GREAT NEWS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT
Court Upholds Willets Point Redevelopment Plan
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/20...elopment-plan/
A federal judge on Wednesday upheld New York’s $3 billion redevelopment plan for Willets Point, an industrial section of Queens dominated by car-repair shops and waste-management businesses, finding that although the city had neglected the neighborhood’s infrastructure for decades, the constitutional rights of the businesses there — many of which will be forced to relocate under the plan — were not violated.
The plaintiffs, who organized themselves into an entity called the Willets Point Industry and Realty Association, and who “have established thriving businesses (notwithstanding the grossly inadequate infrastructure of the area)” and employ hundreds of people, “are understandably aggrieved by the fact that the plan that the city is in the process of implementing has no place for them,” the judge, Edward R. Korman of Federal District Court in Brooklyn, wrote. However, he ruled, it was not the place of federal judges to intervene in the dispute.
Judge Korman’s 22-page ruling did not dispute that the area has long suffered from neglect.
Originally a swamp, and later a dumping site for ash and garbage, Willets Points first underwent efforts at redevelopment in 1939, when part of the landfill was converted into fairgrounds for the World’s Fair, and machine shops and garages started to be built in the area. By 1950, Judge Korman wrote, small factories, auto-related shops and storage facilities “cemented the industrial character of the area.”
By some lights, however, Willets Point has made little progress from its swampy origins. It lacks a sanitary sewer system, its streets are unpaved or riddled with potholes and its curbs and sidewalks, if they can even be called that, have worn away. Broken fire hydrants and an absence of trash removal round out the picture of blight, Judge Korman wrote.
Robert Moses, the development czar, contemplated turning Willets Point into parking for nearby Shea Stadium (now replaced by Citi Field) and a fairground for the 1964 World’s Fair — a plan that Mario M. Cuomo, then a young lawyer, helped frustrate. In 1991 and 1993, the Queens borough president, Claire Shulman, commissioned studies that confirmed that the deplorable infrastructure would hinder development.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s redevelopment plan was approved by the City Council, 42 to 2, last November. It calls for new sanitary and stormwater sewers, more power lines and new roadways and bicycle lanes. It also seeks new mixed-use development — including, possibly, a hotel and convention center — but envisions sweeping away the current industrial uses through eminent domain.
Judge Korman expressed sympathy for the plaintiffs whose property would be acquired by the government (with compensation) but found that they lacked a federal claim. “The timing of this lawsuit as well as plaintiffs’ own admissions at oral argument suggests,” he wrote, that the “real purpose of their lawsuit is to obstruct and forestall the implementation of the approved plan.”