Iron Triangle in Queens to Be Redeveloped

[ForestHillsGardens]

I have always supported this project, I am sick and tired of the auto shops by Citi Field, the auto shop area is dirty, dusty and the view is terrible from the (7) EL Stand-Point. I really feel that this redevelopment will revitalize the area perhaps even beyond Main St. and Roosevelt Ave., it'll be a phase of rebuilding Queens, redefining Flushing and planning for a better Queens and perhaps build up the infrastructure of the future of the City of New York. I really feel the shops, eatery and recreational facilities would be a very good place to have a Girls Night Out, Shopping trip, Relaxation trip, Social time, Guys night at the bar and/or just to be active, it would really make New York residents have a 'Florida' close by home.

[BiggieSmalls]

this makes too much sense.. it has to come together


Mets Owners Working With Real Estate Firm on Queens Arena for Islanders

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6/14/2010 10:30 AM ET By Christopher Botta
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  • Christopher Botta
  • Senior NHL Writer

The owners of the New York Mets have begun discussions with a leading real estate firm to strategize for a potential arena in Queens that would house the NHL's New York Islanders, an industry source has told FanHouse.

Jones Lang LaSalle, the project management company for the upcoming $775-850 million renovation of Madison Square Garden, has begun work on a feasibility study for an Islanders arena at Willets Point -- the property surrounding Citi Field, the second-year home of the Mets.

"This is beyond the preliminary stage," said the source. "You don't bring in a big hitter like JLL unless you're serious. This tells me the Islanders and Mets have made progress in a partnership to take the hockey team to Queens. If Charles Wang and Nassau can't cut a deal, this will be a great option."

Efforts to obtain comment from Jones Lang LaSalle have been unsuccessful.

One month ago, Newsday reported on discussions between Mets chief operating officer Jeff Wilpon and Wang, the owner of the Islanders, about building an arena adjacent to Citi Field for his hockey team.

Since purchasing the Islanders in April of 2000, Wang has made scant progress with area politicians on the development of the Lighthouse Project, his proposed "transformation" of the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum and surrounding 90 acres. Town of Hempstead supervisor Kate Murray has promised Wang her consultants' counter-proposal to his vision this month. Hempstead's push-back is expected to be less than 50 percent of the scope Wang's real estate team not only designed more than six years ago, but was approved by the former leadership of Nassau County in 2006.

After years of meetings and zoning hearings, the response of Hempstead community leaders can best be summed up by Town spokesman Michael Deery. "Unlike the five metropolitan area franchises that opened magnificent facilities in the last year," Deery said recently, "Mr. Wang has tied the Coliseum's future to the construction of a mini-city along Hempstead Turnpike."

As a result of getting no results, Wang has taken down the official website of the Lighthouse Project. Most marketing materials and signage promoting the benefits of the proposed development have been taken out of the Coliseum and the Islanders' practice facility in Syosset, N.Y. Many Lighthouse staffers have been re-assigned to the Islanders or other Wang-owned businesses. Wang's dream of a mixed-use "iconic destination point" for himself and Long Island -- complete with an athletic complex (with three rinks), a Sport Technology center, hotel, office space and housing -- is all but dead.


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Although the Islanders' owner has repeatedly declared that his wish is to keep the team in Nassau County, it appears he has turned a serious eye towards Queens. When he was eight years old, Wang's family moved from China to Flushing.

Despite the big step forward in working with power brokers Jones Lang La Salle, it remains uncertain if Jeff Wilpon and his father Fred, the Mets' chairman of the board, are interested in buying the Islanders from Wang. In Newsday last month, Jeff Wilpon said, "We haven't really discussed ownership. It has been more of, 'Can we get something synergistic with Citi Field and a hockey arena? What can happen here?'"

That's where Jones Lang LaSalle comes in.

In April, Jones Lang LaSalle was honored by the New York Landmarks Conservancy with awards for its work in the $16 million restoration of Manhattan's Beacon Theatre and the $550 million capital improvement program for increased security, traffic flow and restoration of the art deco lobby and other principal spaces of the Empire State Building.

