\u201cThe 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\u2019t have enough of it,\u201d Mamdani said at an unrelated event in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, on Friday.<\/p>\n
After the meeting with the president, the mayor posted<\/a> to social media a photo of himself with the president, who held up two front pages of the Daily News. One was real \u2014 a copy of the infamous cover \u201cFORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD\u201d \u2014 and the other City Hall had mocked up with a headline that read, \u201cTRUMP TO CITY: LET\u2019S BUILD.\u201d<\/p>\n Mamdani framed the housing development project as part of the solution to meeting the city\u2019s affordability challenge. He touted the proposed project as the \u201csingle largest housing development New York City has seen since 1973.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019d have more housing than \u201cHudson Yards and Battery Park City together, and not just housing but also parks, also childcare, also hospitals \u2014 an entire new neighborhood,\u201d Mamdani said.<\/p>\n The Sunnyside Yard project<\/a> first came about under Mayor Bill de Blasio. Building the project \u2014 which at the time included the platform over the rails, new housing, offices and public open space \u2014 would cost about $14 billion, according to a 2020 estimate from the city Economic Development Corporation.<\/p>\n 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<\/a> the process for not reflecting community wants. (Since redistricting, Rep. Nydia Velazquez represents the area, though she is retiring from her seat<\/a>.)<\/p>\n Then the Covid pandemic hit, de Blasio left office and the project stalled out<\/a>.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not clear how closely the Mamdani administration will adhere to the original Sunnyside Yard plan.<\/p>\n Councilmember Julie Won (D-Queens), who now represents the area, referenced Van Bramer and Ocasio-Cortez\u2019s criticism and blasted the mayor for meeting with Trump about what she called a \u201cfailed housing project\u201d before working with the community.<\/p>\n \u201cAny proposal that reshapes Sunnyside Yards must begin with the neighbors who live here. 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,\u201d Won said in a statement. \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n The project does not have any public approvals in place yet, but Won urged City Hall to commit to going through a land use review process that would require Council sign-off of the project. Won last year gave her approval to a major rezoning<\/a> of Long Island City that could result in 14,700 apartments \u2014 but only after extended negotiations to ensure several elements she pushed for, including sewer upgrades and the restoration of a park<\/a>.<\/p>\n Queens Borough President Donovan Richards said he was excited about the prospect of developing Sunnyside Yard, and had tried to get the Adams administration to take another look at it.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was obviously a very complicated time with the asylum crisis, and then the relationship \u2014 or lack of a relationship with the Biden administration, which wasn\u2019t going to yield us any real federal dollars,\u201d Richards said in a briefing with reporters Friday. \u201cWhen the check cashes, then I\u2019ll truly believe it, so I don\u2019t want to put the cart before the horse. But at the end of the day, the mere fact that this is generating a national conversation around Queens once again, and Sunnyside Yards is, to me, a great opportunity, especially as we face a looming housing crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n Mamdani on Friday said City Hall has had \u201ca few conversations across elected officials, labor organizers,\u201d and that the conversations will continue.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.thecity.nyc\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/c63590d1e8d9651766b58fef25bd142b643b_sunnyside_yards.w700.a700x467.2x-1024x683.jpg\")
<\/a>An artist\u2019s rendering of the projected Sunnyside Yard. Photo: NYC Economic Development Corporation<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mayor Zohran Mamdani wants to revive a massive housing development project over a railyard in Western Queens \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150195,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[433,153,2907,9,24,9354,63,122,124,123,1491,82],"class_list":["post-150194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-affordable-housing","tag-donald-trump","tag-housing","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-economic-development-corporation-nycedc","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-real-estate","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150194","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=150194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150194\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}