Peer Reviewed

Title: Speaking of Places - - A Tale of Two Points

Journal Issue: Places, 21(1)

Author: Baldwin, Ian

Publication Date: 2009

Publication Info: Places

Permalink: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/4q0990w0

Acknowledgements: This article was originally produced in Places Journal. To subscribe, visit www.places-journal.org. For reprint information, contact [email protected].

Keywords: places, placemaking, architecture, environment, landscape, urban design, public realm, planning, design, volume 21, issue 1, Recovering, ian, baldwin, speaking, tale, points

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eScholarship provides open access, scholarly publishing services to the University of California and delivers a dynamic research platform to scholars worldwide. A Tale of Two Points

Ian Baldwin

In 2004, New York’s bid for the 2012 parking for fleets of trucks and “The Valley of Ashes” Olympics put an unlikely spotlight buses. Both are a quick trip from Willets Point lies at the northern on two coarse-grained patches of Manhattan via the main highways end of Flushing Meadows-Corona Queens. Hunters Point, facing to Long Island or the number seven Park. It is the site of the legendary ash midtown Manhattan across the East subway line. And both typify the dumps described in The Great Gatsby. River, was to be the Olympic Village. urban potential lying fallow in the It was also home to World’s Fairs in The Olympic Stadium, hastily relo- outer boroughs. 1939 and 1964. A memory of those cated from Manhattan’s West Side, These two massive redevelop- events is still present in the elevated found a proposed new site next to ments, Mayor Michael Bloomberg subway station at Willets Point Shea Stadium in Willets Point. declared in 2004, would come to Boulevard that was expanded to serve Both Hunters and Willets Points Queens whether or not the Olympics them, and in the vast parking lots and are low-slung industrial landscapes did. Five years later, in the wake of wide boardwalk ramps that still handle marked by cycles of use and abandon- the unsuccessful Olympic bid, in crowds destined for baseball games or ment, bordered by rails, asphalt, and greatly reconfigured form they the U.S. Open tennis championships. ragged shorelines. Both host New have reemerged. Just to the west is LaGuardia Airport. York’s back-of-house economy: auto Every few minutes a jet passes over- repair, light industry, warehousing, head, low enough for spectators at the

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baseball and tennis stadia to count half of the point, just beyond the tall and particularly dirty jobs such as the tires on its landing gear. Just to reeds that grow on the banks of the spray-painting may take place in the the northeast is the bustling Asian- river, are an iron works, a gravel yard, middle of the street. dominated center of Flushing. and a few large wholesalers. When I visited the area last winter, In the early 1960s, the Whitestone The 225 to 260 businesses here Shea stadium, for 44 seasons the Expressway absorbed the bridge car- employ at least 1,300 people. Willets home of the Mets, was being disman- rying Willets Point Boulevard over the Point Boulevard teems with cars, tled. A modified excavator jabbed at it Flushing River, truncating the boule- moving slowly to navigate the scrum with a giant yellow arm, coaxing off vard after seven blocks and creating a of pedestrians, vehicles parked every chunks of concrete, which fell with a cul-de-sac neighborhood. Subway maps which way, and enormous potholes slow rumble and a roll of dust. Next began to show the name of the elevated full of dark oily water. Shop signs to this, workers put finishing touches stop only as Willets Point. But a more are everywhere, a riot of fonts and evocative name for the area is the Iron colors above gaping dark interiors. Triangle, a reference to the neighbor- On a typical day, men in caps, hooded Above: On Willets Point Boulevard, an auto shop is hood’s businesses—block after block of sweatshirts, and work boots sit, stand, fashioned from shipping containers. auto body and repair shops, junkyards talk, and work in the open. The smell Opposite: Map of Queens, showing the locations of and parts suppliers. On the eastern of paint thinner and oil is everywhere, Hunters Point South and Willets Point.

Places 21.1 81 on a the new Mets stadium (currently entry to the neotraditional, brick- Emerging at Vernon and walking called CitiField). It is a touchstone for clad stadium; on their right was a due west, brand new luxury condos the city’s development plans, but even continuous line of low garages behind peek out above older row houses, the most optimistic schedule will see broken-down cars and steel shutters. apartments, and workshops. At the at least a year of coexistence with the water’s edge, a lush park built around old Willets Point. On opening day To the River’s Edge the gantries that once put railcars in April, Mets fans shuffled up 126th On its way from Willets Point to onto barges offers piers to stroll on Street from the elevated station. On Manhattan, the number seven subway and a stunning view of the United their left was the grand staircase skims over the dense, multiethnic Nations, Chrysler, and Empire State neighborhoods of Queens—Corona, Buildings. The raisons d’etre of Elmhurst, Jackson Heights, Sunnyside, this spectacular public space are six Above right: The Long Island Rail Road’s Long Woodside—before reaching Long apartment towers built here from Island City Yards. Once the LIRR’s main terminus, Island City. Here, the elevated line 1997 to the present. Five more are it now holds a few deisel trains during the day and slips underground, stopping at Vernon on the way as part of the state-spon- provides limited passenger service. Boulevard before continuing through sored Queens West development. Above left: CitiField, the new home of the Mets, the Steinway Tunnels to Grand Cen- Current plans for Hunters Point rises above the Willets Point streetscape. tral Station and Times Square. South would extend this pattern of

