Queens Triple Play: Willets West, Major League Soccer, and the National Tennis Center highlights the major changes that will impact Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Willets West, a 1.4 million square foot mall, is expected to be completed by 2018, which will be constructed in the parking lot of Citi Field’s parking lot. Also Major League Soccer hopes on building a 25000 seat brand new stadium for the new NYC team. The proposed place to build the stadium is the Fountain of the Planets. Lastly, in the West, the National Tennis Center is planning an expansion of 7000 new seats, suites, retail space, and 700 new parking spaces.

The article sums up the effects of these three major proposals – these three projects will change the northern half of Queen’s flagship park into a “car-dependent” and “largely commercialized destination”. The new plans will easily add more than 10,000 parking spaces and the residents are worried about the heavy traffic those cars are going to bring. With these new changes, it would be difficult to implement “green” plan (with new spaces for park being taken away).

Although these changes will bring some positive results, there seems to be major disadvantages too. The biggest concern has to be the massive amount of traffic the projects are going to bring (especially that 7 train line!!). It really is difficult to find the neutral and the fairest method to resolve these problems. Personally, I’m worried about the park. It seems like developments are closing in on the park and the park is losing its chances of expanding because of these proposals (as shown by the statistics in the article – Flushing Meadow Corona Park is labeled in public documents with 1,255 acres of land, including Citifield and its parking lots. However, when non-park spaces are counted out, only 347 acres of the park is open for use )