Willet’s Point Avenue, 2014. In the next year every shop in this picture would be gone. In 2020 it still is an empty field, awaiting development because it sits next to Citi Field. That’s the Seven Train in the distance.
The streets have always looked this way here. It’s city land and the city had been leasing it to manufacturing, body shops and scrapyards since the Depression. Citi Field was built right next to it. I suppose that fact, and the fact that Bloomberg was mayor, spelled the end of the Junkyards. It was inevitable, given it was to be Bloomberg’s last big rezone/redevelopment play after three terms of this, even though there is a two term limit.