Everyone is betting on Willets Point — not everyone wants in.

Citi Field and its adjacent parking lots, where Metropolitan Park will be built in the coming years. Source: Jonathan Mak

In 1975, Shea Stadium was the place to be for New York City’s sports fans. Yankee Stadium was being renovated and the original Giants Stadium was still undergoing construction. It was, and still is, the only year the Mets, Yankees, Jets and Giants called the same stadium home.

From April to December, over three and a half million fans and 175 games were crammed into a single, overused turf in the Willets Point neighborhood of Queens — only to watch all four teams stagger through a joyless, playoff-less end to their calendars.

“Folklore has it that it was an electric environment; it probably won’t ever be repeated again,” Tom Grech, a 64-year-old life-long Mets fan, said.

Before its sports history, Willets Point was a biologically diverse marshland that became an ash-dumping site in the 1920s when New York ran on coal-fired burners — a trash-burning operation that inspired “The Valley of Ashes” in “The Great Gatsby.” When the city was awarded the 1939 World’s Fair, legislators saw the land as cheap and easily transformable to manage crowds.

The city decided to use the site as a parking lot during two World’s Fairs, a technological showcase that promised a better tomorrow, in Flushing-Meadows Corona Park during 1939 and 1964. The purchase was cheap and displaced minimal residents at the time. Acting as the second Fair’s central point, Shea Stadium was “the beginning of somewhat of a revitalization,” Grech said.

Tucked into a northern corridor of Queens, the horseshoe-shaped stadium sat within tangled highways — the Whitestone Expressway, Grand Central Parkway, Van Wyck Expressway, and the Long Island Expressway running beneath it.

The Yankees and Giants moved out after the 1975 season, and the Jets stayed around until 1983, when they moved into Giants Stadium in New Jersey with their rivals. The city started demolishing the stadium in 2008, deciding that its structure, built in 1964, was so outdated that it was determined “functionally obsolete” by the New York Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC).

By the time Shea Stadium was demolished in 2009, its replacement, Citi Field, was already open, hosting its first Mets game in April the same year. Today, the stadium’s former home plate is marked on the gray concrete of Citi Field’s usually empty parking lot, just over a mile from LaGuardia Airport and a 10-minute walk from the edge of Flushing Bay. Now, a controversial $8 billion entertainment hub is set to redefine New York City’s sports and entertainment scene again.

At the time, the 50 acres of land surrounding what is now Citi Field were just parking — and in 2026, it’s still just parking. But within the next decade, that gray, flat lot will house not just Citi Field, but a new $8 billion project called Metropolitan Park. The park will follow Mets’ billionaire owner Steve Cohen’s “community-driven vision” of a “sports and entertainment park that New York deserves,” the development’s website reads.

A rendering of Metropolitan Park. Source: Metropolitan Park.

Cohen and Queens Future, an LLC that Cohen created to advocate for the project, have touted bringing $1 billion in community benefits: 25 acres of public park space, community athletic fields, a concert venue and a food hall showcasing local Queens vendors.

But the main driver of money for the development — and by far the most controversial — is the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino.

The casino has generated substantial pushback from community members — from protests starting last October to a lawsuit filed this April, a last-ditch attempt to stop the casino from being built.

Metropolitan Park is one of three projects — along with Bally’s Bronx and Resorts World NYC next to the Aqueduct, due south — within the five boroughs to receive a historic casino gaming license in December 2025. The award followed an arduous 13-year process that included a proposed project in Times Square backed by rapper Jay-Z and a physical fight at a public meeting of Coney Island’s Community Advisory Committee.

On the other side of Citi Field, just 50 feet across Seaver Way, another almost $800 million development is coming to the area. New York City FC (NYCFC) is set to open its fully electric, 25,000-seater stadium — New York City’s first soccer-specific arena, known as Etihad Park. NYCFC is owned by Abu Dhabi-based City Football Group, which acquired Manchester City Football Club in 2008, turning the North West English team from a second-division side into one of Europe’s best clubs within a decade. The club hopes to apply the same playbook here.

The club broke ground in December 2024 and will open just in time for Major League Soccer’s transition to a fall-to-spring calendar in early 2027. It is fully financed by the club’s ownership group, City Football Group (CFG), and is expected to host up to eight soccer matches as part of the 2028 summer Olympics soccer tournament. Wrapping around the stadium’s shadow will be Willets Point Commons — a 2,500-unit affordable housing development, the largest affordable housing project in the city in 40 years.

The USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center will affect Willets Point as well. The center hosts the annual U.S. Open at the end of summer, and “is busier than ever,” according to The New York Times — fan attendance records were smashed in 2025. The USTA is trying to keep up with its demand, announcing an $800 million investment to renovate the grounds by 2027 to create more seating and open space.

