Rob Bennett for The New York Times  Jack Bono, left, and his son Jake Bono at their business, Bono Sawdust Supply, which has been in Willets Point since 1933. The Bonos are among landowners lined up against the city's plan.  It is one of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s signature projects — the sweeping transformation of Willets Point, a slice of Queens that has long been among the city’s most neglected pieces of real estate. And a little over a year ago, it seemed like a done deal.  The City Council approved the proposal, which would sweep aside the car-repair shops, junkyards and small factories in the shadow of Citi Field to make room for 5,500 apartments, parks, office buildings, stores, restaurants and a hotel.  Many of the largest property owners agreed to sell to the city, and the city could use eminent domain to force out those who refused.  But a convergence of a Park Avenue lawyer known for toppling big projects, a sawdust maker bent on keeping the family business where it has been for decades, and a pair of highway ramps that exist only on paper threatens to doom Mr. Bloomberg’s grand vision.  The ramps, which would connect Willets Point to the Van Wyck Expressway, seemed like a minor detail at first and never came up during the noisy public hearings before the Council’s vote.  But, as it turns out, they are critical to the project’s survival.  “It’s our smoking gun,” said Michael B. Gerrard, a lawyer who helped lead the monumental battle to defeat Westway, a proposed underground highway along Manhattan’s West Side that opponents said would have imperiled the striped bass population of the lower Hudson River.  Mr. Gerrard, a senior counsel at Arnold & Porter, is now banking on the ramps to kill Willets Point. He has mounted a legal challenge against the project on behalf of a group of small landowners in the area who joined forces and pooled their money to fight City Hall.  The $3 billion project could generate 80,000 vehicle trips a day, and the ramps are meant to help move cars in and out. The city cannot use eminent domain unless the ramps are approved by the Federal Highway Administration and the state’s Department of Transportation.  The Highway Administration “has to consider whether new access will protect the traveling public,” said Cathy St. Denis, a spokeswoman for the agency.  Steven C. Russo, a private environmental lawyer hired by the city to guide it through the ramps’ approval, said that the ramps would improve traffic because they would give drivers more ways to get on and off the Van Wyck.  The city has bought or has agreements to buy 64 percent of the land in Willets Point from 22 of the area’s 74 landowners, and it hopes to start work on the project next year.  But the 20 landowners represented by Mr. Gerrard are accusing the city in a motion filed in Manhattan Supreme Court of deliberately underestimating the volume of traffic the project would generate and playing down the difficulties in getting state and federal approval for the ramps. They want a judge to order the city to redo its environmental review.  “We’re beyond, ‘Don’t take my land.’ We’re done crying,” said Jake Bono, 34, whose grandfather Jacob opened the family sawdust business, Bono Sawdust Supply, on 126th Place in 1933. “We’re out there to prove the city is wrong.”  Besides Mr. Gerrard, the project’s opponents also hired Brian Ketcham, a traffic engineer who filed the original lawsuit that scuttled Westway, and Richard Lipsky, a lobbyist who has helped defeat several high-profile Bloomberg initiatives, including the mayor’s congestion pricing plan and his proposal to convert the Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx into a shopping mall.  They have seized on a pair of traffic reports prepared by the city and the reports’ differing conclusions to make their case. One report, using calculations based on 2017 traffic projections, estimated that about half the vehicles traveling through Willets Point would use the proposed ramps to access the Van Wyck. The other report, using 2035 projections, estimated that about 15 percent of traffic through the development would use the ramps.  Mr. Russo said that the report finding a high number of cars using the ramps did not take into account that drivers might seek other ways in and out of Willets Point, while the other one did. “To expect two models that are built under different criteria and assumptions” to yield the same conclusions, Mr. Russo said, “is just wrong.”  The traffic reports are part of the city’s final application for the ramps, which has yet to be submitted to the federal and state agencies, Mr. Russo said, adding that “some of these numbers are going to change.”  Traffic volume will be a critical factor that federal and state officials will consider when they decide whether to approve the ramps.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg wants to transform a Queens neighborhood of junkyards and car-repair shops, but some landowners there are suing to stop his efforts.