Iron Triangle in Queens to Be Redeveloped

[Kris]

March 4, 2004

A Messy Business: Cleaning Up the Junk

By COREY KILGANNON

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/03/04/nyregion/JUNK.184.1.650.jpg
Hubcap purveyors are among the business owners on and around Willets Point Boulevard who complain of getting little in return for their tax dollars.

The Iron Triangle, a 13-block area between Shea Stadium and the Flushing River in Queens, is the largest single stretch of junkyards in New York City, with more than 100 auto salvage yards, repair garages and automotive shops. Wedged amid bustling commercial areas in Corona and Flushing, the triangle is an auto salvage theme park.

Here, business bustles against a backdrop of stacked, crumpled cars and a slum landscape. The streets are unpaved and lined with tire-change joints, hubcap purveyors, muffler shops, windshield installers and rim retailers. There are brake and transmission specialists, and auto body garages. The area goes back many decades, since parts purveyors first set up on these ash heaps that Fitzgerald mentioned in "The Great Gatsby."

But the Iron Triangle's days may soon be over. Under a plan to revitalize parts of downtown Flushing, the city plans to condemn the Iron Triangle and shut its junkyards. The land, bounded by 126th Street, Willets Point Boulevard and Northern Boulevard, would be bought for a fixed price under eminent domain laws.

One study projected it would cost an estimated $214 million to buy the land and clean up decades of leaked gas, oil and other contaminants. Yet the city has no specific plans for the cleaned site yet. Officials at the city's Economic Development Corporation say they have begun soliciting ideas from local groups. Informal suggestions for the area include parkland, a convention or cultural center, a retail-entertainment or office building complex, a new stadium for the Mets or the Jets, or an Olympic village if the city is selected as the host of the 2012 Games.

Politicians are on board and the plan has the widespread support of many business and community groups.

But like many business owners in the Iron Triangle, Danny Sambucci Jr., 46, of Sambucci Brothers Auto Salvage, complains that no politician, city official or civic leader has called or visited to brief them on what is going on.

"You got thousands of people here making a living and landowners who have paid taxes for decades, and we have to hear second-hand that we're going to have our land seized?" said Mr. Sambucci, whose father, Danny Sambucci Sr., 73, opened the business in 1951.

Mr. Sambucci strips cars for parts and sells what is left to scrap metal dealers for $2 for every 100 pounds, or about $70 per stripped car. The parts can be lucrative. A BMW transmission can bring $1,500, he said, and a Mercedes engine can sell for $2,700. A Nissan Maxima engine can go for $250. The engines are cleaned in a special washing machine that filters out the toxic runoff.

"People think its 'Sanford and Son' down here, but it's serious business," said Mr. Sambucci's cousin Sammy Sambucci, 34.

Danny Sambucci Jr. said that he pays $72,000 in property taxes each year on his 2.5 acres of land but gets little back in services. The city has let the area deteriorate, he said, by not paving the streets and failing to install or offer sewers, sidewalks, signage, street lights or proper garbage pickup.

"They never wanted us here, so they ignored us, to make it make it look like a jungle, like a blight," he said. "I can't relocate this business. Where am I going to go? Is there another community in Queens that will welcome us?"

The area is as thriving a business community as the garment or meatpacking districts in Manhattan or the Hunts Point market in the Bronx, he said. But city officials say the triangle has long been an eyesore and a waste of valuable property close to subway and bus lines, major highways and both La Guardia and Kennedy International Airports. The triangle is a lapse in proper civic planning, they say, and its demise is long overdue. They say the Flushing redevelopment plan will expand retail, office and residential space, improve transportation and recreation spaces and revitalize the Flushing Bay and Flushing River waterfront.

In a letter last month to the Empire State Development Corporation, the Queens borough president, Helen M. Marshall, wrote that the plan could "transform a vastly underutilized tract of land into a thriving commercial center."

Almost as long as the Iron Triangle has existed, business owners have heard rumblings about development. In the 1960's, business owners hired the young Queens lawyer Mario M. Cuomo, who successfully stopped Robert Moses from redeveloping the land. But there seems to be no such unity this time, and longtime politicians say the project has political and economic momentum.

Hiram Monserrate, the city councilman representing the area, said he recognizes the need to clear out the Iron Triangle.

"Clearly there is a better usage for that land, that would benefit the residents," he said. "No one would want to build anything that is going to overlook those junkyards."

But he also cautioned, "The city needs to be conscientious that workers will be displaced and that relocation is necessary."

City officials, including Mr. Monserrate and Councilman John C. Liu, say many Iron Triangle businesses have long been operating illegally and constantly violate city regulations. Business owners counter that this is an exaggeration and that many violations come from hard conditions the city imposes by neglecting the area.

Officials at the Economic Development Corporation say they want to help Iron Triangle companies find ways to stay in business. "We will be working with businesses there to identify relocation options," said Janel Patterson, a spokeswoman for the corporation.

In the Iron Triangle, everything is on display: chrome bumpers, rusted-out car chassis, tires, mirrors, windshields. Planes to La Guardia fly low overhead and collated car hoods cut jagged profiles against the sky. There is hot food at the small delis squeezed among the auto shops, and back behind the auto shops is a spice warehouse and a waste transfer station.

In the streets, there are junkyard dogs, and workers jousting for customers by aggressively flagging down cars. Mechanics in greasy jumpsuits enjoy lunchtime soccer games around crumpled cars and crater-size potholes.

The tremendous ethnic diversity in Queens is reflected in the names here: Zura's 1000's of Auto Parts, the Stubborn Tire Shop and 14 Stars Auto Glass. There is the Mexecu auto repair shop and El Salvador Auto Glass. New Pancho Auto Glass sits next door to New Pamir Auto Body. Nearby is Ebukune Transmissions and New Brother Auto Body.

High-end Korean auto body shops fix sports cars for well-to-do businessmen from Flushing. Young, hip Japanese men flock to certain Japanese shops to soup up their low-riding sports cars. Hindi- and Arab-speaking livery cabdrivers bring their black Town Cars to garages with Afghan, Middle Eastern or South Indian owners. A Spanish-speaking customer looking for window tinting might go Colombia Auto Glass, owned by Hector Ospina, 45, a Colombian immigrant from Woodside.

"For Spanish people from poor cities, this does not look so strange," he said recently, looking over Willets Point Boulevard. "The city does not care about this, but I'm worried because I have to support a lot of people."

Nearby at Aryana Auto Body, Salman Ali, 30, an auto body repairman, leaned on a Mitsubishi Galant with a bashed-in quarter panel.

"The only time the city comes down here is to ticket us; they take our taxes and don't fix anything," said Mr. Ali, an Afghan immigrant who supports his family in Flushing. "Now they say they're going to move us out? Where will they put us? We have no place to go. We're poor people. We're not rich."

At Sambucci Brothers, there are hundreds of totaled cars that are stacked, waiting to be stripped.

"I came down here as a barefoot kid collecting junk in a wagon," Danny Sambucci Sr. said.