What Willets Point looked like through the years. Source: Thomas Byrne via Facebook / A map of what Willets Point will look like with Metropolitan Park, Etihad Park and Willets Point Commons built. Source: Metropolitan Park

By the time both projects are complete within a decade, Willets Point will be home to a casino, a soccer stadium, a baseball stadium, a tennis stadium, a school and over 2,500 new residents. It will host international sporting events like the U.S. Open and Olympic soccer matches, with the infrastructure around to keep fans entertained outside of sports. They will turn Willets Point into the second-largest sports and entertainment hub on the East Coast, only topped in size by the South Philadelphia Sports Complex in PA, which has its own casino, three stadiums and a park.

No other neighborhood in New York City is absorbing this much capital, this much construction and this much political consequence at once. These developments will all be within walking distance of one another, and all within walking distance of the immigrant communities that have called this corner of Queens home for generations. What gets built here, and who it gets built for, will define the borough’s next chapter.

The Casino

Jack Hu and a dozen members of the Queens Anti-Casino group gathered inside a Flushing bodega on a morning in late February. They needed to hide out from brisk, 40-degree weather and iron out the kinks of a planned protest before the neighborhood’s annual Lunar New Year’s parade. The group followed the parade, which included lion dance shows by local performers, a traditional festivity during Lunar New Year. The parade snaked through Flushing along Union Street and Main Street to the Queens Library, where local elected officials and community leaders made speeches. For Hu, it was the perfect opportunity for the group to show their opposition as a collective against the coming casino.

All 13 protesters — who passed around signs, posters and flags reading “Racist Casino,” “Rescind the Casino License” and “[Governor Kathy] Hochul and [Senator John] Liu Want 2 Build Casinos & Destroy Flushing” — walked over to the intersection of 37th Ave. and Union. There, they chanted “Shame on you” and “No justice, no peace, get these sell-outs off our streets,” as soon as State Senator. John Liu and other local community leaders walked by holding a large banner.

[embed]The Queens Anti-Casino group marching alongside the Flushing Lunar New Year’s Parade, yelling, “John Liu, shame on you.” Source: Jonathan Mak

“They have lost the right to walk in these parades and wave their hands to the communities that they’ve betrayed,” Hu said, explaining the anti-casino group’s presence. “We wanted to make it very clear that [the elected officials] betrayed the community, [they’re] not welcome here to have a photo-op. We want you to do things that help the community, not harm it.”

After protesting alongside the parade, the anti-casino group made a stand in front of the library, waving their posters and flags with Hu continuing the chants through a megaphone behind the stage. Another set of members from the Queens Anti-Casino group were on the other side of Main St. with their own set of protest posters, showing their opposition to the development right in front of all the elected and non-elected politicians.

The Flushing Lunar New Year Parade stop outside Queens Library, where protestors gathered to fight the coming casino. Source: Jonathan Mak

The group has continued to make a stand every week since Metropolitan Park was awarded one of three gaming licenses in December 2025. Groups of three or four handed out flyers that called for Gov. Kathy Hochul’s resignation in front of the Queens Library every Sunday, even moving into the Flushing-Main St. station when the weather went below freezing. They have also sifted through public records, scheduled canvas routes, planned the group’s strategies for talking to the press and found ways to motivate people in the community to take action.

Their cultivated research has led to a website with a compilation of public records, statistics, hearing records and detailed profiles of stakeholders in the project that “follows the money” from Willets Point’s local elected officials to Steve Cohen.

Hu has split his time into three since joining the cause in 2023: keeping his 9–5 job, going to the gym to maintain his physical and mental health and organizing the anti-casino group’s actions. Between him and the other lead organizers, Hu is the spokesperson for the group — he talks to most of the press who cover the anti-casino group’s actions and battles against the casino.

Metropolitan Park has even been deemed “predatory” by some due to its close proximity to Flushing, a largely Asian-American community — most notably by the Queens Anti-Casino group — where research studies have shown that Asians have higher prevalence rates of pathological and problem gambling than other racial groups in the U.S.

This fight is a personal one for Hu, whose father struggled with a gambling addiction for his entire life. When he was just a child, his father would drive the family out to the Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut or Atlantic City in New Jersey and give him $10 to go spend at the arcade, “bored out of my mind,” whilst Hu’s dad went to gamble with his mother watching. There was no changing his mind when he wanted to gamble.

“I grew up in a very chaotic household that affected my emotional health, and [created] bad habits in myself that I had to unlearn when I was an adult and in my teenage years,” Hu said. “This was a very personal issue to me when they announced it, because it’s not just my family, it’s all of the folks in predominantly Asian communities [that] are affected disproportionately by casinos.”

In fact, Senator Liu has come under intense scrutiny from his constituents because of his previous stance on casinos in his neighborhoods. In 2024, the senator and Manhattan Assemblymember Grace Lee wrote an op-ed in the New York Daily News warning against how new casinos would exacerbate gambling addiction amongst the Asian-American community.

“Gambling in the Asian American community is a problem that unfortunately is not being taken seriously enough, and there can be no doubt that the arrival of new casinos in New York City will lead to increased rates of gambling addiction, financial hardship and strained familial relationships for Asian-American New Yorkers,” Liu and Lee wrote in the Daily News. “Moreover, the proximity of casinos to Asian-American populated communities raises concerns about vulnerable elderly and low-income groups who are already at high risk of exposure.”

