A mammoth plan to bring thousands of affordable homes to one of the largest undeveloped sites in New York City was resurrected this week. In a meeting at the White House on Thursday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani pitched President Donald Trump on the Sunnyside Yard development, a proposal to build a deck over the 180-acre rail yard in Queens and create a new mixed-use community with 12,000 affordable apartments, new schools, and public space above a new regional rail hub. Former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration released a master plan for the project right before the city shut down during the pandemic in March 2020, and it has been at a standstill since. Mamdani said he asked the president for $21 billion in federal grants to advance the project.
Sunnyside Yard is owned and operated by Amtrak, which means federal approval would be required. As of 2020, roughly 780 trains run through the yard each day, serving trains on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor and the Long Island Rail Road’s Main Line, as well as storage for NJ Transit.
The master plan released by the city’s Economic Development Corporation in 2020 called for a $14.4 billion deck over about 80 percent of the train yard to create new buildable land. The proposal included 12,000 affordable homes, half of which would be rentals for very low- and extremely low-income families and half of which would offer Mitchell-Lama-like affordable homeownership opportunities.
The project would be the largest affordable housing development to be built in New York since Co-op City in the Bronx was completed in 1973.
“New York City is facing a generational affordability challenge,” Mamdani said in a statement following his meeting with Trump. “Working families are being priced out of the neighborhoods they built. To meet this moment, we need a true federal partner prepared to invest boldly and act urgently.”
In a press release about the Oval Office meeting, the mayor said he “underscored the city’s commitment to transparency, fiscal responsibility and collaboration in deploying federal funds – ensuring every dollar delivers safe, affordable housing for New Yorkers.”
According to the mayor, “both parties agreed to continue discussions.”
Appealing to the president’s love of New York City, real estate, and tabloids, the mayor’s team presented Trump with two newspaper front pages, one of the famous 1975 New York Daily News cover that read “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD” and a fake one that City Hall made that read “TRUMP TO CITY: LET’S BUILD.”
The master plan from 2020 also called for 60 acres of new public space, 10-12 new schools, new public libraries, and new child and health care centers. The proposal also outlined a new regional rail station served by LIRR and Metro-North, with potential plans for Amtrak and NJ Transit service, a new subway station, and a new bus rapid transit line.
It’s unclear whether Mamdani’s pitch to the president involved the transportation hub, as it was not mentioned in a press release.
The resurrection of the Sunnyside Yard plan was met with praise by pro-housing and development groups.
“As a member of Mayor de Blasio’s Sunnyside Yards task force, it has always stuck in my craw that all that work ultimately went nowhere. So I was over the moon to see it was the subject of discussion today between Mayor Mamdani and the President,” Carlo A. Scissura, president and CEO of the New York Building Congress, said in a statement.
“Our members stand ready to take it from concept to reality. The President must see the impact this will have on his home city and secure the federal funding needed to make the work of that task force years ago bear fruit and build our city upward!”
Annemarie Gray, executive director of pro-housing advocacy organization Open New York, said the Sunnyside plan is “worth further exploring.”
“We are excited to see the Mayor consistently recognize that building new homes is central to an affordability agenda,” Gray said. “With a housing shortage on the order of a million units, we must explore every possible solution, and Sunnyside Yard presents an opportunity worth further exploring.”
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