Category: Queensboro F.C.

On Tuesday when I threw up my hands at figuring out whether $2 million was a fair price for Queensboro F.C. to pay for a five-year licensing agreement to stick a 7,500-seat soccer stadium on York College land, I had hopes that my hands wouldn’t stay that way forever. And now, thanks to a consult from a property valuation expert, I think we have a way to at least make a start at a guesstimate:

If a sports team were looking to lease a regular plot of land at market value, one would expect that at the very least, the property owner would want them to cover the parcel’s annual property tax bill. Since York College is part of the City University of New York, its land is tax-exempt — as is all public and nonprofit college-owned land in New York, including the frigging Chrysler Building. But it still gets assessed by the city to see what taxes it would pay if it had to, which for the soccer stadium land can be found here and here.

The total assessed value of the land is $14,257,620. If taxed at the regular rate, it would owe $1,524,709 a year in property taxes. Over five years, that comes to $7,623,549.

Queensboro F.C., though, isn’t going to be using the stadium all of the time. If we knock off 51% of the price on the logic that York College will have use of the space 51% of the time — not that it will likely use all of that, but let’s just go with it — then we have an expected market value of at least $3.8 million. That’s nearly double what CUNY is actually getting.

And that “at least” is very much a lowball figure, for two important reasons. First off, it’s likely that a private landlord would want to do more than just cover their property taxes if renting out land. And second, city property assessments are notoriously low, especially in cases where the land isn’t generating any tax money anyway, so it doesn’t much matter what value the city puts on it. (Cf. the whole New York Yankees stadium mishegoss.) So really the best we can say is the soccer team owner’s land discount is somewhere between $1.8 million and … a lot more than that.

The best way to determine market value, obviously, is to put land on the market — but CUNY hasn’t done that, issuing a request for proposals only for “development, design, construction and licensed operation and management of an athletic facility and soccer stadium.” So until then, we have to go with our best guess, which right now is that Queensboro F.C. owner and Chinese investment impersario Jonathan Krane is getting a sweetheart deal worth at least several million dollars compared to what he would have to pay for stadium land elsewhere, if he could even find it at all. As always, public officials really should be hiring experts to do their stadium negotiations for them, because when left to their own devices in this area, they kinda suck.

 

 

Back in April, I reported on the announcement by the Queensboro F.C. USL team of an agreement with the City University of New York to begin work this summer on a 7,500-stadium on York College’s campus in Jamaica, Queens. I immediately asked York College for a copy of the lease, and was told I would need to file a Freedom of Information Law request; as I noted at the time, “this could be a while.”

It sure was! On April 29, I sent a request to CUNY’s FOIL officer requesting “any leases, contracts, or operating agreements between CUNY or York College and Queensboro FC or its representatives regarding construction of a stadium at York College, issued or signed between November 1, 2020 and April 29, 2021.” On June 2, I got an email notifying me that CUNY needed more time to decide whether to fulfill my request. On July 6, I was notified that “more time is needed to complete their review,” and that I’d hear back by July 16. On July 28, I got yet another email, this one saying that they needed until August 7, “because of the length of the contract requested and the review required of said document before disclosure pursuant to FOIL.”

On Monday, August 9, CUNY’s lawyers presumably having finally read through the contract to ensure there was no confidential information being disclosed, I finally got a copy of the Queensboro F.C. stadium license agreement. Here’s the full document, and here are some of the highlights:

• The agreement is a five-year lease, with the option for four one-year extensions. The team’s owners will pay for construction of the stadium — no price tag provided — and CUNY will own it and the land under it, which means Queensboro F.C. won’t have to pay property tax.
• CUNY will lease the stadium to Queensboro F.C. for a one-time fee of $2 million, plus 15% of any naming rights payments (with a minimum of $50,000 per year).
• The team gets all revenue from sale of ad signage and the like, plus the bulk of any naming rights money.
• The stadium is only temporary: Queensboro F.C. plans to build a permanent stadium “in another location in Queens, New York” — there’s been talk of something in Willets Point near the Mets‘ stadium, but not for over two years now — and in fact can cancel the entire deal if no permanent stadium is approved by March 1, 2022.

