Trump, Mamdani Continue Sunnyside Yard Talks

Mayor Zohran Mamdani and President Donald Trump still seem to agree on one thing: Sunnyside Yard.

The two held a closed-door meeting at Gracie Mansion ahead of the United Nations General Assembly, and then emerged together for a press conference on the lawn behind the mayor’s historic home to talk about the long-stalled Queens megadevelopment, among other topics.

“I can tell you that Sunnyside’s a big job, I’ve been watching that for 35 years — everybody’s wanted to do something with Sunnyside Yard,” Trump said. “I would say that it’s a very federal-oriented job; you’re going to need a lot of federal approvals and probably some federal money to do it. But it’s always been a great location. I owned a building in Sunnyside, it was a great building. I know it very well.”

Mamdani and Trump first met in Washington, D.C. in November when he was mayor-elect. There, Trump stated that he and Mamdani had found common ground on “housing being built” and “rents coming down,” calling him “hopefully, a really great mayor.” This unlikely dynamic continued Monday on Mamdani’s home turf, with the pair appearing cordial and even collaborative on the lawn of Gracie Mansion.

Mamdani revived the conversation around the stalled plan to develop atop the 200-acre site, a project that would tie together swaths of Long Island City and Sunnyside separated by the rail yard.

At their second Oval Office meeting, Mamdani brought two newspaper printouts depicting the famous New York Daily News headline from 1975 that read “Ford to City: Drop Dead” and a mockup that read “Trump to City: Let’s Build.” That most recent White House meeting also saw Mamdani asking Trump for $21 billion in federal grants to fund the platform needed to build out the ambitious residential project.

Funding for the platform has proven elusive at Sunnyside Yard, similar to the multi-decade delay to build atop the Atlantic Terminal rail yards in Brooklyn that recently saw renewed plans from Empire State Development with developers Cirrus and LCOR. Mamdani suggested that Trump would be open to further talks about approvals and funds needed to make Sunnyside Yard pencil out.

“One of the focuses of the conversation that the President and I have been having is about the possibility of building more housing here in New York City, we’ve spoken about Sunnyside Yard,” Mamdani said. “It’s a real pleasure that just today we’ve agreed to set up a new level of that conversation between our housing and operations team at City Hall and the White House team.”

The mayor touted the 12,000 homes and 30,000 jobs that Sunnyside Yard could bring as a “new neighborhood” to be built atop the rail yards using a platform that would require federal sign-off and dollars.

Trump also described his own affinity for affordable housing development. “I know a lot about affordability, because I did that housing,” he said. “I did many, many low-income and moderate-income buildings over the years and had great success with it. It was very important.”

While no real plans have been announced yet, Mamdani said he and the president reached an agreement to “be elevated to a place where it’s going to also be technical,” between the city and federal government.

“Yes, there is an aspect of this that is about financing,” Mamdani said. “There’s also an aspect of this about technical and legal authorization of the construction of a platform.”

The mayor emphasized his administration is “sincerely interested and committed to this as an idea,” but wouldn’t provide any dollar amounts or a concrete timeline for the project.

The press conference also touched on policing and immigration. Mamdani’s administration has stood against federal policy directives, voicing opposition on issues like Immigration and Customs Enforcement presence in the city, the end of Temporary Protected Status for certain populations and the sunset of the Emergency Housing Voucher program later this year.

TPS came up at Monday’s meeting, with Mamdani telling reporters he stressed the program’s importance to Trump.

Trump has butted heads with Gov. Kathy Hochul on matters including ICE and TPS, though she has suggested openness to a federal role in the revamp of Penn Station. The governor doesn’t plan to hold her own meeting with the president while he is in town to address the UNGA on Tuesday, she said at a press conference Monday morning.

Though Trump and Hochul seem to be at a stalemate, the president continued his complimentary streak with Mamdani. “I’ve seen [Gracie Mansion] with numerous different mayors,” he said to Mamdani. “And I said, ‘some great ones, and some not so great ones,’ so hopefully you’re going to be a great one and you’re off to a start.”