{"id":147790,"date":"2026-02-27T21:46:33","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T21:46:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/147790\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T21:46:33","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T21:46:33","slug":"queens-dems-declare-cloudy-forecast-for-mamdanis-sunnyside-yard-housing-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/147790\/","title":{"rendered":"Queens Dems declare cloudy forecast for Mamdani’s Sunnyside Yard housing plan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s effort to revive a giant Queens housing plan that died in 2020 may have appealed to President Donald Trump, but responses from local elected leaders are much more mixed.<\/p>\n

Queens Borough President Donovan Richards said he\u2019s excited by a long-stalled proposal to deck over an Amtrak trainyard in Sunnyside and build 12,000 apartments on top. State Sen. Michael Gianaris said many have tried, and failed, to do the same thing. And local Councilmember Julie Won has expressed concern that the local community is already getting cut out of the planning process.<\/p>\n

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Mamdani ally, is taking a slightly more favorable view than she did of the previous plan.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe level of federal investment now under consideration for Sunnyside Yards is transformational,\u201d Ocasio-Cortez\u2019s spokesperson Karla Santillan told Gothamist. \u201cThe congresswoman looks forward to working with the mayor to expand the supply of affordable housing in New York and lower rents across the city.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ocasio-Cortez, who represents parts of Queens, was critical of an earlier plan to deck over the train yard in 2019, and even quit a committee<\/a> tasked with helping shape the plan. In a letter with then-Councilmember Jimmy Van Bramer, she warned against a \u201cluxury development that is Hudson Yards duplicated in Sunnyside.\u201d The lawmakers also cited concerns that the project would further displace communities of color and transfer public land into the hands of private developers.<\/p>\n

The lawmakers said the new version of the project should enhance public benefits like transit and public housing.<\/p>\n

At the time, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio and the city\u2019s Economic Development Corporation estimated that proposal would cost over $14 billion. But the plan withered as the COVID pandemic took hold, and eventually went nowhere.<\/p>\n

Six years later, the project price tag has changed \u2014 the Mamdani administration says it will likely cost $21 billion \u2014 but so have attitudes toward new housing development, including among left-leaning lawmakers like the new mayor.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe tide has turned on housing,\u201d Richards told Gothamist. \u201cWe\u2019re in the \u2018Let’s build\u2019 phase, and there are a lot of politicians who have definitely come around on the housing piece.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s also pitching what he called an \u201cinsane\u201d idea to build an arena for the New York Liberty, the reigning WNBA champions, alongside the housing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe champions would be \u200athe first women’s team in the country to have their own stadium,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Richards said he expects elected officials to support the proposal given the city\u2019s deep affordable housing shortage, but said he wants Mamdani to share more details about the affordability levels, funding sources, and planning and public review processes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a nonpartisan issue,\u201d he said. \u201cBut as always, the devil is in the details.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other leaders have criticized how Mamdani kept the plan under wraps before unveiling it to Trump at a surprise Oval Office meeting Thursday<\/a>. They also question the financial feasibility of a large-scale project that requires approval from an unreliable federal government and billions of dollars to construct.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne day after President Trump\u2019s 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,\u201d Won said in a written statement. \u201cAny proposal that reshapes Sunnyside Yards must begin with the neighbors who live here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Won said she wants to build affordable housing on the site, but only through \u201ccommunity-centered planning.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s still unclear exactly how the planning process will proceed. Typically, housing projects that require zoning changes to build go through the city\u2019s lengthy land use review process.<\/p>\n

But in the case of large-scale housing, the state can step in, establish what\u2019s known as a General Project Plan and bypass city review. The state and city have partnered on one such plan along the waterfront in Red Hook, where they aim to build thousands of new homes.<\/p>\n

Prameet Kumar chairs the land use committee for the community board representing the Sunnyside Yards site. He declined to speak on behalf of the board, but said in his personal view the project could be a boon for the region.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was hoping it would come back, so it\u2019s nice to see,\u201d Kumar said in a phone interview. \u201cSunnyside Yards is one of those super-rare large-scale sites in the city where you can do a lot of big, transformative development.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said he hopes any development plan is shaped by local residents and goes through the city\u2019s land use review process, just like another proposal to rezone a 54-block swath of Long Island City to add 14,000 new homes last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was a nice model for how this part of the city could grow responsibly and ethically,\u201d Kumar said.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s one thing most leaders agree on: Don\u2019t count on the plan to actually happen just yet. A similar proposal to deck over the train tracks at Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn has stalled for over two decades. And the Trump administration has stopped and started funding for other large infrastructure projects, like the Second Avenue subway and the Gateway Tunnel between New York and New Jersey multiple times in just the past year.<\/p>\n

State Sen. Michael Gianaris, a powerful Democrat who has declined to seek reelection, said he\u2019s taking a cautious view.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmbitious plans for Sunnyside Yards have come and gone many times over several decades, Gianaris told Gothamist. \u201cIf Mayor Mamdani can make something happen there that brings thousands of sorely needed affordable housing units, it will be a legacy-defining accomplishment.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s effort to revive a giant Queens housing plan that died in 2020 may have appealed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147791,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-147790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147790\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}