New York City FC officially broke ground on Etihad Park, the 25,000-seat soccer-specific stadium the team is building in Willets Point, Queens.
This momentous occasion for the team brings to a close a 10-plus year search for a permanent home for the team brought to life in 2013 that has played predominately at Yankee Stadium, but has also called eight total stadiums "home" across 10 seasons.
It's been a long and winding road to get here, and the historic nature of the stadium groundbreaking inspired an investigation of the long, messy history of MLS and NYCFC trying, and often failing, to get a soccer stadium built in New York City.
If you have either missed or forgotten about some of the twists and turns in the long journey to "Etihad Park, Opening in 2027," here's a comprehensive timeline of the years-long saga that was the search for an acceptable soccer stadium site.
It's presented in chronological order and starts well before NYCFC was even announced as a thing. This timeline attempts to call out as many twists and turns in the journey as could be unearthed, but it's likely missing at least one or two thing, but this is as thorough an accounting as was possible. Strap in and get ready to take a journey back through New York City Soccer Stadium Saga History.
All about "MLS To Queens"
November 2010: In his annual State of the League address, MLS Commissioner Don Garber says the league is focused on New York for a 20th expansion team in 2013, saying the New York Red Bulls are supportive of the plan and that meetings were held with the Wilpon family, then owners of the New York Mets, and the owners of the New York Cosmos name and brand, according to the MLS website.
November 2011: In the next year's State of the League speech, Don Garber says the league still wants to add an expansion team in New York, but “the biggest hurdle is getting a stadium,” reports the New York Post.
March 2012: Commissioner Garber says MLS has considered 19 potential locations for a soccer stadium in the New York area in the last 18 months and is narrowing down the pool of possibilities, as reported on the MLS website.
April 2012: One of those 19 potential soccer stadium locations is Pier 40 on Manhattan's West Side, reports The New York Times. The scheme to put a stadium on Manhattan's western coast involved a $100 million investment in refurbishing the dilapidated pier.
August 2012: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo both speak out in favor of bringing a new MLS stadium and team to Queens, with Bloomberg quoted by the New York Post as saying "It would be a great idea."
October 2012: MLS enlists SHoP Architects to prepare initial designs for a stadium to be built inside Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens on the site of The Fountain of the Planets, according to Capital New York/Politico.
December 4, 2012: Hundreds gather at the Queens Theatre to rally in support of "MLS To Queens," with Don Garber and MLS president Mark Abbott there to showcase the project, which at this point is still planned for inside Flushing Meadows Corona Park.
February 2013: Conceptual renderings from SHoP Architects of the $300 million, 25,000-seat soccer stadium planned for Flushing Meadows Corona Park leak online, though more accurately they leaked during a presentation at the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture.
May 21, 2013: New York City FC is born, with MLS announcing they've accepted a $100 million expansion fee from Manchester City FC and the New York Yankees to bring a second team to New York starting in 2015 – though there is no mention of where the new team will play its home games.
Raf Noboa y Rivera
Goodbye Queens, Hello Bronx?
June 2013: Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. writes a letter to Don Garber calling for the Bronx, not Queens, to become the permanent home of New York City FC after MLS's plans to build a stadium in Flushing Meadows Corona Park stalled due to fervent community opposition to building the stadium on public parkland.
July 2013: Queens City Council member Leroy Comrie declares that MLS won't be coming to Queens because the planned stadium site inside Flushing Meadows Corona Park "doesn't work...There was no real benefit for Queens residents to site it in that location."
August 2013: The New York Times reports the NYCFC stadium search has moved from Queens to the Bronx, with the team targeting a nine-acre parcel of land located between the Major Deegan Expressway and East 153rd Street that held a Yankee Stadium parking garage, a highway ramp, and the GAL Manufacturing Corporation elevator parts factory.
December 2013: New York Post reports a deal is close for NYCFC to build a $400 million, 28,000-seat stadium at that aforementioned South Bronx location, though it all came with a caveat. While then-New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg approved of the complex stadium deal, it still needed the blessing of incoming (in January 2014) Mayor Bill de Blasio, who reportedly had not reviewed it.
