“Tying New York City’s housing solution to an infamously mercurial president already distracted by a war and midterm elections seems like a risky gamble. By focusing on two key areas within the Yard, a significant part of the benefit can be achieved without the same level of complication and cost.”
Credit: NYC Mayor’s Office (inset); Adi Talwar/City Limits.
The recent round of unlikely camaraderie between Mayor Mamdani and President Trump promoted the idea of building 12,000 units of new housing on a deck suspended over the 180-acre Sunnyside Rail Yard in western Queens.
Since the goal is to deliver housing as soon as possible, the city should start with something smaller, faster, and more achievable, built literally on more solid ground. There is the opportunity for this at Sunnyside Yard, as well as the chance to build a model for community wealth-building alongside the housing.
Last month’s Mamdani-Trump meeting revived a concept dating back to at least 1929 that has periodically resurfaced and revised. The most recent and rigorous analyses of the idea were a 2017 Feasibility Study and a 2020 Master Plan done by the New York Economic Development Corporation.
The Feasibility Study demonstrated that development is both technically and urbanistically possible and could create 24,000 units of housing, along with the schools, open space, and infrastructure required to support an entirely new neighborhood. But the plan would require significant public subsidy to overcome the additional costs of building a deck over an active rail yard that handles roughly 780 trains daily.
The Master Plan further developed the concept, but community and political pressure cut the unit count in half. The reduced density ate into any potential development’s financial return and greatly increased the per-unit public subsidy required to make the project attractive to developers. Mayor Mamdani asked Trump for $21 billion.
The Mamdani administration was right to be attracted to Sunnyside Yard and understood how its boldness would appeal to a Queens-born president who sees himself as a builder of big bold things. Generating headlines—even the imagined Daily News headlines they posed with—gets the president’s attention. Federal support could both unlock the significant public subsidy needed and facilitate the cooperation and support of Amtrak, which controls areas of the yard and whose trains pass through.
But tying New York City’s housing solution to an infamously mercurial president already distracted by a war and midterm elections seems like a risky gamble. By focusing on two key areas within the Yard, a significant part of the benefit can be achieved without the same level of complication and cost.
Though only one-sixth the size, Hudson Yards offers valuable lessons for overbuild development at Sunnyside Yard. Two such lessons are 1) the importance of integrating transit and 2) the benefit of concentrating development on patches of “terra firma”—zones less encumbered by active rail lines. Buildings that can anchor their structural cores directly into the ground, rather than transferring the load sideways to avoid train tracks, are significantly less expensive to build.
At Sunnyside Yard, terra firma exists along Skillman Avenue at the yard’s southern edge and in a dead-end area of tracks known as “Arch Street Yards” near the intersection of Jackson Avenue and 21st Street. Furthermore, Arch Street Yards is immediately adjacent to the 21st Street station on the G line. Along Skillman, housing could be built between Thompson Avenue and Queens Boulevard and connect directly to a new long-envisioned Sunnyside Station serving Metro-North and Long Island Railroad, with a potential connection to a 7 line subway station.
As with the 7 train’s extension to Hudson Yards, the transit infrastructure funding could be tied directly or indirectly to the development’s value. A conservative estimate suggests that the two sites together, roughly 14 acres, could yield approximately 4,000 units—a full third of the total Mayor Mamdani proposed—with far less disruption, much less public subsidy, and without the complication of building 140 acres of deck.
Just as importantly, these sites could create the opportunity to do something the original Sunnyside Yard conversation often overlooked: community wealth-building.
For too long, large development projects in New York have been framed as a tradeoff between growth and community benefit. But at Sunnyside Yard, new housing could be paired with community ownership structures, local hiring pipelines, and opportunities for neighborhood residents to share in the value created by development.
Models such as community-owned energy systems, shared equity housing, and neighborhood investment funds are already emerging in parts of the Bronx and Brooklyn. Sunnyside Yard could scale these ideas into a district-level strategy and help ensure that new development strengthens the surrounding communities of Sunnyside, Woodside, and Long Island City. This approach is both good policy and good politics that will help gain public support.
New York has never lacked big ideas. What the city often struggles with is turning them into projects that actually get built. Sunnyside Yard should not become another chapter in the long history of visionary plans that never leave the drawing board.
With the right first step, it can become something far more valuable: proof that New York can tackle big housing challenges with practical, incremental solutions that deliver real benefits to the people who live here.
Cali Williams is the founder of Kyanite Partners. She directed the Sunnyside Yard Feasibility Study and Master Plan as a senior vice president at the New York City Economic Development Corporation.
Jack Robbins is a partner and the director of urban design at FXCollaborative. He led the architectural and urban design team for the Sunnyside Yard Feasibility Study.
