By Stephen Stirling
The city is readying its game plan.
The city Economic Development Corp. is expected to lean heavily on environmental contamination at Willets Point it says has led to woeful conditions in the area when it pitches its plan to the City Council at a planned hearing Friday.
“This is a highly compromised area environmentally,” EDC President Seth Pinsky told reporters at a briefing Friday. “It’s really an embarrassment to the city at this point.”
Although they will push the environmental contamination at Willets Point as the reason the proposed redevelopment of Willets Point should be approved, the top EDC brass said they will not shy away from a major issue that could dog the project: the deepening economic crisis.
“We will address the economy — we can’t hide from it,” said EDC Vice President Asima Jansveld.
Jansveld said the EDC is still putting together its presentation for the Council’s Planning, Dispositions & Concessions Subcommittee, which is scheduled to meet this Friday at City Hall at 10 a.m.
She said the EDC knows, however, that it will have to address several of the major issues that have cast doubt on the project’s viability in legislators’ minds, such as slow negotiations with property owners, future City Council oversight of the project and the economic turmoil gripping the nation.
One thing EDC Director of Public Affairs David Lombino said the city will not discuss is the continuing negotiations with business owners, which are kept confidential to protect the city’s interests.
“It’s made out as if we’re being secretive, but it’s not that it’s secretive,” Lombino said. “We’re negotiating with taxpayer money here.”
Willets Point is currently home to more than 250 primarily auto-related businesses and about 1,700 workers. Since the area has little drainage infrastructure and much of it is below the 100-year flood plain, it has long been criticized as an environmental eyesore.
The EDC believes the businesses are leaking a toxic soup of pollutants into the surrounding areas, including Flushing Bay.
“They are decades behind what would even be considered basic acceptable practices,” said Kevin McCarty, an environmental consultant working with the city.
One of the largest problems, according to the EDC, is that the city does not know the extent of the pollution. Over the past few years, he said the city has sent out certified letters to the property owners at Willets Point requesting a walk-through of their properties so the city could begin to estimate what kind of environmental damage may exist on the sites, but only three replied.
In the absence of this, the EDC said it has only been able to conduct tests on the streets, which McCarty said revealed traces of pollutants consistent with auto-related businesses: petroleum, waste oil and other petrochemicals.
“They won’t even allow us on the sites to do basic tests,” McCarty said. “Not even a test — just a physical walk-through. It’s very obvious the level of housekeeping that exists here.”
Reach reporter Stephen Stirling by e-mail at Sstirling@timesledger.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, ext. 138.
