{"id":185008,"date":"2026-04-04T00:39:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T00:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/185008\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T00:39:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T00:39:08","slug":"queens-pols-chat-about-mamdanis-trump-sunnyside-yard-pitch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/185008\/","title":{"rendered":"Queens pols chat about Mamdani\u2019s Trump Sunnyside Yard pitch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Queens elected officials got the chance to grill the Mamdani administration Thursday about a proposal to put a deck over Sunnyside Yard<\/a> in Queens and build 12,000 units of housing with 21 billion federal dollars. The idea, which resulted from a chummy photo-op<\/a> between Mayor Zohran Mamdani and President Donald Trump in February, remains theoretical.<\/p>\n

Deputy Mayors Leila Bozorg and Julie Su convened the virtual meeting Thursday to answer questions from Council Members Tiffany Cab\u00e1n and Julie Won, Council Speaker Julie Menin\u2019s staffer Jonathan Szott, Assembly Members Claire Valdez and Diana Moreno, state Sens. Mike Gianaris and Kristen Gonzalez and staff for\u00a0 Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Nydia Vel\u00e1zquez as well as New York\u2019s U.S. senators.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey genuinely seem to be approaching this from a positive element of engaging locals, which is not something the previous iteration of city leadership did,\u201d Gianaris said, referring to a previous version of the project pitched during the de Blasio administration.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mamdani administration officials didn\u2019t have much to report. There is no commitment of federal funding yet, though city officials have begun talking with Amtrak and the MTA. Right now, the city is using a previously shelved 2020 plan<\/a> as a starting point for discussions. \u201cWe\u2019re encouraged by the early signs of interest in securing a historic level of federal investment in affordable housing here in New York, and continue to have conversations with partners across city, state, and federal government about what it would take to deliver 12,000 new homes, tens of thousands of good-paying jobs, and a once-in-a-generation investment,\u201d City Hall spokesperson Matthew Rauschenbach said in a statement.<\/p>\n

On the question of funding, White House representatives referred us to the Office of Management and Budget, which did not respond to a request for comment. Mamdani\u2019s trip to Washington, D.C., earlier this year wasn\u2019t announced in advance, and many elected officials were unaware the mayor planned to pitch the moonshot project. Won was frustrated that the mayor unilaterally brought the idea to the president. \u201cOur 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 she said after the mayor\u2019s White House visit. Won, who is running for Congress against Mamdani\u2019s preferred candidate Valdez, is hosting a town hall<\/a> on the project on Monday.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Queens elected officials got the chance to grill the Mamdani administration Thursday about a proposal to put a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185009,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[1527,153,2907,9,24,63,122,124,123,62995,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-185008","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-queens","8":"tag-construction","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-housing","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-nyc","14":"tag-queens","15":"tag-queens-headlines","16":"tag-queens-news","17":"tag-sunnyside-yard","18":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185008","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=185008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185008\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}