New York City Football Club to get 25,000-seat stadium across the street from Citi Field: report

New York City officials reached an agreement to build a 25,000 seat soccer stadium in Queens that will be home to the New York City Football Club.

It will be the city’s first professional soccer stadium and will be located in the Willets Points neighborhood, right across the street from Citi Field, according to a New York Times report. Officials plan to complete the development by 2027.

The stadium will be the centerpiece of a redevelopment project. Along with the new stadium, city officials plan to build a 250-room hotel and 2,500 units of housing, according to the Times.

“Queens, which is the world’s borough, now will become the home of soccer, which is the world’s sport,” Maria Torres-Springer, the deputy mayor for economic and workforce development, said in an interview on Tuesday.

Taxpayer money will not be used to fund the stadium as the soccer team will pay for the entire construction of the stadium, which is estimated to cost $780 million, city officials said.

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New York City owns the land on which the stadium and housing will be built. The land will be leased to the football club over the course of 49 years. Rent will cost the team up to $4 million per year to lease the land and the club will have the option for a 25-year extension.

NYCFC began looking for a permanent home in 2012. The team was founded in 2013 and have been playing home games at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. The club played its first league game in 2015.

Towards the end of the Bloomberg administration, officials planned to build a stadium for the team in the middle of Flushing Meadows Corona Park, but local politicians and parks advocates foiled those plans, citing that the team has enough money to play in an area that isn’t scarce for land.

The team considered almost 20 locations around the city, including near Yankee Stadium. In 2020, team owners planned to replace parking lots and an elevator parts factory near Yankee Stadium to make room for a new home. Those plans — like the others — fell apart in the following year.

To build hype, NYCFC plan to play some home games in Citi Field before the new stadium opens in 2027.

“It’s pretty much of a fantasy,” said Marty Edelman, the football club’s vice chairman. “We’ve been an itinerant tenant in a number of different spaces. I think our fans need a different GPS every week to figure out where they go to watch us play.”