New York City Community Board Land Use Case Study: Willets Point Development Project
Disclaimer: In compliance with Chapter 68 of the New York City Charter, I am required to disclose that the views expressed in this article are wholly my own as a private citizen. Nothing I write here is to be construed as an official position of Queens Community Board 7, the City of New York, or any of its agencies.
See Related Articles
How and Why I Decided to Join My Local Community Board | What a Community Board Meeting is Like | Committee Meetings | Land Use Committee
Other Case Studies
Charles B. Wang Community Health Center (February 2018) | Kissena Blvd. Re-zoning (March 2019)
Background
This article is part of a series on my experience serving as a member of Queens Community Board 7’s Buildings/Land Use Committee. You can read about the general outline of what this committee does and what kinds of themes emerge in these meetings in this prior article.
Not All Meetings Involve a Vote
Committee meetings are not always set up in order to a vote on a proposal — one case in point are the quarterly updates that CB 7 gets on the progress of the Willets Point redevelopment megaproject. For those who aren’t familiar with this, there has long been talk of doing away with the auto body shops east of Citi Field and west of the Flushing River, and redeveloping the area into a mixed-use community. Although this area is technically just west of CB 7’s boundary, and lies in CB 4, we still get updates because of its proximity to us. The project has gone through fits and starts beginning in 2002, encountering legal challenges as well as environmental ones, and has been scaled down from an original proposal that would have led to the construction of a large shopping mall complex on the parking lot west of Citi Field. If realized, though, it would be a substantial undertaking that would create an entirely new neighborhood in this area.
The Project Update
In March of 2019, several representatives from the city presented to our committee, informing us that they are finally moving forward with the first 6 acres of the development. This 6 acre site sits within the larger 61 acre plot of the entire Willets Point area (locally referred to as the Iron Triangle), of which the city currently owns 23 acres. Indeed, at this point in the year, if you’ve passed by the area for Mets games or live nearby, you’ll have noticed that shops have been cleared away and that there’s nothing but concrete foundations left.
The 6 acre initial phase will contain 1,100 units of affordable housing rising up to 13–14 stories, 20,000 square feet of retail, 6,000 feet of community space, a K-8 school for 450 students, 1.2 acres of open space, and 300 parking spaces. Of the 1,100 units of affordable housing, 220 will be made available to low-income seniors, with a large portion of the remaining units renting for below 60% AMI (area median income). Eleni Bourinaris, who presented on behalf of the NYC Economic Development Corporation, indicated that this marked an increase in affordable units from the original proposal. The planned timeline, including due diligence, environmental testing and remediation, aims for the completion of the first building containing 500 units of housing by 2022, with the remainder of construction finishing by 2024–2026.
Committee members were given a chance to ask questions about the presentation, and they had a lot on their mind, including the common themes of parking, strain on existing infrastructure, but also touching on concerns regarding remediation of this heavily polluted site. Because of the back and forth with this project, which has seen several iterations, some committee members have adopted an understandably skeptical attitude towards the stated intentions of city. I thought that Eleni Bourinaris from the NYCEDC acquitted herself well in the face of some intense scrutiny. She also informed us that various stakeholders were convening a Willets Point Task Force, which will be chaired by Councilman Francisco Moya representing Corona and Queens Borough President Melinda Katz, with seats available for all local community boards. This task force will look at both the existing phase of development as well as plans for the remaining 17 acres of city-owned land within the larger 61 acre parcel. I walked away from the presentation with a much clearer understanding of what to expect from this development.
