NEW YORK (BLOOMBERG) — New York developers are transforming struggling office buildings into more than 12,000 new apartments in a bid to help offset the city’s worst housing crisis in decades.
Most of the units are either starting or completing construction next year and over 3,000 of them will be earmarked as permanently affordable homes, according to a new estimate from the Adams administration which tracks progress on City of Yes — a 2024 zoning overhaul designed to spur housing development. A change in a tax-incentive last year also contributed to the growth.
Real estate developers have already turned iconic towers like Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s former headquarters and JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s old brick fortress into luxury apartments, helping remake the Financial District into a residential neighborhood after banks moved uptown. There’s been a more recent push into midtown Manhattan, with firms lined up to convert Pfizer Inc.’s former headquarters into more than 1,500 rentals and others overhauling the Archdiocese of New York’s onetime home.
“We’re very encouraged by what we’re seeing in a short period of time,” City Planning Department Director Dan Garodnick said in an interview. “We have a high vacancy rate in our commercial office buildings and a very, very dangerously low vacancy rate in our rental housing, and creating an opportunity for offices to convert into housing makes a lot of sense.”…