He hoped his son Danny Jr. would become a doctor, but now Danny Jr. owns the business and plans on passing it to his son, also named Danny, who is 16.

"They took Manhattan from the Indians,'' Danny Sambucci Sr. said. "Now they want to take this from us."

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/packages/images/nyregion/20040228_JUNK_AUDIOSS/met_JUNK_promo_184a.jpg (http://www.nytimes.com/packages/khtml/2004/02/28/nyregion/20040228_JUNK_AUDIOSS.html)

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[billyblancoNYC]

It is a mess, the streets and all, but that is pretty much the city's fault.

I would love some great development there, but these businesses are actually pretty impressive in their own way. You can go down there and get almost anything for any car in that place.

I park my car at Sambucci for Mets games... close and free.

Maybe they could move all the shops en masse to some vacant industrial area to keep the "car bazaar" feel and functionality of it.

[Agglomeration]

I went there once when my friend wanted hubcaps for his car. It was maddening to have to chat with some Mexican who spoke no English! Eventually we got the hubcaps for $40, then he sold it a month later due to a stalling engine.

That place is a junkyard, literally, and I'm glad they're planning to tear that area down.

[Kris]

Photos:

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[pianoman11686]

Ah, nothing like reviving an old thread:

PLAYING TOXIC GAMES

By SAM SMITH and ANGELA MONTEFINISE

June 19, 2005 -- The Willets Point section of Queens, awaiting a makeover through Mayor Bloomberg's new Olympics plan and local renovation efforts, is a "hell hole" of environmental problems that will cost millions to clean, an expert says.

According to government documents compiled for The Post by Toxic Targeting, an environmental-database firm that tracks more than 100,000 toxic sites in the city, the new home of Bloomberg's Olympic dreams has thousands of gallons of chemicals underground.

"This is going to require a massive cleanup," said Walter Hang, president of Toxic Targeting. "It's a hell hole. You'd be looking at removing literally millions of tons of contaminated soil."

According to the city Economic Development Corp., cleaning Willets Point will cost taxpayers $12.5 million. The city also expects to spend $39 million building roads and utility lines, $40 million building pilings and other "soil reinforcements," and $38 million on land acquisition and relocation of businesses.

The chemical soup there includes 40,000 gallons of waste oil, gas and antifreeze spilled in 2001 and not yet fully cleaned.

There are about 30 spills, some from leaky underground oil and gas tanks, that together account for thousands of gallons of gas and oil over the past dozen years and which do not meet state cleanup standards.

There are another 20 whose cleanup status is unknown.

While many spills and leaks released unknown quantities of pollutants, more than 80,000 gallons of chemicals have been dumped — accidentally and deliberately — into the ground in and around Willets Point over the past 20 years.

"There are definitely environmental issues there," said City Councilman Hiram Monserrate, whose district includes Willets Point. "If appropriate development is a catalyst for a cleanup, then that is a good thing."

With the collapse of his West Side stadium hopes, Bloomberg announced last week plans to help build a new Mets stadium, which would serve as the centerpiece of the Olympics should the city win the Games.

The new stadium would be built adjacent to Shea Stadium, and a media center and other Olympics facilities would be built at Willets Point, the so-called "iron triangle" that can be seen across the outfield parking lot.

Private developers have also drawn up 14 different development plans for the area, which include retail and housing.

Copyright 2005 The New York Post

[Ninjahedge]

Maybe we should start drilling there....


Or is is a Citi-Life Preserve......

[krulltime]

Developers flock to new Olympic site
Big names eye Willets Point; city plan for stadium would spur overhaul


By Anne Michaud
Published on June 20, 2005

Last week's 11th-hour plan to save the city's Olympics bid by building a new baseball stadium in Queens is transforming an obscure outer-borough neighborhood recovery project in Willets Point into a top development priority.

The city has received 13 proposals to redevelop the area, along the Flushing Bay waterfront. The applicants include prominent Brooklyn developer Forest City Ratner, the Queens Chamber of Commerce, Taiwan native Michael Lee--whose F&T International Group has offices in Flushing, Queens, and Shanghai--and Queens developer Jason Muss. Mall of America officials were scouting the Willets Point site but declined to make an offer, sources say.

The decision to build a new Mets Stadium, which would serve as New York's Olympic Stadium, has energized the effort to clean up Willets Point, known largely for its 48-acre junk-car haven nicknamed the "Iron Triangle."

The Economic Development Corp., which last fall requested expressions of interest, was scheduled this week to unveil at least 10 proposals that had made the first cut. But EDC pulled back from a public announcement in the glare of publicity focused on the project by City Hall's June 12 announcement that Shea Stadium was the new choice for the city's 2012 Summer Olympics bid. Willets Point would be the site of an international broadcast center if the Olympics come to New York in 2012.

The EDC instead has asked all applicants for silence about their proposals and assurances that they could incorporate Olympic needs into their plans.

For 40 years, community leaders have talked about cleaning up the area. Many envision creating a vibrant neighborhood like Baltimore's Inner Harbor, which was a slum of rotting piers and flophouses before it was redeveloped as a tourist hot-spot just a short walk from the Baltimore Orioles' baseball field.


Perfect confluence

"This unanticipated, but near-perfect confluence of events may make this happen after decades of wishful thinking," says Flushing City Councilman John Liu, who has seen the applications to EDC.

EDC officials, now interviewing applicants privately, hope to choose one or two developers to help them create a master plan, says a spokeswoman. The original timeline was to name a development partner by early 2006, but the spokeswoman says, "If anything, our decision process has been accelerated."


Desolate divider

Willets Point is a desolate 13-block peninsula dividing resurgent downtown Flushing from the area where Shea Stadium is located. The gritty Iron Triangle lacks sewers and roads, and prevents people from venturing to the waterfront along Flushing Bay.

"It's a psychological barrier," right in the heart of Queens, says William Egan, executive vice president of the Queens Chamber of Commerce.

But hurdles loom. Neighbors are raising concerns about traffic, and Flushing businesses are worried that a retail complex at Willets Point would compete with them.

Still, the Mets stadium plan appears to be winning political kudos across the city and even in Albany, where the two legislative leaders who killed the West Side football stadium have already given the Queens team their blessing. Plans for a new Yankee Stadium in the Bronx are being embraced as well. Part of it is loyalty, says Rep. Jose Serrano, who represents the Bronx.

"No one really, for the most part, is against getting new stadiums for these institutions of New York," he says of the Mets and Yankees. "No one could relate to the extravaganza on the West Side."


COPYRIGHT 2005 CRAIN COMMUNICATIONS INC.

[pianoman11686]

Excellent news. I would love to see someone like Ratner come in and literally build a neighborhood from the ground up. Hearing about Mall of America was a bit of a turnoff. Too much traffic on weekends, too many parking spaces taking up good real estate. A good mixed use community is the way to go. Let's all keep our fingers crossed for a visionary master plan.

