{"id":3968,"date":"2008-11-13T09:31:24","date_gmt":"2008-11-13T14:31:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/?p=3968"},"modified":"2008-11-13T09:31:24","modified_gmt":"2008-11-13T14:31:24","slug":"whatchoo_talkin_bout_willets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2008\/11\/whatchoo_talkin_bout_willets.html","title":{"rendered":"Whatchoo Talkin&#8217; &#8216;Bout, Willets?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Before <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/ny_local\/queens\/2008\/11\/13\/2008-11-13_willets_point_deal_set_for_council_ok.html\">the City Council agrees to Mayor Bloomberg&#8217;s plan to transform Willets Point by building housing, retail, hotels and a convention center at the site<\/a>, can someone explain why anyone would want to build housing, retail, hotels and a convention center on an apparently highly polluted site in the flightpath of planes landing at LaGuardia? Because I&#8217;m really, really curious about that one:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>City hall officials struck an eleventh-hour deal Wednesday to transform gritty Willets Point into what they called the city&#8217;s next great neighborhood.<\/p>\n<p>The City Council is expected to ratify the agreement by today&#8217;s deadline by granting a host of zoning and other measures required under the city&#8217;s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure.<\/p>\n<p>The $3 billion redevelopment plan will turn the heavily polluted 62-acre tract near Shea Stadium in Queens into a modern complex of residential, retail, entertainment and commercial uses, including a hotel and the city&#8217;s first convention center built outside Manhattan.<\/p>\n<p>Mayor Bloomberg hailed the agreement with Council officials &#8220;as one of the big, important wins for New York City&#8217;s economy&#8221; at a time when it needs it the most.<\/p>\n<p>He said it will create 18,000 construction jobs and 5,000 permanent jobs and will generate $25 billion in economic benefits in the next 30 years, including $1.3 billion in direct tax revenues.<\/p>\n<p>The redevelopment, which will take a decade, is to include 5,500 units of housing, and the new deal calls for boosting the affordable housing component to 1,920 units, or 35% of the total. That&#8217;s up from 1,100 units, or 20%, in the original version. Some 800 of the affordable units will be targeted to families earning less than $37,000.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Location Scout: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/bigmap\/queens\/flushing\/irontriangle\/index.htm\">Iron Triangle<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Before the City Council agrees to Mayor Bloomberg&#8217;s plan to transform Willets Point by building housing, retail, hotels and a convention center at the site, can someone explain why anyone would want to build housing, retail, hotels and a convention center on an apparently highly polluted site in the flightpath of planes landing at LaGuardia? [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,3,49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture_infrastructure","category-queens","category-someone_way_smarter_than_us_probably_already_worked_this_one_out"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3968","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=3968"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3968\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3969,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3968\/revisions\/3969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}