Every morning, I look out my window at the biggest missed opportunity in New York City. Spanning 180 acres between four of the city’s most dynamic neighborhoods, Sunnyside Yard is a steel and asphalt scar that rips across Western Queens — serving those passing through, not those that call this borough home.
Mayor Mamdani recently made headlines with his visit to the White House in pursuit of restarting plans to build housing, green space, and public infrastructure over this yard. I’ll echo the sentiment on the mock up of the Daily News he brought with him: let’s build.
Developing on this site is one of the rare opportunities we have to address several of our most pressing problems at once.
We’re in the midst of a housing crisis, a lack of supply is driving up rents across the city. Western Queens is sorely lacking green space, with the adjacent neighborhoods ranking as some of the worst for park access in all of New York. And this neighborhood, especially with the massive growth in population in Long Island City, is starved for schools, hospitals, daycares, and other infrastructure.
The answer to all of these issues is right in front of us. Previous visions for Sunnyside Yard included tens of thousands of units of housing, dozens of acres of park space, and space for the human services that will make this entire community more vibrant, lively, and prosperous. This site offers the rare opportunity to address a generation’s worth of challenges at once.
And it solves another problem — the gash across the heart of our city’s map. In the form of imposing overpasses, deep canyons, steel fencing, and loud, unfriendly bridges, I see this barrier firsthand every day. Like many of my neighbors, I’ve pushed a stroller underneath it, ridden a bike over it, and dodged traffic crossing it on foot. It’s a moat that drives our communities apart.
Healing this divide will unlock economic opportunity, with tens of thousands of construction jobs — good paying, union jobs — in addition to thousands more permanent jobs made possible by the businesses and institutions that will fill this restored community. In a borough already bustling with entrepreneurial energy, this will give our innovators room to grow.
This project will not be cheap. But it will be worth it. To save costs, I encourage the city to explore dedicating more of the site to green space and other usages that require less heavy-duty decking — and then realize additional opportunity for housing through strategic rezonings of the corridors adjacent to the Yard. This will make the project more feasible, more contextual, and more sustainable.
The last major decking project like this, Hudson Yards, left a sour taste in the mouth of many New Yorkers. On that site, a luxury mall is surrounded by even more luxurious apartment towers. We need affordable homes and accessible parks, we need schools and sewers — and we need to not waste this once-in-a-generation chance to make our city a better place.
Come to my neighborhood and walk with me on the 39th St. Bridge, looking out at the endless acres of tracks. You’ll see what I see: that this is far from the best, highest use of this space. You’ll see the untapped potential, right at our fingertips — homes for our neighbors, new businesses and restaurants, green spaces and community gatherings. You’ll see a vision for a New York that can still do big things.
Today, with the mayor’s leadership, we have the opportunity to turn that potential into a reality.
Guttmann is executive director of the Queens Economic Development Corp. and a resident of Sunnyside.