[mkeit]

But there is always a need for junkyards and used car parts. Willets Point is a lot more convinient than Bushwick.

Has Victoria Gotti commented on the planned reconstruction of the area? Her former husband-Agnello-was a major player in the area.

[ZippyTheChimp]

Gotham Gazette - http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/landuse/20060410/12/1815

Willets Point: A Defense

by Tom Angotti
10 Apr 2006

Here come the marshals again! After evicting 23 businesses in the Bronx Terminal Market to make way for a development deal with the Related Company, City Hall now wants to get rid of ten times that number in a Queens district. The city plans to use its power of eminent domain to foster what it calls economic development in the area around Willets Point. But it could instead mean economic disaster to the long-established business community that would be broken up and scattered. And while it proposes a multi-billion dollar project that would make Willets Point a “regional destination,” possibly with a hotel, convention center and retail space, the city’s planners appear to have little appreciation for businesses that already draw customers from all over the region.

Willets Point is a small triangle of land (often called “The Iron Triangle”) that sits near Corona and Flushing in the shadows of Shea Stadium. Indeed, the New York City Economic Development Corporation’s intense interest in Willets Point coincides with the announcement of the city’s latest stadium deal with the Mets.
225 Businesses (Not 80)

While the Economic Development Corporation claims there are 80 businesses in this 48-acre area, a recent survey I conducted through the Hunter College Center for Community Planning & Development instead found 225 businesses that provide an estimated 1,300 jobs. The business survey was part of a land use study, including maps prepared by the CUNY Mapping Service, commissioned by Council Member Hiram Monseratte, who has questioned the city’s plans to relocate area businesses from his district.

What accounts for the huge statistical oversight by the Economic Development Corporation? Were the small auto repair outfits run by recent Latino immigrants invisible to the agency’s planners? Perhaps we counted the ones they missed because our survey was conducted in both English and Spanish. Perhaps the fact that most businesses are renters and not owners, and many share precious high-rent building space, has made them invisible to city officials. At a time when elected officials are acknowledging the important role of immigrant labor in the city’s economy, it would appear that the city bureaucracy has failed to open its eyes to a thriving business district that serves as an entry point for immigrant workers and entrepreneurs.

While the largest number of businesses are involved in auto repair, there are also several large parts and salvage operations. The largest employer in Willets Point, however, is The House of Spices (India), Inc. According to Girdhar Assar of The House of Spices, they employ 100 full-time people and are “the largest distributor of Indian foods in the United States.” A significant portion of land is used for waste transfer and building materials storage. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority also has a large strip of land used for rail yards and parking.
The Image of Blight

Over the years, public officials who have coveted the area’s excellent location at a nexus of highway and train lines have played along with a negative public image of Willets Point as a junkyard, dangerous, and foreboding. The city government has helped foster this image by failing to put in sewers, pave public streets, and fix sidewalks. In other words, city officials helped create a condition of “urban blight” that they then propose to fix by evicting the existing businesses.

One Saturday last fall, along with a class of Hunter College students, I walked every block of Willets Point with Joe Ardezzone, a member of the Willets Point Business Association and life-long resident of the area (in fact, the only resident). We saw a thriving though sometimes chaotic and noisy business district. On Willets Point Avenue, a driver would stop and ask one of the workers where to get a new carburetor and a windshield. The curbside broker would direct him to one of the many specialized businesses. A wide variety of parts dealers and salvage yards were there to meet every need of people who came from as far as northern Bronx and eastern Long Island. Ardezzone complained that “people don’t realize there are hard-working people here just trying to make a living.”

What we saw on the ground was the kind of bustling business district that economic development experts across the country keep trying to re-create in giant development schemes, often with little success. The many specialized auto repair shops in Willets Point both compete and cooperate with one another, and the links between them make for a cooperative business community offering a wide array of services.
An Opportunity For Clean-Up

By focusing on Willets Point, city officials have an opportunity to help strengthen this network instead of destroying it. At the same time they could confront head on some of the city’s biggest environmental headaches. When auto repair facilities are concentrated, as they are in Willets Point, then City Hall has an opportunity to apply its pollution prevention programs and deal with the critical issues of waste and emissions. If these activities are dispersed, mechanics are less likely to use cleaner and more efficient technologies. More mechanics would end up working on residential blocks and dumping crank case oil down the city’s storm drains, and it will be more difficult to regulate these businesses.

As for the waste transfer stations that occupy a big chunk of land in Willets Point, there are precious few alternative locations for them in Queens. By paving the streets and enforcing environmental regulations in Willets Point, city officials could help make these waste facilities a model of sustainable management. The dust and debris that workers and business owners have to deal with would diminish. And since Willets Point is right in the flight path for LaGuardia Airport, something needs to be done about the deafening roar of planes no matter what happens to the area!
Rich In Potential

The economic potential of Willets Point businesses can be linked to the growing recycling industry as well as auto repair. The proponents of redevelopment who are quick to call the Iron Triangle a big junkyard might have missed the recent front page article in The Wall Street Journal (March 21, 2006) that hails auto scrap yards as a big source of “healthy profits.”

Contrary to the impression that The Iron Triangle is worthless, the total assessed value of property comes to some $181 million. Property values and the number of jobs per square foot are roughly comparable to those in other areas zoned for heavy industry in the city, and so are tax revenues.

Even after planning for an improved auto repair and recycling district, it would still be possible to allow for some limited redevelopment for new industrial, commercial and recreational facilities. But this should be determined through open and transparent public planning, not a developer-driven process.
Developer-Driven Planning

Over the last three decades, Willets Point has been a favorite target for grandiose development plans, all of which failed when businesses refused to be displaced. When the city’s development czar Robert Moses wanted to get rid of the local businesses, the Willets Point businessmen hired a young attorney named Mario Cuomo and beat Moses. A 1991 rezoning plan also went nowhere.

In 2004, the city’s Economic Development Corporation issued a Request for Expressions of Interest to redevelop Willets Point, and recently selected several large companies to submit proposals. While development proposals may include only a portion of Willets Point rather than a blanket condemnation of the whole area, there are two problems with this piecemeal approach. First, it will pit property owners against each other, and can very well play into the hands of a small group of speculators that have started to move into the area. Secondly, it could pit the property owners against the large group of mostly Latino workers and business owners who rent (82 percent of the total) and who stand to lose everything. Even what might seem at first to be a generous relocation benefit could be worthless when it comes to finding comparable space in a city where low-cost industrially-zoned land is disappearing from sight.

