TalB

Mayor Bloomberg pushing miffed City Council on Willets Point plan
Mayor Bloomberg pushing miffed City Council on Willets Point plan

By Frank Lombardi
Daily News Staff Writer

Friday, October 31st 2008, 9:44 PM

Mayor Bloomberg Friday urged City Council members to back his Willets Point development project - despite some open wounds from the bruising term-limits battle.

Bloomberg met Friday with each of the Council's five borough delegations to press for the $3 billion residential, commercial and retail development of a gritty 62-acre site near Shea Stadium in Queens.

Unless withdrawn, the plan faces a Nov. 13 deadline for required zoning and land-use approvals by the Council.

Bloomberg has yet to nail down the votes he needs, Council and Willets Point sources said.

Several Council members said ill feelings from the 29-to-22 vote the mayor won last week on his term limits extension could spill over into the Willets Point issue.

"He hasn't taken eminent domain off the table," said Queens Councilman Tony Avella, who also opposed the term limits bill. "It's a real possibility they may find we're not rolling over anymore."

But Queens Councilman John Liu, who also opposed the term limits extension, said the mayor and his development officials have been "working very hard to resolve the issues."

Council Speaker Christine Quinn said she's hopeful "there can be a consensus around an appropriate development plan for the area."

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Jehosaphat

Some rather interesting bits of info. frankly, I am amazed that in 6 pages, there is not a single posting from anyone other than TalB. How anyone could want to spend the effort creating and nourishing a thread that nobody else reads, is beyond me.

TalB

City now owns over 40% of Willets Point after latest buy
City now owns over 40% of Willets Point after latest buy

By John Lauinger
Daily News Staff Writer

Monday, November 3rd 2008, 10:29 AM

The city has gobbled up another chunk of Willets Point in Queens as Mayor Bloomberg pushes his plan to transform the gritty industrial zone near Shea Stadium.

In the biggest land deal to date in the neighborhood, the city persuaded Indian food distributor House of Spices - the second-largest landowner at Willets Point - to sell its 4 acres, city officials told the Daily News.

The deal is expected to be announced Monday along with an agreement for a third of an acre owned by another company.

EARLIER: MAYOR PUSHING MIFFED COUNCIL ON WILLETS POINT
Combined with previously inked deals, the city now controls more than 40% of the 62-acre tangle of auto body shops and other businesses - and could soon have half the land.

Bloomberg wants to spend $3 billion to turn the area into a glitzy enclave of 5,500 residences, stores, a hotel and a convention center.

The percentage of city-controlled land is becoming increasingly important as pressure mounts on Bloomberg to sell skeptical City Council members on his plan before Nov. 13. That is the deadline for the Council to take a make-or-break vote on the proposal.

Previously, 32 of 51 Council members signed a letter saying Bloomberg's $3 billion proposal is "doomed" unless eminent domain - the government's power to take private land for public use - is taken off the table.

City economic development officials are promising to roll out as many as nine additional deals before the deadline.

Four deals are "imminent" and could be announced this week, and talks with five other businesses are "very far along," said Andrew Brent, a spokesman for Deputy Mayor Robert Lieber.

If all of those deals are inked, the city would control slightly more than half of Willets Point.

"They still have a lot of work to do in a very short period of time," said City Councilman Hiram Monserrate (D-Queens), whose district includes Willets Point. He said the city must also add more affordable housing to the plan.

jlauinger@nydailynews.com

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TalB

Willets Point project now a done deal
Willets Point project now a done deal

BY FRANK LOMBARDI and JOHN LAUINGER
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Friday, November 14th 2008, 2:02 AM

Get the bulldozers ready for Willets Point.

The City Council Thursday approved Mayor Bloomberg's plan to transform the Queens industrial zone into a glitzy realm of 5,500 housing units, retail stores, a hotel and a convention center.

The Council voted 45 to 2 in favor of the $3 billion proposal, projected to generate $25 billion in revenue during the next 30 years.

It also voted unanimously to approve the Hunters Point South redevelopment for the Long Island City waterfront in Queens. That is the largest subsidized housing project the city has built since Starrett City in Brooklyn in the 1970s, city officials said.

The Willets Point vote comes three months after 32 members urged Bloomberg to take eminent domain off the table - a demand that was not met.

After a frenzied week of deals, the city controls 39 acres of the 62-acre zone near Shea Stadium. That leaves several landowners without deals - and more than 200 tenant businesses with shaky futures.

Several Council members said they had concerns about the city using eminent domain to take private land, but they opted to follow Councilman Hiram Monserrate.

Monserrate (D-Queens), whose district includes Willets Point, supported the plan after striking a deal with the city on Wednesday for 1,925 units of affordable housing and $3 million to help businesses relocate.

Three of the larger businesses - Tully Environmental, Fodera Foods and House of Spices - will be permitted to stay after others are forced out.

They are expected to sell their land - now rezoned for residential and retail uses - to a developer down the road.

"The zoning as passed will make it increasingly profitable for a developer to want to buy those sites," said a spokesman for the city Economic Development Corp.

flombardi@nydailynews.com

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TalB

Staying in Willets Point, and Fighting City Hall - City Room Blog - NYTimes.com
November 19, 2008, 2:38 pm

Staying in Willets Point, and Fighting City Hall

By Corey Kilgannon

Every spare moment he has, Joe Ardizzone is out in the muddy, potholed streets of the Willets Point section of Queens, bouncing from one auto repair place to the next.

Whether the shops specialize in mufflers, tires, rims, auto glass, body work or salvage parts, Mr. Ardizzone exhorts the workers to specialize, too, in fighting the city’s plan to bulldoze the area and redevelop it.

But unlike the militia of mechanics he mobilizes — “You want to keep your jobs, don’t you?” he tells them — Mr. Ardizzone has a different reason for protecting this area, known as the Iron Triangle: He is trying to save the old homestead.

Mr. Ardizzone is the only homeowner and resident of this area. He lives in a house that his family has owned for more than 80 years. His apartment, which he refuses to show a reporter because, he says, it is a mess, is above a ground-floor deli. He is single with no children and has lived here his whole life.

To many people, the area is a gritty, sloppy eyesore of slapdash shops and workers lingering in dirt streets trying to flag down drivers to offer them on-the-spot repair deals. But to Mr. Ardizzone, the place is a paradise, a haven for immigrant workers trying to make a buck and longtime multigeneration businesses that will have a tough time relocating.

He can recall when the area was much more pristine. As a boy, he said, he caught frogs and snakes and played in the grassy areas around the Flushing River. Now the place is overrun with industry and pollution, but this does not diminish Mr. Ardizzone’s abiding love for Willets Point.

And so he rounds up workers to attend protests and press conferences opposing the city’s proposed $3 billion project to build thousands of apartments and office and retail space, a convention center and a hotel.

Mostly, Mr. Ardizzone, who works elsewhere as a security guard, spends weekends trying to build support. He despises the prospect of the city — which has reached agreements recently with several large property owners — resorting to using eminent domain to force him and other holdout landowners to sell.

“Let me be clear,” he said while making his rounds. “This area is not a blight, I am not a blight, and we are not going to be pushed out by eminent domain. I’ve been paying taxes my whole life to the government, and now they want to kick me out of my home. That’s un-American.”

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