Let’s mega deal: Developers are placing their bets on NYC with fun, large-scale super projects

Over the next few years, the Big Apple will boom with playful mega-developments.

Fresh markets, three new casinos — complete with hotels and entertainment venues — a revamped horse racing facility and a new soccer stadium will make the Big Apple feel even bigger.

Pair that with tons of affordable housing, new office towers and acres of green spaces and you’ve got lots to look forward to.

In The Bronx, the Hunts Point Produce Market — responsible for keeping 12% of the city’s food supply and 25% of our produce safe at proper temperatures — will get $400 million’s worth of new facilities on its 100-acre site. The project will be tweaked over the next few months and then built by Aurora-Primus — a joint venture design-build firm consisting of Aurora Contractors and Primus Builders — before being leased to the market’s family-run vendors.

The Bronx will also see one of three downstate casinos.

Nestled by the Whitestone Bridge, it’s rising at the Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course developed by the Trump Organization and operated by Bally’s Golf Links at Ferry Point.

The new project will feature an L-shaped, 150,000-square-foot curvilinear building with gaming amenities and 500 hotel rooms in a 23-story tower, with a rooftop restaurant, banquet and meeting spaces. A 2,000-seat, three-story event center with dining options is also planned.

Over the bridge in Queens, a Hard Rock casino will break ground on 50 acres adjacent to Mets’ Citi Field.

This $8 billion project will include a 1,000-room hotel, a 5,650-seat indoor music and entertainment venue, plus retail and dining options. It will also improve 25 acres, creating public green space and athletic fields.

In nearby Willets Point, the privately financed Etihad Park Major League Soccer stadium will open in 2027. While a year too late to host this year’s FIFA World Cup games, the first fully electric stadium with 25,000 seats will become the new home for the New York City Football Club. Fans can start reserving seats for the 2027 season at EtihadPark.com.  

The stadium will sit in a bustling new neighborhood that is being built by a Related and Sterling Equities venture, Queens Development Group, in a historic public-private partnership between QDG, NYCEDC, the City of New York and NYCFC.

The project will add 2,500 affordable apartments to the city — including 220 units for low-income seniors. Plans also call for a 650-seat public school, retail, a 250-room hotel and 40,000 square feet of public space.  A lottery for the first 747 affordable units in two buildings is open until Feb. 25.

Also in Queens, racing fans will rejoice as Belmont Park is getting a snazzy $455 million upgrade that will open on Sept. 18.

The new 300,000-square-foot, five-story grandstand was designed by Populous and will include premium Champion Suites, as well as updated technology and hospitality areas for fans. All four of Belmont’s racetracks are being entirely rebuilt while the horses will enjoy new stables.

Although the running of the Belmont Stakes will be bumped again to Saratoga Race Course for 2026, the third leg of the Triple Crown will return to the new Belmont in 2027. Thanks to a push by Marc Holliday of SL Green, who also heads the New York Racing Association, the Breeders’ Cup World Championships will also be held at Belmont Oct. 29 to 30, 2027, for the first time since 2005.     

When Belmont opens, Queens’ other racetrack, Aqueduct, will close and its 210 acres will be redeveloped, likely with housing and amenities. The Resorts World Casino attached to the track finally got the nod from New York State to become a full-fledged casino with table games. They’ll start rolling dice around the end of March.

Resorts World will add to its current pool of 5,500 slot and electronic games, spending $5.5 billion to build a new 500,000-square-foot gaming floor with 6,000 slot machines and 800 live table games. In addition to the existing 400-room Hyatt Regency, Resorts will develop another 2,000 hotel rooms, plus a 7,000-seat entertainment venue, tons of new parking and 12 acres of improved open space.

Owned by Genting Group, Resorts World’s also promised a $2 billion community benefits package with a commitment to build up to 50,000 units of workforce housing across the five boroughs. A state-of-the-art Resorts World Innovation Campus with the Jet Center — a sports and media complex led by Queens native and NBA legend Kenny “the Jet” Smith — a community health and wellness center and a Queens STEAM Institute are also planned.

A new Jamaica neighborhood rezoning plan could allow the creation of 11,800 new homes — 4,200 will be permanently affordable units in an expansive Mandatory Inclusionary Housing area.

It would also allow for over 2 million square feet of new commercial and community-facility space plus neighborhood infrastructure and public-realm investments.

In Brooklyn, the 60-acre Marine Terminal will get $418 million in improvements including 6,000 new apartments and 675,000 square feet of commercial space. The all-electric maritime port will also have 28 acres of public space.

Manhattan’s Kips Bay neighborhood is getting an upgrade at the site of the Public Health Lab as the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is being relocated to Harlem. Meanwhile, the Innovation East project at 455 First Ave. will become a state-of-the-art life science hub.

Nearby, the former Hunter College’s Brookdale Campus will become almost 2 million square feet of academic, healthcare and life sciences space with a $1.6 billion investment from the city and state.  

Skanska will build the first 600,000-square-foot phase of the project that will host a new high school plus classrooms and labs for the Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing, the CUNY Graduate School of Health & Health Policy and Borough of Manhattan Community College health care programs.

A second phase will include nearly 1 million square feet of life sciences space, outpatient care and an advanced nursing practice simulation training center for NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue plus the Office of Chief Medical Examiner’s forensic pathology center and toxicology laboratory.

Across town, to help pay for the $10 billion replacement and expansion of the 76-year-old Port Authority Bus Terminal, the city will fork over 40 years of tax revenue generated by two new towers on the top and another on nearby property.

The ambitious project includes a new 2.1 million square-foot main terminal, a separate storage and staging building along with new ramps in and out of the Lincoln Tunnel. There will be more street-level retail, a glamorous new entrance on West 41st Street and a multi-story indoor atrium.   

A temporary terminal and new ramps are expected to be completed in 2028 with the new main terminal wrapped up by 2032. We should live so long.