AP News, June 13th, 2007
Across the street from the parking lot where the new Mets stadium is going up, Daniel Sambucci's auto salvage yard _ with its axles, doors and transmissions _ is a grease monkey's paradise.
But if Mayor Michael Bloomberg gets his way, the 60-acre area where Sambucci's yard is located will become, at least for Sambucci, a paradise lost.
Sambucci's scrapyard is one of 225 automotive businesses occupying a chunk of Queens known as Willets Point. It would be redeveloped into office buildings, shops, apartments and a convention center under an urban renewal plan Bloomberg announced last month.
Except from the business owners and workers most directly affected, there has been no groundswell of opposition.
Sambucci and other business owners say they don't want to leave and that if Willets Point is an eyesore, it's because the city neglected it for years.
"They created the blight, now they're going to use it to wipe out all these people," said Michael Rikon, a lawyer who is advising Sambucci and other area business owners.
The area, also known as the Iron Triangle, would shed its existing businesses and the soil would be cleansed of decades of oil and gasoline spills. Then a new neighborhood with 5,500 housing units, 1.7 million square feet of retail and entertainment and 500,000 square feet of office space would be built from scratch.
"After a century of blight and neglect, the future of this area is very bright indeed," Bloomberg said when he released the Willets Point master plan at the nearby Queens Museum of Art.
Much of Willets Point is filthy. Body shops are housed in trailers and cinderblock sheds. There are no sidewalks or sewers, and the streets flood when it rains.
Fans at Shea Stadium or the adjoining National Tennis Center might never notice the jumble of junkyards and chop shops. But the New York Mets' new ballpark, opening in 2009, will be even closer to them, right across 126th Street, and the Wilpon family, which owns the team, is following the redevelopment plans closely.
"We got along with Wilpon for years," Sambucci said. "Now all of a sudden because he's coming closer to our fence, they're on us."
There is one legal resident in the redevelopment area, 74-year-old Joseph Ardizzone, and he does not want to leave any more than Sambucci does.
"I don't believe politicians have the right to give my property to their friends, whoever they may be," he said.
Willets Point has long been targeted for urban renewal, including by the legendary master builder Robert Moses. But business owners fought off previous efforts.
Following environmental reviews, the city will ask developers to submit revised plans for the area in the spring of 2008. A developer or developers will be chosen in the summer of 2008, and construction could start in 2009. The land would have to be purchased from about 65 individual owners.
The city has promised to help businesses relocate and to provide job training and other assistance to an estimated 1,300 workers.
But Sambucci, who is 71 and started his business in 1951, wonders where he could go and who would pay to move his inventory.
"What do I do with all this stuff?" he said, indicating some 240 cars and chassis.
Tom Angotti, a professor of urban planning at Hunter College who has studied Willets Point, said the city will refer business owners to other properties "but it's inadequate."
"I would imagine they're going to have trouble finding comparable space that's affordable, especially with the real estate market the way it is," he said.
Bloomberg said the city hoped to negotiate with Willets Point property owners and would use eminent domain as a last resort.
Sambucci works with his son, also named Daniel, and had hoped to pass on the business to his grandson. Although they have tacked "Stop Eminent Domain Abuse" signs to their chain-link fence, the Sambuccis seem resigned to moving.
"We don't want to leave here," said the middle Sambucci. "But it looks like I don't have a choice in the matter."
