Senator Avella and Advocacy Groups who are challenging the “Willets West” mega-mall proposal completed their oral arguments before Justice Mendoza yesterday

On Wednesday, the lawsuit filed by State Senator Tony Avella, City Club of New York, Queens Civic Congress, several members of Willets Point United Inc., and nearby residents/business owners against the “Willets West” mega-mall proposal was argued before the New York State Supreme Court.

Attorney John Low-Beer argued the matter on behalf of the Plaintiffs/Petitioners.

The lawsuit is challenging the give-away of 47 acres of Queens parkland worth an estimated $ 1 Billion to build the "Willets West" mega-mall adjacent to CitiField. The suit seeks a declaratory judgment to invalidate approvals already granted to the project. In addition, the suit seeks a declaratory judgment for a permanent injunction which would prevent the construction of a megamall on City parkland without respondents having obtained required State legislative authorization and without respondents having obtained any zoning for this un-zoned park area.

During the oral arguments, both parties presented their case, with the City and developers claiming entitlement to the land based on a 1961 law which authorized the construction of Shea Stadium. However, Mr. Low-Beer explained that the 1961 law never granted the defendants complete control over the premises, which is comprised of public park land. 

Following the arguments, Mr. Low-Beer stated, "As they did in their legal papers, yesterday the developers and the City spent a lot of time talking about how great their project was and very little time addressing the legal issues that are before the Court.  We argued that the defendants are brazenly violating State law and the City Charter's land use provisions, and we are confident that the Court will so hold." 

Senator Avella added, “Most of their response, in their argument, had actually nothing to do with the issue at hand. The issue is that they still have to get the necessary approval from the State Legislature and undergo the City’s land use process before being able to develop on-site. As things stand right now, the developers are illegally taking away parkland and the City is letting them! It’s absurd and I am confident that the Court will agree.”

Mr. Michael Gruen, President of The City Club of New York, stated, “Too often in recent years, the City has acted as if parks exist to generate income rather than to serve the public’s need for places for recreation and relaxation.  A strong body of law called the public trust doctrine is supposed to protect against such abuse by barring any non-park use of park land without the specific consent of the State Legislature.  When the past City administration decided, without legislative approval, to turn over a large portion of the most important park in Queens to private commercial exploitation, the City Club felt it had to act to remind present and future City administrations that parks belong to the people, not to shopping center developers.” 

Marty Kirchner, street organizer with Queens Neighborhoods United, stated:

"As a social justice organization, Queens Neighborhoods United is honored to stand by the many plaintiffs in this lawsuit who would not comprise on such a scandalous parkland give-away. Together with numerous local residents and small business owners, we believe that under no circumstances is this mega-project justified. Not only would the city's largest mall take away precious parkland, but it would significantly diminish the quality of life throughout the surrounding neighborhoods, displacing low-cost housing and reducing the ability of immigrant family-based small businesses to thrive on nearby Roosevelt Avenue." 

Senator Avella concluded, “The bottom line is that this case must be decided on merits. And from what we heard today, the defendants have no explanation as to why they did not follow the law, just that they didn’t. I think their case simply does not make sense.”

Who:        Petitioners/Plaintiffs and Respondents/Defendants
                in the matter of Sen. Tony Avella v. City of New York
                Index number 100161/2014

What:      Oral argument in New York State Supreme Court

When:      July 30, 2014 at 2:15PM

Where:    71 Thomas Street
                New York, New York 10013
                Courtroom of Justice Manuel Mendez / Part 13 / Room 210

            State Senator Tony Avella of Whitestone, Queens, The City Club of New York, park advocacy groups, and an array of residents and business people neighboring the Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, filed suit today to cut off the threat of construction of a 1.4 million square foot shopping mall within the Park.

            The complaint alleges that the project cannot proceed without approval by the State Legislature under the “public trust” doctrine that protects all parkland throughout the State against any form of transfer or introduction of non-park uses without consent of the Legislature.  It does not appear that any such approval for the shopping center use has been requested or obtained.