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development south a few blocks to “New York’s Next Great at stake, but it obscured the fact that Newtown Creek, a wide industrial Neighborhood” the nature and condition of the sites inlet that forms the border between In November, the New York City themselves present major obstacles. Queens and Brooklyn. Just inland Council voted to approve zoning As currently planned, at Hunters sits the entry plaza for the Queens- changes allowing redevelopment Point South it will cost the city $222 Midtown Tunnel. The area is also of Willets Point and Hunters Point million to buy land from the Port bordered by a train yard for the Long South. Both plans call for about 5,000 Authority and upgrade infrastructure. Island Rail Road. This was once the apartments, 35 and 60 percent of them, This is in addition to $128 million in main terminus of the railroad, where respectively, classified as “affordable.”1 housing subsidies. passengers would transfer to wait- Most press accounts configured the The corresponding costs for ing ferries, and the yard occupies an debate leading up to the vote as proxy Willets Point are unknown, mainly area larger than two square blocks. fights over the amount of middle- because the city does not know how With the creek and the river, it hems and lower-income housing and the Hunters Point South into an isolated use of eminent domain.2 Persistent triangle of anonymous warehouses battlegrounds between the forces of Above: A future site of the Hunter’s Point South and parking lots that unceremoniously “development” and “community.” development sits directly across the East River from mark the end of Long Island. This not only oversimplified the issues the Empire State Building.

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badly contaminated the area is. Given The Safe Strategy are today. But they will still, by dint the intense quasi-industrial use over Underdevelopment is a legiti- of location and history, function as the past several decades, the cost mate urban technique, and the back pivot points between adjoining areas, of cleaning it up will be significant. rooms of a city have the same right to between movement systems, between Furthermore, Willets Point’s streets ownership of place as do showpiece spaces of leisure and infrastructure. and sidewalks will have to be rebuilt residential and business neigh- This idea was brilliantly articu- six feet above current levels to pre- borhoods. It would, of course, be lated by the architectural firm vent flooding, and a new network of disingenuous to suggest that Hunters Morphosis in its winning 2004 pro- sewers will need to be installed (waste Point South and Willets Point should posal for the 2012 Olympic Village, currently goes into cesspools). not evolve. However, this does not at Hunters Point South. Turning and If the city does end up using mean that the developer-driven, warping the traditional skyscraper, eminent domain against holdout unapologetically generic strategies Morphosis envisioned horizontal rib- landowners, there will be an addi- of apartment towers-cum-park and bons of structure curving sinuously tional irony in condemning as mixed-use “town center” are the only in three dimensions, touching down blighted an area that was never given way to accomplish that evolution. In and lifting up to allow walk-through basic infrastructural support in the a city that has always grown accord- access to the waterfront. Holding the first place. Both Willets Point and ing to an emergent, at times chaotic, neighborhood edge with buildings Hunters Point South are also overly spatial logic, there is less need for and leaving much of the site open, reliant on the number seven subway such top-down all-at-once placemak- the design relished its location at the line. Always crowded already, it is ing; far less disruptive and artificial junction of two waterways recovering frequently shut on weekends for strategies could be allowed to emerge from decades of pollution. maintenance. from a less rigid framework. The current proposal foresees New York’s explosive growth over The world cities New York com- a narrow strip of park and eight the past decade favors the assump- petes with—London, Los Angeles, standard-issue towers, standing across tion that any area within a reasonable and Tokyo, most prominently—are the river from the world’s most iconic commute of Manhattan will provide polycentric. By contrast, the unipo- island of towers. The city’s pack- fertile ground for profitable develop- larity of Manhattan is undisputed. em-in development brief leaves little ment. The assumption is acceptable This burdens New York with mas- design leeway to do otherwise. Where at Hunters Point South, which sive physical challenges. But it also there might have been an image, vital despite all its challenges, boasts offers an opportunity in a relatively and fresh, of a newly confident outer- unmatched views and connects to open field like Queens, where highly borough urbanism, there will only be an existing, successful development. specialized urban programs (such as the mediocre reflection of a city we But it seems premature at Willets ethnic enclaves, large parks, stadia, know too well. Point. Bounded by busy highways, and airports) can easily disperse along vast parking lots, and a polluted river, common lines of movement. Notes directly beneath the LaGuardia flight The entire city, outside the core, 1. Within this designation are set-asides for several path, with decades of toxic and sew- can thus be seen as a template of income tiers between $23,000 and $158,000. age waste in the ground, it is not well mixed use, with the boroughs offering 2. These were brought to the fore by the Atlantic positioned to become a high-value urban experiences compelling enough Yards project in Brooklyn. See, for example, Norman residential neighborhood—even to compete with the increasingly Oder, “Atlantic Yards: Penn Station for a New before factoring in a daily influx of staid and commercial orientation of Generation?” Places, Vol. 20, No.1 (Spring 2008), pp. tens of thousands of cars and subway Manhattan. This process is already 79–83. riders two weeks out of every month under way, if the knots of European during baseball season. It is much tourists on the streets of Williamsburg, All images are by the author. easier to imagine the new stadium Brooklyn, are any indication. coexisting with the convention Both Willets Point and Hunters center, open space, and retail and Point South will eventually grow, Opposite: A sailboat anchors on the Queens shore of entertainment uses called for in the organically or otherwise, into some- Newtown Creek. The Pulaski Bridge connects Long city’s development proposal. thing quite different from what they Island City, Queens, to Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

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