Raf Noboa y Rivera
January 2014: Initial community sentiment looks negative regarding the proposed South Bronx soccer stadium, with opponents "out in force" during a town hall meeting held to discuss the plan.
April 2014: The New York Times reports that NYCFC has made a three-year commitment to play home matches at Yankee Stadium beginning with the team's inaugural season in 2015. Just a three-year commitment, guys?
Bronx plan stalls
August 2014: A thorough report from Capital New York/Politico's Dana Rubinstein shows negotiations for the NYCFC stadium in the South Bronx are stuck somewhere between "stalled" and "dead." That's because the stadium deal lacked clear support from Mayor de Blasio and because the team had not reached or seemingly gotten close to a deal with either the GAL Manufacturing Corporation or the company that controlled the Yankee Stadium parking lot, each located on the parcel of land that stadium would encompass.
September 2014: As the Bronx stadium dream faded, the Queens Chronicle arrived with a fresh, vaguely-sourced NYCFC stadium rumor: According to their sources, the Aqueduct Race Track was a new target for a soccer stadium. The facility in Southeastern Queens, home to horse racing and a casino, had long been a rumored site for redevelopment, with Governor Andrew Cuomo in 2012 proposing the construction of a new convention center, to replace Manhattan's Javits Center, on the Aqueduct site.
March 15, 2015: New York City FC plays its first home match in existence, taking the field at Yankee Stadium in front of 43,507 fans.
April 2015: Columbia University is the latest new rumored NYCFC stadium site, with the New York Times reporting that the team had an eye on the Baker Athletics Complex located at the very top of the borough of Manhattan. The idea was to tear down the 17,000-seat Wien Stadium and replace it with a 25,000-seat stadium that could be used by New York City FC and also the Columbia football and soccer teams, at a cost of $400 million.
August 2015: Mayor de Blasio pulls back from supporting the previous Bloomberg administration's plans for redeveloping Willets Point, which included a huge shopping mall and thousands of new units of housing. A New York Times report on the latest roadblock to redeveloping Willets Point mentions that the developers overseeing the city-owned land's reenvisioning, Related and Sterling Equities, "recently proposed allowing New York City FC...to build a soccer stadium next to Citi Field in return for a housing fund." That might come back around later...
The lean years set in
September 2016: Jon Patricof, then the president of NYCFC, tells Crain's New York Business that there is no news on the team's soccer stadium search, with Patricof saying "We are working on it daily in some way, shape or form. It’s a very active process, but there’s nothing new to report."
January 2017: Queens Borough President Melinda Katz uses her annual State of the Borough address to propose putting a soccer stadium (or maybe a hockey stadium) in Willets Point, as reported here by the Queens Chronicle. In response, Queens State Senator Tony Avella is quoted as saying of the Willets Point stadium idea, "I don't think that will fly with the community. I'm sort of surprised the borough president would suggest a stadium."
September 2017: Multiple reports emerge that NYCFC will be submitting a bid to build a soccer stadium at Belmont Park on state-owned land, which is technically in Long Island even if it's extremely close to the Queens border. Their chief competition for the stadium site is the New York Islanders hockey team, who are viewed as the heavy favorites to win the bid and build their stadium there.
September 2017: While reporting on the Belmont Park bid, the New York Post also reveals that NYCFC has looked into building its stadium at the site of the former Elmhurst Dairy plant in Jamaica, Queens.
#NYCFC has looked at the Elmhurst Dairy plant in Jamaica, Queens, according to a source. It closed down last year. https://t.co/MMdKmL0IT2 pic.twitter.com/ICcVnUH5w5
— Kyle Schnitzer (@Kyle_Schnitzer) September 26, 2017
October 22, 2017: New York City FC hosts its first-ever match at Citi Field in Queens, closing out the MLS regular season against the Columbus Crew, with the two sides playing to a 2-2 draw in front of 20,113 fans.
December 2017: NYCFC reveal the details of their planned stadium for Belmont Park, saying it would be part of a development that would include the 26,000-seat open-air soccer stadium plus 400,000 square feet of space for retail, a 5.2-acre community park and a two-acre soccer facility.
December 20, 2017: The New York Islanders officially win the bidding for the right to redevelop the Belmont Park site, which will eventually (in November 2021) become UBS Arena.
