Turning old offices into new NYC homes

New Yorkers do not live in cabins – but too much of our future houses are still trapped inside.

Through the five districts, we have empty commercial buildings with high vacant posts that become dark after 6 p.m., while families hunt endlessly for an apartment they can afford. The case of the action is simple.

Converting offices is one of the fastest, closest and most profitable means of providing the supply of housing where it is most important, near transit, jobs, schools, parks and small businesses.

Adaptive reuse prevents unnecessary demolitions, the embodied carbon bars embodied in relation to the crushed construction and respects the character of the neighborhood. It also helps our commercial districts to evolve towards real 24/7 districts with light lights at night, safer streets and regular pedestrian traffic for local stores. This is the rare policy that checks each box: climate, affordability, habitability and economic vitality.

We have already shown what is possible when the local government and the private sector shoot in the same direction: conversions are progressing through the city. The transformation of the 160 Water St. into Pearl House, a residential building with nearly 600 houses, proved that we can transform yesterday’s office space into houses of today quickly, safely and with real advantages for the surrounding community.

And even more projects are advancing: the former headquarters of Pfizer at 235 E. 42nd St., who will become 1,600 houses once finished (the greatest conversion from office to residential in the country); 55, rue Broad, where the old offices of Goldman Sachs become 571 houses; 25 Water St., where New Yorkers can already ask for one of the more than 300 affordable apartments; And more.

As decision-makers from New York City, we helped identify the project route like these with the working group on the adaptation of reuse, created in 2022 by a bill sponsored by Justin to the municipal council and chaired by Dan.

Then, with the adoption of the historic city of the zoning reform, we extended more flexible regulations to more buildings, causing a boom of conversions through New York. With this single action, we have carried out more than 136 million additional square feet of eligible office space to convert to housing.

Before City of Yes, only buildings built before 1961 – or 1977 in parts of the Lower Manhattan – could convert into housing, an arbitrary limitation which unnecessarily prevented our city from adapting to the 21st century. With City of Yes, we have updated the year of eligibility and expanded the possibility of converting into housing in buildings throughout the city, instead of limiting conversions to a few business districts.

New York state has also helped to cross the way. State fiscal incitement for conversions, 467 -M, has made many more feasible conversions – and thanks to this program, for the first time, we also obtain affordable housing limited as part of these projects. Soon, thousands of affordable houses will be online for workers’ families.

Our work on the eligibility of zoning and financial feasibility is not the end of the line: we must still execute. Even good projects can always die on the vineyard if they are linked to administrative formalities or to economic uncertainty.

To create a fluid path and clear instructions to obtain all the required approvals, the city has established an office conversion accelerator which helps 85 buildings through the city to browse the agencies, on everything, historic protections for fire safety.

Funding must also respond to the time. Mathematics for conversions are different from the development of land, especially in a higher interest rate environment. While these projects are successful, we hope that banks and lenders will continue to be confident in the recovery of New York. The population of our city increases again and the investment should also.

It is not a theory; This is already happening. The projects move in the Lower Manhattan, Midtown, the city center of Brooklyn, Long Island City, and beyond. We can indicate buildings that will soon put families close to transit and jobs, transform empty blocks into living neighborhoods and give small businesses a more stable clientele.

Conversions alone are not a miracle solution for the housing crisis, but they are an important part of the solution – and the plan is real. We must now evolve it with speed and discipline.

This is what the government of common sense looks like: clear rules, rapid decisions and results that people can feel about their block. From conference rooms to rooms. We can transform the excess office space of our city into affordable and dynamic districts that New Yorkers deserve.

Brannan is president of the finance committee of the municipal council. Garodnick is director of the town planning department in New York.