Mahjong tables and other social gambling games are ever-present at Chinese family gatherings, especially during the Lunar New Year, where it’s traditional for families to wager small bets whilst playing. It’s been a part of Chinese culture for centuries, with an ancient proverb even stating, “A little gambling is soothing and relaxing; heavy gambling could affect your mental health.”

A study in 2022 conducted surveys on the Asian-American communities in the Greater Boston region found that 65% of interviewees gambled for the entertainment and the social aspect of it, and more than 20% of the interviews brought up gambling as a way to relax and relieve stress.

However, a little over a year later, Liu helped Cohen introduce a controversial parkland alienation bill into legislation. It was crucial to turn the parking lot land, previously considered public city parkland, into commercial property.

In May 2025, it passed the New York State Assembly and the New York State Senate comfortably. The bill was signed by Gov. Hochul the following month, and Citi Field’s parking lots were officially reclassified as commercial property, removing the single largest statutory barrier to construction.

In return, Cohen promised to build Flushing Skypark, a pedestrian walkway connecting downtown Flushing to Willets Point reminiscent of the High Line in Hudson Yards. Queens Daily Eagle was skeptical about the commitment, calling it a “longshot.” Liu also secured a major maintenance fund for Flushing Meadows, dedicating a reported $100 million to infrastructure projects.

A rendering of Flushing Skypark. Source: Senator John Liu on Instagram

In their op-ed, Liu and Lee wrote that casinos must “meet the needs of this historically underfunded and victimized community,” and that “it means doing more than building opulent subway entrances and bike paths.”

Hu saw the irony in his words.

“[Liu] is Taiwanese-American, he knows the harms, he wrote about it,” Hu said. “For him to turn his back on us, it’s just been a complete slap in the face to our community.”

Senator Liu’s office did not respond for comment.

Citi Field’s parking lot on a Mets gameday, the future site of Metropolitan Park. Source: Jonathan Mak

The process, which resulted in Bally’s, Resorts World and Metropolitan Park all receiving gaming licenses, started in 2013 when voters approved up to seven casino facilities in New York state. Four licenses were given out immediately upstate, with a seven-year moratorium on downstate casino licenses. Tioga Downs, del Lago and Rivers Casino in Mohawk Harbor opened within two months of each other, from December 2015 to February the following year.

Resorts World Catskills opened exactly two years after Rivers, and is owned by Genting Group. The same ownership ran a video casino and hotel in Jamaica, Queens, next to John F. Kennedy International Airport.

The downstate casino licenses were allowed to be handed out in 2022, two years after Steve Cohen bought the Mets. Cohen, the wealthiest owner in Major League Baseball, immediately held six “visioning sessions” for Citi Field’s 50-acre parking lot.

At the end of February 2023, Queens Future, which led the workshops, had identified three wishes from the community: creating local jobs, bringing year-round entertainment to the area and building new parks and areas for recreation.

The bid had to jump through a few legislative hoops for the bid to be awarded the license at the end of 2025, when the New York State Gaming Commission awarded the Resorts World NYC, Bally’s Bronx and Metropolitan Park Hard Rock bids the three coveted casino licenses to operate in New York City.

A map of four upstate casinos (orange) and three downstate casinos (yellow) in New York State. Source: Jonathan Mak

After the New York City Council approved a change to the city’s code to allow gaming facilities on commercial zones, the Council approved a Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) for Metropolitan Park that needed votes from six different community boards because of its location.

It was a process that started in March and ended in the Community Advisory Committee unanimously approving the proposal across its six community boards that geographically encompassed Metropolitan Park. While the four voted overwhelmingly in favor of the casino, one abstained and CB3 was the last to vote. It drew the most vocal opposition, approving the casino with a 26–8 split — the narrowest margin amongst the five boards that voted.

“There were six separate meetings [with] various inputs, and I, [as] the Queen’s Chamber, went to every single one of those,” Grech said. “We sang the praises of the deal and of the opportunity as the economic engine that this area has never had.”

Following the ULURP process, the parkland alienation bill was pivotal in allowing the construction of Metropolitan Park. After Senator Liu and Assemblymember Larinda Hooks introduced the bill, it passed the state committee 4–3, with Senator Jessica Ramos a vocal opponent of the bill and the casino.

“Gambling is a drug like any other, and we have some addiction services, but I fear we are not prepared for the level of addiction that can be created across all of the different multicultural communities that exist in such a diverse area,” Ramos said. “That’s going to lead people to perhaps be on the verge of eviction, lose their jobs and perpetuate generational poverty when we’re supposed to be doing the exact opposite.”

It then passed the New York State Assembly with a 138–7 margin and the New York State Senate 54–5, leading to the six-member Community Advisory Committee to unanimously approve Cohen’s bid for a casino. It was a show of “deep and broad support” at the time, according to Karl Rickett, a Metropolitan Park spokesperson.