            The complaint also alleges violations of the City’s Zoning Resolution and  Charter, and seeks annulment of approvals granted by the City to date for the related Willets Point plan.

            The site is 30.7 acres near the northerly end of the Park.  From 1964 to 2006, the site was occupied by Shea Stadium.  When Shea was demolished and replaced in 2009 by Citi Field at a location slightly east of the Shea site, the project site became a parking field for visitors to Citi Field.  The site has also been used for a variety of public recreational events including foot races, circus performances, an annual wheelchair baseball game, and concerts.

            In 2012, Sterling Equities and the Related Companies, both well-known developers, convinced the Bloomberg administration to allow the shopping mall on Park property, although the City Council had approved a plan in 2008 to place the intended retail development in the neighboring Willets Point development project along with affordable housing.   

            The project has moved forward without the customary public review.  There have been no hearings on it before community boards, the Planning Commission, the City Council, or the State Legislature.  The Bloomberg administration appears to have acted on the assumption that no public review is required because in 1961 the State Legislature approved construction of Shea Stadium and provision for parking, with wording broad enough, say proponents of the project, to allow replacement with a shopping center.  The Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for the project on the parking field declares that the parcel is on designated parkland and that legislation permits the shopping mall project.  It lists approvals that the City and developers expect to seek, but State legislative approval is not among them.

             The contention that the 1961 law exempts this transaction from the public trust doctrine, says John Low-Beer, one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, is wrong.  “The 1961 law was intended to allow a stadium and uses directly related to a stadium, such as parking, concessions, and other commercial activity typically incidental to a professional sports arena.”

            Low-Beer adds that the 1961 law “says nothing about a shopping center.  In fact, the Legislature explicitly prohibited any purely commercial uses other than ones strictly related to the stadium, such as concession stands.  The public trust doctrine requires that any legislative consent be very specific about what it will allow.  If it doesn’t specify a use, then that use is not permitted.”

            Senator Tony Avella stated that “Parks are intended to serve the people, to provide open space, landscaping, opportunities for recreation, playgrounds for children, and escape from the hordes and noise of a busy commercial city.  The only commercial uses that belong in them are those, such as snack stands, that enhance the park experience.  A shopping center is not one of them.  We have a wonderful law that is supposed to assure all of this, known as the ‘public trust doctrine.’  I’m outraged when the people who are supposed to administer parks for everyone turn them over to private interests without seeking the State Legislature's consent as the public trust doctrine requires.  So, I am very pleased to be a party to this action.”

            The plaintiffs include Paul Graziano and Ben Haber who have prominently opposed a spate of recent proposals for new or enlarged sports venues in the Park, as well as the shopping center.  The efforts of “Save Flushing Meadows Park,” a coalition of many Queens civic groups put together by Graziano, Haber and others, thwarted the proposed professional soccer stadium, though it was unable to stop a half-acre expansion of the Tennis Center.  They have also led opposition to the shopping center.

            New York City Park Advocates, a City-wide parks advocacy group that helped to establish “Save Flushing Meadows Park,” is also a plaintiff.  Other plaintiffs are individuals and businesses falling into several categories including nearby residents, park users, and businesses along Roosevelt Avenue and in Willets Point having special concerns about traffic and business displacement.

            The efforts of the “Save Flushing Meadows Park” group were recently bolstered by the City Club which took on the shopping center as a major project after successfully participating in a campaign to defeat a proposed upzoning of the East Midtown area around Grand Central Terminal that would have doubled the permissible bulk in much of the area.  After Council leaders announced in early November that the Council would vote against the plan, Mayor Bloomberg withdrew it.

            Michael Gruen, President of the City Club, said that the City Club joined the shopping center fight out of concern that “Flushing Meadows Park has long suffered from neglect in maintenance and from getting eaten away as a recreational park by a voracious assumption that every new idea for a commercial sporting activity should be given a home in this one Park.  Fortunately some of the worst, such as a proposed “grand prix” race track around the lake, have been defeated.  But this is a beautiful park and it deserves much better treatment.”

