The Future of Sunnyside Yards, And What Else Happened This Week in Housing

Mayor Zohran Mamdani met with Donald Trump during a surprise visit to the White House Thursday, where he pitched the president on funding the development of 12,000 new apartments — “an entire new neighborhood” — over the western Queens rail yard.

For decades, city officials and urban planners have puzzled over how to develop Sunnyside Yards, a 180-acre active rail yard in Western Queens.

Could President Donald Trump help finally make it happen? Mayor Zohran Mamdani hopes so.

During a surprise visit to the White House Thursday, he pitched the president on funding the development of 12,000 apartments— “an entire new neighborhood” —on top of the site, what the mayor said would be the largest housing project the city’s seen since Co-op City went up in the Bronx in 1973.

The conversation was a follow-up to Mamdani’s first meeting with the president last fall, where the two politicians established a surprisingly cordial rapport and discussed the city’s need for more housing, the mayor told reporters Friday.

“The last time I was in the Oval Office … I had shared the fact that who I believe to be the greatest mayor in New York City, Fiorello LaGuardia, so much of his success was tied to his partnership with the federal government,” Mamdani said. “So in working with my team, we sought to answer the question of, what could it look like to bring that kind of partnership back to New York City at a scale that’s needed to address this crisis?”

“The president was interested in the idea of working together,” the mayor added, but acknowledged that they are “just at the very beginning” of a conversation about what would ultimately be a complex, costly and time-consuming project—if it comes to life.

Building at Sunnyside Yards would require constructing a massive deck over a busy active rail yard, similar to projects like Hudson Yards and Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park in Brooklyn (in the latter example, the long-awaited platform over the train tracks has still yet to be built).

“We’re not just talking about building housing, but we’re talking about building a great new neighborhood, and I think that can get lost in the shuffle sometimes,” said Vishaan Chakrabarti, the founder of Practice for Architecture and Urbanism.

The firm had worked with former Mayor Bill de Blasio to develop the Sunnyside Yards Master Plan in 2019, which laid out a vision for what the mega-development could look like. It was put on the back burner after the COVID-19 pandemic struck.

“That plan was done in a kind of pre-abundance moment, if you will. I think the politics around new housing has shifted a lot in the last few years,” Chakrabarti added. “The need has become even more acute.”

Of the 12,000 affordable units envisioned for Sunnyside Yards, half would be Mitchell-Lama apartments, Mamdani said. “This will take many, many years. However, we are not daunted by the length of the project,” the mayor said Friday. “It is critically important that we do not fear the scale of these kinds of projects, or think that they are impossible to deliver on.”

The proposal, and Mamdani’s apparently cozy second meeting with the president, drew mixed reactions from other elected officials and advocacy groups. In a statement, Carlo A. Scissura, president and CEO of the New York Building Congress, called Sunnyside Yards “a dream project,” and “the kind of mass production we need to truly put our housing crisis in the past.”

But City Councilmember Julie Won, who represents the Queens district where the rail yard sits, was not nearly as enthused. “One day after President Trump’s State of the Union, where he attacked and degraded our immigrants and trans communities, the mayor opted to meet with the President re-proposing a failed housing project in my district,” Won said in a statement Friday.

Plans for the site under former Mayor de Blasio were set aside over “a myriad of concerns,” Won added (at the time, local reps—including Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and then-Councilmember Jimmy Van Bramer—said they worried the project would further fuel gentrification and displace locals).

“Any proposal that reshapes Sunnyside Yards must begin with the neighbors who live here,” Won said. “Our community deserves a seat at the table long before anyone, including the mayor, makes headlines in the Oval Office especially for a project they have previously rejected.”

Here’s what else happened in housing this week—

ICYMI, from City Limits:

• The Trump administration is reviving an earlier proposal to ban undocumented immigrants from living in federally-subsidized housing, a threat to thousands of New York City families with mixed immigration status who call NYCHA or Section 8 home.
• The Mamdani administration held its first “Rental Ripoff” hearing in Brooklyn, where tenants had a lot to share with city officials.
• A residential project in Bayside, Queens, won the support of housing-skeptical Councilmember Vickie Paladino due the threat of a new voter-approved appeals process that could override her objections.
• The city is seeking providers to operate an additional 190 units of Justice-Involved Supportive Housing—affordable units paired with support services for people with mental health needs who tend to cycle between jail and homeless shelters.

ICYMI, from other local newsrooms:

• City officials are warning New Yorkers to beware of federal immigration officers potentially posing as housing inspectors, The City reports.
• Meet the city’s new homeless and social services commissioner, who hails from Pittsburgh, according to the New York Times.
• Owners of government-subsidized “affordable” housing filed more than a third of the city’s roughly 120,000 eviction lawsuits in 2024, Gothamist reports.

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