But the Queens Anti-Casino group contends that Metropolitan Park used biased procedures in the CAC public hearings that did not allow opponents an equal opportunity to speak to the committee. They filed a lawsuit first in the New York County Supreme Court, then at Queens County Supreme Court to overturn the New York State Gaming Commission’s decision on April 13, 2026, months after the license was awarded, because of the biased procedures and Cohen’s moral character. They alleged the committee failed to evaluate the billionaire’s integrity because his hedge fund was fined $1.8 billion in 2013 for insider trading and is currently facing ongoing litigation for tax avoidance.

The first lawsuit was dismissed due to “improper venue,” but Hu has filed a motion to reargue because the license was issued in the county. The second one is still being argued.

Still, Metropolitan Park is going ahead with construction. The Queens Daily Eagle reported sightings of construction machines on the parking lot in February.

In return, the entertainment hub promised to deliver large social and economic boons. There will be 25 acres of public parkland and more than $1 billion in community benefits — like the $163 million fund for a Community Impact Trust that will provide grants to Queens non-profit organizations, the $480 million set aside for public infrastructure improvements to the 7-line Willets Point station and $25 million to support responsible gaming and improve youth and senior services.

Metropolitan Park will also create over 23,000 unionized jobs and Willets Commons 1,550 permanent jobs, and 14,200 construction jobs, for the surrounding communities of East Elmhurst, Jackson Heights, Corona and Flushing.

The casino itself estimated that it will bring in $3.9 billion within its first year, as well as thousands of jobs for locals living in the surrounding neighborhoods of Flushing, Corona, East Elmhurst and Jackson Heights.

Grech believes in this “transformative opportunity” because it is all privately funded and will give back to the community, at least economically.

“It’s ripple effect jobs in the area, and those will be around for as long as the project takes, three to five years all in,” Grech said. “Once it’s built, it’ll be 6,000 careers where people can go in there, work, have a skill, learn a trade — and these are the jobs that are going to stick. It’s a generational change in mindset for that entire area.”

Yet, those who are living in these neighborhoods remain divided on whether these changes will benefit the area they call home.

“[Cohen] wants to make money off the gambling addiction of local communities,” Charles Park said. A Flushing-born, Jackson Heights resident, Park is running for New York’s 6th Congressional District, encompassing Flushing, Forest Hills, and Bayside.

Ramos agreed, saying that though the casino itself will create jobs, it takes away from the economic opportunity in the area surrounding it.

“It’s not a net gain in jobs for the community, and is poised to hurt small businesses the most,” Ramos said.

Supporters of Metropolitan Park have always touted the thousands of union jobs that the development will create. However, Park and Ramos argue that Cohen is targeting the small businesses around the area, what the communities of Flushing, Corona, Jackson Heights and East Elmhurst mostly consist of. They are predominantly Asian, Hispanic, and Black immigrant neighborhoods which will lose out to the billionaire Cohen trying to siphon money from the community into his own pockets through operating the casino.

Joseph Foudy, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, says it would take revenue away from the local businesses and grow revenue in another — the casino.

“I’m just not sure where [the estimates are] coming from,” Foudy said. “But as a safe rule of thumb, anytime I see these revenue estimates, I assume they’re bullish.”

“I don’t believe that there’s going to be magically billions and millions of tourists dropping tons of money,” Park agreed. “It’s going to look exactly like what we already see in the casino that’s already here in Resorts World — It’s just depressing.”

The New York Times’ Matthew Haag reported that for new casinos opening up, “reality has not matched the initial forecasts, especially in urban areas,” and “new ones popping up all the time that cannibalize one another’s business and rely on loyal gamblers from their neighborhoods.”

It does not bode well for Metropolitan Park, which will have to compete against Bally’s Bronx and Resorts World New York City. It opened its doors on April 28, 2026, as the first casino to operate live gaming tables in the Big Apple. All three are within a 45-minute drive of each other.

“We’re not going to play this game anymore,” Hu said. “We’re going to take the street and start organizing, talking to residents and trying to build a base, instead of chasing this advocacy route where [the elected officials] are not listening to you. They already know what their position is.”

A possible future

Manchester was the “Cottonopolis” of England’s old industrial cities, leading the world in textiles during the Industrial Revolution. It had a head start, already manufacturing and producing fabrics before the Industrial Revolution, and used that momentum to push itself to the forefront of exporting finished goods. East Manchester’s cotton mills, engineering works, coal mines and dye factories like the Ciba-Geigy Clayton Aniline became central to the operation.

“When we grew up going to school, it was always foggy in the morning,” Ian, a local who grew up in the area during the 1950s and 60s and a life-long Manchester City Football Club (MCFC) fan, said. (As one of MCFC’s stadium tour guides, he was not authorized to give his last name.) “Now, the fog as a school kid, if it was white, then we knew it was just plain fog. If it was yellow, green or blue, we knew the chemical company was doing something. We always used to make funny quirks as kids and say they’re making condoms, or something like that.”

