Most people would agree that Queens’ Willets Point is not a pretty place. Located alongside Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, it is full of auto repair shops and junkyards, along with the Mets’ Citi Field and the 7 train’s Mets-Willets Point station, as the two New York Times articles describe. I don’t believe, however, that these features of Willets Point justify Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to hand off the space to developers who would build a hotel, luxury apartments, and shopping mall in place of the current landscape. While the government does have a responsibility to raise the overall quality of a neighborhood, it cannot ignore particular sectors of that neighborhood just because they’re less “profitable.” They’re still jobs for people who need them and just because they might not necessarily attract tourists or people looking to move out of Manhattan does not mean that they can be dismissed. In fact, what I think would be a better plan is some sort of compromise between the government’s protecting “unglamorous” jobs and its trying to raise the overall profitability of a certain area. Continuing to use Willets Point as an example, the city government could allocate funds to the shops in the area on the condition that they maintain certain standards of quality (cleanliness, functioning utilities, etc.). Alongside that, the government could appropriate funds to clean the streets, add better street lighting, and modernize the plumbing systems (all problems that the articles mention). And, if there are any shop owners in a consolidated area eager to sell their lots to the city, those could be bought and turned into the developments that the Mayor envisions.
Of course, these provisions are naïve and unrealistic. But, I think it’s worth the discussion. The only options aren’t just to let the status quo remain or to completely modify the area. There’s more: the government can work with those who call Willets Point their place of work to clean up and modernize the “iron triangle”—protecting the jobs already there while giving Willets Point all the resources it needs to prosper.
–Jonathan Eckman
You’re totally right Jonathan – there are tons of options besides leveling the place and letting it sit in not-so-benign neglect for another fifty years. The problem is that the two options I’ve just described are the two financially viable ones from the perspective of city government. Measures such as modernizing the plumbing systems (without generating a huge financial engine in the process) just mean spending public money. Leaving the neighborhood to fester, as we have for decades, is free. Evicting people and allowing a developer to build luxury housing and a shopping mall would bring millions in investment to an area of Queens and make at least several powerful people rich. So unfortunately the city’s strategic choices gravitate toward the two poles of “let it rot” and “bring it down and let loose the developers.” None of this is to diminish your argument, which is ethically unimpeachable. The problem is not a failure to imagine an equitable, healthy Willets Point. It’s a failure to monetize this vision – to find a way to profit from it.