            Gruen added that the City Club sees the shopping center project as “perhaps the most egregious example of commercialization of parkland throughout the city.  There are places where the annual cycle of fashion shows and holiday bazaars leave little time for enjoying the open space and landscaping. That it is the worst of a pattern of treating parkland as an asset to be sold off for commercial use caused us to take it on so that we could get the courts to draw a clear line:  commercial uses that do not enhance the recreational experience of parks do not belong in the parks.”

            Gruen said that the City Club hopes “clearly to confirm that any alienation of parkland requires legislative action, very specifically stating what uses are to be allowed.  The legislative consent must then be construed narrowly by the courts so that ambiguities in statutory language cannot be exploited, as the developers here are trying to do, to justify other commercial uses that the legislature had no evident intention of condoning.”

            The case is filed in the New York County Supreme Court.  John Low-Beer, Lorna Goodman and Meredith Feinman represent the plaintiffs.

            The complaint asks the Court to declare that the shopping mall project is illegal and to enjoin further steps toward its construction without compliance with applicable law including the public trust doctrine, and without imposing appropriate zoning regulations on the site.

            It also asks the Court to nullify actions taken by the Planning Commission, and approved by the Council in October of last year, to permit construction of parking facilities in Willets Point in lieu of the affordable housing and supportive facilities called for by the 2008 plan.  The complaint asserts that the Commission and Council knew that the changes in the Willets Point plan were needed for no other purpose than to accommodate stadium parking displaced by the intended shopping center, and knew that the shopping center project itself is illegal without approval of the legislature.  They knew that their action would facilitate illegal construction of the shopping mall, the promoters of which had clearly stated their belief that they could proceed with without legislative approval.  The Commission and Council thereby acted illegally, and arbitrarily and capriciously. 

August 28, 2013

Queens Civic Congress Testimony to New York City CouncilConcerning Proposed Willets Point West Mall at Flushing Meadows Corona Park

The Queens Civic Congress would like to say up front that the proposed Willets Point West Mall
project is an unconscionable alienation of public parkland and the City Council should strike it
down immediately and definitively. The Congress and its members are not happy to have
parkland as part of Flushing Meadows Corona Park used as a parking lot, but we have always
believed if the parking lot became unnecessary the land could quickly and easily be returned to
true public, recreational use. Please say NO to this outrageous land grab.

As many of you know, the Queens Civic Congress is an umbrella organization consisting of over
100 civic associations throughout the Borough. The Congress has been active with the Flushing
Meadows Corona Park Conservancy, the Fairness Coalition of Queens, Save Flushing Meadows
Corona Park and the New York City Parks Advocate over the past several months to help ensure
the Park remains available to the numerous communities in nearby Queens. The Congress has in
the past opposed commercial development in the Park and remains adamantly opposed to any
further encroachment on public spaces.

Flushing Meadows Corona Park is the largest park in Queens and ought to serve as the flagship
park in Queens, but instead it has become the dumping ground of last resort for placing projects
that no other area will accept. CitiField has used many acres of park land on a deal that benefits
only the Mets owners and their profits return very little direct financial benefit to the City, to
Queens or to the Park. The parking lots surrounding the stadium sit on parkland and any change
in use should be subject to alienation requirements.

But the introduction of a massive steel and concrete mall to these western parking lots would
permanently destroy a public park amenity the community should enjoy for recreation and fun.
Not only will the mall remove forever land that could be used by the thousands of nearby
residents, but a mall will destroy hundreds of nearby “mom-and-pop” businesses in surrounding
neighborhoods, introducing potentially devastating competition to existing, struggling malls,
such as the struggling Shops at Atlas Park, Rego Park Mall and even Queens Center Mall.
Furthermore, there is no pedestrian traffic nearby to support a mall. Residential development
plans for Willets Point remain unclear and far in the future.

If, as the City is proposing, the CitiField parking lots are excess and can be repurposed, the space
could better be used by the people for additional picnic and recreational space -- not for stores
and movie theaters that have highly questionable demand and little or no access.

Please preserve our open space at Flushing Meadows Corona Park - just say “No.”

