Adams announces steps to ease Midtown office conversions to housing in NYC

Mayor Adams laid out several measures Thursday aimed at expediting office-to-residential conversions in Midtown and across the city as part of the effort to boost supply amid the ongoing housing crisis.

The steps include adjusting regulations and rezoning a 42-block span of Midtown Manhattan, with a focus on creating new housing and exploring opportunities to enable conversions. Adams and others described the new proposals as picking up where Gov. Hochul’s housing compact left off after it fell apart during the legislative session earlier this year.

“It’s unbelievable how much empty office space we have sitting idly by with ready and willing participants to develop the housing. And we are in the way,” Mayor Adams said at a Midtown press conference in Midtown.. “Well it’s time to get out of the way so we can turn these office cubicles into nice living quarters so that we can address the housing crisis we have.”

The mayor had previously said such conversions could produce some 20,000 new housing units for 40,000 New Yorkers. Manhattan skyscrapers have been experiencing record vacancies since the pandemic due to factors including the increase of work-from-home and hybrid employment.

But converting offices into residences can be complicated and drawn-out, not just for a number of technical reasons but also because of the “thicket of regulations built up over decades” that make the process “impossible,” according to Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer.

To that end, they announced an addition to “City of Yes,” a series of updates to the city’s zoning rules. That includes expanded eligibility for conversions to include newer buildings: currently the cutoffs are those built before 1961 and 1977, but the changes would extend to those predating 1990. It would also make it possible for offices and other non-residential buildings citywide to be converted to residential where zoning permits housing.

The changes also include the launch of the Midtown South Mixed-Use Plan, a proposed rezoning initiative that would allow for new housing within 42 blocks between 23rd Street and 40th Street from Fifth Avenue to Eighth Avenue currently designated for manufacturing.

“Around the country, commercial office spaces have been converted into housing. But here in New York, since the pandemic, it’s barely happened at all,” said Councilmember Erik Bottcher, who represents parts of Manhattan including Times Square and the Garment District. “That is a public policy failure.”

According to the city, at least seven buildings have filed with the Department of Buildings for office conversions. If completed, they would create around 3,000 new units. A half a dozen more are “close to filing,” officials said.

Speakers at the press conference called on Albany to pull its weight in the housing push, with Adams repeating the request for a state tax incentive program for office conversions. It comes amid ongoing tensions between city and state over the migrant crisis, just days after Gov. Hochul’s administration said it had “substantial questions” about how the city has handled the influx of asylum seekers from the Southern border.

The city also launched the Office Conversion Accelerator, an interagency group billed as a “concierge service” to help building owners cut through regulatory red tape. Torres-Springer said the hope was that the accelerator program would make the entire permitting process about six months long.