Willets Point Center Plan Still Alive
By ROSS BARKAN
When Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced he was dropping the nation’s largest convention center in Southwest Queens, the popular logic of the hour was that this meant the death of a convention center at Willets Point. If a juggernaut of a convention center, one that would dwarf Manhattan’s Javits Center, rose at the Aqueduct racetrack, it would make a second convention center superfluous.
 |
| Dreams of Willets Point Convention Center have not died yet. |
Not so, said Borough President Helen Marshall and the supporters of development at Willets Point, where some still dream of the sewer-free auto repair-haven as an urban compliment to downtown Flushing. The desire for a convention center is apparently alive and well, and some property owners of the Iron Triangle are fuming.
“The story should be that the EDC [Environmental Development Corporation], Claire Shulman, and New York City government sold the whole entire city that there was going to be a convention center at Willets Point,” said Jake Bono, a member of Willets Point United. WPU is a coalition of Willets Point property owners fighting, in their own words, eminent domain abuse at the Iron Triangle. “It was a big selling point for people to agree to steal people’s land at Willets Point.”
The feasibility of two convention centers in Queens may seem especially questionable in a still-frail economic environment. Despite the Governor lauding convention centers as economic sparkplugs, some experts, like University of Texas at San Antonio economics professor Heywood Sanders, have publically rejected this claim.
“I’ve looked at these convention centers from one end of the country to the other,” Sanders said. “What happens is, they don’t work the way consultants and forecasters say, and the way promises say.”
Sanders said Javits Center attendance has declined drastically over the past 20 years due to competition from other convention centers around the country. The convention center building boom has diluted the market, and the recent recession has only hurt attendance further. Overall, national convention center attendance has dropped precipitously since the early 1990s.
Few politicians seem to acknowledge this, though. The two theoretical Queens convention centers will not compete with one another, said former Borough President Claire Shulman, now president of the City-sponsored Flushing Willets Point Corona LDC.
“A Willets Point convention center is very feasible,” Shulman said. “First of all, we don’t know what will happen with Aqueduct. The governor certainly has a good plan for a major, extraordinary convention center, but it would not be competitive with the one at Willets Point. Willets Point would have a modest convention center meant to deal with trade shows, small exhibits, and would be a completely different project.”
Shulman estimated the Willets Point convention center would be between 400,000 and 800,000 square feet, much smaller than Cuomo’s 3.8 million square foot proposal. She described LaGuardia Airport as a “domestic business airport,” and its proximity to Willets Point would make the convention center worthwhile, she argued. Queens Chamber of Commerce President Jack Friedman, a longtime Shulman ally, agreed that a Willets Point convention center makes as much sense now as it once did in a pre-Aqueduct convention center universe. However, his vision of a convention center would be smaller than Shulman’s.
“The convention centers are two separate concepts; one will happen right away, one won’t happen for a decade,” Friedman said. “What we’re looking for is more a conference center, meeting space, and exhibition space of about 100,000 to 200,000 square feet. Comparing Cuomo’s proposal and the Willets Point convention center is like comparing a brick schoolhouse to a university.”
A Willets Point convention center, he explained, would be for regional and local meetings. He said that Queens lacks adequate meeting space, with no venue offering “even 25,000 square feet.” Terrace on the Park and Citi Field, he said, are the best places to host conventions in Queens currently.
EDC was mum on the effect of Cuomo’s proposed convention center on a potential one at Willets Point. Jen Friedberg, an EDC spokeswoman, said the Willets Point development plan is still in its early stages.
“We continue to review the responses for the first phase of development and hope to select a developer in the coming months, bringing us another step closer to the new Willets Point,” stated the EDC. “This overwhelmingly supported project will create jobs and allow an environmentally contaminated area to become a model center of economic growth for Queens and New York City.”
Reach Reporter Ross Barkan at rbarkan@queenstribune.com or (718) 357-7400, Ext. 127.