NEW YORK—Willets Point in Queens took the next step toward being a big entertainment and shopping center Thursday with Mayor Bloomberg’s announcement of a joint venture deal that involves $3 billion of private investment.
Willets Point is contaminated by petroleum and other substances, such as paint, from more than a century of private dumping of wastes. The plan includes environmental remediation for the area.
Queens Development Group, a joint venture between Sterling Equities, Inc., and Related Companies announced plans to start building retail and entertainment attractions on an initial 23 acres of land to the west of Citi Field. The plan includes 5 million square feet of new development in the plagued area that F. Scott Fitzgerald once described in “The Great Gatsby” as the “valley of ashes.”
It will be transformed into a shopping destination, holding over 200 retail stores, several movie theaters, restaurants, a convention center, a hotel, mixed-income housing, large public spaces, and parking lots that can hold up to 2,500 cars. Construction is slated to start in 2014 after site work is complete.
The development of the area would create an estimated 7,100 permanent jobs and 12,000 construction jobs, according to the New York City Economic Development Corporation. The Phase 1 site is about 12.75 acres and will be bound by Roosevelt Avenue to the south, 35th Avenue to the north, 126th Street to the west, and 127th Street to the east.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg called the plan a “historic private investment, major job creation, and unprecedented environmental remediation.”
“Projects like this one are part of the reason our economy is doing better than the rest of the country,” he said in a release.
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