New York City Mayor Eric Adams, along with other city officials and community partners, celebrated on Wednesday the groundbreaking of the Willets Point transformation in Corona, Queens. The ceremony marked an important step in the city’s largest 100-percent affordable housing development in four decades. The Willets Point project is being developed in partnership with the Queens Development Group, a joint venture between Related Companies and Sterling Equities, and is advancing faster than a year ahead of schedule.
This first phase of development for Willets Point includes the construction of 880 new affordable homes, contributing to a total of 2,500 planned for the area. This phase will also include around 35,000 square feet of public open space and crucial infrastructure upgrades. The development is projected to have an economic impact of $6.1 billion over the next 30 years, creating 1,550 permanent jobs and 14,200 construction jobs.
The full Willets Point complex will also comprise a new 650-seat public school, a 250-room hotel, over 100,000 square feet of public open space, and New York City’s first soccer-specific stadium, privately financed, seating up to 25,000 spectators.
The amenities in the residential buildings will include landscaped courtyards, tenant lounge spaces, outdoor terraces, bicycle storage, and ground-floor retail space. The buildings will be all-electric, engineered to achieve LEED Gold certification, and feature high-efficiency systems to comply with Local Law 97. Financing for this first phase of construction, totaling $360 million, has been arranged by Wells Fargo with a construction loan and Low-Income Housing Tax Credit investment.
The project also represents a critical environmental initiative, with significant remediation of formerly contaminated soil. The city and Queens Development Group have already begun the certification process for the second phase of the neighborhood transformation, which will bring an additional 1,400 units of affordable housing, the new hotel, and the soccer stadium.
“Over the decades, many plans for the transformation of Willets Point have been developed but the Adams administration is proud to celebrate what has for too long been elusive: rapidly turning those plans into actions that benefit New Yorkers,” said Deputy Mayor for Housing, Economic Development, and Workforce Maria Torres-Springer. “This groundbreaking delivers on our promise to accelerate the creation of affordable, new homes on the site as we move full speed ahead in building a whole new neighborhood with acres of open space, thousands of job opportunities, new retail amenities, major infrastructure upgrades, and a state-of-the art soccer stadium. I want to thank NYCEDC, HPD, and HDC, as well as our partners at Queens Development Group for working tirelessly to finally turn this generations-long dream into reality.”
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Willets Point is the site of Fort Totten in northeastern Queens. The development is on Willets Point Blvd. which runs through Queens to that location. Flushing Meadows (formerly the Flushing Rivers) may be in the Corona (formerly West Flushing) zip code, but Citi Field uses “Queens, NY,” as its address.
I really do not see where the “1,550 permanent jobs” are coming from. The apartments will have supers and proters/handymen, but nothing approaching that number. I understand the hotels operate at something like 1 housekeeper per 30 or so rooms.
It will be interesting to see how affordable the all-electric buildings will be given the high rates in NYC. The income formula will be curious as the area is uninhabited with no median income.
The old “iron triangle” of auto chop shops was long suspected of contributing to car thefts in Flushing and many are glad to see them gone. Whether housing in this very low-lying area next to malodorous Flushing Creek is the best use of this land remains to be seen.
Good history lesson.
As for the amount of jobs I agree that sounds like the accidently added a zero. And of the real number, they are counting part time positions as a job even if it takes 3 or 4 separate people in separate ships to make one full time job.
shifts
the devil is in the details as always.
The key words being “PROJECTED” AND “AFFORDABLE”
The development is PROJECTED to have an economic impact of $6.1 billion over the next 30 years, creating 1,550 permanent jobs and 14,200 construction jobs.
Thanks a politician for alll nonunion jobs
It will easily create 1100 jobs with ongoing housing maintenance and tenant services, hotel staff, the MLS team and staff, stadium facility staff and vendors for matches and concerts and other events, plus the community open space which will need to be maintained and programmed with activities which will be executed by paid labor.