New York City F.C.‘s long-awaited $780 million entered the city ULURP land use process last week, setting off a clock that is supposed to lead to votes by the local community board (that one’s only advisory), borough president, city planning commission, and city council by next April. And one potential hurdle seems to have been cleared: Queens borough president Donovan Richards, who had previously said he might hold up the plan until the city reinstates a local street food market, now says he’s reached a tentative agreement on the market.
If that removes one unknown, there are still a passel of others, even as final votes to rezone the land and approve the stadium project could start as soon as December. I’ve finally finished going through the draft environmental impact statement that is required for projects going through ULURP, and there are still a bunch of outstanding questions:
- It’s “expected” that NYC F.C. fans will park at the Mets stadium across the street, but Mets owner Steve Cohen hasn’t agreed to that yet, presumably because he’s still hoping to use it as leverage to extract approval of the casino he wants to build next door. The DEIS includes an “alternative transportation scenario” in which NYCFC would run shuttle buses from parking lots in College Point on the other side of Flushing Bay, which is, yes, an alternative, but not a good one.
- Also TBD, according to the DEIS, is “approval of City capital funding of infrastructure improvements,” which Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer last year guesstimated as being “typically in the $200 to 300 million range,” though Mayor Eric Adams’ administration wouldn’t provide further details. There’s no date for the city council to vote on that, but it’s certainly possible that the rezoning votes will all take place first, making the project a bit of a fait accompli by the time the city money goes up for formal approval.
- The stadium will sit on city land, but will pay no property taxes and only a nominal rent of $30 million worth (present value) of future payments over 50 years. (This assumes that the Willets Point land will still be usable in 50 years, which, uh, might want to check the latest headlines, guys.) The city Independent Budget Office earlier this year estimated that the cost of those tax breaks could end up being worth a whopping $516 million (totaling $1.7 billion in individual lost taxes over half a century). That would bring the potential city subsidy to an even more whopping $800 million or more.
The particulars of ULURP mean that very little of the massive amounts of paperwork needed end up being about money, with far more attention being paid to things like potential adverse impacts on local activities. (The additional housing to be built alongside the stadium is “not expected to result in a significant adverse impact on public libraries,” you’ll be pleased to learn.) This doesn’t mean that the stadium’s potential $800 million public subsidy can’t be raised at the public hearings to come — people can, and will, raise pretty much anything and everything — but it’s not technically part of the scope of the ULURP oversight. Once hearing dates are set I’ll post them here, so we can all follow along together the process of sausages being made.
If it’s the casinos that really make the money that ‘allow’ sports stadium developments to be “successful” (or whatever), why not tear down all sports facilities and replace them with casinos?
Of course, we no longer need actual casinos thanks to….
https://media.guim.co.uk/38ef0d3f0aa5fa94ae57445c393792b5fa97ecde/0_0_3508_5982/3508.jpg
It should be noted that parking is not a very big need for this stadium, as the NYCFC fanbase travels overwhelmingly by transit.