) I cannot envision the completed project, though clustering it all to the west of Fifth Street means that the neighborhood charms of this part of Long Island City will remain intact and even be enhanced by the new context. To see what I mean, walk back to Vernon Boulevard via 49th Avenue. At the northeast corner of 5th Street and 49th Avenue, the Gantry condominiums by Gerner Kronick + Valcarel strike just the right note in negotiating between the high-rises and the modest brick row houses to the east. The six-story building features alternating planes of aluminum panels and rockface granite revetments in carefully thought-out patterns that show how this postmodern vocabulary can be just the right thing for a transitionary building. The remainder of 49th Avenue up to Vernon Boulevard is lovely. The mixed-use street might warm Jane Jacobs’s heart. Here are varied row houses, and a charming neighborhood park, Andrews Grove, with an old Beaux Arts police station backing onto it. Note that the park is about the same size as Gantry Plaza State Park, yet the way the space is designed creates two completely different park experiences. To top it off, 49th Avenue features the Mutual Hardware Corp., in a long two-story stuccoed building with fluted Corinthian pilasters.

Vernon Boulevard is a villagey shopping street. At 49th Avenue stands a pleasing 1887 Gothic Revival church, St. Mary’s. A mix of old and new businesses lines the street, including restaurants such as the well-regarded bistro Tournesol, at 50–12 Vernon Blvd. at 50th Avenue.

I lament the destruction of the beautiful old Pennsylvania Railroad powerhouse at 5th Street and 50th Avenue, a landmark-worthy structure that sported high smokestacks once rendered by Georgia O’Keeffe. Right now this waterfront neighborhood exists in a delicate balance of old and new — and we can only hope it stays that way.