Citylights at Queens Landing

The building combines a lower block of substantial depth with a narrower tower above. The lower floors accommodate a broader range of apartment positions, while the tower’s perimeter provides elevated exposures in several directions. The original design places shared recreation space over the garage, separating outdoor activities from the street and from the upper residential floors.

Apartment types include studios and one-, two- and three-bedroom homes, along with larger combinations and upper-floor configurations. Windows facing west address the river and Manhattan skyline; east-facing rooms look across Long Island City. Corner plans can capture two directions of light. The orientation of the principal living room is a meaningful distinction within a building with this many exposures.

The original offering assigned shares to 521 apartments and reserved a separate residence for the superintendent. Later combinations have changed some interior arrangements. A combined apartment can retain the proportions of more than one original plan, including additional corridors and separate window groupings. The bedroom count alone does not identify which part of the original floor plate a home occupies.

Some apartments have private balconies or terraces. The offering plan expressly reserves building access to certain exterior areas for repairs and maintenance and notes the presence of vents, drains and other building systems. These private outdoor areas are distinct from the common recreation roof and carry their own access obligations under the proprietary lease.

Five residential passenger elevators were specified in the original building design, with separate elevator service for the garage and learning-center component. The architect’s report distinguishes construction-floor numbering from the numbering used in apartment marketing, including the penthouse tiers. A penthouse label therefore identifies an upper-floor designation; confirm separately whether a given "penthouse" apartment is a duplex or has a private roof terrace.

Citylights operates a staffed residential building with common laundry and a fitness center. The garage, street-level commercial space and learning-center premises form part of the larger property. The original plan treats parking use as a service separate from basic apartment maintenance, so a share purchase does not automatically include a parking space.

The recreation roof has changed since the original construction. Brooklyn Grange designed and installed a 16,000-square-foot green roof with native perennial planting. DOB alteration filings also describe outdoor seating and planters, a tennis court, a bocce court and accessory storage created from part of the garage. The planted areas and hard-surfaced recreation areas occupy different portions of the roof.

The cooperative’s obligations extend beyond its interior amenities. The ground-lease summary assigns maintenance and repair of the property to the apartment corporation and requires it to maintain publicly accessible pedestrian spaces. It also requires landlord consent for material alterations to the building. The corporation manages a mixed-use property with public-access obligations as well as a residential tower.

Payments in lieu of taxes, or PILOT, arise under the ground lease. The building’s 2021 financial update describes the phase-out of its earlier tax benefit and scheduled full PILOT payments beginning in 2022. That history explains part of the maintenance growth since 2022; there is no active tax abatement today. Ground rent, PILOT and the cooperative’s underlying debt are separate from an individual shareholder’s apartment loan.

The purchase and sublease applications on file provide the following terms; confirm that the current application retains them before signing a contract.

Financing: Up to 90% of the purchase price in the purchase application. The lender separately reviews the cooperative and its ground lease.

First-year occupancy: The purchaser acknowledges using the apartment as a residence for the first year after purchase before subletting.

Subletting: The application limits each sublease and renewal to a one-year term and requires a separate submission and fee.

Pets: The purchase package permits one pet per apartment and prohibits pets for subtenants.

Transfer process: The proprietary lease provides a right of first refusal on sales and subleases. The purchase package gives the board thirty days from receipt of a complete application to exercise or waive that right.

Recent sales

Recent transfers at this building, from The Roebling Research Library. Prices are the transfer amounts recorded with the NYC Department of Finance; apartment-level detail is checked against the building’s own file in The Roebling Research Library before publishing.

Market read. Most recent trades (2026 to date) cleared a median $818/sf (floor-adjusted) across 9 sales. Floor-adjusted means each sale is restated to a constant mix of floors, so the figure can differ from the plain median of the sales listed above. Median listing discount 3.9% from the last ask — a recurring negotiation gap worth pricing into any offer or listing strategy.

Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 4-00018-0001). Apartment-level facts (line, condition, asking-price context) curated and cross-verified in The Roebling Research Library. Not all transactions cross-verify with ACRIS records — sponsor and LLC purchases sometimes record at stipulated values rather than market price; square footage on co-ops is not officially recorded, figures shown are approximate.

Review the lease term with the lender before committing to financing. The original ground lease expires in 2095 and requires negotiation with the landlord for an extension or a new lease. It does not promise an automatic renewal. Counsel should establish which amendments apply to the apartment corporation today, and the lender should accept the actual lease documents before a financing contingency is removed.

Check the apartment’s share allocation when comparing carrying costs. Maintenance is allocated through the cooperative’s shares. The original schedule assigns different share amounts to apartments, and later combinations can bring more than one original allocation into a single home. Two apartments with similar advertised floor areas can therefore have different monthly obligations without a corresponding difference in their current asking prices.

Resolve in-unit laundry before the transfer inspection. The purchase package prohibits apartment washers and dryers and requires previously approved installations dating from before 2012 to be removed when the apartment sells, with plumbing and electrical connections removed or capped. An existing machine should not be advertised as an amenity that automatically passes to the purchaser. This is a closing requirement to settle before scheduling the inspection.

• The View at 46-30 Center Boulevard — A waterfront condominium with a smaller residential population and river-facing layouts, offering a different ownership structure in the same waterfront setting.
• L Haus at 11-02 49th Avenue — A brick mid-rise condominium organized around landscaped common outdoor space, with a lower building profile and fewer homes.
• Arris Lofts at 27-28 Thomson Avenue — An industrial conversion with large loft volumes, an interior courtyard and a swimming pool, within condominium ownership.
• Galerie at 22-18 Jackson Avenue — A contemporary condominium arranged around an interior courtyard, providing a comparison for shared facilities in a smaller development.
• Skyline Tower at 3 Court Square — A larger glass condominium tower whose high-floor apartments offer a comparison for elevation and skyline exposure in a newer building.