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“A one-time capital pledge does not address the recurring operational deficit that has left the park in its current state. What Flushing Meadows needs—what it has always needed—is a dedicated, recurring funding stream tied to the economic activity happening on its doorstep.”
Flushing Meadows Corona Park was born—and then reborn—to serve as New York City’s showcase to the world. Home to the city’w two historic World’s Fairs and the U.S. Open, our nearly 900-acre park has been host to presidents and popes, works by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Phillip Johnson, not to mention every tennis great of the past 50 years.
More immediately, to the hundreds of thousands of Queens residents who live alongside it, the park serves a much more immediate purpose. Its soccer pitches, volleyball courts, cricket and baseball fields, playgrounds, and pool provide an invaluable community asset.
Given the park’s outsized historic and contemporary role in New York City’s cultural and recreational life, one would imagine funding to maintain and preserve the park would meet at least a minimal standard. One would be wrong: across budgets and administrations, Flushing Meadows Corona Park has been sadly neglected, leading to a state of poor repair that touches everything from the iconic Unisphere fountain to the drainage infrastructure that underlies the park.
Now, finally, Flushing Meadows Corona Park and its supporters have a generational opportunity to change that. Metropolitan Park, the $8.1-billion Hard Rock casino and entertainment complex, and Etihad Park, the $780-million Major League Soccer stadium, will both border Flushing Meadows Corona Park, and together they will arrive in Queens with an impact similar to another World’s Fair.
But where the 1939 and 1964 expos built out enormous public assets in Queens without endowing funds to sustain and manage them for the longterm, we now have the opportunity to lock in support for Flushing Meadows Corona Park for generations. But only if city leaders can harness the opportunity before them rather than settling for a one-off injection of capital funds.
Metropolitan Park planners have promised funding for greenways, including those linking Flushing Meadows Corona Park to Flushing Bay, and athletic fields at our park. These are necessary commitments, but they do not go far enough to serve the long-term health of the park. A one-time capital pledge does not address the recurring operational deficit that has left the park in its current state. What Flushing Meadows needs—what it has always needed—is a dedicated, recurring funding stream tied to the economic activity happening on its doorstep.
How might the soccer and casino projects fund Flushing Meadows Corona Park in the long term? Over the past decade alone, New York City projects offer instructive precedents. Brooklyn Bridge Park’s operation is entirely financed through revenue generated by a hotel and residential building located on adjacent property—a model that transformed a post-industrial waterfront into a destination for New Yorkers and tourists alike. In Hudson Yards, developers can purchase additional floor area through a District Improvement Bonus, with $490 million in annual proceeds supporting parks, streets, and other public infrastructure. And the Park Restoration Surcharge on Under the K concert tickets is funding cleanup and programming across North Brooklyn.
The precedent is there, and the Mamdani administration should act on it. The City should now negotiate a formal, binding commitment from Metropolitan Park’s developers to direct a percentage of annual gaming revenues to a Flushing Meadows Corona Park Restoration Fund, governed by a public board with representation from the surrounding communities of Corona, Flushing, Elmhurst, and Jackson Heights.
The fund should be structured not as a charitable donation subject to revocation, but as a condition of the ongoing operating relationship between the city and the development—modeled on the self-sustaining frameworks that have worked at Brooklyn Bridge Park and Hudson Yards. At the projected revenue scale, even a fraction of a percent would be transformational. For the first time Flushing Meadows Corona Park would benefit from reliable, sustained funding of the park’s playing fields, fountains, drainage systems, and cultural facilities for decades.
The window of opportunity is closing. Construction on the Metropolitan Park site is already underway, with the grand opening scheduled for 2030. Every month of delay is a month in which the terms of this relationship calcify around what the developer has already offered rather than what the community actually needs.
Flushing Meadows Corona Park has waited long enough for its moment. With work underway on the casino next door, let’s not repeat New York City’s old habit of setting-and-forgetting when it comes to Flushing Meadows Corona Park improvements.
The economic engine is being built. The only question is whether the Mamdani administration will have the foresight to connect it to the park that has anchored this community for nearly a century—and give Flushing Meadows Corona Park its rightful role as one of the world’s great urban parks.
Anthony Sama is executive director of the Alliance for Flushing Meadows Park.