If there were an open and transparent planning process incorporating all business owners and workers, and property owners and renters, the division of the territory in a redeveloped area might look quite different from the one that will be cooked up by the consultant firms hired by the big developers. The Economic Development Corporation appears to be open so long as they keep tight control over the process, but not open enough.
Spotlight On Shea Stadium

The proposed new Shea Stadium, which would go up in the huge parking lot bordering Willets Point, is likely to overshadow the Iron Triangle in more ways than one. Local community groups are likely to focus on Shea, which long has been a sore point for many of them, because -- like so many other urban stadiums -- it turns away from its neighbors in the interest of getting fans in and out as fast as possible. Since the new Shea will have more luxury boxes and fewer affordable seats, more fans are likely to drive in and out by car, never stopping for arroz con pollo in Corona or Kimchee in Flushing. And if City Hall has its way, fans won’t even be able to get a tire fixed in the neighborhood.
Tom Angotti is Professor of Urban Affairs and Planning at Hunter College, City University of NY, editor of Progressive Planning Magazine, and a member of the Task Force on Community-based Planning.

Gotham Gazette - http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/landuse/20060410/12/1815

[pianoman11686]

Home Is Where the Auto Parts Are

http://graphics10.nytimes.com/images/2006/09/17/nyregion/17willets.xlarge1.jpg
Joseph Ardizzone on Willets Point Boulevard in Queens. Mr. Ardizzone, Willets Point’s sole resident,
opposes a plan to raze the area to make way for an elaborate development.

By TERRY PRISTIN

Published: September 17, 2006

When Joseph Ardizzone makes the short drive to Flushing to cast his ballot at election time, he never has to wait his turn. “When I vote,” he says, “it’s the whole precinct voting.”

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Many immigrants work at the 225 auto parts and repair businesses in Willets Point.

http://graphics10.nytimes.com/images/2006/09/17/nyregion/willetsg.jpg

Mr. Ardizzone, a wiry man who is still spry at 74, is the sole resident of Willets Point, an unsightly 75-acre enclave near Shea Stadium in northern Queens with a cluster of 225 auto parts and repair businesses, many of them operating out of tin or cinder-block sheds.

It is not hard to see why Mr. Ardizzone has no neighbors — unless you count Mario’s Auto Radio, Q. C. Iron Works and the homeless people who sleep in the junkyards.

The streets are pockmarked with holes big enough to store tires. Scarred chassis are stacked on top of one another or perched on mounds of garbage laced with spare parts. There are no sidewalks or sewers, and rainwater collects in deep puddles. In the summer, the stench from the Flushing Creek on the neighborhood’s eastern edge is so powerful that “it makes your eyes tear,” Mr. Ardizzone says.

For decades, political leaders have sought to rid the city of the place that Robert Moses, the master builder, described as an “eyesore and a disgrace to the borough of Queens.” According to the latest plan, the Bloomberg administration hopes to use eminent domain to transform Willets Point into a retailing-and-entertainment district with a hotel and convention center.

But what city officials see as a contaminated wasteland is the only home that Mr. Ardizzone has ever known. If the Bloomberg plan becomes a reality — which would likely take years — then Mr. Ardizzone’s home would be razed. It also dismays him that businesses that provide jobs for 1,200 people — according to the city’s count — would be displaced.

The Ardizzones were Willets Point pioneers, arriving a few years before the first junkyard. Joseph was born in 1932 in a squat brick house that his father built. Now the sign outside reads “1,000s Auto Parts.” Across a cluttered alley is a mustard-yellow and brown Tudor-style house with padlocked doors and windows and a sign saying “Express Deli and Grocery.” Mr. Ardizzone lives in five rooms on the top floor with a cat and her six kittens.

Today, Mr. Ardizzone is the only registered voter from Willets Point, according to John Ravitz, the executive director of the New York City Board of Elections. During a door-to-door survey of the neighborhood last fall, Tom Angotti, a Hunter College professor of urban planning, and his students counted 225 businesses, but he said they found no residents other than Mr. Ardizzone.

Not everyone in his family approves. “My sister — she lives in Florida — she says it’s disgusting,” he said. “She says, ‘How can you live with junkyards and junk cars?’ It don’t bother me. From when I was a kid, I’m used to them.”

But it does bother him that the city refuses to give Willets Point the services that other neighborhoods take for granted. “If they gave us the infrastructure,” he said, “it would be an entirely different place.”

A familiar figure in his old Mercury Marquis, Mr. Ardizzone has the run of most of the local businesses. When a fight breaks out among the mostly immigrant laborers, Mr. Ardizzone is happy to play mediator. When outsiders want to understand the neighborhood, which is flanked by the Grand Central Parkway and the Van Wyck Expressway and is only a few minutes from La Guardia Airport, he is the tour guide.

As he sees it, Willets Point provides a chance for people from other countries to apply the mechanical skills they learned at home. “Most of the people here are handicapped by not knowing the language, and not knowing how the system works,” he said. “But they have hands of gold.”

Mr. Ardizzone wanders freely among the bags of flour and vats of corn syrup at House of Fodera, a national distributor of baking ingredients that opened at Willets Point 33 years ago.

“He’s like the resident mayor,” said Anthony Fodera, an owner of the baking-goods distributor, one of several family-owned warehouse businesses in the neighborhood. “When we got here, he welcomed us and came in and met with us.”

Mr. Ardizzone, who owned a restaurant and a bar for two decades, now works as a security guard at a nursing home in Bayside. In his off hours, he is involved with the Willets Point Business Association’s efforts to prevent the neighborhood from being condemned as an urban renewal site.

The city Economic Development Corporation is now reviewing proposals submitted by developers in June, and a consultant is preparing an environmental impact statement, said Janel Patterson, a corporation spokeswoman.

The Bloomberg administration’s plan is only the latest in a series of proposals to threaten Willets Point. In the 1960’s, Mr. Moses tried to use park funds to clean up the site, but was beaten back by the business owners with the help of a young lawyer named Mario M. Cuomo.

In 1985, however, Mr. Cuomo, then the governor of New York, supported a plan to build a domed football stadium in Willets Point. The proposal died when no National Football League team would commit to playing there.

Other schemes for Willets Point — put forward by the Mets, the Queens borough president and Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani — also went nowhere.

After the West Side stadium proposal was defeated, Mayor Bloomberg talked about putting press and broadcast centers in Willets Point as part of the city’s last-minute plan to salvage its 2012 Olympic Games bid. But then London was chosen as the Olympics site.

To Mr. Ardizzone, taking property through eminent domain is simply wrong. “If you don’t have the right to own your own property, what rights do you have?” he said.

Willets Point seemed destined to thrive when Mr. Ardizzone’s father, who was in construction, decided to settle there in the 1930’s, along with family friends, who built the house next door. “They were supposed to become millionaires,” Mr. Ardizzone said.

Mr. Ardizzone and his brother, Anthony, of Flushing, have near-bucolic memories of their childhood home. Pheasants, rabbits and frogs were a common sight, and the family grew tomatoes and raised chickens and goats in the swampy backyard.

There were junkyards nearby, but “everybody kept everything clean and proper,” Anthony Ardizzone recalled.

Even then, Willets Point was an odd place in which to grow up. The brothers, who went to school in Flushing, played in an enormous ash pile at 38th Avenue and 126th Street, not far from their house. But it was made up of coal residue from a Con Edison plant that was used in roadbeds, not incinerated garbage like the one in nearby Flushing Meadows that was described in “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Mr. Ardizzone spent many years in the food business. He started with a coffee cart, then opened a coffee shop in the building where his family had lived. Later he added a bar, Joe’s Pit Stop, that catered to the area’s bricklayers, construction workers and other laborers.

