By Melissa Zavala

For drivers speeding along the Grand Central Parkway past Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, the unusual skyline bordering the highway might look otherworldly. The fourth largest in the city and the flagship park for the borough of Queens offers vistas of striking modernist buildings along its margins. The two most visible from the highway are the Queens Museum and the New York State Pavilion, relics from two World’s Fairs. What is now the Queens Museum was built in 1939. A standard-setting spectacle, “The World of Tomorrow” was the theme of the first fair. [1] Behind it is the 1964 New York State Pavilion. This building is seemingly out of a science-fiction novel, with two towers adjacent to a circular structure topped with wires strung across, resembling a spaceship. The sci-fi reference is no embellishment; this site is featured in the movie Men in Black (1997), which raised the building’s profile globally. The utopian motif of “Peace Through Understanding” from the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair starkly contrasts with today’s political landscape, when the idea of the perfectibility of everyday life seems quaint, porous marshes continue to be dangerously overdeveloped, and chipping parkland away by signing it over for debatable improvements to private parties is considered sensible. While the park’s original development for the World’s Fair was also an example of public and private funds being marshaled for the public’s benefit, today’s development battles over Willets Point’s future reflect a dramatic shift in priorities and emphasis, claiming private progress as public good, especially in the form of a large casino.

A major achievement in public infrastructure, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park was once marshland. The meadow was destroyed, however, by the dumping activities of the Brooklyn Ash Removal Company, the Long Island Railroad, local contractors, and negligent politicians. Dumping activities throughout the 1920s transformed the area into the Corona Ash Dump made famous by F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, described as a field of ashes rising 100-feet, growing like wheat into grotesque gardens.[1] Parks Commissioner and “Master Builder” Robert Moses undertook the task of closing the dump and redeveloping the area as parkland in the 1930s, an effort that took more than thirty years to complete. As part of a display of power and the potential of government to transform people’s lives, Moses strongly promoted public works.[2] The urban vision that emerges from his speeches and personal letters presents cities as ripe for radical transformation with the government as a prominent actor facilitating fundamental change. In a Herald Tribune Forum for Community Planning on November 17, 1943, Moses said:

Every man, woman and child has [sic] contacts with the city government and few of them are so independent or so indifferent as not to be vitally affected by the daily running of the municipal machinery and the expansion and improvement of the city’s plant. Millions cannot be fed, transported, protected, educated and given opportunities for recreation without the local government. Businessmen cannot live, much less flourish, without it. [4]

The post-1970s fiscal crisis paradigm promoting tax incentives for private development as a form of public-private partnerships has become so commonplace that arguments about intrusive and inept government continue to echo Ronald Reagan’s famous quip about the nine most terrifying words in the English language. Political partisanship and anti-government attitudes propose that the common good can best be developed and preserved by private parties. But what roles do corporate interests play in molding social worlds and, in turn, what is the part of the government?

Like other mayors before him, Eric Adams has hailed public-private partnerships as opportunities. In the education sector, housing, parks, and other areas, funding such initiatives is conceived as broadening opportunities and incorporating additional funding sources for the public’s benefit. But critics of these types of partnerships, including the World Bank, point to the inequalities built into these relationships. Two key problems are a lack of private partner accountability and the sidelining of people by profits, among others. In the case of parks, these partnerships have harnessed neighborhood volunteers and promoted advocacy for open spaces. But along with benefits, there have also been drawbacks, including the deepening of inequalities across parks. After all, it is clear to see the benefits of the Central Park Conservancy on the landscaping of one of the world’s most famous parks, which stands in sharp contrast to the challenges facing other parks including Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.

Moreover, private players have continuously shaped the life of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. Facilitated by municipal government efforts, wasteland was transformed into parkland to host two World’s Fairs in New York City. The second fair from 1964 expanded the participation of some of the business giants of the time beyond that of the first fair from 1939. Corporations benefited from additional exposure to new consumers excited about the fair’s novel products. The NYS Pavilion provided Texaco an opportunity to advertise gasoline across the state. The floor of the building, the largest cartographic representation in the world, featured a giant map of New York State highlighting Texaco stations throughout the area.

