Summary: Mayor Eric Adams and NYCEDC announce a transformative plan to convert the long-dormant Flushing Airport site into 3,000 workforce housing units, prioritizing union labor and pension fund investment. This ambitious project, part of the most pro-housing administration in NYC history, will create jobs, open 80 acres of public space, and integrate sustainable design to address the city’s housing crisis.
Transcript: Most Pro-Housing Administration in City History: Mayor Adams, NYCEDC Kick Off Housing Week by Unveiling Ambitious Plan to Transform Former Flushing Airport Into 3,000 New Homes
Mayor Eric Adams: I’m really excited about today, this announcement is something that Gary and I spoke about, you know, some time and he said it took a year and a half, but that’s fast time in government time. You know, really great to be here with Councilwoman Paladino, Paladino and the Queens “Get the Money” Borough President, Donovan Richards, who’s always also here.
You know, my borough where I grew up as a child and joined by these amazing men and women who are part of the foundation of our city, members of the building trades and the entire construction industry. Every time we build a new house, we build more dreams and families, but you know, if it’s union built, we get a double win for us. We’re making sure that the union members who built the housing can afford to live in the housing that they are building, and that’s what we’re talking about here.
This is good stuff. The most pro-housing administration in the history of this city, not based on my opinion, but based on the numbers. What Deputy Mayor Carrión and his team, what they have done is just remarkable how we have found ways to ensure that we’re going to build more and more housing in this city.
Everything from the City of Yes, that allowed every community born down to participate in housing, to move in a record number of people from homeless shelters into permanent housing, to breaking records year one, year two, and I’m pretty sure we’re going to do it in year three of the more housing, more housing brought online in the history of the city in individual years.
And then when you look at what the numbers are, the numbers don’t lie. When we are done shoveling the ground, we’re going to have more housing built than the 12 years of Bloomberg, the eight years of de Blasio combined, 20 years in comparison to three and a half years combined, we’re doing it. And then including NYCHA, including NYCHA for the first time, including NYCHA into our housing project. So this is just the way it’s supposed to be done.
Years and years of both Gary and I talking about, how do we make sure that we build this city out in many years. It didn’t start when I became mayor. These conversations started many years , even as a state senator, and even thoughtfully as a police officer living on a police officer’s salary trying to find housing. That’s why this holistic approach of raising the income of union workers and then building union jobs is really just a perfect combination. That’s what a blue-collar mayor is supposed to do. That’s what a blue-collar mayor is doing in the City of New York.
I was not born with a silver spoon. I had a wooden spoon, and many times there was no food on it. These are wooden-spoon people who are standing here on this spot right now, so we know what struggle is, and we know what missed meal cramps are about.
When you think about this airport, this was the busiest airport in New York City, folks. And look at it. When it was closed down, I was a rookie cop, and Ghostbusters was on top of the movie charts. That’s how long this area has lain dormant. In 1984, when it closed, and when you think about it, we’re talking about just watching spaces like this remain dormant while we needed new locations.
Forty years, this land has just been sitting around for 40 years. When we were talking about needing more housing, we were not looking at locations like we see here. And so, we’re turning over every opportunity, including outdated office builders, the city’s office builders, using my executive order, requiring all of our agencies to review their portfolios and find the city-owned sites for housing.
Government can’t hold on to space as some form of novelty project when people could use those spaces to build housing. And that’s what we’re doing. I don’t know if he’s here, but First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro, he has really taken a bull by the horn to make sure that we find every vacant spot and location that we own to not be part of the obstacles, but be part of the solution.
Housing is what’s needed. And this project will build and will bring energy and housing to College Point. And with the partnership with Cirrus Workforce Housing and LCOR Incorporated to build these new homes, create thousands of new jobs, and open 80 acres of public space, and by incorporating nature and sustainability designed to the proposal, we are making the right way to integrate the new homes into the surrounding wetlands. So, we’re protecting nature, but making sure we’re protecting children and families to have the housing they need.
And administration after administration have all tried, have all tried, but we’ve mastered the ability of landing the plane on difficult tasks and difficult actions. That’s what union members do. We know how to make something out of nothing and to build upon it. So, I want to thank, again, Deputy Mayor Adolfo Carrión, EDC President Andrew Kimball for their tireless work on this project, and we’re also making sure that this creates jobs and homes for working class families.
As a result of this historic partnership, we announced last year to develop workforce housing and public lands using union labor. This project will be sponsored by union pension funds and built by building trade members. Just real win, real win, win. Gary, you used all those years of experience to say we could get a win-win. Union pension funds building housing union labor. Think about that for a moment. Can’t get any better than that.
