Mark Levine declares candidacy race for NY Comptroller.
File photograph.
A 50-year-old constructing in Decrease Manhattan represents a brand new frontier for fixing New York Metropolis’s housing disaster.
Due to an formidable redevelopment effort, a former workplace constructing at 25 Water Road has simply been remodeled into over 1,300 new properties, with rents for inexpensive two-bedroom flats beginning at simply $1,116 a month—at a time when our metropolis has a extra pressing want for inexpensive housing than ever earlier than.
It’s the most important workplace to residential conversion in American historical past.
We’re within the grip of the worst housing affordability disaster in our Metropolis’s historical past. Market rents have skyrocketed to unsustainable ranges—$5,368 per 30 days on common, with two-bedrooms usually exceeding $6,500. These costs aren’t simply statistics; they signify a future the place working households, important staff, and even our personal youngsters are more and more shut out of the borough they name residence.
Just some years in the past, 25 Water Road was a virtually empty Nineteen Sixties-era workplace tower within the Monetary District. Initially in-built 1969 to deal with verify processors and computer systems,it grew to become a relic of one other period—impractical for contemporary workplace use and ill-suited for our post-pandemic financial system.
Now, we commerce house for computer systems for house for folks.
With the facility of sensible coverage and daring considering that made the 25 Water Road conversion doable, we will reimagine what our metropolis’s constructing inventory might be.
Workplace-to-residential conversions aren’t a silver bullet—however they’re one of the crucial thrilling instruments now we have right this moment to handle our housing emergency. With workplace vacancies nonetheless excessive, particularly in areas like Midtown South and the Monetary District, now we have an unprecedented alternative to reshape underused business corridors into vibrant, mixed-use neighborhoods.
And extra is on the horizon.
The proposed Midtown South rezoning, which I known as for in my “Housing Manhattanites” plan, would unlock the potential for brand new housing throughout 42 blocks and dozens of underutilized business buildings ripe for conversion. This single change may result in the creation of greater than 9,000 new properties from a mixture of conversions and new development—together with 2,800 completely inexpensive items. That’s not simply housing—that’s a brand new era of Manhattanites who can afford to remain, work, and lift households right here.
These conversions are additionally usually quicker and extra sustainable than ground-up development. In a metropolis the place time, house, and cash are at all times in brief provide, that issues.
We’re at a turning level. If we would like a Manhattan that continues to be numerous, dynamic, and livable—not only for the rich, however for academics, artists, immigrants, college students, and seniors—we should act boldly.
25 Water Road is greater than a constructing. It’s a blueprint.
Let’s observe it.