*The pavilion’s interior, following a $24 Million restoration under former Mayor Bill de Blasio and Queens Borough President Melinda Katz. Photo by author.*

The Pavilion is itself representative of private and public worlds. It is a corporate and architectural marvel past its glory days and with an uncertain future. While working at Queens Theatre in the Park from 1997-2006, I saw different efforts intended to boost the status of this iconic building in disrepair. Blue lights adorned the outside rings of the observation towers until the bulbs started to burn out and the lamps fell off. Fresh coats of red and white paint were applied until they faded. More recently, the rings were painted bright yellow, and the red and white stripes were repainted. Despite cosmetic improvements, the building continued to sink and the expense of salvaging it kept its preservation from ranking very high on the list of priorities for parks or the city. Despite it becoming an eyesore, World’s Fair aficionados in attendance 60 years ago, motivated by nostalgia, called for its restoration, led by The New York State Pavilion Paint Project and People for the Pavilion. Mitch Silverstein, a co-founder of the New York State Pavilion Paint Project, attributes his passion for restoration to childhood memories. [5] Other youthful reminiscences include memories of new experiences at the fair as well as cherished rock bands like Led Zeppelin, the Grateful Dead, and others, when the Pavilion was a concert venue and a roller-skating rink in the 1970s and early 1980s. [6]

Both the Pavilion and its adjacent structure, originally the Kodak building, offer examples of private buildings donated to the public which have been costly to maintain and conserve. Various preservation attempts have been pursued for both. The Kodak building was rescued from the sort of neglect suffered by the Pavilion thanks to its enclosed structure and to the backing of the Cultural Institutions Group as well as former Queensborough President, the late Claire Schulman, who attended the fair with her children and had a special fondness for it: “We would take our three children almost every week to the fair and have dinner at a different country’s pavilion. It was such a wonderful time to share with children. The Pieta [sic] stood out for me, so historic and holy,” she told the Queens Chronicle in 2014 for an article commemorating the fair spotlighting readers’ recollections. [7] Municipal support has been uneven, however, despite the Pavilion’s historic, architectural, and aesthetic value. This is a common problem for Queens, where preservation lags behind the other boroughs. [8]

*Queens Theatre was expanded in 2012 to include a cabaret space (to the left, in the back) and an atrium (front and center), visible here. Photo by author.*

In contrast to the Pavilion, the second site juxtaposed in this essay, the parking lot by Citi Field, is a private for-profit lot leased to a private individual for 80 years, situated on public parkland. A productive meadow, home to a range of wildlife, despoiled, filled, transformed into a parking lot, is now where Steve Cohen, owner of the Mets, plans to build a casino complex with entertainment venues, restaurants, more parking lots, and some open space. In his papers, Robert Moses espoused the productiveness of private-public partnerships for maintaining and enhancing urban parks. On August 24, 1947, during the F.H. LaGUARDIA HOUR on WJZ Talk, Moses discussed the subject The Public Works Problems of New York City, saying: “There is no inherent conflict between private and public enterprise. The private car is worthless without the public road. A house is unlivable without sewers, streets, schools, sanitation, police protection and other public services. Businesses can’t live without public and quasi-public transportation. Human nerves cannot be healthy without recreation parks and playgrounds. Culture can live only with increasing public support.” [9]

The parking lot proposed for development hosts other events throughout the year including the Amaze Light Festival seen here behind promotional material at an early Envisioning Session held in 2023. Photo by author.

While Moses embraced the interplay between public and private, as a public servant he maintained an emphasis on municipal funding and benefits to the commons. Presently, the balance between public and private has shifted, with the primacy of public benefit eroding. How compatible are public-private partnerships for maintaining and improving the public commons as publicly funded programs in service to all? With contradictory aims among residents as well as government administrations, with some supportive of robust public works and others more enthusiastic about collaborations across private and public sectors, outcomes can be uneven. Alliances of non-profit groups like Guardians of Flushing Bay and the FED UP Coalition and construction unions like the Building Trades Employers’ Association and others, have also been highly visible stakeholders in a debate with unclear public-private boundaries. Local residents, too, are split about the promise of this proposed project, which would remove parkland designation and increase traffic without improvements to transportation systems, among other shortcomings. Others support the project as a job-creator, seeing it as transformative.