Jack Bono, an owner of Bono Sawdust Supply Company, a third-generation business in Willets Point, said the bar drew customers from outside Willets Point. “Everybody used to go there after work, hang out, try to relax after work,” he said. “It was a nice place to be.”

But Mr. Ardizzone, who never married, eventually tired of the demanding schedule and leased out the restaurant space. The coffee shop became an auto parts store. The bar became a deli. Both spaces are vacant now.

Mr. Ardizzone said the city seemed determined to remake Willets Point, despite the failure of so many redevelopment proposals. “It seems they want this property in the worst way,” he said, “and only through condemnation.”

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

[JCMAN320]

http://graphics10.nytimes.com/images/2006/09/17/nyregion/willets.large2.jpg

GEEZZZ and people have the nerve to make fun of industrial parts of Jersey!! That looks worse than any place outside some factory in Jersey. I'm not a Mets fan so I've never been by there.

[Eugenious]

http://graphics10.nytimes.com/images/2006/09/17/nyregion/willets.large2.jpg

GEEZZZ and people have the nerve to make fun of industrial parts of Jersey!! That looks worse than any place outside some factory in Jersey. I'm not a Mets fan so I've never been by there.

It looks like some shanty town in africa

[NYguy]

http://www.amny.com/news/local/am-will0503,0,905794.story?coll=am-topheadlines

Mayor details Willets Point plan

By Karla Schuster
May 1, 2007

As the Mets' new stadium rises nearby, Mayor Michael Bloomberg Tuesday unveiled a proposed master plan for Willets Point that would transform the 60-acre swath of car repair shops and junkyards near Citi Field into a mixed-used development that officials envision becoming New York's version of the neighborhoods flanking Fenway Park in Boston or Camden Yards in Baltimore.

The single largest feature of the plan, outlined Tuesday at a news conference at the Queens Museum in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, is 1.7 million square feet of retail and entertainment space that would be built across the street from the new CitiField ballpark.

There would be few, if any, interior walkways and no big box stores -- a street-oriented design aimed at drawing fans before and after games, similar to Landsdowne Street outside Fenway Park or Baltimore's Inner Harbor neighborhood surrounding Camden Yards, according to officials from the city's Economic Development Corporation.

The plan also includes 5,500 units of mixed-income housing, some townhouses and some mid-rise apartment buildings of no more than eight stories; a 700-room hotel, a convention center, 500,000-square-feet of office space, a two-acre park and a new bridge into Flushing over Flushing Creek. Designers have also included plans for so-called "green roofs" on many of the buildings to create additional recreational space.

While the city has outlined its plans for redeveloping what is called the Iron Triangle before, Tuesday's announcement offers the most detailed vision for the site yet and kicks off the formal land-use review process necessary to rezone the area, acquire the property and re-locate the estimated 250 businesses there.

The area has no sidewalks or sewers, and is pockmarked by potholes and deep puddles. City officials acknowledge that an expensive environmental clean-up is necessary before the site can be developed. The city expects to choose a developer by next summer.

The plan, called bold and ambitious by some and criticized as needlessly uprooting viable businesses by others, must be approved by the city Planning Commission and the City Council. A public hearing on an upcoming environmental study of the site will be held Tuesday from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. and from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at the Flushing library.

Businesses and property owners from the area have decried the city's plans, which include seizing the property through eminent domain if owners are unwilling to sell.

Approximately 1,300 workers would be displaced if the city's plans for redevelopment are approved. The city estimates the construction would generate 20,000 jobs, while the the project would create 6,100 permanent jobs at full build-out.

__________________________________________________ ___________

http://www.amny.com/news/local/am-willets-swap,0,7595461.storylink?coll=am-homepage-swapbox

Willets Point's last man standing defiantly

May 1, 2007

On the west side of 126th Street, the Mets are building themselves a new home, while three blocks away, in the rutted exhibit of planned urban neglect known as the Iron Triangle, Joe Ardizzone is just trying to save his old one.

The higher the concrete towers and steel framework of Citi Field rise, the lower the hopes of Ardizzone sink. But while Bruce Ratner has been successful in displacing - or, to use the preferred term of the real estate vulture, "relocating" - thousands of city residents to make way for the future home of the Brooklyn Nets, Ardizzone says there is no way the city or the Mets or any combination of the two will evict the one and only resident of Willets Point, N.Y.

"They'll have to kill me and drag me out of here first," he said. "This is my home. This is not democracy. This is not American. Why should I have to leave the place where I've lived my whole life so some billionaires can get richer?"

No one has yet told Ardizzone, who is 74 and more energetic than any man his age has any right to be, that he has to leave his two-story stucco and brick house, wedged between an ironworks and an auto parts dealer on Willets Point Boulevard, today, tomorrow or ever.

But then, no one has told Ardizzone or any of the 100 or so business owners in The Triangle anything.

"We don't know what they're going to do," Ardizzone said, although he has a pretty good idea. "Their goal is to take all this away from us, come hell or high water."

The high water already has come. In fact, it never leaves an area in which the only storm drain is used by Shea Stadium and where, although the area businesses pay as much as $75,000 a year in taxes, the city has never seen fit to install sewers or provide basic services such as snow removal or road repair. (By the way, the Mets don't pay a nickel in real estate taxes now, nor will they on their new ballpark.)

But now that Citi Field is rising, it suddenly has dawned on a lot of powerful people that Willets Point, for a half-century the most neglected sliver of land in the city, soon could be a slice of real estate as valuable as Sutter's Mill, circa 1849.

And whatever "they" are doing, the fear is that they are doing it in secret, the way they always do when there is a land grab of this magnitude in the works.

At first, the Willets Point community thought it needed to fear only the city, which would seek to condemn the land they live and work on as an environmental hazard, seize it under eminent domain and then sell it off to a real estate developer.

Now they realize their enemy is not only the city but the Mets.

"Since 1994, Fred Wilpon told us, 'We've co-existed with you for 40 years and we can continue to co-exist with you,' " said Richard Musick, the spokesman for the Willets Point Business Association. "But about two years ago, he stopped returning our phone calls."

Yesterday, the other shoe dropped. At a meeting with politicians at Tully Construction on Northern Boulevard, city councilman Thomas White Jr. passed along the bad news: Wilpon had changed his mind. "He said, 'The junkyards gotta go,' " White told the group.

The stereotype angered Ardizzone even more than the death sentence it carried.

"People from the outside, they come here and all they see is junkyards," he said. "This is a community, with hard-working people trying to make a living. These are human beings here."

It is a point that seems to be lost on the politicians, who see only dollar signs, and on sports fans, who don't care whom the bulldozers flatten in the rush to build their heroes a stadium, and by a lot of sportswriters, who become willing shills for the team just thinking about what a dump the Shea Stadium pressbox is.