And so, we said it over and over again, we’re pro-housing, and we’re doing it. The numbers are showing it. We opened the door to more than 130,000 new homes using our City of Yes passage in legislation. We created record amounts of affordable housing two years in a row, as I stated, and we continue to move forward to make sure that we can build housing for children and families.
Before I turn it over to Gary, we have a heat weather advisory. One of the number one causes of weather-related deaths is heat. Heat is a real issue. Don’t take it for granted. We’re expected to have heat index near or above 100 degrees, and so we’ve been saying this every day. More and more hot weather is coming to us, and we’re feeling it now.
And this is some serious heat. And so, we’re telling folks, you know, cooling centers are open. Please go in them. If you need be, be near an air conditioner. If you work outside, please make sure that you take breaks, stay hydrated, don’t leave pets inside cars, don’t leave children inside cars. If you need more information, go to nyc.gov/beattheheat, or call 311. And so, it’s imperative that we take this heat seriously.
But again, let me turn it over to Gary LaBarbera.
Gary LaBarbera, President, New York State Building and Construction Trades Council: Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. It’s great to be here with all of you, my brothers and sisters, our elected officials and representatives from the City of New York. I just want to say a few things.
As the mayor mentioned, you know, I walked up and said it only took a year and a half. That’s fast. And you have to understand that in government and real estate. I want to just expand a little bit on what Mayor Adams said. You know, he and I have been talking about housing for a long time. And when we were together about two years , we were chatting, we were talking, and I floated this idea about union pension funds, funding, bringing equity into projects, and partnering with the City of New York for city land, like an old Mitchell-Lama, to make it possible to build not only affordable housing, but workforce housing.
And I explained to him that only 3.8 percent of housing built in the last two decades was actually for workforce housing. And workforce housing is the city’s essential workers. It’s union construction workers, it’s cops, it’s firefighters, it’s nurses, sanitation, teachers. This is the backbone of the city, and these are the essential workers. And in the current environment, you know, these workers make a little too much money to qualify for affordable, but not enough for market rate.
So, this model of partnering with the City of New York and, I will tell you, a year and a half , the mayor signed an historic memorandum of agreement with Cirrus Workforce Housing and the Building Trades, and the mayor said, I’m going to use every tool in the city’s toolbox to help achieve this goal. I’m going to coordinate with all my agencies, and whatever we can do to help make this possible through collaboration, we’re going to do.
And a year and a half later, I’m really— this historic day, we’re standing here together announcing a 3,000-unit project, 80 acres of parkland. Think about this location. Right across the street, you have big box stores. Three miles away is all your stadiums. This is a great location. And you know, in this district, there’s almost zero vacancy. And there are 26,000 union members that live in this district, 26,000, right?
So, with this model, we’re going to put pension fund money, coordinate and collaborate and partner with the City of New York. We’re going to create thousands of good middle-class jobs that lead to careers. And one of the things that is very important to Mayor Adams and to the Building Trades as well, we’re going to also be able to bring people into the building trades, because there’s more work for marginalized communities and give them the opportunity to go into the middle class and pursue the American dream.
So, I want to thank Mayor Adams and all of the agency heads that are here for working with us. We look forward to doing this again and again and again. This is a scalable model. And I think this is a turning point that we have now reached. This is an inflection point for the City of New York and how we can build housing where it is a win-win for everyone involved. So, thank you very much. It’s now my pleasure to introduce the managing partner of the Cirrus Workforce Housing Fund, Joseph McDonnell.
Joseph McDonnell, Managing Partner, Cirrus Workforce Housing Fund: So, my name is Joseph McDonnell. I’m the managing partner of Cirrus Workforce Housing. Very excited to be here today. And I want to thank the people who made this happen over time. As Gary mentioned and the mayor mentioned, it’s taken about a year and a half to get here, which is quick in real estate time, but a lot of work has gone in to kind of get us to the beginning here.
So, thank you, Mayor Adams, Borough President Donovan Richards, Councilmember Vickie Paladino, and Gary, your tireless support has made this happen. We very much appreciate it and we see it. Community organizations, housing advocates, residents, and labor, all the people standing behind me, they’re leaders who had the vision to get behind this and realized that in order to help make a dent in the housing crisis, we were going to have to take affirmative action.
