With a little more than a week left in office, the Adams administration released recommendations for ramping up housing construction in Manhattan.
The mayor’s office on Monday released the so-called Manhattan Plan, laying out six “key themes” for increasing housing construction in Manhattan.
Those themes include building near transit and job centers, upzoning mid-density districts to allow more housing, building on government-owned sites, encouraging development on vacant or underutilized private sites, streamlining approval processes and exploring new models of housing.
Mayor Eric Adams first announced the Manhattan Plan during his State of the City address in January. At the time, he said the plan would add 100,000 units of housing to Manhattan over the next decade.
That number, however, is a target and not a reflection of how many units could be created if future administrations follow the plan’s recommendations. Already-approved initiatives, including the Midtown South rezoning and a portion of the 80,000 units made possible by the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity text amendment, are also baked into that unit count. The administration doesn’t have an estimate of how many units could be built for each of the plan’s recommendations.
The plan recommends looking at housing opportunities near the Second Avenue subway, noting that the second phase of the project will extend to 125th Street, much of which is within a special district that has height and density limits that restrict development.
“Over the past decade, despite strong community advocacy, much of the corridor’s development potential remains unrealized,” the report states.
It suggests upzoning parts of Community Board 6, which includes Manhattan east of Lexington Avenue from 14th to 59th Streets. The board has pushed the administration to help it craft a housing plan. This could include mapping R11 and R12 districts, which respectively allow buildings that are 15 and 18 times the size of the lot on which they rise.
The plan additionally points to special districts, industrial zones and historic districts as opportunities to ease zoning restrictions and allow more housing.
The administration also floats rebuilding Manhattan’s bulkheads and hardening the shoreline to allow more waterfront development. More extensive land reclamation to extend the borough’s shoreline would require changes to federal law, however.
The plan also calls for further study of how to incentivize development on long-vacant or under-utilized sites. It highlights Soloviev Group’s site on First Avenue between East 38th and East 41st streets, which is Manhattan’s largest vacant site. The developer proposed a casino for the property, which has been vacant since 2007, but the proposal was rejected. The firm hasn’t announced what it now plans for the site, but executives have indicated that they do not plan to let the property sit vacant.
The report further recommends that the city work with the state to reform environmental review and allow more shared housing options, including single-room occupancy units.
It is not unusual for planning initiatives to span multiple administrations. To what extent Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani picks the plan’s strategies remains to be seen, but he has said
that he supports building more housing in areas that have “historically not contributed to citywide housing goals.”
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