None of them seems to realize that the only ones who will truly benefit from Citi Field are the Wilpons and the privileged few who are well-heeled or well-connected enough to score one of its 42,000 high-priced seats. The Mets did not return a phone call seeking comment yesterday.

Ardizzone, who never married and has lived in the house alone for the past 40 years, considers the people of Willets Point his family. One after another, they came up to him yesterday, most uttering a single word: "Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow" is today, when every man and woman working in Willets Point, along with as many family members, friends and supporters as they can rustle up, will gather at the Flushing branch of the Queens Public Library on Main Street to demonstrate against what they see as an invasion of their turf by the people who are supposed to protect it.

They seem to know it is a doomed battle - David hasn't beaten Goliath since the Old Testament - but one worth fighting nonetheless.

"Just because the big guy always wins," Joe Ardizzone said, "doesn't mean you have to roll over for him. What am I supposed to do, lay down and die?"

[clubBR]

Willets Point to be Ratnerized? (http://www.outerb.com/?p=415)

May 4th, 2007
There’s always two (or more) sides to every story. Earlier this week I posted a bit called “Extreme Makeover, Queens Edition: Big Changes Coming to Willets Point”, regarding the city’s 3-year plan to makeover the “Iron Triangle” at Willets Point. All sorts of great things have been promised - affordable housing, schools, green space, not to mention cleaning up all the toxic crap there. From my “outsider” perspective, it sounds good.
Joe Ardizzone, a local resident, has a different perspective, one that is influenced by the situation created by Bruce Ratner/Forest City Ratner at Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards. He doesn’t want to see the locals “relocated” or “displaced”, especially if that comes through eminent domain (ED), which I understand the city will use if they feel it necessary. ED is certainly, in my opinion, an unsavory path.
Part of the problem is that, even though Ardizzone hasn’t been told he has to move from his home of 40 years, he hasn’t been told anything. Neither have any of the other residents or business owners. Lack of communication with the people only brews fear and distrust, not to mention a big plate of contempt. The city should let the area locals what is going on with regard to their future in Willets Point. Soon.
As an aside: I find it annoying that the new stadium is going to be called “Citi Stadium” after a stupid bank. Ugh.


From http://www.outerb.com

[NIMBYkiller]

Is Shea really that run down or out of date that the Mets need a new stadium? I'm all for urban renewal, but this neighborhood has proved to be a vital part of Queens.

[Ninjahedge]

Yes.

[pianoman11686]

Willets Point rehab tab put at $3B-plus

BY FRANK LOMBARDI
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Posted Thursday, June 14th 2007, 4:00 AM

The envisioned transformation of Willets Point from a scruffy haven for scrap yards and auto shops into a residential, retail and convention megadevelopment will cost "north of $3 billion," a city official said yesterday.

The estimate was given by Robert Lieber, president of the city's Economic Development Corp., which is gearing up to submit the Willets Point development plan to the governmental approval procedure known as ULURP - uniform land use review process.

"It will be a lot," Lieber said when asked about the costs during the City Council's first public hearing on the mammoth redevelopment plan announced May 1 by Mayor Bloomberg.

That drew laughs from a dozen Council members who participated in the hearing by the Council's Economic Development and Land Use committees and scores of spectators, most of them representing Willets Point's landowners, businesses, workers and Queens civic officials, including Borough President Helen Marshall and her predecessor, Claire Shulman.

Lieber added, "This is a big project, you know, you've got 60 acres of land to develop, with very large density of what we're going to do, but you know it's not unrealistic to think that this would be a project that is north of $3 billion ... in excess of $3 billion."

"That's a lot of money," said Councilman Thomas White (D-Queens), who put the cost question to Lieber as chairman of the Economic Development Committee.

Councilwoman Melinda Katz (D-Queens), who heads the Land Use Committee, asked Lieber who will be paying the costs, including extensive expenditures for site preparation and sewers, roads and other infrastructure.

Lieber said the developer, or team of developers, that will bid to build the Willets Point of the future will "bear the bulk of the costs for this."

"It's very early on in the process," Lieber added. "I don't think we've come up with a specific budget yet or figured out what the costs are - what the city is going to pay."

He ventured a "guesstimate" the public costs might be in the $100 million-to-$200 million range.

Lieber also fielded questions on the possible use of eminent domain if negotiated deals aren't reached with the property owners and businesses within the 62-acre tract.

He stressed that the city's goal is to reach deals with all those involved.

"We will do everything we can do to accommodate the needs of these businesses," he testified.

"But as the mayor said [at his announcement] on May 1, he's not going to let one person be the holdout for the good that's associated with so many other people."

flombardi@nydailynews.com

© Copyright 2007 NYDailyNews.com. (http://www.nydailynews.com/boroughs/queens/2007/06/14/2007-06-14_willets_point_rehab_tab_put_at_3bplus-3.html)

[brianac]

Against Council’s Wishes, City Pushing Ahead on Willets Point

byEliot Brown (http://www.observer.com/2007/author/eliot-brown) | April 18, 2008

http://observer.cast.advomatic.com/files/imagecache/article/files/stadiums.jpg Eliot Brown
The car-repair haven of Willets Point

The Bloomberg administration is plowing forward on its plan to redevelop the industrial area (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willets_Point,_Queens) next to Shea Stadium, as it intends to start the rezoning process on Monday despite objections from the City Council.
“We have asked them not to certify Monday,” said Melinda Katz (http://council.nyc.gov/d29/html/members/home.shtml), chairwoman of the City Council’s land use committee. “My feeling is that there are a lot of outstanding issues.”

The plan for the 61-acre site (http://www.nycedc.com/Web/AboutUs/OurProjects/CurrentProjects/WilletsPointDevelopmentDistrict.htm), Willets Point, calls for a large mixed-used community with up to 5,500 units of housing, up to 1.7 million square feet of retail, up to 700 hotel rooms, a public school, and possibly a modest convention center. The decision to jump into the seven-month approval process without the blessing of the Council suggests a rising anxiety among members of the Bloomberg administration, which has 18 months left in office and a slew of large development projects left to implement.

The vast majority of rezonings that start the approval process make it to the conclusion with approval from the Council, and should the city ultimately see defeat on its Willets Point plan, it would surely be a high-profile rejection.

Of course few of the major rezonings ever start with consensus, and virtually all see changes from the Council before the process is over.

More than perhaps any other major project in the pipeline, Willets Point has a long list of groups that are seeking concessions and threatening to hold up the process. Housing advocacy groups want a large proportion of the units to be affordable; labor groups want unionized hotel provisions and other wage guarantees; the landowners (http://wpira.com/) want good deals if they are forced to relocate; the workers and tenant-business owners want relocation assistance; and members of the Council want eminent domain taken off the table.

While many involved in talks report progress, none of these issues have yet been resolved, and no deals have been made with landowners, at least publicly. Thus the city seems to be of the mind that by pushing ahead, with a deadline of November before the City Council must approve or deny the plans, they can hasten a resolution of the outstanding issues.

