The New Queens NYCFC Soccer Stadium Plans Include Affordable Housing and a School
The Major League Soccer stadium will finally have a permanent home in the five boroughs.
The New York City Football Club has played most of its home games at Yankee Stadium since the Major League Soccer team's inception nearly a decade ago, but that's finally going to change. Last year, the club announced that it finalized a deal with the city to construct a 25,000-seat stadium at Willets Point in Queens, which is expected to be completed by 2027.
Tiding us over in the meantime, the NYCFC recently dropped renderings of the new stadium, which includes more than 40,000-square-feet of public space, a school, a hotel, retail shops, and 2,500 units of affordable housing—the city's largest all-affordable development since the 1970s.
As reported by the The New York Times, the new stadium will be built in Queens, which is also home to the Mets' Citi Field as well as the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. The stadium will replace a dense network of auto body shops in the area known as the Iron Triangle, and will cost about $780 million to construct, with the city providing infrastructure improvements in the neighborhood and property tax breaks.
Despite playing soccer in a baseball stadium, NYCFC took home the MLS Cup in 2021, beating the Portland Timbers to win the team's first championship. Following that, the team went on to play in the 2022 Campeones Cup and won their first international trophy against Atlas Fútbol Club. This project marks a huge moment for NYC athletics and culture, as the last new sports stadium to be constructed in New York City was Brooklyn’s Barclays Center in 2012.