Mayor Eric Adams announced a new effort on Thursday to turn empty offices into needed housing more quickly — while also detailing a timeline for plans to transform a swath of Midtown into a “24/7” community.
New York City’s new “office conversion accelerator” program, which is currently live, will help the city reach the mayor’s goal of turning 20,000 empty offices into new apartments over the next decade by streamlining what critics have called a cumbersome bureaucratic process down to six months, the mayor said.
Adams also said the city will be amending zoning language for buildings built before 1990 to allow for residential conversions — and office-to-residence conversions in areas already zoned for housing — after a public review process next year.
“Every elected in this city, the number one thing they hear is housing, housing, housing,” Adams said during a press conference in Manhattan on Thursday. “And there’s just not enough of it.”
New York City has less than 5% of apartments vacant and available to rent, according to the city’s most recent housing survey. Low-income New Yorkers are bearing the brunt of the crisis, with less than 1% of units priced below $1,500 a month empty and on the market.
Housing experts say office conversions aren’t a silver bullet — they are costly and can be inconvenient depending on the building’s composition — but can put a dent in the city’s housing needs.
Adams’ office conversion goals hinge in part on plans to change rules in a commercial section of Midtown where apartments and condos are currently banned. He and Dan Garodnick, the city’s planning commissioner, said the city has kicked off the planning process to allow for housing conversions in that area, with the administration starting public engagement around the change this fall and the public approval process next year.
They have likened the Midtown proposal to the redevelopment of the Financial District following rule changes that made it much easier to turn offices into apartments after the 9/11 attacks. Property owners turned commercial spaces into about 20,000 new residential units in the Financial District between 2001 and 2021, according to the Alliance for Downtown New York.
Other office conversions are already underway in Lower Manhattan, including a 1,300-unit residence inside the old headquarters of the New York Daily News that the building owners say is the largest office-to-housing project in the country.
“The biggest challenge is really getting the light and air that you need for a residential apartment to actually work for a very deep office floor plate,” said Eugene Flotteron, the architect behind that project and other ongoing conversions.
Flotteron said he has already seen improvements moving through the process, which often involves multiple agencies, and is hopeful that the accelerator announcement will only hasten things further.
Office conversion plans have few critics, though many policymakers and advocates say any newly created apartment and condo buildings need to include affordable housing priced for low-income New Yorkers most in need.
Real estate groups say the cost of converting office floors into apartments is too high to set aside much affordable housing without deep subsidies from the state or city.
Adams and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul have proposed a tax break for developers who opt to set moderate income restrictions and price caps on some new units. At a February City Council hearing on their plan, several members said the plans should create units that are priced even lower.
“I need to see our lowest-income community in all of these proposals and I hope the administration will join in pushing the state to change these considerations,” said Councilmember Pierina Sánchez, who chairs the housing committee. “This is a matter of fair housing.”
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