“The administration has taken the position that they just want to start the clock and get the progress moving,” said Councilman Hiram Monserrate (http://council.nyc.gov/d21/html/members/home.shtml), who represents the area.

Both Mr. Monserrate and Ms. Katz have a long list of concerns with the plan as it stands right now, and neither professed confidence that they could all be resolved in the next seven months. Chief among them, in addition to the use of eminent domain, is affordable housing—the city has committed to mandate that 20 percent of the apartments be affordable, though the Council and advocates want more. Also at issue is the selection of a private developer—by rezoning the area first, the Council allows the city to select a developer of its choosing, without any oversight from the Council.

The site has long been eyed for redevelopment, yet has proved, decade after decade, to be surprisingly resistant (http://www.observer.com/2008/willets-point-development-waterloo), warding off attempts by numerous mayors and master builder Robert Moses.

In a statement, a city spokesman expressed confidence that the issues would be worked out in the coming months. "We look forward to working with its members and local elected officials on finalizing the best possible plan to make it happen during the upcoming public review process," said the spokesman, Andrew Brent.

Copyright 2008 The New York Observer.

[brianac]

A Possible Exit Strategy at Willets Point? City Studies Two-Phase Plan

by Eliot Brown (http://origin.observer.com/2007/author/eliot-brown) | April 24, 2008

http://origin.observer.com/files/imagecache/article/files/phased%20plan.jpg NYCEDC
The first phase would be on the western portion of the site

An alternative studied in the Willets Point environmental review suggests a possible compromise strategy for the Bloomberg administration in its contested effort to redevelop the 61-acre industrial area by Shea Stadium.

The proposed redevelopment has turned into a big political quagmire, with elected officials on the City Council jumping at the chance to bash the city about its proposal. While a group of current and former elected officials met at City Hall today (http://www.observer.com/2008/yet-another-rally-willets-point) to hail the plan, the project clearly will take some convincing in the Council.

The alternative plan, studied in the draft environmental impact statement, calls for acquiring the land and building the project, in two phases. The plan includes acquiring the land on the western portions of the site first, where most of the smaller automotive-related businesses are based, while the owner-occupied businesses on the eastern portion would have more time before they sell their land. The plan would be the same in size, though the first half would be done by 2013, according to the plan studied, while the second half would be done by 2017.

From the EIS [PDF] (http://www.nycedc.com/NR/rdonlyres/37D0A6BE-BFE7-4FF6-8C63-198A1A49BF69/0/24_Alternatives.pdf):
This would allow the City additional time to find suitable relocation sites for the District’s larger businesses which are concentrated in the eastern portion of the District and which have more specific relocation needs than the District’s smaller businesses. It would also spread the cost of property acquisition and infrastructure improvements over time.


For now, the city is intent upon proceeding with the initiative as planned, though it can’t go anywhere without support from Council, where some members seem to be reveling in the spotlight as they criticize.

http://origin.observer.com/2008/possible-exit-strategy-willets-point-city-studies-two-phase-plan

© 2008 Observer Media Group,

[antinimby]

There's a new blog created in support of the redevelopment plans: http://developwilletspoint.blogspot.com/ (http://developwilletspoint.blogspot.com/)

[brianac]

City Wants $389 M. for Willets Point

by Eliot Brown (http://origin.observer.com/2007/author/eliot-brown) | May 2, 2008

http://origin.observer.com/files/imagecache/article/files/stadiums_0.jpg Eliot Brown
Willets Point

The mayor’s executive budget (http://www.nyc.gov/html/omb/html/finplan05_08.html) released yesterday called for $389.7 million in city funding for the proposed Willets Point redevelopment, an amount that would be one of the largest direct city contributions for an economic development project during the Bloomberg administration.

[Summary of the executive budget here as a PDF (http://www.nyc.gov/html/omb/pdf/tech5_08.pdf)].

The money would be used for acquisition and infrastructure work, according to a city summary of the mayor’s budget plan, with the capital budget calling for the money to be spread over a 12-year period, with the bulk of it at the start.

The city’s plan to redevelop (http://www.nycedc.com/Web/AboutUs/OurProjects/CurrentProjects/WilletsPointDevelopmentDistrict.htm) Willets Point, a 61-acre industrial area next to Shea Stadium, has been criticized by numerous members (http://www.observer.com/2008/majority-council-jumps-anti-willets-point-bandwagon) of the City Council, including almost every member from Queens. The Council’s approval is needed for the city to proceed on its plan, and thus it seems unlikely to move ahead until the city addresses some of the Council’s criticisms, which include concerns over the use of eminent domain and treatment of existing landowners and workers.

As means of comparison, the city previously pledged $350 million for the expansion of the publicly owned Javits Center and $200 million for Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards development.


http://origin.observer.com/2008/city-wants-389m-willets-point

© 2008 Observer Media Group,

[NYC4Life]

From: NY Daily News

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/queens/2008/06/11/2008-06-11_eminent_domain_bid_seen_as_study_slams_w.html

Eminent domain bid seen as study slams Willets Pt.

BY JOHN LAUINGER
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Wednesday, June 11th 2008, 11:26 PM

http://www.nydailynews.com/img/2008/06/12/alg_willetspoint.jpg
Artist rendering of Iron Triangle in Queens project.



Riddled with crime and defiled by pollution, Willets Point (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Willets+Point) is a "burden on the health of the city's residents and economy," says a new report that could remake the future of the so-called Iron Triangle in Queens (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Queens+County). The study of the gritty industrial zone - a draft copy of which was obtained by the Daily News - signals the city is preparing to use eminent domain to transform Willets Point into a glitzy mega development, experts said. Such reports, commonly known as "blight studies," are typically the first step in condemnation proceedings, said Tom Angotti (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Tom+Angotti), a professor in urban affairs and planning at Hunter College (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Hunter+College).

"To establish an urban renewal area and take property through eminent domain there has to be a public purpose - and the public purpose is to eliminate blight," Angotti said. The 790-page report, which was done by an outside consultant, paints an unflattering picture of Willets Point. It documents how area businesses have been linked to crimes such as car theft, resale of stolen parts, insurance fraud and dumping of toxic chemicals into the soil and nearby Flushing River.

"The illegal activities and harmful environmental practices in the district have created a condition that is threatening to the environment and to the neighboring communities," the report notes. Deputy Mayor Robert Lieber (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Robert+C.+Lieber) said the administration's Willets Point redevelopment plan, which has yet to come before the City Council for a vote, would have an "enormous" impact on the local and citywide economies. But Mark Gerrard (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Mark+Gerrard), an attorney suing the city on behalf of several Willets Point businesses, argued the city is attempting to profit from a problem it caused by "its refusal over decades to provide the community with the basic services."

