In the weeks since Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced he was reviving the sprawling Sunnyside Yard housing project in Queens, and had even pitched the venture to President Donald Trump, local residents and elected officials say the matter has dominated local conversations, though not necessarily in an encouraging way.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have no information, which I think makes it very frustrating,\u201d said Memo Salazar, a longtime Sunnyside resident and co-chair of Western Queens Community Land Trust, a leading nonprofit active in land-use issues, \u201cEveryone’s talking about it and, you know, what are we really talking about?\u201d<\/p>\n
City Councilmember Julie Won is holding a public information session on the project on Monday, at 6:30 p.m. at Sunnyside Community Services, in hopes of addressing Queens neighbors\u2019 concerns. Won will be joined by her land use and housing director, Ellie Lauderback.<\/p>\n
Nobody anticipates all of the questions to be resolved in a single evening, for a project that dates back before pre-pandemic times, could easily overlap several mayoral terms, and carries an estimated price tag at over $21 billion. But the new mayor\u2019s embrace has compelled the Queens community to take notice, even if deep skepticism is the prevailing sentiment among many community members.<\/p>\n
The project, which is a holdover from the era of former Mayor Bill de Blasio, would create 12,000 new homes, of which 6,000 would be Mitchell-Lama style affordable housing units, according to city officials. It would require building a deck \u2014 the world\u2019s largest, according to the mayor’s office \u2014 over an existing and still-active railyard.<\/p>\n
According to planning documents<\/a>, it would also generate 60 acres of open space, for various neighborhood-enhancing amenities, 30,000 construction jobs and 7,000 permanent jobs. The 2020 master plan for the project, prepared by city officials and Amtrak, describes Sunnyside Yard \u201cas the most important undeveloped public site in the heart of the most diverse region in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n But the contours of any potential deal between the city and the Trump administration, along with who would foot the bill for the work, have not yet been clarified. The idea was floated<\/a> in February, an aide to Mamdani said, in response to the president\u2019s suggestion months earlier that the mayor return with \u201cbig ideas\u201d for how the two could work together.<\/p>\n Both men have strong ties to Queens. The president was born in the borough, and Mamdani represented Astoria in the Legislature before being elected mayor.<\/p>\n Matt Rauschenbach, a spokesperson for Mamdani, said in a statement that City Hall had begun to meet with local elected officials as well as Amtrak and the MTA, and would eventually submit a formal proposal to the Trump administration in hopes of securing billions of dollars in federal funding.<\/p>\n \u201cWe must put forward solutions at the scale of ambition this moment demands, and the mayor has put forward a proposal that would deliver more affordable homes in a single development than New York has seen since the 1970s,\u201d Rauschenbach said. \u201cThat\u2019s the level of urgency we need \u2014 bold, unapologetic, and rooted in the belief that our city must work for the many, not the few.\u201d<\/p>\n The starting point for all discussions was a 2020 plan, Rauschenbach said, but he added that all aspects of the project are being reconsidered, including the number of homes and the layout of the site.<\/p>\n The White House did not respond to questions about the project.<\/p>\n The project would remake a vast, low-lying area in the heart of Queens. On a recent day trains slowly moved in and out of the railyard, which abuts the growing skyline of Long Island City.<\/p>\n