“It actually turned out they were making condoms,” the tour guide recounted, giggling. “They made the very first condom at the Ciba-Geigy.”

But deindustrialization forced the city into disrepair and poverty, going into the 1960s. It meant factories like coal mines, dye factories and textile mills closed down, people lost their jobs and the town went bust.

Manchester managed to recover and become a fast-booming metropolis in the 2000’s. Since 2002, the city of Manchester has grown into one of the largest digital hubs in the U.K., and

3.5 billion pounds were invested in the city’s medical and digital industries in 2021.

Though it had failed in two different bids to host the Summer Olympics, it had managed to host the 2002 Commonwealth Games, the second-largest international multi-sport event in the world. The city still had to find ways to funnel money into the city to keep up with growth, and a proposal to deregulate casinos in the city was put forward later in the decade.

It reached a stage where Macunians were vocally opposed to the casinos on principle, and the companies “did not want to play ball” with the city’s regulations on gaming, according to Dave Carter, the former head of the Manchester Digital Development Agency, Manchester City Council. The money went into sports development instead.

The city built the City of Manchester Stadium in the Eastlands for the 2002 Games. After Manchester City was sold to the Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG) in 2008, backed by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, it was renamed Etihad Stadium, where Ian works. City Football Group was then formed when ADUG bought NYCFC in 2013, creating a network of clubs with the City name. That network now stands at 12 teams across five continents.

The East Stand outside and inside Etihad Stadium. Source: Jonathan Mak

Manchester has always been a football town, divided into red and blue. Manchester United, rivals of City, to the west in Trafford; MCFC in the south, then the east.

The red side of town had historically been the more dominant team in town as City spent the late 1990s and early 2000s yo-yo-ing between the bottom of the top division and the top of the second division in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. The Sky Blues had actually been playing at Maine Road in Moss Side, south of the city center, since 1923, but the stadium could not keep up with modern innovation and demand. Its infrastructure fell behind and the club could not increase its 35,000 capacity due to the surrounding neighborhood. They moved to the Eastlands in 2003.

“I wrote a book about the 90s, and I remember one of the lines that I used in it — Manchester City were the laughing stock of English football,” Andy Bookley, a life-long City fan and former sports editor at Radio Manchester, said. “It was a soap opera — we were often managerless and penniless. As a journalist, it was a fantastic time to cover the club, so accessible, so friendly, my club…although for the fans, it was horrendous.”

Since 2002, City have been a mainstay in the Premier League — England’s top division. Its stability in the top division meant that they were able to secure the lease of the Eastlands Stadium, expanding their capacity instantly to 48,000 people after the running track and temporary stands were taken out, making City a viable product for foreign investors. The club pays six million pounds a year in rent to the city, the same scheme the Mets have with the City of New York, and MCFC has an agreement with the city of Manchester to use that money for sports development.

When the ADUG bought the club in 2008, it completely turned its fortunes around. Before the takeover, the Sky Blues had won 11 major trophies. Since 2008, they have invested heavily in the squad, support structure and infrastructure of the club, winning 21 trophies, including seven league titles and the coveted European title in 2023.

The group also spent millions of pounds regenerating old, industrial land and turning it into what is now Sportcity, the largest concentration of sports in any area in Europe. Cityzens, fans of Man City, have lauded the success on the pitch and off it and are largely in support of what’s happened since.

Etihad Stadium was built on top of the Bradford Colliery, a coalmine that closed in 1968, and part of that £112 million was used to regenerate the soil. It sits around 55,000 people currently, but the club is working on expansion plans for the North Stand to increase the capacity to 60,000, making the stadium one of the top three largest in the country.

Etihad Stadium’s North Stand with the upper tier covered for renovations. Source: Jonathan Mak

The Medlock Square Hotel will be looking over it, with 401 rooms and views of the pitch from some of the rooms, once it finishes construction. There will be a food court, a 3,000-capacity fan zone and other fan activations to keep match-goers busy. In addition, the Co-Op Live Arena opened in 2024 as a concert venue. The arena was so spectacular that it managed to snag the BRIT Awards away from London for the first time in the music award ceremony’s history.

The construction boards fencing Medlock Square behind the North Stand of Etihad Stadium. / The Co-Op Live Arena, just across Medlock Square. Source: Jonathan Mak

It’s a sweeping change to what British sports fans are used to — “This is totally against what 1960s spectator sport was like,” Ian said.

That comes with trying to keep the fans around the stadium because a few stadium tour guides, who were asked not to be named due to no club authorization, said fans don’t just want to come for the 90-minute matches now.

Similar to Metropolitan Park, Medlock Square will act as the pre- and post-game show for fans after a game. Those who have been around for a while, like Cath Taylor, long-time bartender of Mary D’s Beamish Bar, the pub for Cityzens, the area has grown “immensely with the work that has gone on in the area. It’s a lot cleaner.”

She’s noticed that the pub’s gotten a greater audience now with the Co-Op Live arena nearby, and says it can only be good for the area if there’s more business around. ADUG had struck a deal with the city for the tram lines to be extended east to increase traffic.