February 2018: New York City elected officials – Mayor de Blasio, Queens Borough President Melinda Katz, and City Councilman Francisco Moya – announce plans to move ahead with the construction of 1,100 affordable apartments in "Phase I" of Willets Point's redevelopment on six acres of land. Mayor de Blasio also creates the Willets Point Task Force, chaired by Katz and Moya, to "identify community priorities and produce recommendations for the remaining 17 acres of City-owned land" at Willets Point.
The Bronx again, but different?
April 17, 2018: New York YIMBY shares first details of the Harlem River Yards proposal, a $700 million development in the South Bronx that would include a 26,000-seat stadium for NYCFC designed by Rafael Viñoly, plus 550 units of new affordable housing and a waterfront community park.
April 24, 2018: NYCFC club president Jon Patricof downplays the Harlem River Yards stadium site, describing it as quoted by ESPN as, "We submitted something to the State [of New York] as part of a request for expressions of interest...But that's it. That site is not an active site."
April 24, 2018: One active New York City FC site that debuted on this date: The team's Etihad City Football Academy training facility in Rockland County's Orangeburg, NY. The team spent its first three years holding training sessions on the SUNY Purchase campus in Westchester.
July 2018: A different Bronx stadium site emerges, this one located between Yankee Stadium and the Bronx Terminal Market and tied up in a bigger development meant to include a park, a hotel and conference center, retail and office space, a school, and 3,000 new affordable apartments. It's still contingent on the team and developers securing and converting Yankee Stadium parking lots and the GAL factory, though.
March 2019: Following a prolonged period of quiet on the stadium news front, New York Yankees team president Randy Levine appears on Bloomberg TV and says of a NYCFC stadium, "We are in active negotiations to get a new stadium here in New York. We hope to have an announcement this year." This statement came not long after then-NYCFC Sporting Director Claudio Reyna said of the stadium before the team's 2019 home opener "We’re close...Of course it’s been sort of something that we’ve said quite a bit, but we feel good and we feel close."
October 23, 2019: For the first time since October 22, 2017, NYCFC head back to Citi Field, this time playing their one and only match of the MLS Cup Playoffs at the Queens baseball stadium – they lost to Toronto FC 1-2 to crash out of the playoffs.
December 17, 2019: NYCFC announces a "Citi Field Series"* for the 2020 season that will bring four home matches to Queens, spun by the team as a way for them to avoid playing midweek matches and having a congested home calendar. *This would end up being scuppered by that extremely pesky Covid-19 pandemic.
February 2020: 2019 came and went with no stadium announcement, but early 2020 had a New York Times report that NYCFC was finally close to getting a stadium deal done in the South Bronx. The final deal would have been a $1 billion development, but it would have involved the developers purchasing the now-infamous GAL elevator parts factory, six parking lots near Yankee Stadium for a reported $54 million, and also would have involved eliminating an exit ramp from the Major Deegan Expressway. Brad Sims, now NYCFC CEO, put out a statement to fans confirming that the team was pursuing this site.
Another Bronx bummer
September 2020: Progress in the Bronx stalled through early spring and summer, but Chris Campbell of The Outfield reported in September 2020 that the project's developer, Maddd Equities, had made progress toward solving the major hurdles of relocating the GAL Manufacturing factory and removing the Deegan ramp.
December 2020: THE CITY reports on another reason for a delay in Bronx stadium progress: The hardball being played by the company that operates the debt-laden Yankee Stadium parking lots and garages at the center of the planned redevelopment. The Yankees blame the parking garage operator, Bronx Parking Development Company LLC, for standing in the way of a possible deal to sell some of the garages and tear them down to make way for the stadium-and-affordable-housing development.
June 2021: The Outfield reports on dysfunction in the South Bronx stadium dealings, as a procedural vote that could have advanced the New York City FC stadium plan was delayed by last-minute moves made by the Yankees and the stadium project's developer, Maddd Equities.
July 2021: The second iteration of a Bronx stadium plan fully blows up, with this collapse hinging on ongoing disagreements centered on parking spaces and parking garages around Yankee Stadium. New York City's Economic Development Corporation blamed the Yankees for backing out of promises made to get the deal done, while the Yankees blamed New York City and holders of the bonds tied to the parking garage for reneging on a part of the deal.
