NYCFC soccer stadium approved by board
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Queens Community Board 7 voted 37-2 on Monday to approve phase two of the Willets Point development project, which includes New York City Football Club’s soccer stadium, a hotel and affordable housing. Rendering via NYCFC
By Ryan Schwach
Soccer is to many considered to be a great unifier, bringing people from different countries and cultures together.
On Monday, it brought soccer fans, politicians, union workers and community members into a church basement in Queens for a community board vote on the plan to bring a 25,000-seat soccer stadium, 1,400 units of affordable housing, a hotel and more to what the city has dubbed “phase two” of the Willets Point redevelopment project.
Community Board 7, which includes Willets Point and other areas of Eastern and Northern Queens, voted 37 to 2 to approve the project, marking the first thumbs up on the city’s review process that will play out over the coming months and culminate with a vote in the City Council.
While support for the project was overwhelming, the negotiations over the proposal were at times tense and featured substantial stipulations from the board, including a commitment from the city to explore the possibility of creating a new police precinct in Northeast Queens.
The vote took place Monday night in Whitestone, and garnered a crowd size generally unfamiliar to a usual community board meeting. Most of the over 100 people packed into the basement of St. Luke Roman Catholic Church came in support of the Willets Point project, which has come before the community board in various forms for over a decade.
“Look at the years that we've spent seeing those stops and starts, stops and starts, and finally it's here,” said local Councilmember Francisco Moya, who is arguably the stadium project’s most vocal government supporter. “It is the proudest moment to stand with all of you.”
Phase two of the massive Willets Point development includes 1,400 units of affordable housing, a 250-key hotel, 2.8 acres public open space and the soccer stadium, which will be the city’s first built specifically for soccer and the future home of New York City Football Club. The second phase of the project builds off the first, which has already made its way through the city’s review process and 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.
Combined, it is the largest affordable housing project created in the five boroughs in the past 40 years, officials said.
Hopes of developing Willets Point, 23-acres of which are owned by the city but leased to a group of developers, have been on the minds of locals and developers for decades. It’s largely been seen as one of the city’s largest tracts of underutilized land. A century ago, Willets Point was the inspiration for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Valley of Ashes” in his classic novel, “The Great Gatsby.” The neighborhood’s fictitious counterpart was inspired by the conditions in Willets Point 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, which in some cases further polluted the area with car parts and toxins.
Officials said on Monday that their efforts to redevelop Willets Point also reflect the potential to change the way the neighborhood has been perceived for the past 100 years.
“What you've done is transforming Queens, it's transforming New York, you're making the lives of so many better,” said Moya. “In four decades, we've never seen a project like this come to fruition.”
Large crowds of union supporters, NYCFC fans and locald crowded into the basement of a whitestone church for the willets point vote. eagle photo by ryan schwach
Just a board meeting
The meeting began like almost any other board meeting. And rightfully so – the board has been discussing Willets Point, and all its complexities, for over a decade.
Though there were dozens of new faces in the room, longtime board Chair Eugene Kelty got the meeting underway in the way all meetings begin, by taking roll. Once the meeting was underway, discussion of the Willets Point plan moved rather quickly.
Board members said they felt there had been enough discussion and chose to waive further conversation among members and go straight to the vote, which resulted in the one-sided approval of the plan.
What the board wanted
Community Board 7 came into the negotiation over the project with a list of things they wanted in return for their support. Mainly, the board wanted the stipulation that the city would consider building a new NYPD precinct in Northeast Queens to supplement the 109th Precinct, particularly with the influx of residents coming to Willets Point.
For the most part, the board got their wish, with the city and Deputy Mayor Phil Banks penning a letter to board last week committing to exploring the possibility of building a precinct in the area.
Councilmember Vickie Paladino, who also advocated for the precinct in her district, called Banks’ commitment a “green light, in a way.”
“This has been going on, for those of you who don’t know, since 1984, we have been looking for help for the 109th Precinct,” she said on Monday.
Vice Chair Chuck Apelian also applauded the deputy mayor’s letter on Monday.
“It's pretty exciting, he said. “It's something that they said couldn’t be done, they said nobody could do it, but we worked hard, we persevered.”
Apelian chalked the win up to “a lot of hard work over decades.”
The board has also expressed concern that the new stadium and housing would cause traffic and parking woes throughout the area.
Some of those worries were partially assuaged on Monday after NYCFC announced that they had come to a tentative agreement with Mets owner Steve Cohen over use of the baseball team’s parking lot at Citi Field.
While the soccer club initially was asking for 2,500 spots during game days, the deal, which has yet to be officially agreed upon, has been upped to 4,000 spots.
Apelian called the increase in parking spots and the tentative deal “good news.”
The board said they were also happy to hear that NYCFC home games will not take place on days where the Mets are scheduled to play at home or during any major tennis event at the Billie Jean King Tennis Center across the street.
