City breaks ground at Willets Point
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City officials broke ground on the first phase of the redevelopment of Willets Point on Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2023. Photo by Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office
By Jacob Kaye
City officials broke ground on the first phase of the redevelopment of Willets Point on Wednesday, marking a major step, however symbolic, toward the creation of an entirely new neighborhood in the long-neglected and polluted corner of Northwest Queens.
The first phase of the project, which is expected to be completed in 2026, includes over 800 units of affordable housing and a new school, and will precede by a year the opening of the city’s first-ever soccer stadium just down the block.
Decades in the making, the redevelopment of what was once known as the Iron Triangle has started and stopped numerous times, baffling several mayors, councilmembers, developers and officials with the city’s Economic Development Corporation. The full development of the 60-plus acres of the neighborhood bordered by Flushing Creek and the Whitestone Expressway still may feel out of reach for some, but the development of the first 23 acres of the site closest to Citi Field are, at this point, essentially an inevitability.
That a finalized project is so soon set to materialize in the area was still an idea that seemed like an impossibility to some city officials on Wednesday.
“I couldn't be more thrilled to be at the groundbreaking ceremony of a project that has gone through so many ups and downs, a project that we never thought would get to this point,” said City Councilmember Francisco Moya, a major booster of the project and the New York City Football Club stadium in the center of it. “Yet, here we are.”
A year ahead of schedule, the groundbreaking ceremony follows a multi-year remediation, which wrapped up over the summer, of the polluted site.
Now, construction will begin on the first phase of the development, which was approved by the city last year. 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, 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 and won’t be completed until 2027 at the earliest. The building of the first phase also includes the construction of major pieces of infrastructure, including connecting the neighborhood to the city’s sewage system and building the often-flooded streets up well above the floodplain.
The second phase of the project, which is currently making its way through the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, otherwise known as ULURP, includes the 25,000-seat stadium, an additional 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 and open space. While the soccer stadium is expected to open in 2027, the affordable housing is not expected to be completed until 2030.
When structures do eventually rise in the neighborhood, it will look nothing like it did at any point in its history.
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 it served as a city dump and later became home to scores of auto mechanic shops, many of which occupied the neighborhood for the past several decades until they were bought out and, in some cases, removed from the area to make way for the development currently underway.
Though the details have changed, the current plan for development dates back to Mayor Michal Bloomberg’s administration, which, in 2008, spearheaded the passage of the Special Willets Point District.
But the plans presented for the area didn’t pan out – one plan to bring a shopping mall to the parking of lot of Citi Field, which isn’t included in the current redevelopment plan but in a separate effort from Mets owner Steve Cohen to build a casino, was struck down in court around a decade ago.
It wasn’t until the final years of former-Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration that the current plan began to gain momentum.
Remediation of phase one of the site began in June 2021, when the city also agreed to lease the land to Related Companies and Sterling Equities, which together make up the Queens Development Group, for 99-years.
In November 2022, Adams announced the details of the second phase of the project, striking a deal with the New York City Football Club to build its stadium.
“Being a mayor should not be about dismantling things that were built previously under previous administrations, it's a continuation,” Adams said on Wednesday. “Hats off to all of those mayors that were part of the lineage. We may be putting the shovel in the ground, but there were those before me who understood how important it was to do something here at Willets Point.”
All together, the project, when completed, will be the largest affordable housing development in New York City in four decades.
Though the affordable housing rates for the second phase of development have not yet been agreed upon, however, in phase one 133 units, or 15 percent of the total phase one units, will be rented to formerly homeless New Yorkers; 60 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.
“F. Scott Fitzgerald called this spot the ‘Valley of Ashes,’ if only he could see us rising out of the ashes like a phoenix today, because out of these ashes is going to rise New York City's newest community, one that can and will be rooted in equity and opportunity for all,” Queens Borough President Donovan Richards said.
