Adams wants to rezone NYC’s Garment District for residential use to ease housing crisis

[Kamaji]

Adams wants to rezone NYC’s Garment District for residential use to ease housing crisis

By Nolan Hicks
August 17, 2023

What’s old is new, as Mayor Eric Adams is looking at rezoning barely used manufacturing centers in the Garment District and Chelsea for residential use to help ease the Big Apple’s housing crisis.

The focus is primarily on turning empty older buildings into apartments across more than 40 blocks, which could result in as many as 20,000 new homes, but Hizzoner warned that the city would need a sign-off from the state.

“I’ve said it before: New York City is the ‘City of Yes’ — and today, we are saying yes to a flourishing economy, yes to thriving business districts, and yes to creating more homes for New Yorkers,” said Adams on Thursday.

The most dramatic of the proposals calls for a re-examination of the old manufacturing districts in Midtown’s southern quadrant, which stretch roughly from West 23rd Street to West 40th Street between Fifth and Eighth avenues.

The goal, officials argue, is to reinvigorate a portion of Manhattan hit hard by shop closures and commuters shifting to work-from-home schedules following the coronavirus pandemic by adding housing — and thus residents — to the area.

*  *  *

Source:  https://nypost.com/2023/08/17/nyc-mayor-adams-wants-to-rezone-garment-district-for-residential-use-to-ease-housing-crisis/

[mountaineer]

Real estate developers would have to be convinced it was a good investment with their money to convert these industrial buildings into apartments, I should think. The article implies these renovations would be done with private funding, after all.

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

Not a bad idea. Stopped clock and all that. In Boston they’re reasoning office as mixed use/residential

[Kamaji]

The zoning in NYC should be comprehensively revisited/revised in any event.  Zoning in NYC is generally an exclusionary process, rather than a hierarchical process - in most places with zoning laws, the rules are hierarchical, meaning that a lower zoned use cannot be conducted in a higher zoned area, but a higher zoned use can always be conducted in a lower zoned area.  In NYC, zoning is exclusive, which means that if an area is zoned commercial, even light commercial, no other use can be conducted in that area, including housing or industrial.  As a result, when an area zoned industrial or commercial ceases to be used for that purpose - for example, because it's too expensive to maintain those kinds of businesses in NYC and the companies relocate elsewhere - the area becomes abandoned rather than being repurposed for another use, such as housing.

Just one more in a long list of prog/lib "improvements" that have done nothing but damage the city's fabric.

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

The zoning in NYC should be comprehensively revisited/revised in any event.  Zoning in NYC is generally an exclusionary process, rather than a hierarchical process - in most places with zoning laws, the rules are hierarchical, meaning that a lower zoned use cannot be conducted in a higher zoned area, but a higher zoned use can always be conducted in a lower zoned area.  In NYC, zoning is exclusive, which means that if an area is zoned commercial, even light commercial, no other use can be conducted in that area, including housing or industrial.  As a result, when an area zoned industrial or commercial ceases to be used for that purpose - for example, because it's too expensive to maintain those kinds of businesses in NYC and the companies relocate elsewhere - the area becomes abandoned rather than being repurposed for another use, such as housing.

Just one more in a long list of prog/lib "improvements" that have done nothing but damage the city's fabric.

Interesting. Thanks.

[DefiantMassRINO]

The caveat with those industrial areas is potential hazardours waste cleanup liabilities.

[Kamaji]

The caveat with those industrial areas is potential hazardours waste cleanup liabilities.

With industrial areas, yes.  With the garment district, most likely not.