Can Sunnyside Yard Finally Happen?

Could Sunnyside Yard finally become one of New York City’s next great mega-developments? This week on Deconstruct, The Real Deal’s Lilah Burke and guest co-host Jake Indursky speak with New York Building Congress President and CEO Carlo Scissura about the decades-old dream of building a new neighborhood over the Sunnyside rail yard in Queens. The proposal could create roughly 12,000 homes, but first New York would need to construct a platform over the active rail yard at a cost measured in the tens of billions of dollars. Scissura explains why the engineering may actually be the easy part — and why bringing together the federal government, New York State, City Hall, the MTA, Amtrak, local elected officials and the surrounding community could prove far more complicated. He also discusses lessons from Hudson Yards and Pacific Park, how long a project of this scale could take and why early community involvement matters. Later, Indursky explains the real estate paradox behind Brooklyn and Queens’ so-called “Commie Corridor”: neighborhoods that have produced enormous amounts of private housing while increasingly supporting politicians skeptical of the real estate industry. Plus, the latest on Marty Burger’s return to dealmaking, Mitchell Kossoff’s release from prison and the upcoming sentencing of the Alexander brothers.