Could the Sunnyside Yard project, once rejected by AOC and local elected officials, be revived?

Could a stalled project to bring 12,000 affordable apartments over Sunnyside Yard in Queens be back from the dead? Maybe – if President Donald Trump agrees to swoop in with more than $21 billion in federal grants.

With a mock-up Daily News front-page trumpeting “TRUMP TO CITY: LET’S BUILD,” New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani traveled to Washington D.C. Thursday to pitch the Republican president on the plan at the Oval Office. And while there was no formal commitment from the White House, Mamdani emerged from that meeting touting at least one important early victory: Trump was into the idea. At least for now.  

“I was heartened by the fact that the president was interested in this proposal,” Mamdani said Friday at an unrelated press conference in Brooklyn. “I anticipate it will be the subject of conversations to come.”

If successfully brought forward, the project could be transformative for Western Queens. Under the mayor’s proposal, a giant platform would be built over the railyard, which would then be used to construct the 12,000 affordable homes – 6,000 of which would follow a Mitchell-Lama-style model of cooperative and subsidized homeownership. The idea, a version of which was initially proposed by then-Mayor Bill de Blasio before it was shelved during the pandemic, would infuse the surrounding area with the creation of 30,000 union jobs building parks, schools and health care clinics. Altogether, it has the potential to be the largest housing and infrastructure investment made in the city in more than 50 years.

For development groups and pro-housing advocates, the potential of Sunnyside Yard’s revival is a long time coming. Annemarie Gray, executive director of the pro-development group Open New York said she’s excited to see Mamdani recognize that building new homes is a central part of making the city more affordable. “With a housing shortage of more than 1 million units, we need to be exploring every possible solution,” she said.

Much is still unknown. Like whether the project would include any market-rate apartments, who will develop it and the total price tag. Mamdani acknowledged Friday that bringing the project to fruition will take “many, many years.” Building over the bustling 180-acre railyard – which currently serves passenger rail services including Amtrak, the Long Island Rail Road and New Jersey Transit – would be immensely expensive and technically complicated. Funding aside, the project would require sign off from the federal government given Amtrak owns the majority of Sunnyside Yard. Local elected officials within the New York City Council and the Legislature would also likely play instrumental roles in the approval process. There’s no guarantee they’d be on board. The same can be said of residents in the surrounding communities. 

Already, Council Member Julie Won, whose district encompasses the site, criticized the mayor’s approach. While she said she welcomes the prospect of building more affordable housing, she slammed Mamdani for disregarding local officials and the community’s perspective. “Any proposal that reshapes Sunnyside Yards must begin with the neighbors who live here,” she said. “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.”

The mayor also didn’t brief City Council Speaker Julie Menin ahead of the meeting. "Speaker Menin strongly supports building more affordable housing in neighborhoods across the five boroughs,” a spokesperson for the speaker’s office said. “Our office has not yet been briefed on this particular idea but has requested a briefing to learn more." 

In a statement, Assembly Member Claire Valdez said that “details matter” as does “community input” going forward. “There’s no question that meeting the scale of the housing crisis will require federal investment, and Sunnyside Yards is an opportunity to not only build a significant number of affordable homes, but also to deliver major mass transit improvements and create much-needed new public space.” Valdez, a Democratic socialist and close ally to Mamdani, is currently running against Won in the race to succeed Rep. Nydia Velázquez.

Senate Deputy Leader Michael Gianaris did not respond to a request for comment prior to publication.

Asked Friday what conversations he’s had with local leaders about his plan so far, Mamdani said he’s had a few. “Those conversations will continue,” he said without going into specifics. “This is a longstanding project that will also require a longstanding commitment and we’re just at the very beginning of it.”

The previous iteration of the project was opposed by many local officials, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, an ally of the mayor who previously represented Sunnyside Yard before redistricting. Ocasio-Cortez resigned from the project steering committee in 2020. Together with then-Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer, she expressed concerns that the project as proposed would spur gentrification, pushing low-income residents out of Queens. Her office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on thoughts on reviving the plan.

But since 2020, there’s been a sea change on the left regarding housing development. Building as much housing as possible is now widely viewed as the best way to address soaring rents. 

“It is very clear that the left has undergone a necessary and long overdue evolution on the notion that we need to build as much housing as possible,” said Amit Singh Bagga, a resident of Sunnyside and the former campaign director of the Yes on Affordable Housing coalition. “The underlying concept of Sunnyside Yard presents us with a beyond generational opportunity to potentially achieve great things in a way that New York is known for achieving.”  

Van Bramer, who remains a resident of the community, also acknowledged as much. “The political climate in New York City in 2026 is light years away from the political climate when we last visited this,” he said, adding that Mamdani deserves credit for taking on such an incredibly complicated project. 

As for Won’s frustration for not being clued in, Van Bramer said he agrees the community needs to be brought into the process. Ultimately though, he’s hopeful Mamdani knows what he’s doing.

“He’s holding most of the cards,” Van Bramer said, noting the recent passage of the housing-related ballot proposals that dilute the City Council’s power to unilaterally stop land use projects. “You know he’s still got to get the $21 billion from the fascist, white supremist in chief, but Zohran is trying to do big things here.”