Mayor Zohran Mamdani and President Donald Trump said Monday that housing officials from their administrations will advance a plan to build housing over the Sunnyside train yard in Queens.
“We’ve agreed to set up a new level of that conversation between our housing and operations team at City Hall and the White House team,” Mamdani told reporters alongside Trump. The mayor says the project would result in 12,000 new units of housing and create 30,000 jobs.
Trump, who walked out with the mayor onto the lawn of Gracie Mansion, described Sunnyside Yard as “a big job.”
“I’ve been watching that for 35 years,” he continued. “Everybody’s wanted to do something with Sunnyside Yards.”
He added: “You’re going to need a lot of federal approvals and probably some federal money to do it. But it’s always been a great location.”
The afternoon meeting, which lasted roughly an hour, marked the first time Trump met Mamdani in New York City. It came at the start of the U.N. General Assembly, an annual summit that draws leaders from around the world to discuss pressing issues. Trump is set to deliver a speech before the assembly on Tuesday.
In February, Mamdani presented Trump with a plan in the Oval Office to build 12,000 housing units at Sunnyside Yard with federal assistance. The yard is owned by Amtrak. At the same meeting, Mamdani presented the president with a mock Daily News frontpage with the headline “Trump to City: Let’s Build” – a nod to the paper’s’ legendary ‘Ford to City: Drop Dead’ headline a half century ago.
Mamdani has described the project as building a “new neighborhood.” He estimated the project could cost $21 billion. He said the new conversations will focus in part on the technical challenges surrounding construction of a platform above an active train yard for the new housing development.