May 1, 2007 7:10 pm US/Eastern
Mayor Plans Overhaul Of New Mets Stadium Area
QUEENS (CBS/AP) ―
Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced an ambitious plan Tuesday to turn 60 acres of auto-parts shops next to where the New York Mets are building a new stadium into a new neighborhood of homes, shops and entertainment.
"We believe that out of the ashes can rise New York City's next great neighborhood," Bloomberg said. "After a century of blight and neglect, the future of this area is very bright indeed."
The master plan for the area known as Willets Point, or the Iron Triangle, would create a new neighborhood also including a school, a 700-room hotel and a 400,000-square-foot convention center.
In the next decade, the plan would replace 225 auto-related businesses with 5,500 housing units, 1.7 million square feet of retail and entertainment and 500,000 square feet of office space.
Bloomberg's announcement at the nearby Queens Museum of Art is one step in a long process of redeveloping the site due east of where the Mets' new Citifield is scheduled to open in 2009.
The area is now an eyesore populated by the auto businesses, many of them low-rent chop shops in cinderblock sheds. It is polluted from years of petroleum spills and will have to be cleaned up before it can be redeveloped.
Garbage and broken-down chassis are piled high, and there are no sewers.
The city reached out to developers in 2004 with requests for expressions of interest in the site, then sought formal proposals for building on it last year.
Following environmental reviews and a public approval process, the city will ask developers to submit a revised plan in the spring of 2008. A developer or team of developers will be chosen in the summer of 2008, and construction on the multiyear project could start in 2009.
The land would have to be purchased from some 65 individual owners through negotiation or by eminent domain.
The city has promised to help the existing businesses relocate and will offer job training and other assistance to the estimated 1,300 workers who make their living there. Asked how many of the auto body shops could be relocated, the mayor said the city would alternate space for as many as possible.
(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
