By Forum Staff
Mayor Eric Adams and the Department of City Planning Director Dan Garodnick on Thursday took three steps towards building much-needed new housing across the city, including by laying out a plan to convert vacant offices into housing as part of Adams’ “City of Yes” plan. The Adams administration is also launching an Office Conversion Accelerator to expedite complex office-to-housing conversion projects — speeding up the process of creating new housing while putting millions of square feet of empty offices to better use for New Yorkers.
While Albany failed to take critical action in the 2023 legislative session that would have facilitated office conversions with affordable housing, the City can act through the land use review process to change zoning citywide and expand the flexibility needed for these projects. With the proposed changes office-to-residential conversions could produce 20,000 new homes for 40,000 New Yorkers in the next decade. This proposal will be part of Adams’ forthcoming “City of Yes for Housing Opportunity” citywide zoning text amendment that will unlock the potential for more new housing in every corner of the city. Adams has committed $24 billion for affordable housing, and even though the City can act to change zoning and permit conversions, State action would still be needed for office-to-residential conversions to produce a substantial amount of new affordable homes.
If the State again fails to act in the upcoming legislative session, the City’s progress in tackling the affordable housing crisis could stall.
Under the proposed actions to facilitate office conversions, the most flexible regulations would be extended to an additional 136 million square feet of office space — roughly the amount of office space in the entire city of Philadelphia — though individual property owners will ultimately decide whether to convert their buildings. The zoning changes would make buildings built before 1990 eligible to convert to housing — an update from the existing 1961 and 1977 cutoffs in various areas — and allow offices and other non-residential buildings to convert to housing anywhere in the city where housing is permitted under zoning. They would also enable conversions to a wider variety of housing types, including supportive housing, shared housing, and dorms.
Adams’ “City of Yes for Housing Opportunity” — with this proposal to facilitate office conversions — will begin public engagement this fall and be formally referred in early 2024.
To further use every tool in the City’s toolbox to enable conversions of empty offices and create much-needed new housing, Adams launched a new Office Conversions Accelerator, comprised of experts from across city government, to work with office building owners to advance conversion opportunities. Led by Get Stuff Built Executive Director Robert Holbrook, the accelerator will convene representatives from City Hall, the DCP, the City Department of Buildings, the City Department of Housing Preservation and Development, the Board of Standards and Appeals, the Landmarks Preservation Commission , and others to marshal the City’s resources to assist owners with complex conversion projects — from analyzing the feasibility of individual projects to helping secure necessary permits.
Property owners and applicants can visit nyc.gov/site/officeconversions/index.page to seek the accelerator’s help.
