Speaking to a room full of real estate leaders, Mayor Eric Adams on Wednesday picked up on a major theme of the mayoral race: housing and how to build more of it.
At The Real Deal’s NYC Forum on Wednesday, Adams boasted about zoning changes under the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity and the tens of thousands of housing units built under his administration.
“We turned inaction into inertia … and showed that government, businesses and labor can still come together to do bold, ambitious things,” he said. “This has been the most pro-housing administration in the city’s history.”
As his latest example, Adams detailed plans for a 50-year-old office building on city-owned land. The city, in coordination with developers Rabina and Park Tower Group, plans to replace 395 Flatbush Extension with 1,263 apartments, of which 253 to 379 would be affordable to those, on average, earning at or below 80 percent of the area median income.
Rabina and Park Tower Group control the site through a long-term ground lease with the city. The city is filing an application to rezone the site, and a scoping hearing is expected June 5.
Rabina CEO and President Josh Rabina said that “replacing the dark and outdated office building” will “breathe new life into one of the most important intersections in Downtown Brooklyn.”
Adams touted the project for a few reasons: It is one of the first to be able to exceed a previous cap on the residential space in the city, thanks to changes made by the state last year and in the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity. The tower is expected to have a floor area ratio of 21.8.
His speech also served as an opportunity for the mayor to re-pitch himself as a real estate-friendly mayoral candidate. He credited developers and businesses, as well as pro-housing leaders, with making projects like 395 Flatbush possible.
“I’m here to support my developers, not fight my developers,” he said.
The project’s developers are expected to seek the property tax break 485x. Under the incentive’s rules for larger projects in certain locations, the developers will need to pay higher wages to construction workers. The all-electric project is also expected to include a 4,750-square-foot public plaza, 66,000 square feet of retail, 75,000 square feet of commercial space and an “expanded and heightened” entrance at the DeKalb Avenue subway station.
Details on the project were previously reported by TRD.
Three years ago, a few months into his term, Adams spoke at TRD’s NYC Forum. He was aware the crowd came from an industry that helped get him elected, pledging to “roll out the red carpet” for builders and to do away with arcane regulations that hold up construction.
Much has happened since that speech. The mayor was indicted on corruption charges, which were dropped in April at the behest of the Trump administration. The charges were dropped with prejudice, after a federal judge determined that allowing the case to be revived would create the perception that “the mayor’s freedom depends on his ability to carry out the immigration enforcement priorities of the [Trump] administration, and that he might be more beholden to the demands of the federal government than to the wishes of his own constituents.”
One day after the charges were dropped, Adams announced that he would run for re-election as an independent, bowing out of a crowded Democratic primary. The real estate industry’s support has since flocked to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who announced his run for mayor in March. Cuomo has already raised millions of dollars from real estate executives through his super PAC, Fix the City.
Many of the mayoral candidates have released housing plans. Sen. Zellnor Myrie says he wants to build 1 million homes over the next decade. Comptroller Brad Lander’s plan calls for 500,000 units during that time, and Assembly member Zohran Mamdani has pitched spending $100 billion over the next 10 years to increase the number of subsidized affordable units to 200,000. Cuomo’s plan, which received some backlash for typos and use of AI, calls for building and preserving 500,000 homes.
But Adams remains confident he will keep the industry’s support. When asked after the session whether he thinks he can win real estate back, Adams said, “They never left me. I’m not in the primary.” He went on, “There’s a primary, there’s a general election. Real estate has always been supportive.”
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