Mayor Eric Adams.
Michael Appleton/Mayoral Images Workplace
In November 2022, our administration introduced a historic once-in-a-generation transformation of the Willets Factors neighborhood in Queens. This neighborhood, which was as soon as referred to as the “Valley of Ashes” and recognized for its junkyards, is now being reworked right into a vibrant neighborhood with 2,500 new all-affordable properties — the most important all-affordable housing undertaking within the metropolis during the last 40 years — a new faculty, 150,000 sq. ft of latest open public house, retail house, a resort, and the town’s first-ever soccer-specific stadium that might be residence to, and privately financed by, the New York Metropolis Soccer Membership.
With the Metropolis Council’s vote to approve section 2 of the event, we’re one main step nearer to victory for all New Yorkers. The Willets Level undertaking represents the way forward for our metropolis, a future during which all New Yorkers can afford to dwell in a protected residence that’s near faculty, good-paying jobs, out of doors house, and nice public transportation.
Once we got here into workplace two years in the past, we had a mission: to guard public security, rebuild our economic system, and make this metropolis extra livable for hardworking New Yorkers. Constructing extra reasonably priced housing in each neighborhood throughout all 5 boroughs is the cornerstone to livability and prosperity. I do know this from private expertise.
Rising up on the sting of homelessness, my siblings and I needed to take trash baggage full of garments to high school as a result of we didn’t know the place we might sleep the subsequent evening. No baby ought to must really feel that method. You can’t plan for the long run if you’re frightened about right this moment.
Development for the primary section of housing at Willets is already underway — a yr forward of schedule. The primary 880 reasonably priced properties are anticipated to be accomplished by the tip of 2026. The following section will embody the remaining 1,400 properties, with 220 reasonably priced properties put aside for low-income seniors. Our new properties may have in-building laundry, bike storage, a landscaped interior courtyard, and extra, in addition to LEED Gold certification and all-electric Native Legislation 97 compliance. We count on Willets Level to generate $6.1 billion in financial affect because it creates 1,550 everlasting jobs and 14,200 building jobs.
Our new soccer stadium would be the first totally electrical stadium in Main League Soccer and the primary totally electrical skilled sports activities stadium in New York Metropolis. And it’s anticipated to be able to open its doorways and welcome soccer followers by the 2027 MLS Season. This, together with New York Metropolis co-hosting the World Cup in 2026 with New Jersey, places us on the map as a world-class soccer vacation spot.
It additionally makes Willets Level the town’s premier sports activities hub, with the New York Mets’ Citi Discipline and U.S. Tennis Affiliation’s Billie Jean King Nationwide Tennis Middle, which hosts the U.S. Open, each inside strolling distance of the Mets-Willets Level subway and Lengthy Island Rail Highway station.
None of this might have occurred with out our companions on the Metropolis Council, together with Councilmember Francisco Moya and Speaker Adrienne Adams, in addition to Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, the New York Metropolis Soccer Membership, Queens Improvement Group, and all of the hard-working New Yorkers who made Willets Level attainable.
This undertaking will even advance our ongoing work to construct our method out of our metropolis’s housing and affordability disaster, together with our historic “Metropolis of Sure for Housing Alternative” proposal to construct just a little extra housing in each neighborhood. And it’ll get us nearer to our moonshot aim of 500,000 reasonably priced properties over the subsequent decade.
Protected and reasonably priced housing is the important thing to the American Dream. Willets Level brings us one large step nearer to creating that dream a actuality for New Yorkers.