‘I’ll do anything for my team’
Fans of NYCFC, generally used to celebrating from the stands and cheering goals, decided supporting their club also included coming to the community board meeting, as they did for a number of committee meetings on the project held last month.
“I’ll do anything for my team,” said Angelo Castellanos, the founder of the Third Rail Queens chapter, an NYCFC supporter group.
Fans of New York City Football Club came en masse to support the project’s approval, which would mean a new, permanent home for their team. Eagle Photo by Ryan Schwach
For fans like Castellanos, a large number of whom spoke during the public comment section of the meeting in favor of the plan, getting this stadium means a new home, and one close to their own homes in areas like Elmhurst, Corona and Whitestone.
“This is 4.6 miles from my house,” said Whitestone resident and NYCFC fan Oscar Garcia.
While the project is months away from a final approval and three years away from opening day, fans at Monday’s meeting saw the board’s approval as a major marker toward progress.
“Today is the last game of the season, this is it,” said Castellanos.
More support for the project came from a sizable contingent of union workers, who stand to benefit from construction jobs associated with the stadium and hotel.
The construction jobs for the housing units will be open shop for the best bidder, but could ultimately wind up being union workers.
Not everyone is in favor
Although the support for the project at the Monday meeting was overwhelming, not every local was totally behind the Willets Point plan.
A handful of advocacy groups, including Queens Neighborhoods United and Guardians of Flushing Bay, protested the project outside the church, and some spoke inside about their dislike of the proposals.
“We are concerned about all kinds of things related to traffic, both car traffic but also obviously traffic on the train, pollution, and the economic questions,” said Arianna Martinez, a CUNY professor and member of Queens Neighborhoods United. “These mega-developments are a big win for the private developers and the community doesn't really get much out of it, except for increasingly unaffordable rents.”
Those opposed to the project argued that locals will be priced out of the stadium’s amenities, that there wasn’t enough affordable housing included in the plan and that the large developments exempt billionaires from taxes and harms the surrounding environment.
Those opposed to the Willets Point project projected a notice against the project on the walls of the church where a community board meeting on the project took place. Eagle photo by Ryan Schwach
“This entire development is surrounded by environmental justice communities,” said Rebecca Pryor from the Guardians of Flushing Bay. “We deserve better.”
While the board’s vote was nearly unanimous, there were still holdouts, board members Lawrence Hughes and Cody Herrmann.
Herrmann’s vote, in part, centered around the fact that the city will allow NYCFC to pay $0 in property taxes each year in exchange for the club’s financing of the stadium’s build and operation. The tax break is expected to cost the city $516 million in lost revenue over the 49-year term of the club’s lease on the land.
“This plan really doesn’t center equity,” argued Herrmann, who is also a member of the Guardians of Flushing Bay. “How do we get the precinct that we wanted if we aren’t getting taxes back?”
Hermann also said she would have preferred the various aspects of the plan be voted on separately, and that more conversation was had leading up to the vote.
“I found that there was no discussion to be disappointing,” she said.
A coalition celebrates a win
Once Kelty read the final 37-2 vote, the crowd erupted in cheers and chants of “N-Y-C-F-C.”
Among those celebrating was NYCFC CEO Brad Sims.
“[I’m] very pleased that [we had] such overwhelming support,” he said. “It's an amazing project. The city and Queens have been waiting decades to try and figure out a great solution for Willets Point and we've got it – it's a transformative project.”
Moya also saw the vote as a big win for the project, which still has a ways to go before any shovels hit dirt.
“This is a big milestone,” he said. “I think for all of us who have been involved in this project, it's been a passion, a labor of love. But I think tonight is indicative of what happens when you involve the community, transparency, and really work with the right partners to do something special.”
“This is really creating a real economic engine, not just for the city of New York, but for the borough of Queens,” he added.
Not there yet
Monday’s vote was just one more stop on Willets Point’s proverbial 7 train trip to completion.
The project now heads through an environmental impact statement process, which includes scoping meetings and then a hearing on the impact statement.
Then the project heads to the desk of Borough President Donovan Richards, who has expressed support for the overall project, but has also been willing to use his signature of approval as leverage in other negotiations, something he has said he is willing to do again if the situation arises.
After that, it heads to the City Planning Commission, and then on to the City Council, where Moya doesn’t believe he needs to be stressed about gaining the support of his colleagues.
“The testimony here from the people that live in the community, and then in the surrounding community, it's vastly overwhelming,” he told the Eagle after the vote. “We did it right the first time….We did the whole thing right, we took our time on this.”
It then goes to Mayor Eric Adams, who has already thrown his support behind the project.
To some on Monday, victory was within striking distance.
“Let's make the ‘Valley of Ashes,’ the ‘Valley of Champions,’” said Garcia.
