Mayor To Redevelop Iron Triangle in Bid To Transform Flushing

Just east of the parking lot at Shea Stadium lies the Iron Triangle, a 48-acre site zoned for heavy industrial use that is occupied by a ragtag mix of auto related businesses. The area, sealed off from the rest of Queens by highways, train tracks, and mounds of waste, is the site of the city's next redevelopment project, and one of its most ambitious to date.

Next month, the Bloomberg administration will ask preselected developers to submit proposals to remake Willets Point, aiming for a mix of residential, commercial, retail, and entertainment use. The project is expected to cost billions of dollars and take years to complete.

The aim of the redevelopment is to transform Flushing into a regional destination, take advantage of the area's extensive road and rail network, provide thousands of new jobs, increase tax revenues, improve the environmental quality of the neighborhood, and spur further growth of the Queens waterfront and downtown Flushing. The redevelopment would complement a new Shea Stadium planned for across the street.

"The city's goal is to create an experience that is unique to the New York metropolitan region, with a strong sense of place and an attractive new identity," a spokeswoman for the city's development agency, Janel Patterson, said.

As with some of the other large redevelopment projects in the works that also have the city's approval, such as the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn and the new Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, members of the local community say City Hall's grand plans neglect neighborhood interests.

About 80 businesses currently occupy the Iron Triangle, from garages to auto parts stores to a spice manufacturer. While plans for redevelopment of the area have been discussed for years, some neighborhood advocates say the threat of eminent domain is hanging in the air.

The city has required that all proposals for Willets Point include a relocation plan for the existing businesses, and the city is currently working to finalize a comprehensive "Business Assistance and Workforce Development Program" to assist both businesses and workers affected by the project.

But the area's City Council member, Hiram Monserrate, a Democrat who calls himself a defender of the "little guy," wants to ensure that those relocation and compensation packages are more generous than offers the city has recently made to owners and tenants ousted by other large-scale development projects.

So far, Mr. Monserrate said, the city's outreach to the community has been insufficient.

"The administration has a worldview that is pro-big business," he said. "Are they talking about building schools, affordable housing, maintaining some of the businesses there, relocation plans?"

Mr. Monserrate said he has seen a proposal for Willets Point that envisioned a "supermall, even bigger."

A professor of urban planning at Hunter College, Tom Angotti, will soon release a study he is writing with a team of graduate students on the existing businesses of Willets Point, their employees, as well as a land use analysis and potential development alternatives.

"Once again, the city's process seems to be evading discussion with the local businesspeople and hanging the threat of eminent domain over them without involving them in the process," Mr. Angotti said.

City officials said the planning process has been inclusive and that they have met with businesses and representatives of the community, as well as with the president of Queens, Helen Marshall, the state, and the appropriate city agencies.

Mr. Angotti said redevelopment of Willets Point would displace a diverse, valuable local economy.

"These are jobs that are available to people that don't have many other entry options into the job market," he said. "The impression is created that there is nobody there. That it's a junkyard. It's just not true."

A spokesman for Ms. Marshall, Dan Andrews said the borough president "does not believe that all the companies, or at least the bigger companies, would relocate, would be absorbed into one of the existing proposals."

Redeveloping the area will be no easy task. The city's request for developers' expressions of interest said that since the 1950s the area has had "severe infrastructure constraints, including lack of sanitary sewers," bad drainage, and unpaved sidewalks and streets.

In addition, there is strong potential for contaminated soil that would require remediation. The loose organic silt below would require more expensive pile-supported foundations.

From a planning perspective, Mr. Angotti said Willets Point offers the advantage of easy access to highways, subways, and commuter rails, and the disadvantage of being isolated from other residential neighborhoods by a virtual moat of transportation infrastructure.

A Queens developer, Lester Petracca, whose company Triangle Equities chose not to submit a project proposal, called it "a very, very large project" and "a great site."

Mr. Petracca said any development would face potential challenges from traffic mitigation, the need to relocate the existing owners, and environmental remediation.

The city is currently undertaking environmental, engineering, and soil studies, as well as infrastructure analyses. Next month, the city will ask 13 firms - the respondents to a request for expression of interest issued in November 2004 and due in March 2005 - for development proposals.