So, what I’m excited to see today is rather than diagnosing the problem, we’ve put together a public-private partnership that’s going to try to bring 3,000 units to what today is basically fallow land. And so what is going to be done here is to take 20 acres along the boulevard, create 3,000 units for the working people of New York, that’s teachers, policemen, firefighters, nurses, people who if you actually look at statistics today, some of them are commuting from the Poconos and from Pennsylvania, and to provide them dignified, high-quality housing surrounded by 60 acres of wetland that will be enjoyed not only by them but by the current residents. So, a win-win for everybody.
When you look at New York City today, the housing crisis everybody talks about, the reality is there aren’t a lot of easy sites left. This is 80 acres and it’s something that we need to do, and I think the vision of this administration and EDC, our partners, Elcor, have brought us to this point, and we’re excited to get started.
So, we look forward to collaborating with all of you. We thank you for coming out here today and showing your support, and many great things to come at the old Flushing Airport. Thank you. And with that, I’m happy to introduce one of our supporters on this and other projects, Borough President Donovan Richards. Thank you for being here and all your support always.
Queens Borough President Donovan Richards: Good afternoon, Queens. Great day for Queens County, and I couldn’t be prouder to be here during this historic morning, well, it’s afternoon now, historic afternoon as we breathe life back into the forgotten chapter of this community, into the former now Flushing Airport.
You know, this is the borough that are home to both of the city’s airports. This is the borough that gives travelers from all over the world an amazing first impression of New York, but this is also the borough that built our city’s aviation industry. And today, we really have an optimal opportunity to really address the housing crisis head-on.
And we’ve often talked about not just talking about the housing crisis, but building our way out of it. To take 3,000 units of workforce housing, and there’s always this conflict between building housing and labor, but today we’re getting it right across this borough and this city because labor is labor in the house. We are saying to the working people of this city that not only are you going to build, but you are also going to be part of building this borough and community as well.
And often what we’ve seen is a lot of our communities, and we’ve heard this, we hear this every day, many of our neighbors being pushed out of the city who can no longer afford it. The working, the middle class, to low-income New Yorkers who don’t have an opportunity to stay in this borough and this city. Today this is part of the transformation of, not only just this airport, but Queens is actually leading the way when we talk about what we’re doing in Jamaica, another 15,000 units.
Today we’ll be releasing our recommendation on Long Island City, another 15,000 units online. We’ve done in Arverne East, down in the Rockaways, taking 50 acres of land and turning that into almost 3,000 units of housing, transformational. So, we are really creating a pipeline for not only our union workers, we look at all the economic development that’s happening in Queens and look at what’s happening at Willets Point, the fastest growing, largest affordable housing development built in 40 years.
We look at the possibilities, we have at least two proposals that are before us at the state, and in a few weeks we’ll also be announcing the redevelopment of the Creedmoor site, and we’ve put some plans in place there already that are really going to transform another 50 acres of land that people can call home in this borough.
So today is really a transformational day. I really want to thank the mayor, I want to thank all of his agency partners, the union most importantly, for using your pension funds wisely. This is an investment in the working people of this borough and of this city, and this is certainly a home run for our borough. So, congratulations to everyone who made this possible today.
Mayor Adams: Thank you everybody. Great, great. Why don’t we take a few on topic questions.
Question: Appreciate you taking the time. So, you said it took about a year and a half since sort of conception bringing this forward, and that’s fast in real estate and construction terms and all of that, but I think for normal New Yorkers they hear a year and a half and then it’s going to take a certain amount of time to build. Most normal people are going to think, what takes so long?
So, you’ve been in this, you’ve been focused on this. Let me ask you the question from the perspective of a normal New Yorker when they look at housing deficits. What’s taking so long?
Mayor Adams: Yeah, no, and I think that’s a valid question to those who are outside looking in, but this is what we have not done. We have not sat on our hands and waited until projects like this come to completion. The goal in housing is always to have something in the pipeline.
And as I stated, we move the most New Yorkers in individual years out of homelessness into permanent housing in the history of the city. We have moved more people using our FHEPS voucher program in the history of the program. What now Deputy Mayor Carrión, what he did about building more housing in individual years in the history of individual years. So, I’m not sure how much history we have to do to show that we’re not waiting for projects in the future. We’re doing it right now.
Those buildings you see going up in Willets Point, when Gary and I stood there at Willets Point, there were no shovels in the ground. We had nothing but repair shops and junkyards. Now you see actual buildings going up. So, we understand the urgency. Everyone must join that urgency. We lost 20,000 units because of the move by the City Council and our City of Yes. We lost 20,000 homes.
