Mayor Zohran Mamdani wants to revive a massive housing development project over a railyard in Western Queens — with major funding help from the Trump administration.

The project, Sunnyside Yard, would consist of 12,000 affordable apartments, with 6,000 of those being in what the administration described as a “Mitchell-Lama-style,” or units created via cooperative and subsidized homeownership.

The project would also include new parks, schools and healthcare clinics, according to City Hall.

Mamdani pitched President Donald Trump on the idea during a meeting at the Oval Office on Thursday, and he is seeking over $21 billion in federal grant funds to construct a platform over the railyard, which serves Amtrak, the Long Island Rail Road and New Jersey Transit.

“The president was interested in the idea and I look forward to the ensuing conversations about how to build more housing in a city that doesn’t have enough of it,” Mamdani said at an unrelated event in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, on Friday. 

An artist’s rendering of the projected Sunnyside Yard. Credit: NYC Economic Development Corporation

After the meeting with the president, the mayor posted to social media a photo of himself with the president, who held up two front pages of the Daily News. One was real — a copy of the infamous cover “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD” — and the other City Hall had mocked up with a headline that read, “TRUMP TO CITY: LET’S BUILD.”

Mamdani framed the housing development project as part of the solution to meeting the city’s affordability challenge. He touted the proposed project as the “single largest housing development New York City has seen since 1973.”

The Sunnyside Yard project first came about under Mayor Bill de Blasio. Building the project — which at the time included the platform over the rails, new housing, offices and public open space — would cost about $14 billion, according to a 2020 estimate from the city Economic Development Corporation.

Though there was an extensive community engagement process to come up with the plan, then-Councilmember Jimmy van Bramer and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticized the process for not reflecting community wants. (Since redistricting, Rep. Nydia Velazquez now represents the area.)

Then the Covid pandemic hit, de Blasio left office and the project stalled out. 

It’s not clear how closely the Mamdani administration will adhere to the original Sunnyside Yard plan.

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