As the company serves for the Madison Square Garden renovation, Jones Lang LaSalle could be selected officially as the manager of the Willets Point arena development. If so, it would be involved in creating timelines and financial controls and oversee the selection of the architect and construction team.

Unless Wang gets something close to the answers he needs from the Town of Hempstead and Nassau County, Jones Lang LaSalle and the Mets are ready to pave the way for the Islanders' relocation to Queens.


http://nhl.fanhouse.com/2010/06/14/m...-is/2#comments

[BiggieSmalls]

battingly propoganda in Willets POint...

The Times reports that EDC Emails are mocking the viability of the product -- EDC emails sent to the times by the project opponents.

Emails Show State Officials Skepticism About WP Project.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/13/ny...er=rss&emc=rss

Then The NYDN reports (via EDC press release) that four more properties totally 33,000 sq feet have been purchased bringing the total to 80%

City's Willets Point development plan gets more land

THE CITY HAS scooped up four more properties in Willets Point in recent months, helping to pave the way for the first phase of its $3 billion mega-development plan.
The newly acquired 33,000 square feet gives the city about 80% control of the 22-acre southwest portion, where construction is slated to begin on the gritty 62-acre industrial area, officials said.

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/...#ixzz0wUGMINKm

Why isnt the Ramp Project a slam dunk approval with the Federal and State Officials?

[Merry]

Judge Rejects Challenge Against Willets Point Project

By JAMES BARRON

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg won a victory on Friday for his $3 billion blueprint for apartments, offices and stores in the shadow of Citi Field in Willets Point, Queens, when a judge rejected a challenge from opponents in the area.

The judge, Justice Joan A. Madden of State Supreme Court in Manhattan, turned down their request for an injunction to keep the city from going ahead with the project. Seth W. Pinsky, the president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation, said that the city now controls “about 80 percent” of the land for what is planned as the first phase of development.

The opponents included a Willets Point homeowner, 18 businesses and a group formed to fight the project, Willets Point United Against Eminent Domain. They asked Justice Madden to throw out the city’s environmental review of the project and the approvals by the City Planning Commission and the City Council.

She rejected their arguments against the environmental review, particularly as it focused on proposed new ramps from the Van Wyck Expressway. She said enough information had been provided to make possible “informed consideration and comment” on how the project would affect traffic in the area.

Michael Gerrard, a lawyer for the opponents, called the decision a “two-edged sword for the city.”

In a statement posted on the Web site of Willets Point United, a group that is fighting the city, he noted that in dismissing the opponents’ case, Justice Madden concluded that the environmental impact statement had adequately covered the traffic issues.

“But in so doing,” he said, the decision “stressed the terrible traffic effects forecast by the environmental impact statement; the need for federal approval for the Van Wyck ramps; and the fact that if the ramps are not approved, the project cannot go forward.”

“The city can’t paint one picture to the court and a completely different picture to the federal government,” he said.

Mr. Pinsky said the decision “moves Willets Point one step closer to becoming New York’s next great neighborhood.”

He added, “Redeveloping Willets Point will allow us to revitalize a neighborhood that has suffered too long from environmental contamination.”

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/20...t/#more-212059

http://www.observer.com/2010/real-es...int-court-case

[BiggieSmalls]

Interesting Court decision in teh East Harlem Eminent Domain case that WILL effect the Willets Point Redevelopment.

the lawsuit seeking to halt the development was dismissed even though it was one judge's opinion that "whatever blight exists is due to the actions of the City and/or is located far outside the project area."

The major contention of the WP defense group is that the Blight IN the area is "due to the actions of the City"/ And this decision squarely solidifies the opinion of "So What?"

[Merry]

City's Iron Triangle Takeover Mapped For Your Convenience!

October 27, 2010, by Sara Polsky



The city's redevelopment of chop shop central, aka Willets Point, has seen some tough moments, but now deals between the city and Iron Triangle businesses to clear land for the megaproject are starting to close. The city has about 80 percent of the 62-acre development area in contract. Thirty of those properties have closed so far—the latest deed, for two more parcels of land, was recorded this week for $12 million—and the folks at PropertyShark have handily mapped them (the city-owned land's in blue above). With that taken care of, there's now even less reason to visit Citi Field any time soon!

