By Janaki Chadha

New York City Mayor Eric Adams delivers an address on the future of Housing in the city at the Manhattan Community College's Tribeca Performing Arts Center on Thursday, Sept. 21, 2023. | Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office

How much additional housing could the city produce if new buildings didn’t need to set aside as much space for parking?

An installation in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, over the weekend offered a visual answer to that question: turning two parking spaces in the underground garage of a residential building into a pop-up studio apartment.

“Every time you require parking to be built alongside housing you’re literally sacrificing apartments that could be built,” said Sara Lind, co-executive director of the advocacy group Open Plans, which put together the installation and has pushed for eliminating parking mandates. “People aren’t moving to Williamsburg right on the L line and being like, ‘I’m going to need a car.’”

She noted constructing parking spaces, especially those below-grade, adds significant cost to projects — taking away resources that could be used to build more apartments.

The two parking spots used for the one-day installation, which was part of the Open House New York festival, yielded a generously-sized makeshift apartment space, fit with bedroom and living room furniture.

Mayor Eric Adams is seeking to eliminate parking requirements through his citywide zoning proposal for housing growth, but the plan still has to undergo public review from community boards, borough presidents and the City Council. Lind said succeeding in eliminating the mandates would be a “legacy-making action by the mayor.”

The idea has been controversial in parts of the city that are more car-dependent, but Lind noted the move would not be “banning parking or taking away any existing parking.”

“Even without mandates, developers are going to build parking where people are demanding it,” she said.

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AP Photo

HOUSING PRODUCTION SLOWS — THE CITY’s Greg David: “New York City is on track to complete only about 11,000 new housing units this year, half the number built in 2022 and a fraction of what is needed to deal with the city’s housing crisis.

“The forecast, contained in a construction outlook released Wednesday by the New York Building Congress, is in line with data from the Real Estate Board of New York, which believes the total this year could even fall below 10,000 — primarily because the legislature allowed the controversial 421-a tax break for developers to expire in June 2022.

“‘It’s embarrassing in a city of 8.5 million people to only be building that many units,’ said Carlo Scissura, president of the Building Congress.”

MEDIATION IN RIGHT TO SHELTER CASE — POLITICO’s Janaki Chadha: A Manhattan Supreme Court judge on Thursday directed the city, the state and the Legal Aid Society to try to work towards a settlement instead of escalating their legal fight over the decades-old right-to-shelter mandate.

“The parties have agreed that for now, there should not be a war of legal papers,” Judge Gerald Lebovits said during a court hearing after the parties discussed the matter privately for more than an hour. “The solution is to try to settle the matter, if possible, and to solve whatever problem might exist.”

CITY UNVEILS OUTDOOR DINING RULES — POLITICO’s Janaki Chadha: The Adams administration unveiled proposed rules Thursday for the city’s new outdoor dining program and will begin public outreach on the draft guidelines with restaurants, business associations and community groups.

The first dining set-ups to be approved under the program are expected to come online next spring. Officials said the latest outdoor dining regime draws on lessons from the temporary program created during the Covid-19 pandemic, which saved tens of thousands of restaurant jobs but also drew quality-of-life complaints.

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Visitors to the Resorts World Casino at the Aqueduct racetrack play electronic slot machines in Queens, New York. | Julie Jacobson/AP Photo

CASINO BIDDER PITCHES NEW HOUSING — New York Times’ Stefanos Chen: “A developer vying to build a casino near the United Nations in Manhattan has tried to sway skeptics with a Ferris wheel, a museum and a glowing field of lights on the 6.7-acre site.

“Now Soloviev Group, the longtime owner of the lot, is trying a different tack: the inclusion of 1,325 apartments, nearly 40 percent of which would be offered permanently below market-rate rent, according to the firm.”

CITY ORDERS PARKING GARAGE INSPECTIONS — Gothamist’s David Brand: “The city’s buildings department is set to enforce stricter inspection requirements on thousands of parking garages that might have otherwise avoided review for years, after a deadly cave-in killed a man in Lower Manhattan earlier this year.”

RXR JOINS MOTT HAVEN RENTAL BOOM — The Real Deal’s Harrison Connery: “Another developer has made the leap north over the Hudson River to Mott Haven. RXR officially arrived in the borough Thursday, completing a 27-story, 200-unit residential rental tower dubbed the Maven. Scott Rechler’s firm, which filed plans for the project three and a half years ago, is the latest of a slew of developers to build recently in the South Bronx neighborhood.”

VETERAN INVESTOR SAYS COMMERCIAL DECLINE ‘HALFWAY THERE’  — Crain’s Aaron Elstein: “The Park Avenue-based commercial real estate investment firm Cohen & Steers is raising cash to invest in distressed properties when the time is right. The firm, a pioneer of REIT investing since it was founded in the 1980s, doesn’t see that time as now, however.

‘“Our expectation has been that prices need to decline 25% to 30% and to generalize we believe we’re about halfway there,’ CEO Joe Harvey said on a conference call Thursday, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript.”

— Congestion pricing has been put on hold until after the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. 

— New York City is getting a new biomedical research hub.

— A South Bronx waterfront complex has opened with 542 subsidized apartments.

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