City reaches milestone at Willets Point
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The city recently completed construction of the structure of the first two apartment buildings at Willets Point on Friday. Eagle photo by Jacob Kaye
By Jacob Kaye
The city reached a major milestone last week in Willets Point when it completed construction of the structures of the first two buildings that will one day anchor the new neighborhood in Queens.
City officials and around 500 construction workers celebrated the placement of the final beams of the external frames of the first two apartment buildings to be completed as part of the redevelopment of Willets Point, the long-neglected and polluted corner of the borough that the city has been attempting to redevelop for decades.
Together, the buildings will one day be home to 880 affordable housing units, or around a third of the total units expected to come to what will amount to the largest affordable housing development built in the city in the last 40 years.
The milestone is significant for the city, which faced significant hurdles in getting the development of Willets Point underway. Multiple mayors proposed a series of different plans for the area which is boxed in by Citi Field, Flushing Creek, the elevated 7 train line and the Whitestone Expressway. All but one has panned out.
“We used to say, ‘Yeah, [Willets Point is] the armpit of Queens,’” said Adolfo Carrión Jr., the city’s deputy mayor for housing, economic development, and workforce. “It was not a friendly suggestion.”
“[Willets Point] was a cemetery for vehicles, for cars and car parts, it was ‘Hubcap City,’ it was where cars would get stolen and get broken down,” he added. “It was not a good place. And administration after administration tried to turn this around.”
The two buildings topped off on Friday are the heart of the first phase of the redevelopment – a school and a building with apartments for seniors will also soon be built as part of phase one.
The plan to develop the Iron Triangle – named for its shape and industrial use – dates back to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration. That’s when a nearly two-decade long saga of failed plans and false starts began.
Under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, the city approved plans for phase one of the development and broke ground on the project in 2021. The groundbreaking was “historic,” City Councilmember Francisco Moya, who represents Willets Point in the legislature, said at the time.
On Friday, the term-limited councilmember said he was “proud to see the vision moving forward.”
“This is really establishing something very special,” Moya said. “Look, this is my legacy. To me, it's not the structure itself. It's that we're leaving behind a neighborhood where families are going to come and grow here for generations to come.”
But Willets Point hasn’t always garnered a sense of pride from city officials.
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 by Robert Moses 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, some of which agreed to a failed city-run relocation program in 2014.
The final beam of the first building at the Willets Point redevelopment. Eagle photo by Jacob Kaye
Shortly after taking office in 2022, Mayor Eric Adams announced that the city had reached a deal with New York City Football Club to make their home stadium the center point of the second phase of the development.
NYCFC, which is privately financing the stadium in exchange for a number of city tax breaks, has recently begun building the foundation of the 25,000-seat stadium, which is expected to open for its first game in 2027.
Next door to the stadium will be 1,000 units of income restricted housing.
In total, the first two phases of the redevelopment of Willets Point are expected to bring 2,500 affordable homes, around 150,000 square feet of new public open space, a new public school, over 20,000 square feet of retail space, a new 250-key hotel and the city’s first-ever soccer stadium.
“Cities can still do bold, ambitious things that make life safer and more affordable for working-class people,” Mayor Eric Adams, who did not attend the topping off ceremony, said in a statement. “Willets Point is proof of that.”
“From the ‘Valley of Ashes,’ we are building a brand-new neighborhood with thousands of affordable homes, valuable public space, and the city’s first soccer-specific stadium,” he added. “With today’s topping off ceremony, we are one significant step closer to bringing this historic plan into reality and giving New Yorkers the homes, public space, and jobs they deserve.”
Willets Point’s first tenants are expected to move in at some point next spring, according to New York City’s Economic Development Corporation, which is leading the project.
Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, who also was absent from the topping off ceremony but who recently went on a tour of the construction site, called the project “nothing short of transformational.”
“Having toured the progress at this site myself in recent months, I could not be more excited to have topped off these two buildings, and I commend our construction workers for giving their all to ensure this historic 100 percent affordable housing project is moving ahead of schedule,” he said.
