Mamdani pitched Trump a $21 billion plan to build housing over the Sunnyside Amtrak yard. Not everyone’s pleased.
By COLE SINANIAN
cole@queensledger.com
Posing for a photo op next to a smiling Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Thursday afternoon, Mayor Zohran Mamdani held up a fake copy of the New York Daily News with the headline “TRUMP TO CITY: LET’S BUILD.”
The mayor had brought the paper to the meeting in an apparent appeal to the president’s ego as he pitched what could one day become one of the Mamdani Administration’s landmark achievements: the Sunnyside Yards redevelopment.
Mamdani’s proposal would resurrect the Sunnyside Yards plan, a DeBlasio-era project that stalled during the pandemic and aimed to build 12,000 units of affordable housing on an elevated deck over Sunnyside’s 180-acre Amtrak railyard.
But while several politicians and organizations have since come out in support of Mamdani’s proposal, others have questioned the mayor’s appeal to the president before consulting the local Sunnyside community.
“New York City is facing a generational affordability challenge,” Mayor Mamdani said. “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. I appreciated the opportunity to speak directly with President Trump about building more housing in any single project than our city has seen since 1973.”
Amtrak first released plans to upgrade the railyard back in 2014, opening up the possibility of extending the Sunnyside neighborhood over the railyard. But with a price tag of $14 billion and the COVID-19 pandemic grinding the city to a halt just weeks after the master plan, was released, the Sunnyside Yard redevelopment never materialized. Now, as Mamdani looks to formulate his housing development strategy amid a worsening housing crisis, the new mayor is bringing the project back from the dead with an updated price tag of $21 billion— money Mamdani hopes to get from Trump through federal grants.
If completed as proposed, the redevelopment would include 12,000 units of affordable housing — 6,000 of which would be “Mitchell-Lama-style,” according to the mayor’s press release — built on “the world’s largest deck over the site.” The project would add some 30,000 union jobs, as well as new parks, schools, health care facilities and 60 acres of public space in what would be the largest housing and infrastructure investment in the city in more than 50 years.
The proposed Sunnyside Yards redevelopment would expand the Sunnyside neighborhood over the 180-acre Amtrak railyard. Photo via NYC EDC.
Several organizations and elected officials were quick to applaud the mayor for his ambition and urgency in addressing the city’s affordable housing crisis. In a written statement, Annemarie Gray, Executive Director of Open New York — a pro-development housing nonprofit — welcomed the potential for new housing units built over the railyard.
“We are excited to see the Mayor consistently recognize that building new homes is central to an affordability agenda,” she 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.
Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, meanwhile, praised the plan in a statement, highlighting the need to balance development goals with adequate community engagement.
“Sunnyside Yard’s untapped potential as New York City’s next great community is even more immense now than it was a decade ago, when the city first proposed such a redevelopment plan,” Richards said in a statement.
“In the event that New York City does secure significant federal investment for this project, I would strongly encourage the administration to conduct a comprehensive, community-centered planning process that takes into account the current and future needs of The World’s Borough,” the borough president continued.
But it’s precisely this “community-centered planning process” that critics allege was lacking in the Sunnyside Yards’ initial redevelopment plan. Back in 2019, US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez opposed the project, raising concerns about the potential privatization of parts of Sunnyside and displacement of local residents as a result of the project.
“The proposal as it stands reflects a misalignment of priorities: development over reinvestment, commodification of public land over consideration of public good,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote in a joint letter with then City councilmember Jimmy Van Bramer.
“No one wishes to see the specter of luxury development that is Hudson Yards duplicated in Sunnyside.”
Among Sunnyside elected, reactions to the mayor’s proposal were chilly. In a lengthy press statement, Sunnyside and Long Island City councilmember Julie Won called out the mayor for seemingly going over the community’s heads to secure funding before consulting Sunnysiders.
“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.
Won continued: “Community centered planning requires transparency, early engagement, firm commitments to affordability, social infrastructure, feasibility, and protections against displacement. I welcome the opportunity to build more deeply affordable housing and other federal investments for public transit and other infrastructure, but it cannot be done behind closed doors unilaterally.”
