A Well-Intentioned City Redevelopment Plan Hits the Skids
In 2013, the New York city council approved a plan for a gleaming new development in the Willets Point section of Queens—a mall, a hotel, and hundreds of new apartments near Citi Field—and soon began helping a group of auto-repair shops that occupied the land move to a new home in the Bronx.
Four years later, the Willets Point development project is stalled, the Bronx landlord for the auto shops is about to evict them, and the $7.5 million the city has spent to assist the business owners appears to have been for naught.
“It’s a waste of the city’s money,” said Tom Angotti, an emeritus professor at the Urban Policy and Planning department of Hunter College. “But it’s also a waste of time and effort.”
Explanations vary for what went wrong in the relocation effort. . .