'Save Willets Point'

by Sandy Ikeda
Wed, 27 Aug 2008 at 6:09 PM

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So read a large banner I noticed strung across a building when I drove past Shea Stadium last evening.

In a Crain's New York Business article, "City Quiets a Loud Willets Point Critic," Daniel Massey seems to suggest that that cause has just suffered a body blow. (Hat tip again to JW.)

One of the most vocal critics of the proposed Willets Point redevelopment says he has inked a deal to sell his land to the city. Jerry Antonacci, owner of Crown Container, says he reached an agreement earlier this week to sell his 23,000-square-foot parcel on 34th Avenue and move to Maspeth, Queens, should the city's proposal pass successfully through the land-use process.
"All I can say is it's a very good deal," said Mr. Antonacci, whose father started the waste transfer company in 1959. "The last couple of weeks we put a lot of time in, and we got it done."

It may seem that the Mayor has "bought off" Mr. Antonacci and severely weakened the organized opposition. But I suppose whether his neighbors view this as a sell-out or something else depends on what they want to see happen.

If it's to keep things status quo or to enable the 250 or so business in Willets Point to develop or sell their land independently so that a wealthier, more organic community can emerge out of it — which is what I'd like to see (and blogged about here) — that's one thing.

Some might argue, however, that a second-best outcome would be for City Hall to at least give the current owners something approaching the true market value for their property, which seems to have been the case for Mr. Antonacci, rather than take it via eminent domain and paying out whatever it deems "fair." In my limited personal experience with this sort of thing (a few years ago and in another state), if an owner is able to negotiate a good price for his land in an area that's about to be condemned, his neighbors may be able to use it to leverage a higher price in their own negotiations later.

Of course, what still bothers someone like me is that this second-best is a very distant second indeed, when you consider where the Mayor is getting the money to make these deals. I'm not at all slamming Mr. Antonacci. What else could he do? But he's quoted as saying: "I don't want to see eminent domain used on anybody." Unfortunately, this solution still means taxing people elsewhere to compensate owners like him, so that the Mayor can take control of Willets Point. That's just eminent domain in a different guise.

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