By Jamie Ong, Maggie Flanagan and Gita Nandan
What kind of future do we want for Queens? As climate change intensifies and the city faces increasingly destructive storms, heavier rainfall, and hotter summers filled with wildfire smoke, our vision must include protection from flooding, extreme heat, poor air quality, and rising sea levels. A vision where every Queens resident can live, work, and thrive in a healthy, climate-resilient environment.
Sadly, we are moving further away from that future.
On March 30, Flushing’s State Senator John Liu announced legislation to complement Assembly Member Larinda Hooks’ bill, which allows a private hotel and casino development on 78 acres of NYC public parkland, a significant shift in Senator Liu’s previous position. Behind the announcement is a backroom negotiation: Queens Future–Mets owner Steve Cohen’s group behind the proposal–agreed to secure approvals and design funding for a pedestrian and bicycle bridge connecting Flushing to Willets Point.
As lifelong New Yorkers and environmental professionals, we are sounding the alarm. Queens Future’s proposal is greenwashing. The so-called “Metropolitan Park” is not a park—it’s a sprawling casino development dressed in the language of sustainability. It features an 18-acre hotel and casino complex, multiple nine-story parking garages, and two 26-story hotels. What they advertise as a 20-acre park is, in reality, a seven-acre privately managed plaza wedged between a Vegas-style casino and Citi Field. This is not climate justice. It is profit over people and the planet.
Flushing Meadows Corona Park (FMCP), one of the most flood-prone parks in the city, lies along the path of Flushing Creek. The fourth-largest park in NYC, FMCP is beloved by nearby communities and visited by thousands each year. However, parts of FMCP—including Citi Field and its adjacent parking lot—interrupt the park's continuity and cut off access to the Flushing Bay Promenade. These are all public lands. Redeveloping them with public use in mind is key to creating a more accessible, resilient, and equitable future for Queens.
Privatizing public space is a short-sighted, lose-lose deal for future generations. Queens Future claims it is ‘righting the wrongs’ of Robert Moses, who first turned the land into a park’s parking lot. But here’s the reality: this is public land and it belongs to the people. Redevelopment of public land should benefit the public interest—not private profit. Public parks contribute billions in value through improved health, flood mitigation, cleaner air, enhanced property values, and outdoor recreation. Well-funded and well-maintained public parks are essential now and for our future. We’d be trading away our priceless public asset for a private development that offers far less in return and actively harms our communities with a casino.
Robert Moses is infamous for increasing air pollution with highways that cut through low-income neighborhoods and communities of color. If Queens Future wanted to ‘right the wrongs of Robert Moses’ then they would propose an actual park, not a project that doubles parking spaces and increases traffic pollution. In short, their development would reflect the tenets of the Phoenix Meadows Vision Plan, which advocates for real investment in our public parkland, without a casino.
The legislation enabling this project sets a dangerous precedent. At an April 2 panel hosted by the Center for an Urban Future, Brooklyn Bridge Park President Eric Landau warned against such actions, pointing out the absurd hypothetical of putting a hotel in Prospect Park, saying “we can’t for a number of reasons, least of all the fact that it is parkland alienation”. Unfortunately, that is exactly what is happening in Queens.
Queens Future LLC is not a vision of a thriving, climate-resilient Queens.
Instead, imagine a future where public lands stay public, with parks that prioritize community, ecology, and justice, the goal behind the Phoenix Meadows Vision Plan. Where residents don’t have to rely on billionaires to fund improvements and jobs, with strings attached.
What if our elected officials created policies that properly fund and expand public parkland, such as a dedicated ticket surcharge to strengthen and sustain our Parks for the benefit of all New Yorkers? What if we supported a future for all of Queens, creating a public park that prioritizes people over profits?
Jamie Ong is a Flushing resident, parent, union member, ecologist with the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation, and founder of a nature-based climate solutions consultancy, Just EcoCities. Maggie Flanagan is a Jackson Heights resident and a board member of the Guardians of Flushing Bay. Gita Nandan, a community planner and architect at Thread Collective, worked alongside the FED-UP coalition to create the Phoenix Meadows Vision Plan, a climate-resilient design focused on restoring and reimagining this public land for collective benefit.