In return, the city got Manchester Life, a residential property development company that oversaw the demolition of old terrace housing for new, modern condos. However, the city ruled that 20% of the housing the Abu Dhabi group put up had to be affordable for its city residents.

“From a city management point, it was a great compromise — it was private funding, but it wasn’t through something as controversial as a casino,” Carter, now an honorary research fellow at the University of Manchester, said.

It provided a “huge boost” to the area, despite it still being “pretty run down,” according to Carter. People were willing to relocate because it was half the cost of living in the city center and it was only a 15-minute metro trip away.

ADUG had also promised world-class facilities next to the stadium when they took over, and the City Football Academy (CFA) was built on top of the old Ciba-Geigy site, across the Nexen Tyre Bridge, over Alan Turing Way.

The Nexen Tyre Bridge from Etihad Stadium to CFA. / Etihad Stadium and the Co-Op Live Arena from the Nexen Tyre Bridge. Source: Jonathan Mak

It is fully sustainable, solar-powered and is the only training facility in the Premier League that is right next to its team’s stadium. Sheikh Mansour and the ADUG spent around 76 million pounds regenerating the land CFA is on, returning soil that had been dyed purple after decades of use back to its natural state. The Group wanted to make sure it was fit for a “best in the world” training ground and now holds Joie Stadium, a 7,000-seater arena for the academy and women’s teams, the men’s and women’s first-team buildings, an academy building for academy players aged six to 16, an indoor pitch, the studio for CITY+, the club’s media platform, and 16 and a half pitches.

“I believe that there were three objectives [when ADUG took over,]” Ian said. “To build the best training facilities in the world for the players, so across the road, they did that. Two, they were always bothered about the community, so all around [East Manchester], they built swimming pools, tennis courts, running tracks, everything. And, the area is going to be looked at as an entertainment district for 365 days a year.”

As part of its community outreach arm, City in the Community, one pitch is dyed blue and dedicated to the community members around the Etihad Campus. The club named the blue pitch after former player Alex Williams, who went on to grow City’s community program from 12 employees to hundreds. In other community events, 1,000 people with disabilities use the same pitch the first team trains on, every month, according to Bookley.

Taylor’s only complaint was that traffic had gotten a lot worse because the club and the area had gotten so popular.

“It gets very gridlocked,” Taylor said. “Where normally it takes me 10 minutes to get here, on a concert or matchday, it could take anything up to a half hour or more.”

Some fans have also complained about their season ticket seats being moved due to the construction in the North Stand. But most view it as another step forward for progress. Their on-the-pitch success, including becoming only England’s second team to win the Premier League, Champions League and FA Cup in one season, has brought them worldwide attention and fandom, and ADUG is building the infrastructure to support that growth.

“It’s always been a community club, even from when it was formed in 1880 with St. Mark’s church,” Ian said. “It was designed as a community club. One of the reasons why we came into the stadium was because after the Commonwealth Games. This stadium had to be handed back to the community. What fairer way than giving it to a community club like Manchester City, and it’s one of the reasons why we got it.”

Etihad Stadium and Metropolitan Park, whilst not a stadium, reflect what each city values and what it’s willing to do to get to its goal — Shea Stadium was built on an ash dump, then a parking lot. Citi Field replaced it. Now, a casino is replacing the parking lot. Each iteration promises a better tomorrow — the same language the 1939 and 1964 World’s Fairs used on that exact same land.

Etihad Stadium’s story, in contrast, ends with a world-class training facility from the ruins of a dye factory, a community pitch named after a local hero, and world-class entertainment venues. Manchester’s 10 years down the road has been a community-focused regeneration of the area. Metropolitan Park officials claim the same community focus, but only time will tell if the community actually agrees.

The stadium

Etihad Park, New York City FC’s soon-to-be home stadium, is slated to open in the spring of 2027, just six months after the historic 2026 FIFA World Cup, hosted for the first time by three nations — Canada, the U.S. and Mexico — concludes at the ‘New York New Jersey’ stadium in East Meadowlands, New Jersey.

Yet, New York City’s oldest-surviving club was borne from the 1994 World Cup hype, the first time America hosted the most-watched sporting event on Earth.

Much like Manchester, New York City’s soccer teams are divided by red and blue. Or, rather, New York’s and New Jersey’s teams. The NY/NJ Metrostars, the red side, played in the inaugural 1996 Major League Soccer (MLS) season as one of the original 10 teams. In 2006, Austrian multinational conglomerate Red Bull GmbH, named after the energy drink, bought the club and rebranded it Red Bull New York.

They had played at the former Giants Stadium until it was demolished, moving into Red Bull Arena, now Sports Illustrated Stadium, in Harrison, NJ. Stars like former World Cup-winner Thierry Henry and former captain of the 1994 U.S. national team Tony Meola have played in both Red Bull and Metrostar shirts, respectively.

New York City FC joined the MLS in 2015 as the 20th expansion team in the league as part of CFG’s plunge into American soccer, a market long regarded with a lot of untapped potential in the sport. They believed it was a good investment.

