Develop Willets Point

In an interview with Maury Brown, New York Sun columnist Tim Marchman vents about the construction of the new stadiums in Queens and the Bronx.  I stumbled across an excerpt from the interview at Bronx Banter.  Marchman was asked about the end of the era of both Yankee and Shea Stadiums, and here’s his response:

Mainly I think it’s too bad that the new Yankees park is displacing public parks, that the Mets park is displacing the really vibrant chop shop district at Willets Point, and that both seem to be simultaneously titanic monuments to a really bombastic idea of New York and utterly divorced from the life of the city. At least one of them should have been built in Brooklyn.

Two things here.  Marchman equates taking away parks, as the Yankees did in building their new stadium, to developing a wasteland adjacent to Shea Stadium and Citi Field in Queens.  A park and Willets Point are about as dissimilar as it gets.

Transforming Willets Point is hardly divorced from the life of the city.  If anything, the project will create an amazing neighborhood that will enhance life in the city.  I’d say he’s implying the area will cater to tourists when, in fact, it will be home to many residents of the city and businesses that can thrive and therefore support the city.

And last but not least, suggesting “at least one of them should have been built in Brooklyn” is absurd.  I don’t even know where to begin on that one.