The push to convert office space into apartments has the potential to transform the nation’s largest business district, and its older and less desirable office space, into a very different kind of midtown Manhattan, THECITYNY reports.
“No progress has been made toward getting a new large-scale conversions program underway in New York City in the past two years because a key ingredient has been missing: cooperation for critical policy changes at the state and city levels,” said Basha Gerhards, senior vice president of planning at the Real Estate Board of New York.
Hochul’s budget proposes to revise the state’s multiple dwelling law to allow more flexibility on floor area, light and air requirements for office building conversions south of 60th Street in Manhattan. The language in the bill is regarded as a placeholder for further negotiations on what those standards should be.
The reclassification aimed to encourage the construction of new office buildings in the city’s crucial Park Avenue business district by allowing the transfer of air rights and created a public benefits fund to improve the infrastructure. It has spurred the construction of the 93-story One Vanderbilt tower next to Grand Central, a new headquarters for J.P. Morgan Chase on Park Avenue, and a new hotel-office building at the site of the Grand Hyatt that is likely to cost more than $3 billion.
She argues that developers must gain the ability to proceed with conversions without having to go through ULURP approvals project by project, because developers won’t proceed if they have to face the political uncertainty the city’s approvals gauntlet would add. City Council members are likely to want to retain their power to approve each project individually.
“Virtually all the new office buildings being built under the rezoning have had to seek City Council approval to tweak the rules,” he noted. “Modern office buildings tend to be larger floor plates with massive cores that go straight up and down and in order to convert them the units have to be made deeper than normal,” said David West, the founding partner of the architectural firm Hill West and someone who has designed numerous conversions.