On a warm Friday evening, on May 19, 2023, State Senator Jessica Ramos held her first of three Town Hall Meetings on the proposed casino plan offering 20,000 jobs, bike paths, restaurants, upgraded waterfront access, improvements to the Willets Point train station, and much more. Reactions to the proposed development plan were mixed, as reflected in the audience’s questions and comments. Some residents called for dropping the word casino, instead referring to the proposal as an “entertainment center” while others underscored that parkland alienation is a disservice to all New Yorkers. Some media outlets reported Flushing residents calling “bullshit” on Steve Cohen’s plan. [10]

In a case of corporate astroturfing, Cohen’s team packed the third Town Hall meeting at the New York Hall of Science with union workers the following winter. On a mild weekday evening on February 7, 2024, vociferous workers called for jobs. But they quickly vacated the hall as the counterproposal designed by local groups wrapped up. Steve Cohen’s spokesperson, Michael “Sully” Sullivan, was once again questioned that evening on the viability of this plan when other failed casinos demonstrate that these ventures don’t pay. Asian residents of Flushing regularly point out that siting a casino so close to their neighborhood is intentional and based on racist stereotypes about their supposed gambling addiction. [11] The tensions among supporters and the opposition, stoked by Cohen’s lobbying efforts as benefits are offered to nearby civic groups and businesses, harm the community not only given the plan’s divisiveness, but also because a project of this magnitude is ecologically unsound in a flood zone.

Sully has led the charge for Steve Cohen’s Point72 company, which has been conducting extensive public outreach. Boundlessly energetic, he has been meeting with local groups for over a year and presenting the design plan for “Metropolitan Park” to community boards. Paid staff canvassed northwest Queens neighborhoods in flashy t-shirts asking residents if they prefer parks over parking lots with the name of the proposed park prominently displayed across the back. Shiny brochures and phone surveys bombarded residents with the false dichotomy of parks versus parking lots throughout 2023, generating some support through confusion as numerous residents remain unaware that the Citi Field parking lot is city parkland and that a new park will not be built unless there is support for the casino–the key feature of the plan, which gets left out or muddied in outreach efforts. The promise of public goods delivered by private businesses, sometimes serving as fronts, is not new. We need only recall the historic case of Aaron Burr conning Alexander Hamilton into backing a public waterworks scheme called the Manhattan Water Company, which left the city with tainted water in order to found what later became JPMorgan Chase, to remind ourselves that public benefits are not the main drivers behind private investments.

*Most of the local chop shops are now gone as developers transform the area into a brand-new neighborhood. The last of these shops are private businesses with land leases. Photo by author.*

Are the existing legal mechanisms sufficient for ensuring mutually beneficial outcomes for private developers and residents alike? My fieldwork in parks across the city reveals that not all parks are created equal. [12] During her first Town Hall Meeting, Senator Ramos further reminded us of the pitfalls and inequalities or private investments using public goods. There, she noted that she would like to see Cohen taxed accordingly, also underscoring that he is not a city resident, which has not deterred him from wanting to control city land. She has also pointed out that unlike California, NY State does not require development projects to address community needs, it does not do a good enough job outlining these or enforcing terms of agreement. She cites the Barclays Center as a telling example of how no community benefits have been realized years post-construction. [13]

The NYS Pavilion and the baseball parking lot located in the same park represent a tale of two promises for the greater good as well as a story of ongoing inequality. Supporters and detractors debate the complicated private amenities on public land argued to be in service to, and reflective of, a public desiring progress. But a modernist relic hailing perfectibility now physically sinks into soft land on a site still behaving as marshland aggravated by regular and stronger storms enhanced by climate change. [14] What will it take to preserve the Pavilion and the parkland hosting the lot in question? How will the city’s government respond on behalf of New Yorkers, some of whom fiercely love their parks and others demanding jobs?

*Clearance for housing, a school, and other amenities planned across the street from Citi Field began in 2023 on a site with a long history of pollution and neglect. Photo by author.*

The transformation of this area has begun. Clearance of the chop shops shifted into overdrive in 2023 as shops without leases were evicted and the land was cleared. Private businesses were removed for private development ostensibly presented as a public good. Developers continue to promote new plans as greener than the industrial and commercial use this area has served. New populations will supposedly benefit from the development of a state-of-the-art neighborhood, a community expected to contrast significantly from the previous working-class immigrant population sustained by this area. In the case of the parking lot, it serves the stadium as a complicated public-private entity as well. A private business with public subsidies that also generates revenue for and is attended by the public, much like the nearby tennis stadium also situated in the park. [15]

On either side of debates over development and progress is the need to protect public health and open space belonging to us all equally. The borough of Queens faces a future of sinking developments just a short walk from each other. The funding and political will to preserve a prized structure have been missing for over half a century despite public interest. Now, the city considers losing 65 acres of parkland to a capitalist venture as its best option for preservation, especially as a response to flooding and rising temperatures, as has happened along the waterfront in Long Island City. It does not matter that LaGuardia Airport and nearby Arthur Ashe Stadium are also sinking or that a casino can very well mean more tumbling ruins. Will the city soon inherit another shrine to consumption in need of rescue from the fate of a neighboring sinking relic, if not in Flushing, then near the airport or elsewhere? Which world of tomorrow is worth preserving? This is an ongoing challenge facing the city.

