The Sunnyside Yard megaproject is no longer just a pipe dream; On Thursday, the city and Amtrak jointly confirmed the news that it had hired Vishaan Chakrabarti’s Practice for Architecture and Urbanism (PAU) as lead consultant to form a master plan for the proposed megadevelopment.

The city and Amtrak also announced the creation of the Sunnyside Yard Steering Committee, which will spend the next 18 months organizing public meetings and workshops to elicit feedback from Queens residents on how best to proceed with the megaproject’s development, and address the needs of local residents.

The steering committee will work in tandem with the group of consultants to formulate a master plan for the development. The approximately 35-member committee is comprised of a variety of local stakeholders and technical experts such as Gail Mellow, the president of LaGuardia Community College, Denise Keehan-Smith, the chair of Queens Community Board 2, and Felix Ciampa, the executive director of the Urban Land Institute of New York. The committee will be co-chaired by Elizabeth Lusskin, the president of the Long Island City Partnership, and Sharon Greenberger, the CEO of the YMCA of Greater New York.

The city has chosen this particular moment to move forward with the plan because it precedes construction work planned by the MTA and Amtrak; that construction could uniquely position the yard for decking, and in turn promote mixed-use development like Hudson Yards.

The city was also propelled by the fact that Queens could see the addition of more than 80,000 people in the next 20 years; it’s hoping that a large mixed-use development will address a variety of community needs like schools, jobs, and transit infrastructure.

In February 2017, the city unveiled a feasibility study of the Sunnyside Yard area, which showed that decking was in fact possible, and that there were various scenarios through which a development of the yard could move forward.

This new steering committee will use that as a basis for their master plan; many of the details in that plan still remain intact: Decking is possible on 80-85 percent of site, which totals 180 acres of space. This could see the creation of up to 24,000 homes, 19 schools, and 52 acres of public parks.

This isn’t the first time a plan has been put forward to build over the train yard, which is the busiest passenger rail yard in the country. Proposals to overbuild date all the way back to the 1920s when the Regional Plan Association proposed a massive skyscraper at the site. Most recently, in the 2000s, former deputy mayor Dan Doctoroff also proposed a project over the yard.

The master planning process for this newest iteration of the plan will officially get underway this summer, and the steering committee will meet once every quarter over the 18 month planning process.

“This is a once in a generation opportunity for civic groups, public officials and residents to create a vision for their borough, one that delivers on the central challenges Queens faces like affordable housing, open space, more school seats and better public transit,” said Deputy Mayor for housing and economic development, Alicia Glen, in a statement.