Trump And Mamdani Find Unlikely Common Ground On New York City Zoning

NEW YORK — When Mayor Zohran Mamdani met President Donald Trump in the Oval Office last fall, the 34-year-old democratic socialist steered their private conversation toward an unlikely subject: New York City zoning laws.

It wasn’t idle policy chatter. The city’s labyrinthine land-use approval process has long been a personal fixation for the Queens-born president — a grievance that dates back decades to his days as a New York real estate developer. For Mamdani, who entered the meeting as a liberal villain to the right and a frequent Trump antagonist, it proved a rare point of resonance.

Trump became animated as Mamdani described how the system slows housing construction, telling the mayor he had wanted it overhauled for years, according to a person with direct knowledge of the meeting.

“The president was like, ‘If you can get that done, that’d be amazing, I wanted this to happen for years,’” said the person, who was granted anonymity to divulge details about Trump’s musings in the private sit-down.

The dynamic carried into the public portion of their meeting, where the two men struck an unexpectedly warm tone — a jarring turn for a mayor who had built his campaign around confronting Trump and a president who had routinely threatened to punish blue cities like New York with funding cuts and federal crackdowns.

Their exchange about land use regulations, the specifics of which have not been previously reported, highlights how Trump’s enduring fascination with the granular mechanics of New York City government could both complicate — and potentially benefit — Mamdani’s mayoralty, as the White House weighs how aggressively to wield its power over the nation’s largest city.

Since their meeting, Trump and Mamdani have continued to discuss the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure over text message, according to two people familiar with the exchanges who were granted anonymity. But details of those exchanges — and how exactly Trump hopes Mamdani can overhaul the process — remain unclear.

Barbara Res, an engineer who for nearly two decades served as the top construction executive at the Trump Organization, said she has an idea about what the president is angling for when it comes to the process, also known as ULURP.

When Trump’s firm was developing Manhattan’s West Side Yards in the 1980s and 90s, Res said he openly groused about how it should be abolished altogether.

Initially, Trump planned to build “Television City” on the site, a proposal to erect a 150-story skyscraper that would house NBC’s studios in a brand new 76-acre neighborhood. But intense community pushback about the environmental impacts — voiced through the ULURP process — forced Trump to significantly scale it back, with the final plan ultimately featuring only a few residential towers.

“He hated ULURP because he saw it as anti-development, as anti-business and as what destroyed his plan,” said Res, who left the Trump Organization in the late 1990s and has been openly critical of him since 2016, when he first ran for president.

Any project that involves significantly changing a property’s zoning to accommodate development is subject to ULURP. The process necessitates that the City Council, the Planning Commission and the relevant borough president and community boards sign off before a project can get underway. The process is supposed to run roughly seven months, but often requires preparation work that can take years.

Mamdani has said ULURP reform — which would require action from the City Council — can help tear down bureaucratic barriers that delay development at a time when the city is facing a dire shortage of affordable housing.

Trump’s interest in the issue is more personal and raises questions about self-interest.

Whether there’s a direct financial angle for Trump in pushing for changes to ULURP is difficult to deduce. But the Trump family’s real estate company could benefit from changes to ULURP were the president’s namesake company to get more actively involved in real estate projects in New York again.

Some of the Trump Organization’s recent activities in the city, including its failed push to take over Central Park’s Wollman Rink, suggest the company is poised to reassert itself in New York.

With that in mind, there is a strategic value in ULURP reform for Mamdani as it pertains to Trump. The famously vengeful president has threatened to slap New York City with funding cuts, troop deployments and other punitive actions — as he has done in other blue U.S. cities. So far, however, Trump has not acted on most of those threats in the Big Apple.

The person with knowledge of the Oval Office sit-down, who noted that Mamdani was the first to mention ULURP, said Trump told Mamdani that reforms would make it “a lot easier to build at scale.”

The dynamic offers a window into how Mamdani is navigating a White House led by a president who views New York through a deeply personal lens — and how the mayor is choosing engagement on issues Trump understands, while also pushing back on issues they disagree on.

A Mamdani spokesperson didn’t comment on the mayor’s ULURP talks with Trump. A White House official would not comment on the talks, either, but told POLITICO to review the president’s “public remarks about his thoughts” on New York City.

A person close to Trump who has worked with him on politics and business for over a decade said personal motivations are often at least a component of anything the president does related to real estate. But the Trump confidant also said the president may be looking out for the interests of New York developers like Steve Roth, the Vornado chairman who’s a major Republican donor.

“He loves the [real estate] business, and these are issues that linger for colleagues in that industry,” said the person, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the president’s mindset.

At the same time, the Trump associate said ULURP is also a natural conversational point between the president and Mamdani. “I think it’s in his character to try to find common ground with people he is supposed to disagree with,” the person said.

Bruce Tietelbaum, a New York developer who is about to begin construction on an 1,100-apartment housing complex in Harlem after the ULURP process took nearly 10 years, said Trump has a point — regardless of any financial motivation — as it relates to doing away with ULURP entirely.

“It adds enormous expense, time, risk, uncertainty and, without question, delays projects for years — which helps explain why we have a housing crisis,” said Tietelbaum, who served as City Hall’s chief of staff under Mayor Rudy Giuliani. “The city and those in need of affordable housing would be better without it in its current form.”

Trump’s family company hasn’t developed new buildings in New York City in years. But the company still owns and licenses a number of properties across the city, including the president’s flagship Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan.

The company, managed by the president’s sons, Eric and Donald Jr., has also recently expressed interest in New York City real estate.

Albeit unsuccessfully, the Trump Organization tried last year to regain the city contract to run Central Park’s Wollman ice skating rink. The company also saw a $150 million windfall from a state-approved deal for Bally’s to develop a casino on the Trump golf course in the Bronx.

The Trump Organization did not return a request for comment.

Trump has said he remains on good footing with Mamdani despite the mayor’s frequent criticism of his White House agenda.

“It’s politics, it’s a nasty world, it’s a nasty profession, if you want to know the truth, it really is,” Trump said in a recent appearance on WABC radio, referring to Mamdani’s broadsides against him. “But I got along very well with him, we had some good meetings, some good talks.”