Iron Triangle / Iron Will

I woke up in the middle of the night with clammy palms, a pounding chest, racing pulse and drenched in sweat, hallucinating a lunar landscape where ogres, resembling a cross between Jethro of Beverly Hillbillies and a mob enforcer, demanded that I go to an ATM to get ransom money or else. It simulated a dire post-apocalyptic fantasy. 

It was otherworldly. A place without a geography. A no-go for compasses. All directions crushed into one. An alternate reality perhaps parallel to the twilight zone. While there, I lost all sense of proximity to normalcy. 

I thought I had died and went to hell. I had been half right. I had imagined myself in resurrection-resistant Willets Point in Queens. It is called "The Iron Triangle.” Junkyard rhapsody. Planet Ripoff.

I was there not because I had sinned beyond remission, but rather to retrieve my car that had after an accident been towed there for repair diagnosis and storage. Not every business was a chop shop or a safe-house for catalytic converters that had fallen off trucks, but there was something eerily illegitimate about the guards who had my car in their protective custody.   

Getting my car back was like springing a prisoner from a supermax, but I forked over an extortionate ransom and made good my escape from that shabby industrial park of cash transactions, junk parts of unknowable origin and paths with pebbles like gallstones.

The Iron Triangle struck me as a heap of unsalvageable salvage yards. People who had a more in-depth experience there than I had romanticize its colorful ambience and lawful charms.  Maybe they can get their own public television show to sing its praises.   

Around 15 years ago, then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed a $3 billion redemption of Willetts Point that would transform it into what The New York Times described as a "vast neighborhood of office buildings, hotels, parks, restaurants, retail shops and 5,500 units of affordable housing.

Obstacles arose that had to be litigated or otherwise resolved. Among them were issues of "eminent domain" and the desire of the Real Estate Board to grace the area with big-box retailers.  

But the pledge of thousands of new union jobs gave the green light a more intense green. Last November, it seemed like Willetts Point was on the road to recovery and there would be no turning back. There was much fanfare over the mayor's pledge of an "accelerated timeline."  

It was announced that a new, privately financed soccer stadium would be built there, as well as the city's largest 100-percent affordable housing project since the 1980s, consisting of thousands of units. The city's website proclaimed the creation of over 15,000 construction jobs and many permanent positions primarily for the local community. It foresaw a $6 billion boost to the local economy.

There were more handshakes than you could shake a stick at. Mayor Eric Adams lauded "a true pathway to the middle class" and explained "This is what it means to build a City of Yes.” Deputy mayors delighted in the photo-op: "I am proud to be part of this team that 'Gets Stuff Done,'" hoorayed Deputy Mayor for Housing, Workforce and Economic Development Maria Torres-Springer. "I'm thrilled to see … a transformative project at Willetts Point," cheered First Deputy Mayor Lorraine Grillo.  

Other ecstatic appointees cooed over the project as a godsend for critical infrastructure and a stimulating "generational investment" in essential building blocks. They touted the ambitious expansion of community-focused amenities and made platitudinous references to "bold vision.”  It unveiled a bold blueprint for equity and paid homage to "environmental sustainability".  

Jeff Wilpon, of Sterling Equities (and son of the former New York Mets COO) marveled at prospects of the perfect harmony of a mutually dedicated public-private partnership. It was enough to make an initiated, municipal archivist barf. Nonetheless, optimism was rampant and understandable, but premature. 

Labor unions, trusting that all parties were as trustworthy as they are and would adhere to agreements, were buoyant. The Building and Construction Trades Council, the Mason Tenders,  International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, 32BJ SEIU and the New York City District Council of Carpenters were among those whose members, masters of their trades, stood to gain.

Job expansion is essential not only for the expansion of the middle class and for the prosperity of the entire general population. But then the New York City Economic Development Corporation (EDC) played dirty pool. They reneged. They fouled. They broke their covenant in May 2021 to hire solely union workers, pay prevailing wages and mandate a state-certified apprenticeship program for safety.  

They are epic rats.  

The union's insistent concern for safety is highly responsible, though the EDC seems to regard it as fluff and perk-lust. On average, a construction worker dies of injuries on the job every two weeks and the lion's share occurred at non-unionized sites where enforcement or proper safety standards is a low priority.

"New York City is a union town. If we don't get it, shut it down,” said District Council of Carpenters representative Michael Piccirello at a recent rally.  He hit the nail on the head.  Carpenters know when they're being chiseled.

Brooklyn Councilwoman Sandy Nurse used a suitably indecorous synonym for feces to describe the EDC's betrayal. State Senator Jessica Ramos used the same word prefixed by "bull.” The EDC has a history of blowing out promises and reducing them to funky vapor. Councilwoman Joann Ariola calls them "liars" and NYC and Vicinity District Council of Carpenters Executive Secretary-Treasurer Joseph Geiger also used colorful understatement for arrogance and gross unfairness of the EDC which has taken no action and provided no answers after months of appeals.

The EDC's indefinite delay in even agreeing to a remedy adds insult to the injury of their original error. This is a black and white case of right and wrong. There are no shades of gray. 

City Comptroller Brad Lander and other elected officials are on board. Often, when cameras and microphones are off,  politicians are less vociferous in their pursuit of justice. But the support for these carpenters and their union is strong. Their fight is not a private one, but a larger battle for the integrity of the law and the survival of the city.