Melissa Zavala is an anthropologist studying New York City’s parks. Using the Fresh Kills landfill as a main case study, her research explores urban biodiversity as it intersects with waste and pollution.

[1] Wurts, Richard. The New York World’s Fair 1939/1940 in 155 Photographs by Richard Wurts and Others. Text by Stanley Appelbaum. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1977), ix.

[2] Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. (Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions, Ltd, 2019), 19.

[3] Caro, Robert A. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), 183.

[4] New York Public Library Rare Books and Manuscripts Division—Robert Moses Papers 1912-1980. New York Parks Department: Box 135 – Moses Speeches Series 14 1939-195, folder no. 9.

[5] Tumola, Cristabelle. “Star of Queens: Mitch Silverstein, Co-Founder New York State Pavilion Paint Project.” Queens.com, May 5, 2014, https://qns.com/2014/05/star-of-queens-mitch-silverstein-co-founder-new-york-state-pavilion-paint-project/.

[6] For more on the life of the Pavilion after the fair, the Center for Architectural Conservation at the University of Pennsylvania offers a close recap: https://www.conlab.org/acl/thereallybigmap/exhibit/postFair.html.

[7] Rhoades, Liz. “Readers tell us their memories of the World’s Fair 1964-65 event left a lasting impression on those who attended it.” Queens Chronicle, June 19, 2014, https://www.qchron.com/editions/queenswide/readers-tell-us-their-memories-of-the-worlds-fair/article_2f1b9919-11a7-5e4a-aec8-f5fb5109bfd3.html.

[8] According to a report by NYU’s Furman Center on the history of preservation in the city, Queens has just 1.6 percent of the lot area “covered by an LPC designation. The percentages for other boroughs are 5.2 in Brooklyn, 3.2 in the Bronx, and 3.1 percent in Staten Island” while Manhattan has 27 percent of lots included in a historic district or designated as individual or interior landmarks. Ellen, Ingrid Gould, Brian J. McCabe, and Eric Edwards Stern. Fifty Years of Historic Preservation in New York City (March 7, 2016), 22.

[9] New York Public Library Rare Books and Manuscripts Division—Robert Moses Papers 1912-1980. New York Parks Department: Box 99 – Department of Parks 1947-1953.

[10] Local businesses, especially those wooed by Cohen’s firm, support the plan. Restaurant owners in particular are being offered a reward point system for casino visitors to spend money in nearby restaurants. In turn, local business owners have been lobbying Senator Jessica Ramos to support the project, as Queens papers report: https://qns.com/2024/04/dozens-of-restaurant-and-small-business-owners-urge-sen-ramos-to-support-the-8b-metroplitan-park-proposal-at-citi-field/.

[11] Tong, Julia. “Asian am youth speak out against proposed casino in Queens.” Asamnews. April 7, 2023; Mohamed, Carlotta. “Flushing community members rally against plan to build casino near Citi Field.” Qns.com. March 6, 2023.

[12] My research on parkland restorations and environmental conservation analyzes urban reclamations in New York City. Between 2010-2013, I participated in restoration projects around the city. Inequalities in park access and funding are a recurring theme correlating with class and ethnicity.

[13] deMause, Neil, “Queens Casino Debates Return: Will Jessica Ramos Be the Immovable Object to Steve Cohen’s Unstoppable Force?” Hell Gate. Nov. 28, 2023.

[14] Cohen’s plan is presented as a response to what his design team admits is a flood zone in need of drainage.

[15] The proposed soccer stadium site, where the chop shops used to be, represents an additional wrinkle to the complicated relationship between the private and the public. Developers are claiming that the public in Queens, consisting largely of Latin Americans and people from the Caribbean, are represented by the development plan given that they are heavy users of the park’s playing fields and are soccer enthusiasts.

Spectacular Ruins: Conservation and Boosterism in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park