OuterB on Queens Real Estate

The New York Observer has a fascinating and engaging opinion piece about the Willets Point Iron Triangle section of Queens. Harry Siegel brings up a lot of familiar points - the toxicity of the land, the potential of eminent domain - but also connects the intent by the the city to create blight so that eminent domain can be invoked. I found this passage very interesting:

As things play out, the years of willful neglect from the city and attendant environmental abuses by the businesses based there may prove to be Willets Point’s best defense against this latest attempt at a hostile takeover. As Mr. Angotti has written: “Preliminary environmental surveys of the area have found a litany of problems. There are storage tanks underground, the soil is too soft to hold heavy loads, it’s on a flood plain, and building heights are constrained because of its proximity to LaGuardia Airport.”

Still, there’s no doubt the land’s value will skyrocket as soon as it’s connected to the sewer grid and the nexus of city services, or it’s known with certainty that it will be brought back onto the grid. Once that happens, it’s near certain the owners will sell or develop, and the businesses presently there will leave.

He also connects the new Citi Stadium with the redevelopment, not because of the more societal issues of making the area “fit in” with the stadium (gentrification), but because of a revenue issue - the team has made a deal to pay zilch in real estate taxes each year.  The city will be reliant on a gentrified Willets Point to provide the the revenue that the Mets really should be paying in the first place:

The latest redevelopment scheme, a relatively little-noticed part of Mr. Bloomberg’s NYC 2030 plan, is also stadium-related. Willets Point is adjacent to the Mets’ $600 million new ballpark presently being erected, and the team has a deal with the city to pay exactly zero dollars of real estate taxes on the stadium each year, meaning New York must generate a subsidiary economy to recoup the infrastructure dollars and tax breaks it’s invested.

I love baseball, but I find this kind of thing truly disgusting.

• Bloomberg’s Bossist Approach to Willets Point[NY Observer]

Related: OuterB Willets Point coverage [previously on OuterB]

Photo Credit: Satan’s Laundromat

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 28th, 2007 at 2:00 am and is filed under Queens Blogs, Willets Point. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.