First Salvage Shop Set to Leave Queens' Iron Triangle [Curbed]

http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2010/1...onvenience.php

[BiggieSmalls]

things have been quiet on this project publically..

there was some spin from the opponents that three of the companies who swapped their properties for land in College POint are flipping it to Wal MArt or some such big box store.. dont understand how that affects anything.. as they just basically sold out their business .. if what was reported as "word on the street" is true.. but as we read Sambucci is moving on a schedule.

this map doesnt seem accurate as a number of properties in city control arent colored right.. Feinstein Iron Works being one.. (the odd shaped property bordering WP Blvd and 37th ave)

Seperately.. dont undertand why the city doesnt buy the old brick bus company building on 126th between 34th and 35th.. they've had a big AVAILABLE sign out there for a year or so..perhaps the cant agree on price..
or they get more for the cell towers on top than the price of selling\\

[Merry]

City to Seize Land in Queens

Eminent-Domain Proceedings Set for Property Holdouts at Willets Point Project

By ELIOT BROWN


New York City is set to initiate the eminent-domain process on holdout owners in part of
Willets Point, Queens, a site near Citi Field slated for a massive real-estate development.

Seeking to kick-start a massive Queens real-estate development project conceived in the boom years, the Bloomberg administration is moving to seize a portion of the site from private property owners.

Next week, the city plans to initiate the eminent-domain process on holdout owners who own property in the first 20-acre phase of the 62-acre project. The city also is planning to solicit bids from developers in the spring, according to city officials.

Known as Willets Point, the development site by Citi Field is slated to ultimately contain more than eight million square feet, with more than 5,000 apartments, a hotel and more than 1.7 million square feet of retail space.

The site currently is filled with junkyards and auto-repair shops, along with some larger industrial properties. The City Council in 2008 approved the use of eminent domain to acquire parcels from holdouts.

The property owners are expected to litigate to block the city action, although New York state laws give the government broad powers to use eminent domain. Similar recent development projects, like the new basketball arena being built at Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, have survived court challenges.

Seth Pinsky, president of the city's Economic Development Corp., said in an interview Wednesday that the city has purchase agreements with property owners for 88% of the first phase of the site.

There are nine holdouts whose land the city would seek to acquire, and others whose land would be acquired in later phases.

"We just can't wait any longer and need to know that if we can't reach those agreements, that we can still move forward," he said.

Opponents of the project have argued that the city isn't permitted to construct entrance ramps to the Van Wyck Expressway nearby that are called for as part of the project. Richard Lipsky, a lobbyist who represents business owners at the site, says that the eminent domain action was "an absolute disgrace."

"The city is going ahead with a project that no one knows what it will cost, with a developer that no one knows who it will be, and with ramps that no one knows whether they can be built," Mr. Lipsky says.

Mr. Pinsky said the city's position is that it isn't required to build the ramps—which would mitigate traffic congestion on the local streets—until later phases of the project.

The action comes as the city administration is making a bet that the real-estate development industry—in hibernation since 2008—has warmed enough that landlords are willing to take risks on giant construction projects. In April, city officials said, they plan to solicit bids from a set of developers who have previously showed interested in the site, including Related Cos., Muss Development and Sterling Equities.

The first phase of Willets Point is expected to include as much as 1.3 million square feet of development with hundreds of apartments, retail space and maybe a hotel.

Success is by no means assured, given that the site is far from Manhattan and it requires extensive infrastructure work and a cleanup from years of industrial use. Among other things, the site needs to be raised by as much as 7 feet to meet flood-plain requirements.

Further, during a contentious fight for approval with the City Council, the Bloomberg administration agreed to a number of community givebacks that would likely inhibit developer interest, such as a requirement to reserve 35% of the housing for low- to middle-income residents.

Still, the project has remained a priority for the administration, as it hasn't cut back its budget of about $400 million in city money over multiple years even as other economic development and affordable-housing projects have been trimmed or cut.

The scope, however, has been scaled back and split into phases.

