New York City FC stadium hopes hinge on approval from Queens borough president

New York City FC, like many of the city's residents, is running into problems in finding a place to call its own.

The Major League Soccer team, which has called Yankee Stadium its home since its inaugural season in 2014, has been awaiting approval to put shovels in the ground for a 20,000-seat soccer-specific stadium at a site in Queens. However, the borough president Donovan Richards is withholding his formal approval of the project until street vendors who were displaced from the site are allowed to return to the market that was designated for them.

In her report for local website Gothamist on Wednesday night, Arya Sundaram detailed Richards' position against the demands of the city, which is trying to redevelop an area that it feels is underutilized and gained a poor reputation for illegal activities:

The ultimatum adds a new wrinkle to a long-running dispute over Corona Plaza, where the city earlier this year shutdown a popular street vendor market amid complaints about cleanliness, crime and crowding, including from owners of brick-and-mortar stores. Many of the street vendors are migrants doing business without licenses.
The 25,000-seat stadium is the future home of the New York City Football Club, set to debut in 2027.
City officials have said they are still ironing out long-term plans for a market at Corona Plaza, after sanitation police cleared out dozens of vendors in July over ongoing complaints of blocked sidewalks, unsanitary conditions and “illegal vending” too close to storefronts.
Richards has been a vocal proponent of the Willets Point project, particularly the mixed-use development also planned for the site.

NYCFC is jointly owned by the City Football Group (owners of Manchester City among other soccer teams) and the New York Yankees, and the team was launched with the promise of having a soccer-specific stadium in the city itself. (The MetroStars, a founding team in MLS, have always played in New Jersey. They were sold to Red Bull in 2006, were rebranded as the Red Bulls and gave up exclusive territorial rights to the city in the process, paving the way for NYCFC.)

NYCFC had its eyes set on several different sites in the city, including next door to the new Yankee Stadium, which opened in 2009 amid much outcry over how much public money and parkland were used towards its development. The team decided to forge ahead with plans to build a stadium in Willets Point, next door to the Mets' home of Citi Field.

The Gothamist article is an illuminating read on some of the wide-ranging factors that come with commercial development, including that for massive projects such as stadiums and arenas. Mayors past and present have always wanted to create a signature development in the area surrounding Citi Field and its predecessor Shea Stadium. At a time where current mayor Eric Adams is jostling with federal and state officials over the recent influx of migrants into the city, it appears that Richards is holding the line for vendors - many who are migrants themselves - to get their own stake in the stadium deal.