Trump and Mamdani put a Sunnyside Yard housing deck back on the table

A plan to build homes on a deck above Sunnyside Yard in western Queens is moving again. After the two leaders met Monday at Gracie Mansion, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced that his housing staff at City Hall would open a new round of talks with a White House team, with President Donald Trump standing beside him.

The pair appeared together on the mansion’s lawn after their Gracie Mansion sit-down, an hour-long session that included both chiefs of staff. Trump was in town for the U.N. General Assembly. According to the mayor, the next step is the technical and legal authorization for a platform over the Amtrak-owned tracks. Neither leader said when approvals or construction might happen.

What the Sunnyside Yard housing plan would build

Mamdani said the project could produce 12,000 homes and 30,000 jobs. He described it as the prospect of a whole new neighborhood in a city where housing is the top expense. He has earlier put the platform’s price at $21 billion. Trump called it “a big job.” “You’re going to need a lot of federal approvals and probably some federal money to do it,” he said.

Ideas for building over the yard date back almost 100 years, and none has gotten off the ground. The last attempt died out in 2020, soon after the city’s Economic Development Corporation published a deck and affordable housing plan with an estimated cost of about $14 billion. Mamdani revived the concept at the Oval Office in February.

Queens leaders are skeptical

Council Member Julie Won said the plan would need money approved by Congress and coordination among federal, state and city agencies, and none of that has happened. “I’ll believe it when I see the actual funding for it,” she said. Borough President Donovan Richards said he doubts Trump will stay committed to a project that would take decades to finish. In his view the city would gain more from goals it can actually reach, such as a plan for 3,000 apartments on the abandoned Flushing Airport site. “I’m not saying we shouldn’t be doing it,” he said.

Immigration was also on the agenda. Mamdani raised the administration’s move to revoke Temporary Protected Status for people from 13 countries, Haiti among them. Roughly 40,000 Haitians with that status live in New York state. Trump did not promise any change, though he said the mayor “feels very strongly about it.” The Gracie Mansion session was the pair’s third face-to-face meeting, following Oval Office talks in November and February.