So, all of us must be on the same page with the level of urgency. Our numbers don’t lie. Our level of urgency has been real. And as I stated, it may have been lost. And when I stated, we’re building more than 12 years of Bloomberg, eight years of de Blasio combined and three and a half years. If that’s not urgency, I don’t know what it is. You know, we heard the message. We got the memo. So, it needs experience, not extremism. And that is the difference, what you’re seeing now.
Question: How are you able to keep all of this housing so affordable? And are only city workers going to be allowed to live in it? And then one question for the councilmember. Will you be on board with the land use review procedure?
Mayor Adams: Yes, with the land use decision, the committee that was put in place, because people want to see housing and people occupied faster. I was down in Coney Island where we were dealing with a major development project there this morning with Congressman Hakeem Jeffries. And I was speaking to Don Capoccia, who was there, of stating how long it takes.
When housing is built, it takes too long to get people in the affordable arm. The everyday person who wants to rent a market rate, they’re in in no time. We have to do an examination of why is it taking us so long. And this is what we’re looking at. And it’s imperative that we examine what New Yorkers have said over and over again, as was just indicated. Why is it taking so long?
We’re doing our job. The process should not be this long. It just takes too long to build housing. No matter how fast we’re moving and we’re putting points on the board, the process is taking too long. The ULURP process is taking too long. There are too many layers. We need to shorten it substantially. Our action must meet the urgency. And right now, it has not been doing that. And that’s why we put in place the Charter Commission, to look at how do we shorten the timeline, because New Yorkers are asking for that at this moment.
Adolfo, do you want to talk about the – she was asking about who’s moving in.
Deputy Mayor Carrión: Yeah. So, you know, just in terms of the sense of urgency, I want to put it in context, and the mayor said earlier, the numbers don’t lie. They speak loudly. Deeds are far more important than words. And in this four-year term, and we’re only three years and seven months in, we’re just about to report, later this week, the record number of housing units that we created in the last year.
But in one term, in one four-year term, we will put into construction, into the cycle available to New Yorkers, from digging foundations to people leasing units, over 100,000 units. Over 100,000. So, when you ask about, you know, sort of the urgency of the moment, this administration stepped up to the challenge of history.
History gave us a 1.4 percent vacancy rate. History gave this mayor a city that was still climbing out of a pandemic economy, and it’s been the quickest, most aggressive turnaround, and the production numbers speak for themselves, let alone five neighborhood plans that are going to generate 50,000 units of housing over the next decade, and the massive rezoning.
The mayor referred to the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, that will create another 80,000 units of housing over the next 10 to 12 to 15 years. That is being responsible to the moment that you’ve been given. And so, the process does take long, but the agency who’s responsible for running the lottery is doing a full-court press on process improvement to ensure that New Yorkers can get into those affordable housing units as quickly as possible.
Question: I guess I had a similar question. You know, the assurances, it’s been a year and a half to get here, but how do you assure New Yorkers, you know, 3,000 units sounds great, but it’s not today. And that’s, you know, what assurances do you have as part of the project to make sure that it’s meeting the timeline and gets done quickly?
Mayor Adams: Yeah, I think the best insurance for the future is to look how successful we were in the past. You know, I don’t know if this is resonating. We did more than 20 years of two mayors combined, while inheriting an asylum seeker crisis, while inheriting COVID, while inheriting a crime crisis. While we build housing, we took 22,000 illegal guns off the streets, so we can make it safe for tenants.
There has to come a point when we are analyzing it and come to the same results that bond raters are coming to. The bond raters raised our bonds for a reason, that no matter what you threw at this administration, they were able to successfully turn around the economy.
More jobs in New York in the city’s history. Broadway had the greatest 12 months that they had in history. Shooting and homicides at the lowest in recorded history in the last six months. No tax on working-class, low-income people in the city, because of our Axe the Tax phenomenon.
More small businesses are operating in the city’s history. I mean, when do we come to the point of saying, [], this guy did one hell of a job? We got to reach this. What else we need to do? We have to come to a point where we said, no matter what they threw at him, we saw a union member, working-class mayor, what these guys do every day.
Every day, they have to make it happen with what they have. And that’s what we did. And so, if you want to know how committed we are for the future, just take a peek into the past, into the current, and you’ll see that you can bet your dollar on New York, and you can bet your dollar on this administration.
Okay, got to bounce.
July 28, 2025 Manhattan, New York
Sources: nyc.gov , Big New York news BigNY.com
