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Sunnyside Yard burst into the headlines in February when Mayor Zohran Mamdani went to Washington to meet President Donald Trump, armed with a mock Daily News front page that read “Trump to City: Let’s Build” and a pitch that the two of them could erect an enormous housing project over the Queens railyard.

Trump, the city’s most famous former real estate developer, took an unexpected shine to the mayor — and apparently to the idea. The proposal took center stage when the two met again in September at Gracie Mansion , after which Mamdani said Trump had “agreed to set up a new level of conversation” about the proposal.

Mamdani is asking the federal government to provide the city with $21 billion to build a deck over the yard that will lay the foundation for 12,000 new affordable units. That comes to $1.75 million per unit — before any affordable housing is actually built.

It costs about $700,000 to build an affordable housing apartment in New York, according to the Mamdani administration. So even if the development over Sunnyside Yard was done on the cheap, the price tag would well exceed $2 million per unit, including the deck the feds would hypothetically pay for.

That $21 billion alone is an extraordinary request. By comparison, the federal government sends $7.2 billion to the city annually for housing, including $5.3 billion for housing vouchers and other aid and $833 million in assistance for developments, according to the Furman Center’s 2024 State of New York City’s Housing and Neighborhoods .

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The total 2026 budget for the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development is $77 billion, and Mamdani’s $21 billion request is more than what Washington spends nationally on community development block grants and public housing combined.

The extreme cost is only one of several reasons why the Sunnyside Yard plan appears to be about politics, not housing — using the plan as a ploy to intrigue Trump and keeping him from demonizing the mayor ahead of the crucial midterm elections.

But the distraction comes at a cost. Queens Borough President Donovan Richards questions the entire premise of the project. “Given the housing crisis, we have got to focus on things that are in front of us,” Richards told The City Reporter. “And I could name at least 15 projects in Queens alone that would do that.”

“By the time a shovel is in the ground at Sunnyside Yards, Mamdani won’t even be mayor,” Richards said.

The borough president said a better use of federal money and the city’s efforts would be to redevelop Flushing Airport, which closed in 1984. The Eric Adams administration once proposed building 3,000 apartments there; the site needs substantial infrastructure work to make it viable for housing.

Undeveloped areas at Willets Point and land near the Resorts World project at Aqueduct, which has excellent access to the A train, are also high on Richards’ list.

The City Reporter also spoke to real estate executives who have been involved in other projects involving platforms, as well as longtime experts in the city’s land use process. The real estate executives declined to be identified since they all do business with the administration and fear antagonizing officials, but many characterized the administration’s focus on Sunnyside Yard as “ridiculous.”