Good morning, my name is Moses Gates and I am the Vice-President for Housing & Neighborhood Planning at Regional Plan Association. RPA is a 103-year old nonprofit civic association focused on research, planning and advocacy in the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut Metropolitan area. We have long advocated for adaptive reuse in many circumstances, most recently in creating a viable office-to-residential conversion program that can be utilized in the high-density office districts of the five boroughs. We have also been longtime advocates for many of the specific components that make this program work, most notably lifting the 12.0 residential FAR cap.
As the proposed conversion shows, this program can provide more housing, including affordable housing, make use of buildings that are largely empty, and create better 24/7 neighborhoods. We would like to commend both the City and the State for their dedication, innovation and commitment to making these types of projects work. We enthusiastically support amending the general project plan in order to enable this conversion.
This conversion would create 1250 new homes - to put this in perspective, this is the equivalent of creating about 5 square blocks of Brownstone Brooklyn - including a significant below-market component. These are all in an already existing building with excellent access to jobs, transit and cultural amenities. As the transformation of downtown Manhattan shows, these types of conversions benefit the entire neighborhood and the entire city - creating more housing, which then creates a base for additional services and amenities, which then benefits both the new residents and the existing workers and visitors. This in turn makes the neighborhood a more attractive place to work as well as live, benefiting existing businesses and office building owners as well.
While office-to-residential conversions are not a comprehensive solution to our housing crisis, they are an important component that can have a very positive effect on some of the more trafficked neighborhoods in the city. In conjunction with other land-use interventions such as expanding Accessory Dwelling Units and Transit Oriented Development, reducing Parking Requirements, and allowing more mixed-uses throughout the five boroughs, office-to-residential conversions can form a comprehensive solution to our housing crisis. We urge the state not only to approve this project, but also to use this as a template for future office-to-residential conversions as well.
