Mayor de Blasio’s plan for a mini-city over a 180-acre railyard in Queens is loaded with uncertainties but could be built — at a cost that could reach $19 billion, the city’s Economic Development Corporation said Monday.
The agency highlighted a 70-acre section known as the Core Yard as the most promising area to develop, with room for up to 15,000 residential units — including up to 4,500 of them permanently affordable.
The site would also host retail, community amenities, schools and open spaces at a cost of roughly $10 billion.
But even that plan would take over 15 years to complete and a total of 40 years to break even financially, officials said.
“A project of this nature faces risks due to shifting political priorities, as well as changes in expected revenue and/or cost assumptions,” the EDC review cautioned.
Most of the land in the Core Yard is owned by Amtrak, which is poised to build a high speed rail facility at the site to accommodate more trains.
EDC officials said they’ve already committed $7.8 million in public funds to get Amtrak to redesign that facility in a way that doesn’t preclude the city from adding an overhead deck on top.
The city is moving forward with community outreach before it creates a specific development plan for the site, as part of a proposal the mayor first made during his State of the City address in February 2015.
Officials in the office of Gov. Cuomo, who had quashed the mayor’s idea the same day it was proposed, didn’t respond to a request for comment.
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