With final city approval of the Silvercup West project expected today, Long Island City may be poised to finally live up to the title it has held for more than 30 years: the next hot thing in New York neighborhoods.

About as big in total space as the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle, Silvercup West is one of several huge development projects now planned across the five boroughs. Developers Alan and Stuart Suna are seeking to build three towers with 2.7 million square feet of studio, office, and residential space on the East River waterfront, just south of the Queensboro Bridge.

The Suna brothers are co-owners of Silvercup Studios, a successful film and production company headquartered just to the east of the proposed project. The Sunas purchased the 6-acre site in 1999 from Citigroup for an undisclosed price. Now, the brothers are seeking a development partner to help with the financing of the project that is expected to cost more than $1 billion.

Stuart Suna said yesterday that he has been a resident of Long Island City for 25 years and he has heard all of the hype. “It is finally happening now,” he said.

Yesterday, the project received unanimous approval from the City Council’s Land Use Committee, and it is expected to receive the final nod by the full council today. The project required several zoning changes, including a switch to residential from manufacturing use.

In another era, the site was the home of a terra-cotta factory that supplied the materials that make up several of the city’s landmarked treasures. More recently, two decommissioned power generators and a giant salt pile occupied the area. The Queensboro Bridge separates the site from the Queensbridge Houses, the largest public housing project in America.

Silvercup West is designed by architect Lord Richard Rogers, who also designed London’s Millennium Dome, in close collaboration with the architecture firm NBBJ New York.

Local politicians and the Bloomberg administration have touted the project as a job creator in the film and television production industry, one of the city’s fastest-growing industrial sectors, and an important step toward transforming the non-productive East River waterfront.

Following community concerns that the development would be a rich, gated-community, the city’s Planning Commission and the local City Council member, Eric Gioia, brokered a deal earlier this summer with the developers to add 150 units of affordable housing, to be located within a half-mile of the site.

“This will help to transform Queens waterfront from salt piles and power plants to homes and parks and a museum,” Mr. Gioia said yesterday.

He said that previous proposals for the site were “nickel and dimed to death” by local politicians and overregulation.

Mr. Gioia said the Silvercup West plan is made possible by a mayoral administration with a grand vision for the waterfront and the removal of the political hurdles that stymie much of New York’s development.

“Everything people fear about the regulatory environment — about how difficult it is to build — is true,” Mr. Gioia said. “Local politics is like navigating a mine field in New York City.”

A senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute who specializes in development, Julia Vitullo-Martin, said part of Long Island City has been “like a cemetery of broken dreams.”

Ms. Martin said she fears that Silvercup West will meet the same fate as other ambitious, large development projects in the area. The 48-story Citigroup tower, visible from Midtown as the lone skyscraper in Long Island City, has stood since 1989 as a reminder of development that was promised but never happened.

“This is one of those cursed sites that looks very good and doesn’t quite work. This is a huge development to put on a site that has a history of problems,” Ms. Martin said.

She said the project’s office and residential space could come on the market at a time when demand for real estate had dropped off, and added that she worried what would happen to important low-rise neighborhoods in Western Queens if the waterfront became a wall of glass towers.

“Development on the waterfront was held off the market for too long, but I would not like to see it turned into a Miami Beach-style development,” Ms. Martin said.

A professor of urban planning at New York University, Mitchell Moss, said that previous plans for the site lacked creativity.

“That site has been ripe for renewal for 30 years,” Mr. Moss said. “But this is the first time that we’re finally dealing with ideas and a design that will work on that portion of the Queens waterfront.”

Under the approved plan, the developers could back out of building the office tower and just build the apartments, studio space, and retail stores.

Yesterday, co-owner Stuart Suna said that under current market conditions, he intends to build the office tower.

“It is looking more attractive in the past two months as commercial office prices have soared in Midtown to new highs,” Mr. Suna said.

He said he would market the space to broadcast- and entertainment-related companies, such as HBO and Fox.

If the Suna brothers find a financial backer soon, they are hoping to break ground this winter, with the expected completion in 2010.

“We are in the dating phase now,” Mr. Suna said.