Electeds break ground on Willets Point development
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A host of elected officials broke ground on the Willets Point development project on Wednesday, June 16, 2021. Eagle photo by Jacob Kaye
By Jacob Kaye
It was a groundbreaking nearly 15 years in the making.
Public officials, including Mayor Bill de Blasio, came together Wednesday to break ground on the long-stalled Willets Point development. The 6-acre site, and the surrounding area slated for development sometime in the distant future, is the last remaining empty tract of land of its size in all of New York City.
The ceremony marked the beginning of the site’s cleanup efforts, which are expected to be completed by 2023. Following the remediation, construction will begin on 1,100 units of affordable housing, a K-8 school, around 25,000 square feet of retail space, 3,000 square feet of community facility space and an acre of open space.
“This is groundbreaking, this is historic,” said City Council member Fransisco Moya, who’s long advocated for the development of the area. “When I stepped foot in the City Council, the first thing I did was to work to create a true path toward bringing affordable housing to the district. And I'm proud that despite three administrations attempting to do this, we were finally able to move forward with the first phase of this project.”
Cast in the shadow of Citi Field – the home of the New York Mets – Willets Point has largely been occupied by auto body shops and workers over the past several decades. Its main claim to fame came nearly a century ago, when F. Scott Fitzgerald described the area as “the Valley of Ashes” in his classic novel The Great Gatsby.
During the author’s time, Willets Point was home to an ash removal company, which left the neighborhood in 1930, leaving behind a layer of ash 30 feet thick on average, beginning nearly a century of pollution in the area. The cleanup is expected to last two years.
Remediation of the first phase of the development is expected to be complete in 2023. Eagle photo by Jacob Kaye.
The plan to develop the Iron Triangle – named for its shape and industrial use – dates back to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration. Thus began a nearly two-decade long saga of failed plans, one of which was struck down in court, and false starts.
Last month, the Queens Borough Board approved plans presented by the New York City Economic Development Corporation and the Queens Development Group, which is made up of real estate giants Related Companies and Sterling Equities, to begin the process of bringing the affordable housing and school to the first phase of the development.
The city agreed to lease out the 6 acres of city-owned land to Queens Development Group for the next 99 years.
“I’ve been looking out at this acreage for many, many years hoping there would be a day like this,” said Richard Browne, a partner at Sterling Equities. “We understand the gravity and history of this project.”
The Willets Point development was further stalled by the pandemic. On Wednesday, officials marked the remediation of the land as a coming of a new age, post-pandemic.
“We had thousands of people who died during this pandemic, where our communities were more impacted by COVID-19 than any other parts of the city,” said Queens Borough President Donovan Richards. “And today, we begin that comeback story for Queens.”
De Blasio echoed the sentiment, comparing the city’s old lease on Willets Point to the Mets’ contract with former ballplayer Bobby Bonilla, who collects a nearly $2 million check from the team each year as a result of a deferred payment plan.
“It’s another sign of New York City’s rebirth,” the mayor said. “We were knocked down, but New Yorkers always get back up. This is a city coming back strong.”
As part of the neighborhood’s development, Queens Development Group will build new streets, sidewalks and utilities, including a sewage system, which the occupants of Willets Point have gone without for over a decade.
Auto shops, which once populated the phase one of the development, continue down the block from where the new development will be. Eagle photo by Jacob Kaye
State Sen. Jessica Ramos touted the new development for meeting the immediate needs of New Yorkers.
“The biggest parcels of land need to be utilized in order to produce housing that is not only truly affordable, but prioritizes those who are homeless, those who have been through the roughest of times, and I'm so proud to see that this project does just that,” Ramos said.
“I hope that this project actually serves as a model as an inspiration for the other projects that are to come here to Willets Point,” she added. “I know lots of developers must be salivating at our parcel of land right here in Queens and you're not going to be allowed to come here if you're not going to do the right thing.”
Construction of the school and housing is expected to begin in 2024.
