{"id":255,"date":"2005-06-14T10:42:58","date_gmt":"2005-06-14T18:42:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2005\/06\/willets_point_junkyards_threatened.html"},"modified":"2005-06-14T10:42:58","modified_gmt":"2005-06-14T18:42:58","slug":"willets_point_j","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/06\/willets_point_j.html","title":{"rendered":"Willets Point Junkyards Threatened!"},"content":{"rendered":"

If plans for an Olympic stadium in Flushing Meadows move forward, the auto parts haven in Willets Point will be threatened, the Daily News reports<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Just east of Shea Stadium’s parking lots sits the Iron Triangle, a wild tangle of car repair shops in nearby Willets Point, Queens.<\/p>\n

For decades, urban planners have plotted to eliminate the madcap bazaar of garages and junkyards that smells of anti-freeze and motor oil and looks like a Third World slum.<\/p>\n

With a new Shea Stadium planned for the Mets and possibly the 2012 Olympics, the Iron Triangle’s fate is uncertain. But the owners of the body, glass, muffler and radiator shops – which employ untold hundreds of people – fear the worst.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Expanding on the third world theme, the paper notes that fixing up the area will be a monumental task:<\/p>\n

Cleaning up the area will take work. The streets are rocky and flooded, the curbs don’t exist and the potholes are full of lug nuts and shattered glass – all within sight of Shea’s upper deck.<\/p>\n

“The soil is so contaminated here, they’d have to go 15 feet down to get out all the oil,” said Billy Kalatzis, 54, who has owned a repair shop on Willets Point Blvd. for 15 years.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And displacing auto parts businesses won’t fix the existential conundrum that Queens exists because we all need it there:<\/p>\n

Drivers flock to the ramshackle streets for secondhand parts and cheap repairs.<\/p>\n

“It’s kind of unfair just to get rid of all of them,” said Kenneth Inniss, 44, of East Elmhurst, who was getting his air conditioner fixed yesterday.<\/p>\n

“I have no idea what they’ll do to us,” said Ajray Kshora, 29, who runs a small tire shop. “If they want to take my business, then what am I supposed to do? Where would I go?”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He’d probably relocate to the Bronx!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If plans for an Olympic stadium in Flushing Meadows move forward, the auto parts haven in Willets Point will be threatened, the Daily News reports: Just east of Shea Stadium’s parking lots sits the Iron Triangle, a wild tangle of car repair shops in nearby Willets Point, Queens. For decades, urban planners have plotted to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-queens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}