That’s a lot, and it gets even a lotter. The stadium is being built “as-of-right,” meaning in accordance with existing zoning. Since the site’s current zoning is R6 — up-to-mid-sized apartment buildings with stores at ground level, basically — and that doesn’t allow for “commercial or professional recreation,” the city Department of Buildings signed off, but with a caveat: The stadium would have to be primarily operated by CUNY, with the USL team only “accessory to the primary education function & mandate.” The lease, in fact, specifies that CUNY would get use of the stadium 51% of the year — slightly weird, since a USL team wouldn’t need more than 182 days a year of stadium use anyway, but significantly less weird if that clause is what enables everyone to maintain the pretense that this is really a stadium for students, and York College just happens to be leasing it out to Queensboro part of the time.

(This likely helps with CUNY not having to get anyone’s permission to lease out its property, too: It’s not really turning over a large swath of public land to a private sports team, it’s just getting a private sports team to build a soccer stadium on its campus, and then generously allowing the sports team to use it half the time.)

So, we have CUNY and the city agreeing to look the other way on zoning to grease the skids for a private soccer stadium on public land — cutting through red tape, it’s the American way! As for how much of a subsidy this deal represents, that’s as yet undetermined: Getting a stadium that you don’t have to pay property tax on is worth something, but it will take some number-crunching to determine exactly what; and whether $2 million is a lot or a little for use of about 3.5 acres of Queens land is going to be even trickier to calculate than the whole New York Islanders mess was.

And speaking of the size of the land, remember this image comparing a typical USL stadium, this one for San Antonio F.C., with the plot that Queensboro was hoping to build on?

The actual comparable stadium Queensboro is looking at turns out to be Loudoun United‘s in Virginia, so let’s drop that onto a map of York College and see what we get:

Better! But still very tight, especially if people are going to be able to get to their seats. The bleachers, according to schematics attached to the lease, will be supported by a metal lattice, so there won’t be a lot of circulation room under them:

Anyway, figuring out how to squeeze stadiums into available space isn’t the job of this website, it’s that of Populous engineers. (Yes, Populous is designing this thing, their name is even on the zoning application.) The upshot here is: A privately owned soccer team has gotten a public college to let it drop a 7,500-seat stadium on its campus, in exchange for $2 million and letting the school use it part of the time, without having to either pay property taxes or go through the usual public rezoning process. And this is apparently only step one en route to another stadium elsewhere in the borough, which is somehow expected to be approved by next March, despite a new mayor and city council taking office in January. (Queens Borough President Donovan Richards will be staying put, after winning a special election last year to finish out his predecessor’s term.)

Like I said, it’s a lot. I’ll be following up on some of the remaining loose ends, and maybe taking a drive out to York College to see what the progress of construction is. The Queensboro F.C. stadium campaign has really been flying under media radar, but especially with the USL’s apparent plans to go toe-to-toe with MLS for soccer domination, it definitely bears watching.

When last we checked in on USL expansion team Queensboro F.C.‘s plans to build a 7,500-seat stadium on the campus of York College about a year and a half ago, that was pretty much all there was for details: Nothing about how much it would cost, who would pay for it (other than the local city councilmember’s claim that it would be “100 percent privately funded” by the club, which as we’ve previously seen in New York can mean lots of things), or how it would fit on a City University of New York campus that is wedged into populous Jamaica, Queens.

Yesterday, Queensboro F.C. and York College announced that construction on the stadium will begin this summer, after CUNY approved the team’s contract. The project will reportedly be a “partnership” between the club and the college, and will cost … no, nothing about that, but the contract will involve … nope, no details there either, though we do learn that York students will get to hear from the soccer team’s staff and players as guest speakers. Maybe this WABC-TV video that for some reason appears on Yahoo! News will provide more details? Why did I even type that sentence?

