Report on Thursday's CB7 meeting

Thursday night, a hastily arranged meeting between a CB7 committee and NYCEDC occurred inside the College Point Corporate Park office trailer. The purpose was to again review NYCEDC's plans to relocate 3 businesses from Willets Point to the College Point Corporate Park, prior to the votes that will be held on Monday by the Queens Borough Board. If the Borough Board approves on Monday, then NYCEDC will be legally permitted to transfer the titles of the College Point properties to the 3 Willets Point businesses to enable their relocation.

The 3 businesses represented at the night's meeting and which will be the subject of Monday's Borough Board votes are Feinstein Ironworks, Sambucci Bros. Auto Salvage and T. Mina Supply.

Those who have followed the Willets Point story may recall that last year, a total of 5 Willets Point businesses were approved by CB7, the Queens Borough President, the City Planning Commission and the City Council to relocate to property within the College Point Corporate Park. Tonight's meeting and Monday's Borough Board vote account for only 3 of those total 5 businesses. The 2 businesses that are being denied relocation at present are Flushing Towing and Mets Metals. Although the proprietor of Flushing Towing had been invited to attend tonight's meeting, earlier today he was again contacted by NYCEDC and told that the meeting was "canceled". This outright lie seems concocted to discourage this business owner from showing up at Thursday night's meeting, and thereby eliminate any questions about why all 5 businesses whose relocations were approved last year by CB7, the Queens Borough President, the City Planning Commission and the City Council, are not in fact being relocated.

Apparently, the proprietor of Flushing Towing did not believe NYCEDC's lie that the meeting had been canceled, and he decided to show up at the trailer. Half an hour prior to the start of the meeting, he was seen conversing at length with NYCEDC lackeys outside of the trailer. Eventually, he left prior to the meeting without entering the trailer. During the meeting, no one present even bothered to ask what had happened to the other 2 businesses of the total 5 whose relocations to the College Point Corporate Park had been approved last year.

The 3 businesses provided "Cooperation Letters" to CB7, containing representations such as: Acknowledging the adequacy of the space available at the College Point site; business will not park any vehicles or trucks on any of the adjacent or adjoining streets or business lots; main access to the site will be on College Point Boulevard, and main egress exiting the site will be on 31st Avenue.

Committee Chair Chuck Apelian stated: "My sole desire is to have these 3 businesses come into College Point, as owners; and become model citizens of the College Point Corporate Park. And the biggest intent we have, is that we never hear of any problems or any issues from them at all. ... And that's the purpose of the memorialization of these letters."

However, CB7 Chair Gene Kelty wondered what recourse there would be if the terms of the letters are violated in the future. Kelty asked, "Those letters that we now have -- If they don't abide by them, what enforcement action is there and what agency is going to enforce it?" When told by NYCEDC that NYPD would be responsible for enforcement, that did not sit well with Kelty. "See, now we have a problem. ... You're not going to dump that on the PD because they're not going to enforce it. They haven't enforced anything in 25 years that I've been here."

Kelty insisted that instead, NYCEDC's legal department should commit in writing to "sue" any of the 3 relocated businesses that fails to comply with any provision of their Cooperation Letter, to force their compliance. Kelty concluded: "Unless EDC gives me a commitment, in a letter in writing, by next week, saying that their legal department will take legal action to back these letters up, this is as useless as Mayor Bloomberg's promises."

NYCEDC diplomatically pointed out that NYCEDC may not be legally entitled to compel relocated businesses – by suing them – to comply with provisions of the Cooperation Letters. And the business owners appeared insulted, that Kelty is envisioning future circumstances in which NYCEDC must sue the businesses.

After further discussion, Kelty ultimately requested that NYCEDC provide a letter signed by NYCEDC President Seth Pinsky, assuring CB7 that NYCEDC will be responsible for contacting enforcement agencies in the event that relocated businesses do not abide by the terms of the Cooperation Letters that they have signed.

The Queens Borough Board reportedly is scheduled to vote on this matter during its meeting on Monday at 5:30P.M. If the Borough Board approves, the 3 businesses still will not take title to the College Point properties until their closing dates with NYCEDC, which have not yet been scheduled and are not expected to occur until several months from now.

Meanwhile, why the relocation of 2 other approved businesses is not proceeding is unknown. And above all, there is no plan whatsoever to relocate the overwhelming majority of 250 additional Willets Point businesses.

Businesses being "fast tracked" to College Point

From Queens Crap:

There's going to be a meeting about 3 of the 5 Willets Point businesses being fast tracked into College Point. The meeting will be held Thursday May 6 @7:30 PM. Meeting will be at College Point Corp Park Office (Out house) On Ulmer and 26 Ave. This has been called by CB7 as an emergency meeting. It's going to be crowded.

By the way, why rush to sacrifice City-owned CPCP properties to relocate businesses, when there is no assurance that the development for which they need to relocate can proceed?"

Hearing on our EIS challenge scheduled for August 20th

From the Neighborhood Retail Alliance:

As the Crain's Insider is reporting this morning, the folks at Willets Point United will be getting their first court opportunity on August 20th to contest the city's effort to remove them from their land:

"On Aug. 20, Willets Point eminent domain opponents will get their first chance to make their case in a courtroom. Their lawsuit argues that because the Bloomberg administration’s proposed redevelopment requires a new Van Wyck Expressway off-ramp that has not been approved, it’s premature to condemn property. State and federal approvals are needed for the ramp."

...it makes little sense to evict land owners before there's any real indication that: (1) There is an actual plan with a developer and the money to complete it; (2) Even prior to the plan, that the city knows just how much it will cost to clean up the site-and the money is there to do it; and, (3) That the plan will be environmentally feasible-and not lead to an ummitigatable traffic nightmare in Congestion Free NYC.

Without these pieces in place, there's a good chance that the eviction of the property owners will yield a good sized, and more or less permanent hole in the ground; and in fact, two of the current Willets Point owners facing eviction, went through the same thing in College Point thirty years ago-and the land taken from them lies empty to this day!