Related and Wilpons Win Revised Willets Point Project, Planning Mall

Willets Point has long been one of the most neglected corners of the city, famously appearing in The Great Gatsby as “the valley of ashes.” The Bloomberg administration has been working for years to redevelop the 62-acre Iron Triangle, for years home to auto body shops and a handful of heavy industries. Today, City Hall took a step toward spiffing up the site, if not quite in the direction it had hoped.

The administration withdrew its eminent domain case, known as a determination of findings, from the courts today, halting takeover proceedings against a handful of holdout property owners in the area. This paves the way for the project to move forward, albeit in an altered form from the 2008 rezoning, which called for a mixed-use development on the site.