[ZippyTheChimp]

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/misc/nytlogo153x23.gif

November 13, 2008

Willets Point Project Foes Reach Deal With the City

By FERNANDA SANTOS

Two of the leading opponents of the Willets Point redevelopment project (http://www.nycedc.com/Web/AboutUs/OurProjects/CurrentProjects/WilletsPointDevelopmentDistrict.htm) in Queens came out in favor of the plan on Wednesday, after they reached a critical deal with the city over the number of homes for low-income families that will be built at the site.

The agreement calls for more than 800 homes for families earning less than $38,400 a year and essentially paves the way for the project’s approval by the City Council on Thursday. The agreement is a major political victory for one of the opponents, Councilman Hiram Monserrate, and for the Bloomberg administration, which spent considerable time and money in recent weeks to arrange support for the plan.

“This is a project for the people,” said Councilman Monserrate, who represents a district that includes Willets Point, a 62-acre expanse of auto body shops, junkyards and manufacturers on unpaved roads near Shea Stadium. “Everybody wins,” he said.

The deal requires that 35 percent of the project’s 5,500 housing units be set aside for families who make less than $99,840 a year, or 130 percent of the city’s median income of $76,800. The original plan reserved just 20 percent of the units for families of those income levels.

The agreement was announced on Wednesday at a news conference at City Hall that brought together what days ago would have been an improbable cast of allies.

On hand were Mr. Monserrate and Bertha Lewis, chief organizer of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or Acorn, which Mr. Monserrate had enlisted in opposing the project’s housing levels and the city’s plan to take over privately owned property by eminent domain. At their side were Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the city’s deputy mayor for economic development, Robert C. Lieber, who worked late into the night on Tuesday to arrange the deal.

“The truth of the matter is, we have worked well together over the years,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “We don’t always agree on everything, but people always want to paint these battles as personal battles, or if you’re not together on one thing, it means you can’t work together on others. This is as good an example as you could ever find.”

The mood was festive, with thank-yous and congratulations on both sides. The Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, declared her “enthusiastic support” for the project, proclaiming it “a major economic engine for the city just at a time when we need it most.”

Councilwoman Melinda R. Katz, who heads the Council’s Land Use Committee, which will hold one of three votes on Willets Point on Thursday, called it “a great project.”

“We’re creating jobs,” Ms. Katz said, “and we’re creating housing for folks who can least afford to live here.”

The city has agreements to acquire about 31 percent of the 48 acres of privately owned land at Willets Point and is close to sealing another deal, with Tully Construction and Tully Environmental, which owns the largest parcel at the site. Negotiations with landowners will continue after Thursday’s votes, the mayor said.

The proposed project includes a half-million square feet of office space, eight acres of parks, stores and a hotel and conference center. It is estimated to cost $3 billion and expected to be built over about 10 years, generating about 18,000 construction jobs and 5,000 permanent jobs, city officials said.

The future developer will have to abide by housing guidelines that will require the construction of 820 homes for families who make $38,400 a year or less, which is more housing for low-income families than was required in any of the city’s other recent redevelopment projects, including Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn and Hudson Yards, on the west side of Midtown.

The rest of the homes will be distributed as follows: about 330 for families earning $38,400 to $46,080; 770 for families earning $46,080 to $99,840; and the remaining 3,500 or so priced at market value.

“It actually makes homes affordable for the families that live in the area,” said Hannah Weinstock, an organizer with Queens for Affordable Housing, a coalition of community groups that pressured Mr. Monserrate and other legislators to push for a greater portion of homes for low- and moderate-income families.

The city has established job training programs that will be open to all of the approximately 1,700 people who currently work in the 260 or so businesses at Willets Point, including many illegal immigrants.

“We’re agnostic in terms of the immigration status of the people who are working there,” Mr. Lieber said. “We want to make sure that people have the jobs and have the opportunity and have the training so that we can keep them in New York City and we can give them an opportunity to grow their families and make a decent wage and benefits for them and their families.”


Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

[ZippyTheChimp]

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/misc/nytlogo153x23.gif


November 13, 2008, 5:34 pm

Council Approves Queens Redevelopment Plans

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/11/13/nyregion/willetspoint-480.jpg


By Fernanda Santos

The Bloomberg administration won City Council approval for the redevelopment of Willets Point, in what is now a neglected industrial triangle near Shea Stadium. (Photo: Frank Franklin II/Associated Press)

The City Council overwhelmingly approved two redevelopment plans that together will provide thousands of new housing units for low- and moderate-income families and senior citizens in Queens. The projects – Willets Point, in what is now a neglected industrial triangle near Shea Stadium, and Hunters Point South, along the waterfront in Long Island City – will offer nearly 4,000 homes to families that make $99,800 a year or less, with 800 units in Willets Point reserved to families with an annual income of less than $38,000.

The Council voted in favor of the projects by a 42-to-2 margin, with one abstention.

The approval was no surprise. Hunters Point South was never truly a controversial project and Willets Point has seen considerable change and movement, especially in the past few days, as the city rushed to enter into as many agreements as possible with the property owners.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg first unveiled his plan to redevelop Willets Point in 2007, promising to transform a bedraggled 62-acre enclave lined with junkyards, auto body shops and manufacturers into a neighborhood filled with offices, stores, a hotel and convention center, parks and new homes. Getting it approved was far more complicated – and controversial – than it was to approve Hunters Point, largely because the city was seeking the right to take private land at the site by eminent domain.

By voting in favor of the project, the Council authorizes the city to do just that, but how much of it will be needed is still questionable. On Thursday morning, the city’s Economic Development Corporation reached an agreement to acquire the largest of the businesses there, Tully Construction, which, along with a partner company, Tully Environmental, occupies 10 acres of land at the site. The city also agreed to authorize two other businesses, Fodera Foods and House of Spices, to stay in Willets Point even as construction progresses and later sell their land to a developer.

“The end game here was always to ensure that we had a project and a plan that was fair to all parties,” said Councilman Hiram Monserrate, who represents a district that includes Willets Point and had been one of the project’s most vocal critics. “I think we’ve achieved that.”

The redevelopment of Willets Point, which is expected to be completed in about 10 years, will generate 18,000 construction jobs and about 5,000 permanent jobs, city officials said. Under an agreement with labor groups representing construction, building services and hospitality workers, those will be for the most part union jobs, with good wages and benefits.

Hunters Point South, for its part, will have 5,000 homes built on 30 acres on the edge of the East River, near Newtown Creek. Three thousand of the homes will be set aside for families whose annual income totals $126,000 or less, with 800 of them destined specifically to families who earn less than $61,400 a year. There will also be 300 units built for low-income senior citizens and at least 225 units devoted to a middle-class homeownership program.

“We’re creating a model,” said Councilman Eric N. Gioia, whose district includes the area where the project will be built. “We’re creating housing where all New Yorkers can live together, in the same neighborhood.”

* Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

[Ninjahedge]

Building is simple, but cleanup is going to be expensive. I really have not heard too much about city budget appropriation for site restoration forso many low to mid income housing units.

IOW, in this market, with those income restrictions, where is the money going to come from? And do we have a realistic estamate, or are we going to get another example of an overbudget parade.....?