Commish: Park The ‘Perfect Place’ For Stadium
Major League Soccer (MLS) Commissioner Don Garber confirmed the rumors flying rampant during a Friday, Oct. 6 roundtable with Queens reporters at the Queens Chamber of Commerce offices in East Elmhurst: the league is seeking to build a stadium at the site of The Fountain of The Planets in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.
According to Garber, the plan is to construct a $300-350 million, 25,000-sq. ft. stadium at the site for what would be MLS’ 20th franchise.
Garber called the site “the absolutely perfect place” for a new stadium, noting that he grew up in Queens and attended the 1964 World’s Fair in the park.
“This is a soccer country, and this is entirely a soccer community here in Queens,” he said. “Our goal is to bring the world’s game to the world’s park.”
Before choosing Flushing Meadows, the league looked at 40 different sites throughout the city over the past year to find a location for the arena, including Pier 40 in Manhattan and Randalls Island.
Of the 10 to 13 acres the league is looking to use, only one acre is grass, Garber claimed; the rest of the space is currently being taken up by blacktop and a pool area.
Under state law, parkland must be subject to a process called alienation before being used for other purposes; in the process, the parkland being taken away must be replaced with new parkland in other areas of the city. Garber said that the league is committed to replacing all acres of parkland; it was noted that sites along Flushing Creek and in Rego Park are being considered.
In addition, “we will make a significant investment in the community recreation and sports in the park,” Garber announced; the league will spent up to $10 million to “rebuild all the soccer fields” at Flushing Meadows before the stadium is completed, and will give operation of the fields over to the city Parks Department.
MLS will also consider other improvements to Flushing Meadows, he added.
The stadium will be fully, privately financed; the league is in the process of obtaining the financing, according to Garber. SHoP Architects- responsible for the design of Barclays Center in Brooklyn-has been tapped to design the new site, with a target opening date of 2016.
The design will allow for the stadium to be expanded to 35,000 seats without expanding the stadium’s footprint, an MLS spokesperson would later tell the Times Newsweekly.
“The league is making progress in discussions with a number of potential owners,” he stated; the owner would also be responsible for operating the stadium.
The group behind the New York Cosmos, however, is not one of the ownership groups, as they have decided to operate a team in the North American Soccer League, a Division II Professional League under FIFA (soccer’s governing body).
MLS plays a 34-game regular season from March to December, meaning that 17 regular season games would be played at the new stadium in addition to any playoff games. The site would also host about 15 other events, including international exhibition games, music events and other activities.
Most of the games will take place on Saturday nights. MLS is working to ensure that no games will be played while the Mets will be playing next door, although Garber stated that a day/night split could be feasible.
The league has hired transportation consultant Sam Schwartz to analyze potential traffic concerns. The stadium would ostensibly use Citi Field’s parking facilities, and additional parking spots could be constructed under the nearby Van Wyck Expressway that would
Construction at the site would create 2,100 to 2,300 jobs; Garber stated that the jobs would be union labor, and that the unions the league will work with tend to involve local workers.
In addition, the operations of the stadium will provide 160 full-time and 750 part-time jobs.
“The city has been very supportive of this concept, but we’ve got a lot of work to do,” Garber stated; the league has met with local elected officials, including Rep. Joseph Crowley, State Sen. Jose Peratla, Assemblyman Francisco Moya and City Council Member Julissa Ferreras.
The league has also begun to reach out to community organizations in the area in the past two weeks, he claimed. The league also expects to give the public an opportunity to voice their opinions on the project.
In addition, because the park is one of 12 “Joint Interest Areas” across the city, five community boards (3, 4, 6, 7 and 8) will get the opportunity to weigh in. There is also a land use and environmental review process, as well as negotiations with city, state and federal officials related to the alienation of the parkland.
“We get the fact that we need local community support, and we need to work as close as we can with the leaders in this community to satisfy their goals and their objectives,” he said. “The things that we will be looking to do is not because we have to, it’s because it is a part of our corporate DNA.”
Anthony Ng of the Jackson Heights Green Alliance-a member of the Fairness Coalition for Queens, a group of civic organizations that have come out against the proposal- told the Times Newsweekly in a Monday, Oct. 8 phone conversation that his group had not yet spoken to MLS officials.
He stated that the coalition’s opposition was due to the impact of three concurrent plans at the site; in addition to the MLS stadium project, the U.S. Tennis Association seeks to expand its facility at Flushing Meadows, while rumors of a large mall in the Willets Point area persist.
“You have to look at the impact of all three proposals,” he said.
