PRESENTATION
Proposal 5 part 2: Allow commercial use above residential in some districts
0:33:24
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165 sec
The second part of Proposal 5 would allow commercial uses to be located above residences in C4-C6 districts, as long as there is complete physical separation between the commercial and residential areas.
This provides more flexibility, especially for conversions of office buildings to mixed-use. Similar allowances already exist in some special districts.
- "You know, we look at that and we say, well, if you're allowing them in the same building, the precise order of where they are is less critical than the safety and environmental separation between those businesses."
- "[this] has a real impact on conversion. If you and we're talking about the 80,000,000 square feet of vacant office space in New York City, 19% vacancy today. If you wanna convert an office building in part to residential. And you wanna convert the lower part of the building, but you have a robust commercial tenant upstairs. Why are we as New York City saying, you can't convert the lower half of your building to residential?"
- "The rules about stacking are antiquated. They they no longer reflect the fact that an elevator can actually bypass floors in a way that they really couldn't in 1961."
Dan Garodnick
0:33:24
Okay?
0:33:25
So that's number 1.
0:33:26
Number 2, and this one has gotten a little bit more attention even than the other.
0:33:29
Let's go to the next slide, is allowing commercial over residential because of existing stacking rules that we have in New York City.
0:33:41
The issue for us here is that options for converting or constructing mixed use buildings are limited in some areas because of stacking rules that require commercial uses to stay below residential uses.
0:33:56
K?
0:33:56
So you can have commercial and residential in the same building.
0:34:00
In a C4 to say C6, but the commercial's got to be below the residential.
0:34:08
You know, we look at that and we say, well, if you're allowing them in the same building, the precise order of where they are is less critical than the safety and environmental separation between those businesses.
0:34:20
That's 1.
0:34:21
2, it has a real impact on conversion.
0:34:24
If you and we're talking about the 80,000,000 square feet of vacant office space in New York City, 19% vacancy today.
0:34:32
If you wanna convert an office building in part to residential.
0:34:37
And you wanna convert the lower part of the building, but you have a robust commercial tenant upstairs.
0:34:44
Why are we as New York City saying, you can't convert the lower half of your building to residential?
0:34:49
Provided that, You have separate entrances, separate elevators, separate stairwells to keep the commercial and the residential uses.
0:35:00
Distinct.
0:35:01
You know, we think about our building or you could think about 250 Broadway right across the street.
0:35:05
It's a perfect example.
0:35:06
There's a building where you have, what, 6 elevator banks.
0:35:10
You can have half of them going to the upper floors for commercial, half of them going to the lower floors for residential, and you could very easily segregate the uses between commercial and residential in a way that would not affect anybody's quality of life.
0:35:26
Most importantly, we want to create opportunities so that buildings are not sitting there vacant.
0:35:32
The rules about stacking are antiquated They they no longer reflect the fact that an elevator can actually bypass floors in a way that they really couldn't in 1961.
0:35:43
We want to make sure that we enable more flexibility here.
0:35:47
This sort of rules where you can have commercial above residential already exists in a number of areas of New York City, Midtown, Long Island City, Southern Roosevelt Island, West Chelsea.
0:35:59
This is not a a proposal that is without precedent is just something that we think rationally belongs in all C4 to C6 districts.
0:36:08
Let's go to the next slide.