As Man City’s sister team, they play in Sky Blue and play in Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, and Citi Field at times throughout the season — the team rotates depending on the baseball teams’ schedules. They have, at times, played across the Hudson River at Sports Illustrated Stadium when neither baseball stadium was available. The river is why their rivalry is called the Hudson River Derby. Both are owned by multi-national conglomerates.

There were plans as early as 2010 to bring an MLS franchise team to New York City, specifically Willets Point, Queens. MLS commissioner Don Garber, also a Flushing native, led the “MLS to Queens” rally in 2013, and finally got his wish in 2022, when then-New York City Mayor Eric Adams and local Councilman Francisco Moya jointly announced the first soccer-specific stadium in Willets Point, alongside Willets Point Commons, in a joint private-public venture between CFG and New York City.

A state-of-the-art sporting facility now expected of City Football Group, the fully-electric stadium features the Cube — a seven-story ode to Las Vegas’ Sphere and the exclusive Tunnel Club amongst other premium seating for fans who are able to spend the extra money, much like the one in the Etihad Stadium in Manchester.

The project faced its own ULURP process in 2023, passing through the Queens CB 7 vote 7–2 in favor of it in late 2023. In 2024, it received its final approvals as Metropolitan Park did — passing through the City Planning Commission and New York City Council votes by April and breaking ground at the site in late November of 2024.

That same day, the club announced the name — Etihad Park — on a 20-year deal, despite a group of NYCFC fans wanting their new second home to be called The Valley of Ashes. The deal is similar to the one CFG struck with the City of Manchester for the rights to change the stadium name to Etihad Stadium.

[embed]Etihad Park on groundbreaking day, with the pitch marked out on the construction site. Source: Max Edelman/amNY

Etihad Park construction in April 2026, peeking behind Citi Field. Source: Jonathan Mak

The Etihad Park construction site as of April 23, 2026. Source: Jonathan Mak

It’s finally a place for the club and its fans to call home. The team is well-supported — averaging crowds of 10,000 on most matches. The fans are loud, even causing neighbors to complain about their pre-match marches when they play at Yankee Stadium.

The 25,000-seater stadium is being built by more than 300 unionized construction workers and like in Manchester, the group is focusing on making a lasting impact.

Jonathan Stemp, chief of infrastructure at CFG, told QNS at the ground-breaking ceremony that the club is ensuring it’s built right because the stadium will be here for 50 to 75 years.

Professor Lee Igel is an NYU Tisch Institute for Global Sport professor who has covered the Etihad Park development for Forbes, amongst other topics.

“There’s a lot of attention now in sport, infrastructure [and] in cities to stadium-anchored mixed-use developments,” Igel said. “A stadium or arena sits here in the middle, and then all around it, there’s retail, residential, entertainment, public spaces, parks and such that go up around it.

It represents 15 years of learning from City Football Group, according to Igel. Since acquiring NYCFC, the Manchester-based group has extended its reach to Japan and Australia, as well as Uruguay, Bolivia and Belgium’s second division. They have created a model within the footballing world to transfer players worldwide between their teams to either try and play for Manchester City, develop them or sell them on to sustain other clubs. It is all detailed here by the Athletic.

After visiting the site a few times during its construction, Igel realized that CFG is using the knowledge and experience from other clubs in its network to regenerate the land.

“They figured out that the ground underneath the pitch and actually, underneath the entire stadium, [had] decades of refuse, coal ash,” Igel said.

Armed with knowledge from regenerating the soil underneath City Football Academy, NYCFC was able to dig out and level the soil to put an underground heating system throughout the pitch. It’s definitely needed as New York City has experienced its fair share of snowstorms during the winter months, and also because the MLS has switched its competitive calendar to a fall-through-summer season, meaning both NYCFC and RBNY will be playing in the middle of the winter.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that the New York City Football Club and City Football group are very much thinking about everything,” Igel said. “They’re thinking about every kid who’s going to go to the public school…thinking about the residents of the apartment complexes, visitors both local and international.”

Like in Manchester, CFG has a community-oriented approach for the club. The club invited long-time fans, media members, workers who helped build the stadium, and local elected officials — including Mayor Zohran Mamdani, an outspoken fan of the game — to sign the final metal beam that would go up on Etihad Park on March 25, 2026. They regularly host the Local Ford Classic, a charity soccer match between the NYPD and FDNY played on Icahn Stadium in Randall’s Island, which NYCFC helped renovate on the city’s behalf, restoring its athletic track and pitch for different sporting events. NYCFC II, the club’s development team, plays matches there.

City’s community-impact arm, City in the Community (CITC), has four objectives to increase access to the sport and help empower locals in New York. The organization turned a part of gray concrete in a Queens public school yard into a patch of blue turf — like MCFC’s community pitch halfway across the world.

CITC has also partnered with the club’s supporters’ group, The Third Rail, to designate player ambassadors for community events, giving the outreach efforts a greater impact.

