The owners of the Mets have big plans to redevelop the Willets Point area around Citi Field, including the enigmatic industrial neighborhood across the street and the huge parking lots that ring the stadium. The developers were handed a setback in court Thursday, when three justices of the Supreme Court Appellate Division ruled that the parking lot where Shea Stadium once stood is still legally designated parkland that is only zoned for a stadium, the New York Times reports. So the planned mall and movie theater can’t be built until the 1961 law that authorized the construction of Shea is changed.
The Supreme Court ruled that while the proposed Willets West development would definitely be more economically productive than a parking lot, the law is the law. The very law that allowed the Mets to build a stadium is now preventing them not having a stadium there anymore. The Mets may be playing relatively well right now, but they’re still such a cosmically unlucky organization.
This will be a fun case to watch. Some deal is going to have to be struck to change the law, and so some local politician is going to have season tickets for a luxury skybox and a really nice house in Florida that he didn’t have before.
(Photo: Google Maps)