Mr. Pinsky said the city was moving forward now as construction costs have fallen, and it has received a warm reception from the interested developers in anticipation of the city's request for proposals.

"We feel confident that we're going to get a robust response" to the request for proposals from developers, he said.

The eminent-domain action will trigger a month-long public comment period.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...455780068.html


http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2011/0...angle.php#more

[BiggieSmalls]

Awesome news!!!

Looks like phase one has a chance to be completed by the all star game in 2013

[BiggieSmalls]

another similar article after the WP press conference yesterday
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/51051/

City Prepares to Seize Willets Point Properties

NEW YORK—Small business owners and workers gathered in front of a gas station in Willets Point, Queens, scared to lose their property and feeling pushed to the periphery. They are facing an uncertain future.

The city's Economic Development Corporation (EDC) will move ahead with the first phase of the Willets Point redevelopment plan in the coming weeks, forcing the remaining tenants to leave. Locals expressed their concern and fear in a frosty press conference on Thursday afternoon.

The gathered crowd comprised scrap yard owners and workers, humble shop keepers, and many who have worked in the same place for decades. Unsure about where they would go if the city begins taking over their property against their will—under the eminent domain law—some of them have scraped together meager funds to hire a lawyer and a lobbyist.

more at...
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/51051/

[Ninjahedge]

"Humble shop keepers".


Hmm. They are making that cesspool seem almost quaint.

[BBMW]

Does everything have to be residential/hotel/office? Maybe this would be a good place for an updated industrial park?

[Merry]

Concern for Underclass as the City Progresses on Its Willets Point Plan

By DAN BILEFSKY


The city plans a $3 billion project of apartments, office buildings, stores, restaurants and
a hotel in Willets Point, a 61-acre expanse of junkyards and auto-repair shops.

Two years ago, as the mayor attended the Mets’ home opener at the new Citi Field, Adrien Nicolescue, an auto mechanic from Romania, joined a procession of honking garbage trucks to protest the city’s plans to condemn the nearby Willets Point area and build a $3 billion project of apartments, office buildings, stores, restaurants and a hotel.

But as his comrades geared up for another showdown with the mayor at a public hearing on the project scheduled for Wednesday, Mr. Nicolescue decided to pack up and leave. “I am going home, back to Romania,” he said, standing on the same pothole-pocked corner of Willets Point where he has been drawing in customers for windshield repairs for 36 years.

Willets Point, in Queens, is a 61-acre expanse of junkyards and auto-repair shops so squalid that local business owners compare it to Iraq. “I don’t want to leave,” Mr. Nicolescue said, “but I have nowhere to go. This may look like the third world, but it is my world.”

For half a century, Willets Point has proved remarkably intractable — Mayors Robert F. Wagner Jr. and Rudolph W. Giuliani were among those who failed in their attempts to give the area a facelift. But in the latest four-year skirmish, which has provoked heated debates on class and ethnicity, inspired furious lobbying on all sides and spawned allegations of conflicts of interest, the administration of Michael R. Bloomberg has gotten further than its predecessors, managing to persuade many of the larger businesses to sell out or relocate.

The city agency overseeing the project, the New York City Economic Development Corporation, hopes that at the hearing on Wednesday it can make the case that it is redeeming a hazardous industrial wasteland.

Seth W. Pinsky, president of the corporation, said in an interview that the project would create 5,300 new jobs, provide affordable housing and generate $25 billion in investment over the next 30 years. He said that 29 developers had already expressed interest, and that the city would choose finalists this spring.

But opponents of the Bloomberg plan counter that the project is speculative and environmentally unsound. They insist that the area, however bedraggled, has become an Ellis Island of sorts for a newly arriving underclass that depends on it to get by. They also complain bitterly that the city is shutting down thriving small businesses that have nowhere else to go.

The city will have 90 days to respond to concerns raised at the hearing on Wednesday. Officials said they planned to proceed with the project, including seizing property, if necessary, by the middle of 2012.

