Willets Point soccer stadium approved by Council
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City Councilmember Francisco Moya has led the charge to bring the city’s first-ever stadium dedicated to soccer to Queens. On Thursday, the City Council approved the plan for the stadium to be built in Willets Point. Photo by Gerardo Romo / NYC Council Media Unit
By Jacob Kaye
Decades of the city’s failed attempts to develop a long-polluted corner of Queens appeared to come to an end on Thursday as the City Council overwhelmingly voted to approve the second phase of the redevelopment of Willets Point.
Following Mayor Eric Adams’ expected approval, work will begin on bringing 1,400 units of affordable housing and the city’s first-ever stadium dedicated to soccer to the area once known as the Iron Triangle.
Combined with the Council’s approval of the first phase of the development last year, the Willets Point project amounts to the largest affordable housing endeavor the city has pursued in half a century.
The mood was celebratory both on the steps outside and inside of City Hall on Thursday, as the Council’s vote on the project nearly went off without a hitch.
The Council voted 47 to one to approve the second phase of the Willets Point project, with the lone “no” vote coming from Queens Councilmember Shekar Krishnan, whose district sits next door to the forthcoming project.
But all eyes on Thursday were on Krishnan’s Council colleague Francisco Moya, who has long put the pursuit of bringing the soccer stadium, and its future owner New York City Football Club, to Queens at the center of his efforts as an elected official.
Through tears, Moya said from the Council floor that the creation of a soccer stadium in his Western Queens district would be the fulfillment of a lifelong dream and love affair with the world’s game.
The new NYCFC stadium will be built just across the street from where Moya first learned how to play soccer, kicking the ball back and forth with his father, who died only months ago, in the shadow of the Unisphere in Flushing Meadows Corona Park.
“This has been a lifelong journey driven by my commitment to my community,” Moya said. “It's taken perseverance and the belief that in New York City even the impossible is possible.”
“Impossible, because we all know how many failed plans and false starts this corner of the world has seen,” he added. “Yet, here we are, breathing new life into the Valley of Ashes, turning the underutilized and polluted corner of my neighborhood into a historic development project no other city has seen before.”
Though Moya’s journey to the soccer stadium’s approval has been lengthy, the winding history of the land located across the street from Citi Field is even longer.
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.
Eventually, the area was used as a municipal parking lot and then, in the 1960s, the New York Mets came to town. Across the street from what was then Shea Stadium was the beginnings of the Iron Triangle, which was home to scores of auto shops.
The neighborhood didn’t see much change until Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office and began to eye developing the 61-acre area – around one third of the total area is owned by the city.
In 2008, the Council moved to create the Special Willets Point District, the first step in redeveloping the long-ignored neighborhood.
But nearly every subsequent effort by the city to develop the area either stalled indefinitely or outright failed, including a plan to build a shopping mall in the area that was shot down in court.
All but one attempt to develop Willets Point have failed to come to fruition.
That exception – the plan approved by the City Council on Thursday as well as the proposal for the first phase of the development – has seen little opposition since its general configuration was introduced by former Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2021.
A rendering of New York City Football Club’s soccer stadium in Willets Point. The project was approved by the City Council on Thursday, April 11, 2024. Rendering via NYCFC
In combination with the first phase of the development, which is currently under construction, the development at Willets Point will represent the largest affordable housing project pursued by the city in 50 years.
The city claims that the project, which is being led by the city’s Economic Development Corporation, New York City Football Club and developers The Related Companies and Sterling Equities, will generate $6 billion in revenue, create 14,000 construction jobs and 2,500 units of income restricted housing – 1,400 of those units would be built as part of phase two while the remaining 1,100 units would be built as part of the first phase of the development.
What prices the units in phase two of the project will rent at remains to be determined but the developers have said that the housing portion of the project will likely mirror the housing in phase one.
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.
Phase two of the project approved by the Council this week includes NYCFC’s 25,000-seat soccer stadium, the affordable housing, a hotel, several parking garages, retail space, pedestrian plazas and open space.
The stadium is expected to host its first game in 2027. The housing in phase two is expected to open in the years that follow, but just when residents will move in next to the stadium remains unclear.
“I do not know the timeline,” City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said before the vote. “At this point, we are still working with the councilmember, with the developers on all of this, so I don’t have a timeline for you.”
In addition to the housing, the first phase of the project includes plans to build 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. With the exception of the school, phase one is expected to be completed in 2026. The school is expected to open in 2027.
In all, the project essentially amounts to an entirely new neighborhood in the World’s Borough.
Phase two of the project, which city officials say will be the “anchor” of Willets Point, was first introduced by Mayor Eric Adams in November 2022 when he announced that the city had reached a deal with NYCFC for their new stadium.
On Thursday, he called the project a “historic, once-in-a-generation victory.”
“Eighteen months ago, we came together to lay out a vision for a new neighborhood born out of the ‘Valley of Ashes,’ out of the ‘Valley of Just Car Repair Shops,’ out of the ‘Valley of Unpaved Roads and Slick Oil All Over the Place,’” the mayor said. “People rode by and didn't see the vision and opportunity, but we said, ‘Yes, we can get it done.’”
But part of the deal with NYCFC drew at least one critic on Thursday.
In explaining his “no” vote on the project, Krishnan bemoaned the tax break being given to the $800 million stadium’s owners, including Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a member of Abu Dhabi’s royal family and the country’s vice president. According to reporting by the New York Times, the project being built on public land is expected to cost taxpayers around $516 million in taxes NYCFC will not be required to pay as a result of building on the site.
“The economics and public value of this transaction must be questioned,” Krishnan said. “This is a bad deal for New York City and sets a terrible precedent for land use.”
The Western Queens lawmaker said that in addition to the tax breaks, the stadium’s footprint on the site takes away space from what could be affordable housing in the area already home to Citi Field and the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center.
“We do not have a stadium crisis in our city,” he said. “We have a housing crisis.”