Richard C. Hellenbrecht, President
president@qccnyc.org

Auburndale Improvement Association, Inc.
P.O. Box 580331, Station A
Flushing, NY  11358
September 3, 2013
 
New York City Council, Land Use Committee, Zoning Subcommittee
City Hall
New York, NY  10007
 
To the Land Use Committee, Zoning Subcommittee of the City Council:

     My name is Henry Euler and I am the First Vice President of the Auburndale Improvement Association, Inc.  My testimony today is on behalf of my civic organization.  We are the oldest and geographically the largest civic group in Queens County and our membership numbers close to six hundred families and individuals living in Auburndale Flushing and western Bayside.

    We are very concerned about the three proposed projects to be constructed on parkland at Flushing Meadows Corona Park.  These projects include expansion of the tennis center, the building of a soccer stadium and the construction of a huge mall.  We oppose all three proposals.

    Today you are considering the proposal dealing with the 1.4 million square foot mall to be constructed on the parking lot to the west of Citi Field.  This land is parkland and should be off limits to any private development. Parkland is sacrosanct.  It belongs to the people, not private developers. With the rate of intense development in Queens, we need all of the green space we can spare.

    The asphalt on the unused part of the parking lot to the west of Citi Field should be removed and trees and other vegetation should be planted on the site in order to make it look more like a park once again.  There is no shortage of people living in close proximity to the park, or even further away, who could use that refurbished parkland.

    Have you seen how many people use Flushing Meadows Corona Park?  It is staggering.  How could anyone think of usurping land for private gain when people living in overcrowded neighborhoods look to the park as their backyard and a source of relaxation, exercise and tranquility?  This park should be a New York City landmark, just as Central Park is in Manhattan and Prospect Park is in Brooklyn.  Queens is tired of being ignored!

    And what will happen to local businesses if this mall is completed?  And what is the impact on traffic and quality of life in the surrounding community if the mall is built? Is this land, where the mall is to be built, stable enough to support the structures to be built on the site?  This area was originally wetland.

    There are so many questions to consider in this case, and so many concerns.  We stand with the coalition known as Save Flushing Meadows Corona Park and our neighbors in western Flushing and Corona.  No mall in this location!  Just preserve the parkland and find additional funds to sustain and maintain our precious park.  Thank you!

Henry Euler, First Vice President
Auburndale Improvement Association, Inc. 

Good afternoon,

My name is Geoffrey Croft, president and founder of NYC Park Advocates.

It is truly a sad day in "city planning" when we are talking about a plan that seizes more than 30 acres of public parkland to allow one of the country's largest developers to build the largest mall New York City. 

Sounds inconceivable right?  Just when you thought this administration couldn't get any lower, here we are today. 

And lets not forget the Related Companies and Sterling's original plan for our park -  building a massive casino and retail complex.

Let's be very clear:  The 1961 statute that the city and the applicants are so desperately trying to rely on in order to justify being allowed to develop the public parkland for non-park purposes does not permit a shopping mall, much less a 1.4 million square foot mall.    

Administrative Code 18-118 explicitly states that any monies gained from a temporary lease on the property must go back into the property. Back Into The Property, not line the pockets of Related or Sterling Equity. 

To quote the law directly, the revenue must aid "in the financing of the construction and operation of such stadium, grounds, parking areas and facilities, and any additions, alterations or improvements thereto, or to the equipment thereof." 

Clearly this is not the case unless the applicant is representing that this is being done to off-set unfortunate investments made by the Wilpons.  Is that the plan?

Clearly the intention of the law was not to allow any project to make a permanent claim on the parkland or its facilities, because the revenue was supposed to fund the property.

The law simply does not authorize the Willets West project. It does not enable use of the parking lot or authorize retail stores - and certainly something that is primarily a shopping mall.

The bill does say "trade and commerce", but that obviously refers to conventions, not stores. Obviously, a shopping mall was never intended as the bill language states.

The park land we are talking about here today for this irresponsible project was never alienated as required under state law nor are they planning to replace it if approved. 