What we do learn is a location for the proposed stadium — “near the corner of 160th Street and Tuskegee Airmen Way” — and a rendering, which is sadly lacking in gratuitous fireworks but does enable us to figure out exactly which plot of land the team plans to use:

That round building in the background is clearly the school’s gym, currently in use as a vaccination site. This means that the stadium will be built on the currently vacant land to the south (and also that in the image above, the sun is setting in the north, because that’s just how vaportecture rolls):

How well will a 7,500-seat stadium fit into that space? Let’s take 8,000-seat Toyota Field, home of San Antonio F.C. of the USL, size it to the same scale in Google Maps, and plop it down on that plot of land:

Eek. That’s … not so good? Maybe even more not so good than when David Beckham’s Inter Miami released renderings of a stadium that would be built on top of parked cars and then backed away from it because the site shockingly turned out to be too small.

There are a few ways Queensboro can try to squeeze a stadium into that space: They can reduce the size of the sideline seating and put more seats into the ends, which the rendering actually appears to have done, though this makes for less desirable fan views. And soccer pitches can actually vary in width: San Antonio’s is 70 yards wide, and the minimum according to FIFA rules is … okay, 70 yards, so that’s not going to help much.

At best, then, it’s going to be a tight squeeze; at worst, you might see the stadium need to encroach a bit onto Tuskegee Airmen Way, which has buildings right across the street and so can’t easily be moved. Though it’s worth noting that the last time I said a New York sports venue was impossible because existing buildings were in the way, the team involved solved the problem by just knocking down the buildings.

And we haven’t even gotten to the cost or how it will be paid, or whether Queensboro F.C. will pay New York City (which owns the campus) for the land. The Queens Eagle reports that “York College will allow QBFC to use its land for the stadium and the club will bankroll construction and operation, a CUNY spokesperson said,” but that’s not really the level of detail we need to determine the level of subsidies for this project. (Will the stadium be exempt from property taxes by virtue of sitting on public land? Will it require additional public approvals? And so on.)

I’m going to close with the same thing I wrote the first time this project was proposed: “Friends don’t let friends reprint sports team owner press releases without at least trying to check their facts, okay?” Like, really. Did you journalists out there think I was joking? Did you take me seriously, but are trapped in a hellish existence where you’re forced to churn out rehashed press releases all day long, without time to think or breathe or go to the bathroom? Blink twice if you need me to call the labor department.

Ever since last Tuesday’s announcement that New York City would be getting a new USL team called Queensboro F.C. in 2021, I’ve been trying to figure out where exactly this second-tier (soccer’s term for the top minor league) team would play. That was the holdup when the franchise was first rumored last winter, and while last week’s announcement mentioned a “new, modular stadium at York College in Queens that will have a capacity of around 7,500,” none of the news outlets appeared to have actually called York College to see who would build it or where it would go, important questions given that the campus, though conveniently located right by a major subway terminal, isn’t exactly bursting with huge swathes of vacant land.

So, I called. And was directed to a press spokesperson for the City University of New York school, who said she’d get back to me with a statement from the school’s president, but couldn’t “promise it will be today.” That was Thursday; it’s now Tuesday, and still no statement has been forthcoming.

I next tried the team itself, whose press representative told me yesterday they’d be back to me “shortly”; I’m still waiting. After that, it was on to city councilmember Francisco Moya, who has helped shepherd the team into existence and declared himself one of its first fans, whose communications director actually replied:

Queensboro FC will be playing in a modular stadium, which will be 100 percent privately funded through the club. The City is not involved in the arrangement between QBFC and York College.

That is slightly more of an answer, but not much of one. Where will this stadium be built? Does a “modular stadium” just mean a bunch of temporary bleachers that can be taken down and stored away when York College needs to use its track? Is York College being paid anything for use of its land? And does the public university have to get any city or state permissions before repurposing public land?

These are all kind of important questions, and it’s reflective of the sad state of journalism in this city (and in this country, and on this planet) that no one seems to have asked them — or, worse, has asked them and when they didn’t get answers, didn’t bother to mention that in their articles. (It’s also sad that an entire minor-league baseball team in Staten Island has been marked for elimination, and none of the city press has deigned to report on borough residents’ thoughts on that — or has just forgotten that Staten Island is a part of New York City, which is a thing that happens.) I’ll report back here if I learn of anything to add, but in the meantime: Friends don’t let friends reprint sports team owner press releases without at least trying to check their facts, okay?