By Chris Fuchs
“Unfortunately, it happens to be the site of all our salvage yards and there's always been a problem there,” said Eugene Kelty, the newly elected chairman of Community Board 7.
“Some have cleaned their act up, but a lot of them are sprouting up all over the places,” Kelty said. “And every now and then the big businesses get concerned, and every now and then the city sends in a task force to try to get them under control.”
The area on which the mayor focused his attention in his remarks last week stretches from 126th Street to Willets Point Boulevard to Northern Boulevard in Flushing. Inside that perimeter, Kelty said, are a number of metal scrap yards and the apparatus that comes along with them: tractor trailers and construction equipment.
So far, Community Board 7 has not officially heard from the mayor about his wishes to condemn the Iron Triangle. But Kelty is worried about where those businesses would relocate if the area is ultimately condemned.
“If they reclassify the area and get rid of the salvage yards, where are they going to put them?” Kelty said. “We wouldn't want to put something in someone else's backyard.”
Kelty said that this was not the first time city officials had considered developing the Iron Triangle. In the 1980s, there was talk of condemning the property and putting in its place a football stadium, to keep the Jets in Queens.
“There was a plan to develop the area like a Meadowlands,” Kelty said.
