By Connor Adams Sheets
City Comptroller John Liu said during an interview with TimesLedger Newspapers that city projects, such as its $3 billion proposal to redevelop Willets Point, are facing delays and challenges that have not plagued private development throughout Queens and the city.
The Willets project, which gained City Council approval in 2008, has since been tied up in court on challenges to the city’s plan to use eminent domain as well as its review of the impact on the environment and traffic in the surrounding area.
The stalled status of the 62-acre Iron Triangle overhaul is reminiscent of issues with Flushing Commons, an $825 million proposal to redevelop Municipal Lot 1 in downtown Flushing, and a number of other development projects that rely on city support or subsidies that have stalled throughout the borough, Liu said.
At the same time, projects like Sky View Parc, a $1 billion mixed-use development on the banks of the Flushing River, have moved forward more easily because they are fully private ventures, Liu said. Sky View is partially finished, and its developer has said it is still deciding whether to complete three more residential towers there.
“There are lots of other projects in Flushing and Queens that are progressing. Even though Sky View is not building its three towers, I have every expectation that they will move forward,” Liu said last Thursday. “These huge [city] subsidies that are being given to developers, what are they doing for the taxpayers? Maybe if nobody got subsidies, there would be more projects moving forward and maybe it would level the playing field.”
Liu, the former city councilman from Flushing, also spoke about the prospect of an applied sciences university building a campus at Willets as part of an effort Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Dec. 16 to attract such a school to build a satellite campus somewhere in New York City.
Liu said Willets Point should be one of the preferred sites for such a school, which would add it to a list of three pieces of city land Bloomberg identified in Manhattan and Brooklyn as the top choices for it to be built. More than two dozen schools, including Stanford and Cornell universities, have expressed interest in Bloomberg’s initiative.
“I’m not suggesting any sites for this campus, nor am I suggesting any uses for Willets Point, but the point is Willets Point, as far as I’m concerned, would be a very viable site for this applied sciences campus … especially with the fact that some of the other potential uses at Willets Point are moving at a snail’s pace,” Liu said. “I’m not trying to be an arbiter as to whether an applied sciences campus would be a better use than some of the residential or commercial development that were originally a part of the vision for Willets Point.”
Reach reporter Connor Adams Sheets by e-mail at csheets@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4538.
