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Can Willets Point the Way?
Development watchers should pay close attention to what happens over the next few months in Willets Point, Queens, where the New York City Economic Development Corporation wants to demolish a hardscrabble haven for auto-repair shops and other modest industrial-service businesses, building in their place a convention center, hotel, housing, retail, and other components of a sparkling new neighborhood, to be constructed by a single developer yet to be selected.
That project is about to go through the City’s land use review process, and a number of community organizations — including Asian Americans for Equality, Queens Community House and ACORN — are looking to bargain for affordable housing, well-paying jobs, pedestrian access and other benefits from the development. The groups brought workers in Willets Point and residents of surrounding neighborhoods, including Corona, Flushing and East Elmhurst, together for a series of brainstorming sessions, whose recommendations are compiled in a new report (careful — that’s a PDF).
Meta-disclosure: The sessions and report were facilitated by the Pratt Center for Community Development, which sponsors this website as an independent news source on development in New York City. I’m mentioning the Willets Point project here because groups all over the city should watch it carefully: it’s poised to be perhaps the greatest test yet of the extent to which neighborhood groups will be able to influence a major development project. The Daily News picked up the story today, and as ULURP proceeds — especially as the transformation plan for Willets Point heads toward the City Council — there will be a lot to discuss about how much the public can and should expect when a neighborhood goes through an extreme makeover.
April 5th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
WILLETS POINT INDUSTRY AND REALTY ASSOCIATION LAUNCHES AD CAMPAIGN IN NEW YORK DAILY NEWS DEMANDING INFRASTRUCTURE AND BASIC SERVICES
(NEW YORK) NY April 5, 2008 — In an Open Letter published in the Daily News on Saturday, April 5th, the Willets Point Industry and Realty Association (WPIRA) invites Mayor Michael Bloomberg to a meeting in Willets Point, Queens to discuss their vision of the area’s future.
The Open Letter was the first in a series of ads in the Daily News and Queens Chronicle. A similar Open Letter appears in the April 3rd edition of the Queens Chronicle, addressed to Mayor Bloomberg and Queens Borough President Helen Marshall. In that letter, the Queens Borough President is also invited to meet with the second and third generation land and business owners in Willets Point.
The City of New York is proposing to rezone it Willets Point, condemn it and evict the existing businesses through the use of Eminent Domain and replace them with 1.7 million feet of retail space, 500,000 square feet of office space, a hotel, 5,500 residential housing units and a convention center in the neighborhood that is currently zoned for heavy industry. To make this proposal a reality, the City must first acquire the 60 acres of privately owned land at Willets Point. WPIRA maintains that the City of New York has planned to rezone and redevelop for many years and has been waging a campaign of intentional neglect to create and perpetuate an eyesore for the eventual justification of the use of Eminent Domain.
In the Open Letter to Mayor Bloomberg, business owners write: “Our businesses generate hundreds of millions of tax revenue dollars for the City of New York. We have survived and even thrived at Willets Point despite the fact that for the past 30 years, the City has perpetually deprived us of the most basic services such as sanitary sewers, paved roads, sidewalks, street lights, snow removal and trash pick-up.”
“We agree that Willets Point needs to be developed. Our solution is to allow the area to develop on its own. If the City provided the infrastructure and services that we are entitled to and in fact, are paying for, this will happen. The City plans to spend upward of three billion dollars to redevelop Willets Point. However, with the current credit crisis and increasing construction costs, we can certainly expect those costs to balloon to a multiple of that number. It doesn’t make economic sense in light of your budget cuts to our police, schools and hospitals.”
WPIRA members appeal to the Mayor: “We ask that you meet with us and our employees, learn about our businesses and our challenges, and walk the “streets” of Willets Point with us. Let us share our vision of the future of Willets Point with you. Let’s work together because to continue to look the other way is to deny our existence; and to invoke Eminent Domain is to steal our land and businesses. It’s unjust and it’s un-American.”
The members of WPIRA believe that the area would be revitalized if the City spent a fraction of the capital required for redevelopment and invested in infrastructure for the area. The New York City Economic Development Corporation (EDC) conducted a study of the area in 1991 that suggested exactly that. “If the City provided the infrastructure and services that we are entitled to and in fact, are paying for, the area would be revitalized,” said Dan Feinstein, President of Feinstein Iron Works, Inc. The estimated cost of redeveloping the area is upwards of three billion dollars. That estimate is expected to skyrocket given the credit crisis and increasing construction costs.
A second ad will run in the Sunday, April 6th edition of the Daily News. It is a letter to all New Yorkers from the workers at Willets Point. The workers write: “New York City plans to use Eminent Domain to seize the land from all 250 businesses and property owners in Willets Point, to enrich a politically connected developer. The developer will earn hundreds of millions of dollars in profits. We will lose our jobs, our economic security, and we could lose our homes. What will happen to us? What will happen to our families? What will happen to our hopes and our American Dreams?
In the ad, the workers state their opposition to the City’s intended use of Eminent Domain and join their employers in demanding services. New Yorkers are reminded that the situation in Willets Point could happen anywhere: “Neighborhoods all over New York City from the Atlantic Yards and Coney Island in Brooklyn to Harlem in Manhattan are facing Eminent Domain. And you could be next. Join us in calling or writing your elected officials. Remind them you are taxpaying voters and you oppose Eminent Domain because it is unjust and un-American.”
The Willets Point Industry and Realty Association will hold a press conference on the steps of New York City Hall on Wednesday, April 9, 2008 at 11am to demand infrastructure and services. A major announcement regarding this issue will be made at the press conference.
The Willets Point Industry and Realty Association (WPIRA)
The Willets Point Industry and Realty Association (WPIRA) is dedicated to the development, improvement and growth of the Willets Point area by the businesses that reside there, and not by development schemes in which eminent domain is used to forcibly evict and raze those businesses. A. Fodera & Son, Inc., Bono Sawdust Supply Co., Inc., Crown Container Co., Inc., Feinstein Iron Works, Inc., House of Spices (India), Inc., Parts Authority, Inc., QC Iron Works Inc., Sambucci Bros. Inc, T. Mina Supply, Inc., Tully Environmental, Inc., Tully Construction Co., Inc. http://www.WPIRA.com
Contact:
willetspoint@gmail.com