It could easily be the name of a Netflix docu-series your work colleagues won’t shut up about, but the ‘Valley of Ashes’ is an epithet for the plot of land where New York City’s first purpose-built soccer stadium will open in 2027.
The moniker was coined exactly 100 years ago by F Scott Fitzgerald in his novel ‘The Great Gatsby’. It’s a fictional name for a real-life refuse dump at Willets Point. ‘Valley of Ashes’ lends more colour than ‘Willets Point’ and in the book the area represents a byproduct of industrialisation which made protagonist Jay Gatsby’s booming lifestyle possible.
In 2024 a well-struck baseball could theoretically land here from Citi Field next door. Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, home of the U.S. Open, is within walking distance. “It's an area that has been so desolate for a very long time,” explains Jen O’Sullivan, Chief Operating Officer at New York City FC. “If you grew up in this area, you knew it as the place to go if you lost the hubcaps on your car – it was just full of these ‘chop shops’ and auto body shops and not much else.
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“With The Mets, the Tennis Centre, and UBS arena [home of the New York Islanders ice hockey team] not too far away, there becomes this sort of this sports hub if you will. Two major airports are also here. So it's just a tremendous location for so many reasons.”
As of 2011 the area had a population of just 10, there are no paved roads, no proper sewage system, and after several false starts (New York Mets owner initially pushed to build a casino on the land) City Council members voted 47-1 to proceed with plans for a soccer stadium in April.
If you grew up in this area, you knew it as the place to go if you lost the hubcaps on your car – it was just full of these ‘chop shops’ and auto body shops and not much else.
Jen O’Sullivan
At the heart of the push was Councilmember Francisco Moya. “I'm Ecuadorian,” he explains, “I'm born with a soccer ball in my crib, that's how real the passion for the sport of football is in my household and a lot of Latino households in Queens.”
Behind Moya hangs a picture of him taken at the Nou Camp with his father. “I go to the Clasico every year, I haven’t missed once since 2007, plus two Champions League finals, in London and Berlin.”
Moya was born in Corona, Queens and has served the district on the New York City Council since 2018. “When I got into office the vision I had was to develop something special. If you walk the streets of my neighbourhood, you're going see people wearing their favourite team’s jersey or the jersey of their home country. TVs are all filled with soccer.
Having the opportunity to bring a soccer-specific stadium, not just to Queens, but to the neighbourhood I grew up in is pretty incredible
Francisco Moya
"Having the opportunity to bring a soccer-specific stadium, not just to Queens, but to the neighbourhood I grew up in is pretty incredible. I have to give it up to New York City Football Club who are going to privately finance the construction [$800m]. We're also going to bring in over 14,000 union jobs [during construction], and over 1,500 permanent jobs after that.
"We’re bringing in 2,500 units of affordable housing, a brand new school, retail – turning the so-called ‘Valley of Ashes’ into a beautiful neighbourhood, community and place of gathering.”
Moya emphasises this isn’t just about soccer, but about building an “economic engine” that can keep a community like this thriving. “It's taken close to 10 years of my career trying to make this come to fruition.” New York City mayor Eric Adams described it as “the goal of the decade”.
Conscious of the Councilmember’s busy schedule I end our conversation by asking if he has thought about how it might feel to watch the first game kick-off there in three years' time. The first football stadium in the five boroughs, next to the park where he learned to play the game: “I think I'm gonna cry,” he says.
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