November 2021: A survey by South Bronx business group The 161st Street Business Improvement District finds that support for building a soccer stadium for NYCFC near Yankee Stadium lost significant support, with only 56% of survey respondents approving of building the stadium, down from 67% in 2019 and 75% in 2014.
December 2021: During the celebrations at City Hall to commemorate NYCFC winning MLS Cup 2021, team CEO Brad Sims was serenaded with chants of "We want a stadium!" In response, Sims declared "I’m here today to promise you that we will not stop pursuing trophies and we will definitely build you a stadium...It’s a promise."
Post-Cup momentum?
February 23, 2022: With neither Yankee Stadium nor Citi Field approved venues for Concacaf Champions League play and Red Bull Arena unavailable due to planned renovations, New York City FC is forced to play a "home" match in Los Angeles, California, in Champions League, against Santos de Guápiles FC.
March 8, 2022: Same problem as before but a different solution: Another round of Concacaf Champions League play meant finding another "home" stadium for NYCFC, and this time they traveled back to East Hartford, Connecticut to host Guatemalan club Comunicaciones FC.
June 2022: Chris Campbell of The Outfield reports that Harlem River Yards appears to be back on as a potential stadium site for NYCFC, based on a review of public records and lobbying disclosures that showed renewed activity by the team in late 2021 to try to secure the South Bronx site.
June 2022: Rumors pick up steam that NYCFC plans to invest money to renovate Icahn Stadium and begin to play games on Randall's Island, potentially using the small track-and-field stadium as a temporary venue for home matches.
July 2022: By this point of the 2022 MLS season, NYCFC had played "home" matches in six different stadiums spread across four states – Banc of California Stadium in Los Angeles, CA; Pratt & Whitney Stadium in East Hartford, CT; Red Bull Arena in Harrison, NJ; Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, NY; Citi Field in Queens, NY; and Belson Stadium in Queens, NY. The club has played "home" games in eight different stadiums across its existence, those six plus Jack Coffey Field at Fordham University and at the Wide World of Sports Complex in Florida during the MLS Is Back tournament.
Is this really happening?
July 2022: An exclusive report from the New York Post claims that New York City Mayor Eric Adams is set to approve plans for NYCFC to build its soccer stadium at Willets Point, though negotiations are described as "ongoing" with the Mayor's office saying in the report that "There is no agreement at this time."
October 2022: NYCFC at first announces plans to host a MLS Cup Playoffs match at Red Bull Arena, but an early playoff elimination for the New York Mets allows the club to move the match over to Citi Field one week after announcing the intent to play in New Jersey. A break from the baseball gods for a change, as NYCFC dominates Inter Miami CF 3-0 in front of a lively Queens crowd.
October 11, 2022: City Football Group CEO Ferran Soriano strikes an extremely confident tone about an impending NYCFC stadium announcement.
Ferran Soriano, CEO of City Football Group (owns NYCFC), says "we are very close to announcing where we are going to build a stadium" for NYCFC.
— Mark J. Burns (@markjburns88) October 11, 2022
Soriano says he's hopeful the team will be able to announce an update by the end of 2022. #SBJWCOS
November 7, 2022: Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, Jr. lets slip on a webinar that "...we’re going to have some announcements going on with...New York [City] Football Club" as it pertains to the redevelopment of Willets Point, Queens.
November 15, 2022: The New York Times drops the report over a decade in the making: New York City officials finally made a deal to build a soccer stadium in the city, with a $780 million, 25,000-seat stadium for NYCFC officially planned to come to Willets Point.
November 16, 2022: In a big event at the Queens Museum, Mayor Adams formally announces the plan for redeveloping Willets Point, which will eventually (in 2027) include the soccer stadium but also 2,500 new affordable apartments, a 650-seat public school, a 250-room hotel, 180,000 square feet of new retail space, and over an acre of new open public space.
