City scores stadium deal for Willets Point

A rendering for a new soccer stadium and affordable housing buildings in Willets Point unveiled on Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2022. Rendering via NYC Mayor/Twitter

By Jacob Kaye

The World’s Borough will soon be home to the world’s game.

After decades of bungled schemes and faulty starts for the development of Willets Point, a new plan has emerged, and officials appear to be closer to scoring a deal for the long-neglected corner of northwest Queens than ever before.

Officials gathered in Corona on Wednesday to announce that Willets Point will soon be home to the city’s first soccer stadium, which will serve as the home field of the reigning MLS champion New York City Football Club. Built next to the stadium, which will be paid for entirely with private funds, will be over 1,000 new units of 100 percent affordable housing, city officials said.

In combination with the first phase of the Willets Point redevelopment – which was recently approved by the city – the crater-filled neighborhood almost exclusively home to auto shops will likely be transformed into a new neighborhood replete with apartment buildings, a new school, retail space, a hotel and a soccer stadium before the start of the next decade.

“We have a once in a generation opportunity to create a brand new neighborhood,” Mayor Eric Adams said from the Queens Museum, where hundreds gathered on Wednesday for the announcement.

“We are materializing what others attempted to do, but everyone should be acknowledged for their contribution and knowing that there was something possible that we could accomplish here,” he added.

The 25,000-seat stadium, which is expected to open to New York City FC fans by 2027, will be the focal point of the redevelopment of the neighborhood, which sits across the street from Citi Field, where the New York Mets play. Willets Point is also a short walk from Arthur Ashe Stadium in Flushing Meadows Corona Park.

“What just happened here was that we scored that game-winning goal in stoppage time folks,” said City Councilmember Francisco Moya, who has advocated for the construction of a soccer stadium in his district for over a decade. “We scored it for the neighborhood, we scored it for Queens and we scored it for New York in bringing a new stadium right here in our beautiful Corona.”

A number of details about the stadium have yet to be revealed. However, it will be paid for entirely with private funds. It won’t come without some financial costs to the city, however. Subsidies will be used to pay for some of the infrastructure improvements – the neighborhood where people continue to work is without a working sewage system – and the developers will not be required to pay property taxes on the site throughout the duration of the lease from the city.

The New York City Football Club is expected to lease the land for 49 years, paying $4 million in rent each year of the lease, the Times reported.

The plans announced on Wednesday will be featured in phase two of the development project. The second phase will also feature around 1,400 new affordable apartment units – the income restrictions for those apartments have yet to be determined. A new hotel will also be built next door and feature around 250 rooms.

Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, City Councilmember Francisco Moya and Mayor Eric Adams joined a number of other officials in announcing plans to bring a new soccer stadium to Willets Point on Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2022. Photo by Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office

The new plans come as plans for phase one have recently begun to make headway.

In October, the city’s Public Design Commission approved plans to build 1,100 units of affordable housing, with a number of them designated for seniors.

It will include over 22,000 square feet of retail space, around 5,000 square feet of community facilities, over 30,000 square feet of open space and a new K-8 school with 650 seats, which is being designed by the School Construction Authority in a separate effort.

The affordable units in phase one will rent from a range of below 30 percent of the area median income to over 100 percent of the area median income. Moya said Wednesday that he expects the affordable housing in phase two to rent for similar numbers.

“We're done talking about the affordable housing crisis in Queens County,” Queens Borough President Donovan Richards said. “We're going to build our way out of this crisis.”

Willets Point has been eyed for redevelopment by both the city, which owns 23 acres of land in the neighborhood, and by developers for decades.

The neighborhood, sometimes referred to as the Iron Triangle, sits in the shadow of Citi Field and sat in the shadow of Shea Stadium before that.

Around a century ago, it was home to an ash removal company that polluted the area so much that it inspired author F. Scott Fitzgerald to feature the neighborhood in his classic novel “The Great Gatsby” – Fitzgerald refers to the neighborhood as the “Valley of Ashes.”

After the ash removal company vacated the neighborhood, auto shop business began moving in, further polluting the area that sits on the Flushing Creek, which itself is one of the most contaminated bodies of water in the five boroughs.

Plans to redevelop the neighborhood have come and gone.

The beginnings of the serious push to redevelop Willets Point date back to the Bloomberg administration. The former mayor proposed building housing and office space in the neighborhood before proposing the site include a shopping mall on the Citi Field parking lot, which is also on city land. A lawsuit promptly brought those plans to close.

Towards the end of former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s second term, plans were unveiled for the neighborhood that included primarily affordable housing. Those plans greatly resemble what is planned for the first phase of the redevelopment today.

Remediation on the first phase of the city-owned property began during de Blasio’s last year in office, and is expected to be completed by either late 2023 or early 2024 depending on the complications presented by the century of pollution.

Phase one of the Willets Point redevelopment is currently undergoing a remediation process after a century of pollution in the area. Eagle file photo by Jacob Kaye

As the redevelopment plans have shifted, one thing has remained the same – business and workers in the area have been pushed out year after year.

In the early 2010s, a number of shops took buyouts from the city and reallocated to the Bronx, a move that ultimately proved to be a failure for many of the business that moved.

Other workers and business owners remained in the neighborhood, only to see conditions there worsen, they say. Without a working sewage system, workers were forced to find toilets outside of the neighborhood during working hours. Business owners in Willets Point joked that no one got their car fixed in Willets Point only once – after picking up their repaired car, they’d just have to turn around to get it fixed again after damaging it on the pot-hole ridden streets that line the neighborhood. Even after a light rain, the streets would flood and would dry out into a crusted mud the next day.

Officials deflected when asked about the relocation services offered to workers and business on Wednesday.

“This was something that was already discussed in prior administrations,” Moya said. “What they did with [the relocation funds], we'd have to ask them, but that’s what the payoff was for them to move to…the Bronx, and that's where it has been since then.”

“I can't speak for those that decided to say here, but they all received compensation,” he added.

The developments in the move to transform the neighborhood come shortly after Steve Cohen has taken over ownership of the New York Mets. Cohen appears to have a better working relationship with the city as a whole – although, previous Mets owners, the Wilpon family, remain heavily involved in Willets Point and, together with the Related Companies, control the Queens Development Group, which is responsible for the development.

Reports from a number of outlets have suggested that Cohen has been pushing to be the recipient of one of the state’s three new casino licenses and has plans to build one by Citi Field. Supporting the development of the

“The entire conversation around what's going to happen with the casino, that’s a state issue,” Adams said. “I don't have the power to determine the siting of that.”

“We want to celebrate this historic victory today, so the state can answer that question,” he added.