BY THE WILLETS POINT INDUSTRY AND REALTY ASSOCIATION
The members of the Willets Point Industry & Realty Association own more than 52 percent of the privately held land in Willets Point and have been operating third generation family-owned businesses in Willets Point for more than 80 years. Our grandparents and great-grandparents started their businesses here for the express purpose of achieving the American dream.
We object to Mayor Bloomberg’s exclusionary plan to abuse eminent domain by rezoning and redeveloping Willets Point; he will shatter our aspirations as well as those of the thousands of the highly skilled workers we employ and to whom we pay top wages and provide excellent benefits.
Eminent domain is sometimes a necessary land-use mechanism to serve a public purpose such as building highways, schools and hospitals. Seizing private land and turning it over to an unnamed private developer - as the city plans to do - in order to build shopping malls and convention centers clearly constitutes an abuse of eminent domain and destroys its intrinsic purpose to contribute to the “public good.”
The city continues to justify its use of eminent domain by asserting that Willets Point is a blighted area. Seriously neglected by the city for decades, the area has been deprived of the most basic services, such as sanitary sewers, paved roads, sidewalks, snow removal and trash pickup. The city has ignored the urgent need to serve the hardworking, taxpaying public who utilize Willets Point.
Thirty-three members of the New York City Council have joined with us in expressing the serious concerns we have about the feasibility of this project and adamant opposition to the use of eminent domain through a plan that is little more than a ‘pie-in-the-sky’ concept.
New Yorkers should be outraged about the way in which their mayor intends to spend billions of their hard-earned tax dollars on this and other mega-projects. Providing Willets Point with the basic infrastructure and services would cost a fraction of the money of the proposed $3 billion-plus the city anticipates their plan will require. By investing in basic infrastructure and providing essential services, Willets Point would quickly be transformed and it would evolve into a vastly different place and emerge as a thriving world-class industrial park.
However, don’t take our word for it - in 1991, a study conducted by the city and paid for by former Queens Borough President Claire Shulman determined that Willets Point would be a flourishing industrial park if it obtained the very services that have been intentionally withheld by the city.
We believe that if eminent domain is used in Willets Point, the city will succeed in destroying a robust industrial area that will lay fallow for decades to come. The city’s track record of failed projects, including several in Flushing, combined with the current economic recession and skyrocketing construction costs points to the possibility that it will be a long time, if ever, before the city will get a shovel into the ground to even begin this project. Don’t think that’s possible? Just look at New London, CT.
The Willets Point Industry & Realty Association has 14 members who own more than 52 percent of the privately held land in Willets Point.