The organization hosts night leagues and Saturday Night Lights, free youth programs that combine the Beautiful Game with mentors who help the children with their problems on and off the pitch. When the stadium is built, CITC will be based out of the area, allowing the organization to continue these programs with boots on the ground.

It is “purposeful,” according to Igel. “It really is a community that happens to have a stadium within it.”

The stadium is flanked on the north and south sides by developments from Willets Point Commons and is “purposeful,” according to Igel. It comes amid a “brutal housing crunch” in the Big Apple, and will provide 2,500 units of fully affordable housing, park spaces and a 650-seat school. It is the city’s largest affordable housing project in 40 years.

The south end of Etihad Park and two buildings as part of Willets Point Commons. Source: Jonathan Mak / A rendering of Willets Point Commons. Source: QDG

Built by Queens Development Group (QDG), a joint venture between Related Companies and Sterling Equities, the city and QDG had to “remediate the soil” per a press release, as CFG had to for their Academy grounds on old dye factory land. The Queens Daily Eagle estimates a $1 billion cost to build infrastructure and remediate the soil that used to be “The Valley of Ashes.”

“I wouldn’t give the city any credit for [the affordable housing development],” Hu said. “The conditions of our city demand that our elected officials should be building affordable housing, right? We have a crisis going on and that should be the bare minimum.”

Etihad Park cost CFG $780 million to build and will be the five boroughs’ first stadium dedicated to soccer in its history. Like in Manchester, CFG paid $500,000 for the first year of its 49 year-lease, with each annual payment increasing until it reaches $4 million a year.

A report from the Independent Budget Office showed that despite the lease payments, New York City will lose over $500 million in tax revenue and spend $1 billion on infrastructure. It echoes criticisms Manchester faced when Sheikh Mansour’s Abu Dhabi development corporation partnered with the city to create Manchester Life, aimed at regenerating the Ancoats and New Islington neighborhoods near Etihad Stadium — a deal The Guardian said effectively sold the city short.

The housing lottery opened three days before the downstate casino licenses were awarded, Dec. 12, 2025, for the first 880 units in the development. They are expected to start welcoming residents in April 2026, with a full project completion estimated in 2028.

If Metropolitan Park is built by 2030, that means children who would have been going to school in that new public school, or schools in surrounding neighborhoods, will be living just blocks away from the Hard Rock Casino.

“I would hope that it wouldn’t be a temptation for people, no matter what age,” Ramos said. “I don’t really think that anybody is in a financial position in our community to be gambling their money away like that…For every case where a person can’t control themselves and ends up spending and gambling more than they should, that puts a deep financial strain in the community for that family, and we don’t want anybody to be in that position.”

Mets fans don’t seem to mind the position they’re in, outside of the National League East standings, of course. Grech, a life-long Mets fan, thinks it’s great because people will have teams to root for almost 12 months of the year. He also implied that juxtaposing the Mets, “the underdog team in New York,” with a championship-winning side like NYCFC could be good for their fortunes.

“I think it’s going to be really cool,” Grech said. “It’s going to bring a lot of traditional baseball fans into the world of soccer for the team.”

For Ishir Talaptra, a tennis and Mets fan, his main concern is about the congestion. Experiencing both sides of the traffic, he believes the Willets Point subway station is not prepared at all for the amount of foot traffic and it’s going to make it worse for people who live nearby.

“It’s crazy, I’ve experienced it on both ends,” Talaptra said. “It’s going to be an absolute nightmare getting in and out. If all three events [the U.S. Open, a Mets game and NYCFC game] are going to be together, it’s going to be hell on earth.”

Hopefully, the almost $500 million of the $1 billion community benefit fund allocated to the MTA station improvements will ease congestion and allow fans to get to and from their events conveniently and safely.

Or it might also mean fans have to stay longer in the area because of the loaded expressways and subways, thus spending more money at the only entertainment around — Metropolitan Park.

For 63-year-old Grech, he cannot wait for the developments to arrive.

“I don’t think I’m ever going to retire, I have way too much fun with what I’m doing,” the 63-year-old Grech said. “For so long, the people who have lived in that area deserve something nice, deserve something better. In five to seven years, those dreams will come to reality — I’m looking forward to driving there, whether I’m in a wheelchair or a walker, and see what’s going on there, I’m just going to be really happy and smile that I played a small role in that.”

Hu doesn’t believe the promised benefits are worth the cost. Walking back to the Flushing Workers’ Center, he bumped into his great-aunt and greeted her in Mandarin with the customary “Happy New Year!” before pulling a red envelope out of her purse. It’s a customary tradition during the 15 days after Lunar New Year for elders and married couples in the family to pass red packets, and thus their fortune, to the unmarried, younger generations. This is the community Hu refuses to let a casino destroy.

“I will fight this for the rest of my life, I’m not even kidding,” Hu said. “I know it sounds ridiculous to say, but I’m not going to allow these people to destroy my community. This is my lifelong home. This has affected my family personally. Excuse my language, but fuck that.”