In 2007, Mayor Bloomberg announced a plan to put apartments and office buildings on the 60 acres bounded by Citi Field, the Whitestone Expressway and Flushing Creek. His plans expanded to include a shopping mall on a parking lot technically mapped as parkland, prompting a lawsuit that stopped the project in its tracks.
Mr. Bloomberg’s successor, Bill de Blasio, re-envisioned the plan to prioritize affordable housing, and during his second term, announced a remediation of the polluted site to allow for 1,100 apartments and a school. Most of the more than 200 businesses that made up the Iron Triangle have since been evicted, or bought out. A plan to relocate many of them to the Bronx failed.
City officials initially said that only two businesses remain at the site. After the article published, they revised the number to about a dozen: roughly half on city-owned property. Officials said the city will evict the tenants on city land, and the developers are working on acquiring the private property hosting the other businesses.
Waiss Mohibi, who owns garages there, said the city has pressured him to leave, in bad faith. He said he has four years left on his lease and he will not leave without a buyout.
“You give me a good deal, I’ll get out,” he said. “If you don’t, I stay.”
The 1,100 units announced by Mr. de Blasio in 2018 will be incorporated into the 2,500 unit total Mr. Adams will announce on Wednesday.
The stadium project and additional housing will have to go through the city’s onerous land review process, which is heavily reliant on the support of the local council member. In this case, that council member’s support is not in doubt.
“I’m a kid who grew up playing soccer in the fields right across from Willets Point,” said Francisco Moya, a councilman who has been pushing for a soccer stadium in Queens for years. “We hope to create the same kind of passion that we see throughout the world, where some kid right now who’s playing on Field 11 in Flushing Meadows Corona Park will one day be able to don the jersey of the team that plays right across the way from them.”
Nate Schweber contributed reporting.