64 NYC Office Buildings Eyed for Residential Conversions
Building owners have reached out to city's Conversion Accelerator Program.
The owners of 64 office buildings in New York City have contacted NYC’s Office Conversion Accelerator Program for assistance in navigating the process of converting offices into residential housing, according to new data from the Department of City Planning.
Last summer, Mayor Eric Adams unveiled the program, which provides a single point of contact within city government to help speed adaptive reuse projects that provide 50 or more housing units. NYC is aiming to turn offices into up to 20,000 apartments over the next decade to help address the city’s housing shortage.
Thus far, four office buildings involved with the accelerator program have successfully converted to residential apartments or begun construction, encompassing a total of 2,100 new apartments, according to a report in Gothamist.
The owners of two additional buildings, at 650 First Avenue and 980 Sixth Avenue, have received permits to begin renovations, the report said.
The accelerator program consists of an interagency team with 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.
The interagency team analyzes the zoning feasibility of proposed conversion projects and helps the projects secure necessary permits. Its mission is “to identify barriers to conversion and expedite pathways to overcome those barriers,” according to a release.
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 2023.
The January 2023 report also recommended rezoning a wide swath of Manhattan—an area from W. 23rd to W. 41st streets—to erase zoning restrictions that limit uses to offices or manufacturing, allowing dozens of aging office buildings to be converted into apartments.
According to the Department of City Planning, a total of seven conversion projects are now in the works or recently completed in NYC, most of them in Lower Manhattan
An office-to-residential project is under construction in the Financial District, where developers Silverstein Properties and Metro Loft are adapting 55 Broad Street into 571 luxury apartment units. Apartment tenants are expected to begin moving this fall into the tower at 55 Broad, which opened in 1967.
The largest adaptive reuse project in Manhattan involves an office building at 25 Water Street, which used to be home to the offices of the New York Daily News, that is being converted into 1,300 apartments.