Calling Willets Point "another euphemism for blight," Mayor Michael Bloomberg yesterday unveiled an ambitious urban renewal plan for the gritty, industrial area near Shea Stadium that would include a major environmental cleanup and a vigorous business relocation program.
"We believe that out of these ashes can rise New York's next great neighborhood," Bloomberg said at a news conference at the Queens Museum in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.
"There's a lot of work to do," Bloomberg said, "but it's going to be a great investment in the city's future."
That future, shown in a series of colorful architectural renderings, depicts the heavily polluted area known as the Iron Triangle as a vibrant, mixed-use community, with a retail and entertainment hub near the new Mets ballpark; low-rise housing, office space and a park.
Currently, though, Willets Point is a neighborhood with no sidewalks or sewers, one resident and a cluster of auto parts and repair shops and junkyards whose employees and owners are fiercely opposed to the city's plan.
"I went down there broke, with no shoes and now they want to take the shoes right off my feet," said Danny Sambucci Sr., 71, who has owned Sambucci Salvage in Willets Point for 58 years. He was among a small knot of Willets Point business owners and employees who attended yesterday's news conference clad in T-shirts that read "It's Our Land" and the words "Eminent Domain" in a circle with a slash through it.
Later, outside a town hall-style meeting held yesterday afternoon at the Queens Public Library in Flushing, about 200 people protested, screaming "Hell no, we won't go."
Bloomberg said the city will only use the legal power of eminent domain to seize property as a last resort.
"My hope is that we don't have to use eminent domain at all," he said. "The city is going to do everything it can to come to an economic agreement where it's in everybody's best interest and it's a win-win."
City officials also said they will soon announce a "robust" program to find new locations for the 235 businesses in the Iron Triangle and offer training and Graduate Equivalency Diploma classes for workers.
"As we move ahead, we must not leave them behind," said Queens Borough President Helen Marshall.
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