By law, PARKS ARE NOT allowed to be used for such non-park purposes. In fact State law - which our elected officials have taken an oath to uphold - prohibits such commercial development.

If ever there was a poster child for non-park purposes, building the city's largest mall would be it. 

I would also like to point out one of the most disingenuous statements being made today -  language included in your calendar states:

"It would incorporate a development substantially similar to that anticipated and analyzed in the 2008 Willets Point Development Plan Final Generic Environmental Impact Statement (FGEIS), as well as a major entertainment/retail component and parking adjacent to CitiField."

Is that a joke - who wrote that -  the Applicant? The 30 acres of public parkland was NEVER part of the original plan in anyway. In any way and it certainly was never approved by the City Council.  

There is also just no getting round the fact that this 1.4 square foot mall is a totally new project than what was approved by the City Council and City Planning. 

And, as usual, no one is under any illusion that City Planning will do its job and reject such an irresponsible project.  This is nothing but an end run around the law and City Planning will be complicit when you rubber stamp its approval.   

This is public park land and it does NOT belong to Mayor Bloomberg or to Seth Pinsky, the Related Companies or the Wilpons - it belongs to the people of the City of New York. 

If the 30 plus acres of public park land they are attempting to seize for the project are no longer needed for parking ,then it should revert back to its original use. This is what our elected officials should be pushing for and what any legitimate city planning agency would insist on and not, instead, allowing our public spaces to be given away to politically connected developers. 

The proposed giveaway of public park land is being done to sweeten the deal for Related so they have a guaranteed revenue stream "up front"  in order to help them off-set their investments in building the rest of the Willets Point.  

This is disgraceful.   This plan is about greed, pure and simple. It is a nightmare for the residents of Queens in so many ways and for the City's taxpayers at large who are greatly subsidizing this project. 

The corporate welfare must end. 

Thank you.

Geoffrey Croft
NYC Park Advocates
(212) 987-0565
(646) 584-8250 Cell #
gmcroft@verizon.net

NYC Park Advocates Inc. is a non-profit, non-partisan watchdog group dedicated to improving public parks, restoring public funding, increasing public recreation programs, expanding open space and accessibility, and achieving the equitable distribution of these vital services in New York City for all. We are the only non-profit park advocacy group dedicated to all City, State and Federal parkland in New York City. For more information please visit us at http://nycparkadvocates.org

After her public hearing, at which there were 20 speakers in opposition and just 2 in favor, and prior opposition from the overwhelming majority of the combined memberships of community boards 3 and 7, Borough President Helen Marshall has APPROVED the 1.4 million square foot Mets mall to be constructed on mapped parkland in Flushing Meadows Corona Park.

The City Planning Commission public hearing is next Wednesday, July 10, on a calendar with other items. The entire session begins at 9:00AM, but according to the CPC calendar the Mets mall hearing "is not likely to begin before 11:30AM".

"MLS has been, along with the two other projects proposed for Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, a gigantic boondoggle that Mayor Bloomberg has pushed to become one of his legacies," stated Paul Graziano, a co-founder of Save Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, a coalition of community-based civic and environmental groups opposed to the continued commercial encroachment of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.  
 
"As everyone in Queens - except for most of our elected officials - seems to know, the proposed site was a terrible location for any sort of stadium, as it would have horribly impacted the park as well as sat directly on top of the Flushing River, which the Fountain of the Planets currently is sited.
 
"As advocates specifically for Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, we are hopeful that we are seeing the last of this awful proposal and that it will evaporate back into thin air where it came from. All told, this project, along with the USTA expansion and the proposed Willets Point West mall would have allowed over 50 acres of our parkland to be taken from us and handed to private corporations and /or billionaire friends of Mayor Bloomberg's for free, shortchanging the citizens of our city by stealing precious and irreplaceable parkland.
 
"As it stands, this situation potentially removes one of those threats from gobbling up over a dozen acres of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. However, we must remain vigilant to make sure that there will not be another proposal for this site - or any others - and stand strong against the two other proposed projects to make sure they never become a reality."