City officials estimate that Willets Point is home to 255 businesses, which employ about 1,700 people, some in sheds made of tin or cinder blocks. Of 74 property owners, 28 have agreed to sell their land or relocate, city officials say; the city already owns 90 percent of the property where the first five-year phase of development would go.

While opposition to the plans remains strong, people on both sides said that the city’s divide-and-conquer strategy seems to have worked, with many of the largest landowners conceding defeat and planning to depart, leaving the smaller shops and the immigrants who work there to fight a lonely battle.

“I’m not going to fight a man like Bloomberg: You know you aren’t going to win,” said Daniel Sambucci, 80, who said he had agreed to accept an offer of a “few million” dollars from the city for his 2.5 acres of land and to relocate his 61-year-old auto salvage company to a nearby neighborhood. “They treated us pretty good. But I am upset that I paid $50,000 a year in taxes for years for a place with no sewers. This place is worse than Iraq, and the city let it become this way.”

On a recent afternoon, as garbage cans burned, Mexican norteño music wailed from boom boxes on the hoods of cars. Large pools of swirling dirty water overwhelmed unpaved roads. Locals complained that the police handed out tickets for parking cars on the sidewalk, even though there were no sidewalks.

Whatever the challenges, some are determined to stay. Michael Rikon, a lawyer representing 82 businesses that have refused to leave, said that he was preparing to file a lawsuit against the city, claiming that the project flouted environmental laws. But he acknowledged that history and precedent were not on his side.

In November 2009, the Court of Appeals, New York’s highest court, ruled that the state could take businesses and private property for the $4.9 billion Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn. Legal experts said that decision reaffirmed New York’s right to use eminent domain even as many state legislatures have been moving in the opposite direction.

While some critics have portrayed the redevelopment of Willets Point as a class battle by a billionaire mayor intent on supplanting scrap metal with sushi, the Bloomberg administration has some unlikely allies in the project. “We see Willets Point as a form of modern-day slavery in which poor people are working in conditions worse than in their home countries,” said Eduardo Giraldo, head of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Queens. “It is better to shut it down.”

Mr. Pinsky, of the Economic Development Corporation, stressed that the first phase of the project would include 140 affordable housing units and noted that the city had offered free English language lessons and training for Willets Point’s dispossessed. But, Mr. Giraldo said, many of the immigrant workers could not take advantage of the classes because they were already working 12-hour days.

Meanwhile, some small business owners are frustrated that their neighbors are getting lucrative deals from the city and they are not. Ralph St. John, whose company has built apartment buildings and parks for the city for nearly 20 years, said he had been offered nothing, and that his 18 employees would lose their jobs if he were forced to leave.

City officials said that Mr. St. John’s land was not earmarked for development in the first phase, and that by the time the city was ready to make a deal with him, his land would probably have increased in value. But Mr. St. John, who is 77, does not want to live in limbo.

“If you want what I got, act like a man and come face me,” he said. “Don’t use eminent domain and steal from me.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/ny...er=rss&emc=rss

[Ninjahedge]

The place is a poop-hole.

Trying to save the poop-hole by saying it is somehow the land of opportunity is BS. I feel for some of these guys, but at the same time it is not an obligation to keep a crappy area around IF a better use can be made of it.

There is no art, no culture, no charity there. It is just a junk slum where a bunch of people work, but nobody really lives.


Here's the question though. Although I may detest this area and otehrs like it, with their closure and "cleaning up", where do all of our industrial sites get pushed to?

You con't exactly say "New Jersey", they are doing the same and there is only so much room in Bayone...

How can the NYC area keep "gentrifying"? Where does its supporting industry go?

[BiggieSmalls]

there are plenty of locations in existing industrial areas that are vacant for example By Rikers Island or Parts of The Old Flushing Airport lcoation.. even by La Guardia or JFK Airport there are plots sufficient to support an "Auto Repair District" significantly larger than the existing WP site... The Bronx by the Sheridan Expressway has a bunch of such sites.

people think NYC is some completely developed place but there are literally acres of land that lay vacant.. just drive around the highways of NYC.

what we dont need is a highly toxic industrial waste land sandwiched between a shiny new stadium and the largest Park inthe city and a growing high population area across the flushing River