Huge towers on Long Island City waterfront start going vertical

Good morning, and welcome to New York Minute, a new roundup of the New York City news you need to know about today. Send stories you think should be included to tips@curbed.com.

Construction on massive Hunters Point South towers housing inches forward

It’s been a few months since TF Cornerstone broke ground on two large rental buildings on the Long Island City waterfront, and today, YIMBY reports that the project has gone vertical.

The structures, designed by ODA New York (with SLCE as the architect of record), will have close to 1,200 apartments, of which 60 percent will be earmarked as permanently affordable, and 100 will be reserved for seniors.

Some kind of development has been proposed for the Hunter’s Point South site—which was known, until about a decade ago, as Queens West—and it even became one of the selling points of the city’s failed 2012 Olympic bid. But eventually, the middle-income housing that was promised came to fruition: The first phase of development brought in Related Companies, Phipps Houses and Monadnock Construction, a team that developed Hunter’s Point South Commons and Crossing, two affordable buildings that opened in 2015.

In addition to the two buildings that TF Cornerstone is developing, another parcel at the southernmost tip of the Hunters Point South site will give way to two towers, developed by Gotham and RiseBoro Community Partnership Inc., that will have more than 1,100 apartments between them. Plans for those were filed earlier this year.

And in other news…

• A new start-up wants to change how New Yorkers pay for security deposits.
• Two ornamental globes were removed from one of the Manhattan Bridge’s towers, and will be replaced by replicas.
• If you’re planning to visit Green-Wood Cemetery during this ~spooky~ time of year, don’t plan on wearing a costume.
• SL Green sold the old Daily News building on 42nd Street for $815 million—and the buyer is reportedly Jacob Chetrit.
• The new Greenpoint branch of the Brooklyn Public Library has been delayed again; now, it may not open until December.
• “A federal judge temporarily blocked New York City restrictions on strip clubs and adult-entertainment establishments,” the latest move in a long-running fight over the fate of NYC’s peep shows.
• And finally, someone got creative with road work signs in Brooklyn yesterday: