NYCFC pitches pitch to borough prez

Queens Borough President Donovan Richards held a public hearing on phase two of the Willets Point redevelopment on Wednesday. The project includes plans to build New York City Football Club’s soccer stadium across the street from Citi Field. Eagle file photo by Jacob Kaye

By Jacob Kaye

New York City Football Club pitched their pitch to the borough president Wednesday as the team continued its efforts to get the city to approve its plans to build a 25,000-seat soccer stadium in the center of what will one day be a completely new neighborhood in Western Queens.

The football club, alongside the city’s Economic Development Corporation and developers from Related Companies and Sterling Equities, brought their plans for what they’ve dubbed “phase two” of the development of Willets Point to Queens Borough President Donovan Richards on Wednesday.

While the borough president didn’t express his outright support for the project, which also includes plans to bring over 1,000 units of affordable housing to the area across from Citi Field, no part of the plan appeared to be too controversial to him.

Though Richards peppered the developers, city and soccer club with a number of questions about local hiring, community oversight of the project, affordable housing and more, none of the answers he received seemed to cause any contention.

“My goal as the borough president is to always get to a ‘yes,’ however, we will never sacrifice the community in that initiative of trying to get there,” Richards said on Wednesday.

“The goal is to make sure that we’re not just scoring a goal for the stadium, but for the community,” he added.

Several months ago, Richards said he wasn’t afraid to withhold his approval of the soccer stadium project if the city wasn’t able to work out a deal to bring food vendors back into Corona Plaza. His demand came after city law enforcement booted unlicensed vendors from the plaza at the request of the mayor and City Councilmember Francisco Moya, the soccer stadium’s biggest booster, over the summer.

In November, the city announced that it had struck a deal with the vendors, Richards and others to allow for a new pilot program to allow at least a handful of vendors to return to Corona Plaza.

“Sometimes you got to use your leverage,” Richards told the Eagle in November after the city agreed to implement a new program to allow at least some of the vendors back into Corona Plaza.

With the new program in place, Richards appeared on Wednesday to be far more amenable to eventually approving the project. However, his support for vendors remained.

“​​Everybody's aware of the challenges we've had with street vending in the city, and we want to make sure that there are opportunities for street vendors as well, to grow their products here and at the stadium as well,” Richards said.

Queens Borough President Donovan Richards and City Councilmember Francisco Moya toured phases one and two of the Willets Point redevelopment project in May. This week, Richards held a public hearing on phase two, now making its way through the city’s land use review procedure. Eagle file photo by Jacob Kaye

An NYCFC representative told the borough president that the club and their not-yet-named concessions partner will “design a program that will include Queens-based vendors.”

The request was one of several Richards made to the team, the city’s EDC and the Queens Development Group on Wednesday during a public hearing on the project hosted by his office.

The hearing marked the first time the project has appeared before the BP, who is effectively the second stop on the group’s tour toward what is expected to be the city’s approval. The local community board overwhelmingly voted to approve the phase two plan earlier this month.

The first phase of the project was approved around a year ago and following a lengthy remediation process, construction began in recent weeks. Phase one of the project includes 880 units of income restricted housing, 220 units of senior housing, a 25-space parking garage, over 22,000 square feet of retail space, around 5,000 square feet of community facilities and over 30,000 square feet of open space. Construction on the first phase is expected to be completed by 2026.

Phase two of the project, which was up for discussion on Wednesday, include 1,400 units of affordable housing, an 18-story hotel, several parking garages, over 75,000 square feet of retail space, a number of pedestrian plazas, open space and the stadium, which is expected to open for its first match in 2027.

While the stadium has been pitched by some as the centerpiece of the second phase of the development, others have touted the affordable housing component. Combined with the first phase, the development is the largest affordable housing project the city has seen in decades.

Though the city has yet to specify the breakdown of the affordability of the units, they said on Wednesday that the units in the second phase of the development will largely mirror the first phase.

In phase one, 133 units, or 15 percent of the total phase one units, will be rented to formerly homeless New Yorkers. Sixty units, or 7 percent will rent at 30 percent of the area median income; 99 units, or 11 percent, will rent at 40 percent AMI; 60 units will rent at 60 percent AMI; 109 units, or 12 percent, will rent at 80 percent AMI; 339 units, or 38 percent, will rent at 100 percent AMI; and 80 units will rent at 120 percent AMI.

Phases one and two of the Willets Point redevelopment project. Rendering via NYCFC

Every unit expected to be built at Willets Point under the first two phases of the project will be income restricted.

Richards is expected to give his recommendation on the project within the next month. From there, it will come before the City Planning Commission before moving on to the City Council and, finally, the mayor.

Whatever form the final project takes, it will likely be seen as a major victory for the city and the development group, which has been attempting to develop Willets Point for decades.

A century ago, Willets Point was the inspiration for a particularly desolate setting in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, “The Great Gatsby.” He called it the “Valley of Ashes,” named for the conditions created by the Brooklyn Ash Removal Company, which dumped heaps of ash onto the site until 1930, when the company was booted from the neighborhood to make way for the World’s Fair.

For a time, the neighborhood served as a city dump and later became home to scores of auto mechanic shops. Those shops populated the area when in 2008, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the City Council officially marked Willets Point for redevelopment.

Several plans for the area were pitched and scrapped, including one that involved bringing a shopping mall to Willets Point that was shot down in court.

It wasn’t until the final years of former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s second term in office that the current plan began to take shape.

De Blasio announced the details of phase one of the site in June 2021, and remediation began on the land shortly after – around that time, the city also agreed to lease the land, which is city owned, to Related Companies and Sterling Equities, the two development companies that comprise of Queens Development Group, for 99 years. The clean-up, which included excavating 100,000 tons of contaminated earth and replacing it with 80,000 tons of clean dirt, was completed earlier this year.

Richards went on a tour of the first phase of the site in May alongside Moya and representatives from the EDC and Queens Development Group.

While on the tour, Richards called the project “the definition of community development.”

“As this site gets developed, we’re really thinking about not just simply calling them [apartment] units,” the borough president said. “These are people's lives that are going to be impacted, who will be able to stay and live in a neighborhood across the street from Citi Field and a new soccer stadium, which is unheard of.”