Hudson River Blue Staff
Dream gets closer to reality
April 14, 2023: The architectural firm HOK is tabbed to design the Willets Point soccer stadium, with Turner Construction Company handling construction. It seems like a good fit: HOK was the firm responsible for designing CITYPARK, home to St. Louis City SC, and Mercedes-Benz Stadium, home to Atlanta United, among others.
May 10, 2023: The first renderings of the new NYCFC stadium in Willets Point are released, and Naming Rights Sponsor Stadium is officially born, in digital form.
May 18, 2023: A potential late complication emerges and it once again revolves around disputes about parking spaces. New York Mets owner Steve Cohen is reported to be opposed to NYCFC getting to build its stadium across the street from his Citi Field, and THE CITY's Katie Honan reports the hedge-fund billionaire is playing hardball with NYCFC and New York City over access to Citi Field's many, many parking lots during match days at the future NYCFC stadium.
June 2023: Mayor Eric Adams and City Councilman Francisco Moya reportedly held a "cordial yet spirited" conference call with Steve Cohen that sought to "hash out differences about the fate" of the NYCFC stadium and the sharing of Cohen's parking spaces around Citi Field, according to the New York Post. Cohen hoped to exert his parking lot leverage in order to have his casino proposal/scheme combined with NYCFC's planned portion of Willets Point redevelopment to help it achieve community approval.
October 6, 2023: Political leverage season arrives as Queens Borough President Donovan Richards says he won't approve changes to the city map needed to build the NYCFC stadium unless local street vendors are allowed to return to Corona Plaza following a summer crackdown by the Adams administration.
October 16, 2023: The Willets Point Phase II development which includes NYCFC's stadium officially enters New York City's Uniform Land Use and Review Procedure (ULURP), a multi-step public review and approval process that will either clear the way for the stadium's construction, or deal the project another costly setback.
December 4, 2023: Queens Community Board 7 votes by a margin of 37-2 in favor of Willets Point Phase II, meaning the NYCFC stadium cleared a major hurdle right at the start of the ULURP process. The Community Board held multiple meetings to discuss the plan for Willets Point in the basement of a church in Whitestone, Queens but ultimately voted overwhelmingly in favor of advancing the stadium project.
December 20, 2023: New York City breaks ground on Phase I of the Willets Point redevelopment down the block from NYCFC's stadium site. The first phase is expected to be completed in 2026 and includes 880 units of affordable housing.
Final approvals, new owner, groundbreaking
January 10, 2024: Queens Borough President Donovan Richards gives the NYCFC stadium and the Willets Point Phase II project his approval, moving things further along in the ULURP process.
March 6, 2024: The ULURP process closes in on its endgame as City Planning Commission of New York City votes unanimously in favor of the soccer stadium and the rest of the Willets Point development. The City Planning Commission represented the first all-or-nothing vote the NYCFC stadium and Willets Point project faced, not advisory like the Community Board or Borough President votes before it. Thankfully the CPC liked what they saw.
April 11, 2024: The big one arrives: The New York City Council voted overwhelmingly to approve the stadium and all of the Willets Point redevelopment, with only one dissenting Councilmember.
Andrew Leigh
July 2024: Turns out a stadium on Randall's Island was a part of the plan for NYCFC after all, kinda. The club announces that it has funded a revamp of Icahn Stadium to install a new soccer field that will be utilized, at least some of the time, by New York City FC II, the club's reserve team in MLS NEXT Pro.
September 2024: The New York City FC ownership group gets transformed as billionaire entrepreneur Marcelo Claure purchases a 10% ownership stake in both the club and its new Willets Point stadium for an amount reported to be around $100-150 million.
November 21, 2024: The official, sponsored name of the new NYCFC stadium is officially unveiled and it's set to be Etihad Park (though fans of NYCFC seem to want to refer to it as The Valley of Ashes, for what it's worth).
December 4, 2024: The city, NYCFC, and their developer partners officially break ground on the construction of Etihad Park, beginning work on the long-planned, long-sought-after first soccer-specific stadium in New York City.
WE’VE OFFICIALLY BROKEN GROUND ON ETIHAD PARK. DALE NEW YOOOOOORK 🗽🥹 pic.twitter.com/0j5dGdRiRp
— New York City FC (@newyorkcityfc) December 4, 2024
Oliver Strand
