What Could Be Next for 50 Acres of Asphalt?
A park alienation bill and a (new to me) Liza Minnelli dance album
More than a year ago I noticed a limited-liability company called New Green Willets was lobbying elected officials and City Hall staff, including Mayor Adams. I did a little reporting and found it was registered in Delaware but to an address that traced back to the Stamford, Conn. office of Point 72, a financial company owned by Mets owner Steve Cohen. I wrote then about what they met with the mayor and his team about -- their pitch to fix up the area around Citi Field, focusing on Willets Point, even though they don’t own the land and have no involvement with the current development plan there.
Besides the mountain biking trails and outdoor activities, of course, was Cohen’s interest in a casino.
And now, that LLC -- whose staff has been lobbying politicians and which has also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on other lobbyists to lobby politicians -- was named in the first few lines of a park alienation bill introduced this week by Assemblyman Jeff Aubry. The bill calls for the parking lots surrounding Citi Field, which are legally and technically a park, to cease being a park so they can get developed. (More on that parking lot plan from last year.)
The bill came as a surprise to State Sen. Jess Ramos, who has to approve such a park alienation, along with City Councilman Francisco Moya and many people in City Hall, according to multiple people I spoke to.
The Mets organization has made no secret about building and changing their little parcel of Queens. They launched the Queens Future website, writing “We are the borough with millions of voices, and when we see an opportunity, we come together and create change.”
The word “casino” is absent from the entire website. At these sessions, reported by my colleague Haidee Chu, residents and Mets fans wrote about their hopes and dreams for the space. In the report on these sessions, “gaming” – another word for casino – was near the bottom of the community's wants.
Yet this park alienation is a “casino bill,” Aubry told me. It gives the Mets a fair shot at one of these downstate licenses, since the land-use decisions are required before anyone is selected.
You might not believe that the parking lot around Citi Field is a park, but it legally is. Shea Stadium was built in the 1960s only after a park alienation bill in 1961 approved it. An effort from previous Mets owners to build a giant mall on the parking lot was struck down by the state court of appeals in 2017, citing this type of alienation.
My colleagues at the Queens Daily Eagle and Queens Chronicle also took big swings at this bill. Like how if the parking lot park isn't turned into a casino in the next 15 years, it goes back to being a park. And how the bill calls for the alienation of at least 60 acres of land, but only guarantees that 20 acres be exchanged for parkland.
It could be a long road to get any development in the Citi Field parking lot. In the meantime, the Queens Future organization, run by the New Green Willets LLC, continues advertising their push to do something on the 50 acres of asphalt around their ballpark. “We deserve better than 50 acres of asphalt,” they write on their page (parking for games is $40.) In the meantime, who’s listening?
Other interesting stories this week:
Hudson Valley Towns Have a New York City Problem. [THE CITY]
And happy Women’s History Month! The new rat czar will be a woman.
LISTEN
I started this week at a Times Square press conference on the new “We <3 NYC” logo (comment.) A performer from Broadway’s “New York, New York” played, what else, “New York, New York,” and when I left I listened to Liza Minnelli’s version on Spotify. That’s when the Spotify algo/order of songs brought me her version of “Losing My Mind,” which is originally from Stephen Sondheim’s Follies.
That logo, that press conference, and that performance is how I learned Minnelli recorded a dance pop album called Results in 1989. It was produced by the Pet Shop Boys with an orchestral arrangement from Angelo Badalamenti.
Pitchfork gave its reissue a 7.4. Paste wished it had ushered in a career shift for Liza, but it didn’t. The whole album is fun and interesting.
And here’s a wild trailer for the 2017 reissue:
Thanks for reading!