Court Square Tower Grows to 56 Floors, Cocoons to the 57th

On September 10 a contractor filed to install cocoons and screens on rail climbing systems at 45-11 23rd Street in Long Island City, running from the 15th floor through the 57th. That single filing says more about the state of the building than any announcement: it is above the fifteenth floor and climbing, and the protection is specified to a floor higher than the tower’s own story count.

Why it matters

Perimeter protection filings are the most precise construction-progress data the city publishes and almost nobody reads them. A cocoon system specified from floor 15 to floor 57 tells a subcontractor exactly where the work face is today and how much superstructure is left, which is the information that decides whether it is worth chasing the interiors package. For a competing developer in Court Square, it dates the delivery.

The numbers

The job number runs back to February 11, 2022, when it was filed as a new 54-story building with 310 dwelling units across 394,082 sq ft, Daniel Kaplan of FXCollaborative as applicant and Ramon Gilsanz as structural engineer. On May 28 of this year the same job was amended to a 56-story building with 319 dwelling units. That amendment is in objections, which means the taller version has not been signed off even while the building rises.

The intervening filings read as a schedule: excavation support and foundation in February 2022, structural in February 2022, plumbing and mechanical in December 2022, sprinkler and standpipe in April 2023, a temporary personnel hoist in April 2026, a concrete pump in March 2026, and now the climbing perimeter system.

It is not alone on the block. A separate application at 23-14 45th Avenue on the same Queens block carries 314 dwelling units across 311,694 sq ft and names Tavros as owner. Between the two, more than 600 apartments are filed on one Court Square block.

What’s next

The gap between a 56-story amendment in objections and a cocoon system specified to the 57th floor is the thing to resolve, and the answer is usually a mechanical bulkhead counted differently by two filings rather than a dispute. Watch for the amendment to clear, which is what a temporary certificate of occupancy will eventually depend on. See the New York market for the rest of the file.