NYC Launches Office Conversion Accelerator Team

Mayor Eric Adams announced a new Office Conversion Accelerator Team this week that will provide a single point of contact within city government to help speed adaptive reuse projects that provide 50 or more housing units.

The team will include representatives from City Hall, the Department of City Planning, the Department of Buildings, the Department of Housing Preservation & Development, the Board of Standards & Appeals and the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

Creation of the centralized contact for office-to-residential conversion projects was a recommendation of the Department of City Planning’s Office Adaptive Reuse Study, issued in January.

The January report also recommended rezoning 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 Accelerator program will assist owners with conversions, from analyzing the zoning feasibility of individual conversion projects to helping conversion projects secure necessary permits, City Hall said, in a release.

“Property owners of existing office buildings can seek the interagency team’s help to identify barriers to conversion and expedite pathways to overcome those barriers,” the release said.

In announcing the recommendations earlier this year, Adams estimated that an area of midtown which stretches from Chelsea up through the Garment District can yield 20,000 housing units, making a significant contribution to the mayor’s “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 NYC Office Adaptive Reuse 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.