It is easy to drive past Willets Point, the 62-acre tangle of auto shops, car parts and grease-covered mechanics tinkering with automobiles, that sits hard by the Unisphere of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. Passing by is far easier than driving through: The streets that cross each other at odd angles here in the glossy shadow of Citi Field look as if they had been blasted by land mines. They are pooled with dark, oil-slicked water or rutted with knee-deep holes that suck in a car’s tires. The chalkboard scrape of chassis meeting pavement sounds through the air here with the regularity of a bell tolling the hour.

It is Flaco’s job to entice drivers to enter. Three hundred sixty-five days a year, Flaco, 32, a lanky man with thick brown hair, stands at the mouth of the warren of shops, gesticulating like a carnival barker, beckoning drivers in need of car repairs with promises of cheap prices and swift fixes.

By next Saturday, there will be little need for his services. That is when the city begins the first phase of a $3 billion plan to overhaul what it calls a blighted area. The city could invoke eminent domain to take control of land where several hundred businesses have eked out a livelihood for years, some for decades.

The New York Times

The plan will unroll in three phases.

In the first, businesses in the 23-acre section of Willets Point just across 126th Street from the stadium, and roughly bounded by 127th Street, Roosevelt Avenue to the south and 35th Avenue to the north, face a deadline to vacate this month; they will be replaced by a hotel, a retail area and a park.