NYC Mayor: Rezone Wide Swath of Midtown for Housing

Mayor Eric Adams is proposing to rezone a wide swath of Manhattan—an area from W. 23^rd to W. 41^st streets—to erase zoning restrictions that limit uses to offices or manufacturing, allowing dozens of aging office buildings to be converted into apartments.

The NYC mayor estimates that the area—which stretches from Chelsea up through the Garment District—can yield 20,000 housing units, making a significant contribution to Adams’ “Moonshot” plan to build 500,000 new housing units in NYC in the coming decade.

In his second State of the City address, Adams also proposed to rezone an area on Staten Island’s North Shore to permit expanded mixed-use development and improved waterfront access.

A city-led task force recommended the Midtown rezoning. Most of the area between W. 23^rd and West 41^st street is zoned for manufacturing and currently prohibits ground-up residential development and conversions of office space to residential use.

The task force earlier this month issued a report, entitled the NYC Office Adaptive Reuse Study, which made a series of recommendations that Adams is aiming to enact to facilitate widespread office conversions to apartments in NYC.

The study recommends that NYC allow office buildings built before 1990 access to the most flexible regulations for conversion to residential use, which will require a change to New York State’s Multiple Dwelling Law as well as NYC’s Zoning Regulation.

The task force said this change would provide “an easier path to conversion” to office buildings encompassing 120M SF in NYC. The study also recommended expanding access to the most flexible conversion regulations to all high-intensity office districts.

Currently, the most flexible rules only apply to the city’s largest business district—a change the study said would allow about 16M SF of old offices in Downtown Flushing and the Bronx Hub to be converted.

The study also recommended lifting NYC’s cap on residential floor area ratio (FAR), which will enable office building owners to convert all of the existing floor area in their buildings.

The task force said the city should provide an incentive to generate affordable housing units in converted buildings, adding that “analysis indicates that while office conversion entirely to affordable housing is generally infeasible, conversion to mixed-income housing could be achievable through a property tax-based incentive.”

Most of the above recommendations will need to be implemented in order to meet the city’s goal of getting 20K new apartments out of the area the mayor just committed to rezone in Midtown Manhattan.

In designating as a rezoning target for new housing an area adjacent to the Penn District development that is planning to bring 10 new office towers to a huge parcel next to Penn Station, NYC is hoping the two elements combine as NYC’s version of a “live-work” community.

The area spanning W. 23rd to W. 41^st also has some of the highest retail vacancies in the city to the lack of five-day-a-week commuter traffic.

In perhaps a sign of an emerging consensus on the need to utilize rezoning as a means of facilitating the growth of housing in NYC, Mayor Adams gave a shout-out to two city council members for dropping their opposition to rezoning.

In his address, Mayor Adams also announced a crackdown on income discrimination by landlords.

“If you tell a potential tenant that you don’t accept Section 8 vouchers or other rental assistance, guess what?” Adams said. “That tenant might be an actor hired by the city, and we are going to take enforcement action against you.”