Earlier last year, Mayor Eric Adams announced his push to convert a big chunk of the underused office space from 2020 into new apartments for New Yorkers, and as of February of this year construction has topped out!
While the COVID-19 pandemic gave us all the luxury of working remotely, it also left a lot of abandoned offices. The conversions from commercial/office to residential space were estimated to add as many as 20,000 homes in the next decade – or enough to house at least 40,000 individuals.
The latest office-to-residential project is set to create 1,300 apartments, the most extensive conversion to date.
The Lower Manhattan building, 25 Water Street, used to be the office of Daily News and JPMorgan Chase, which cleared out earlier in the pandemic. Mid-2023 the building’s new owners set out to ease residential conversions using old methods to gut the offices, carve out courtyards and add ten floors to the 22-story structure.
New York Yimby writes that in February of this year construction on the project topped out.
Apartments will range from studios to four-bedrooms with around 50 units per floor. Amenities will include a basketball court, a sauna and steam room, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, sports simulators, an outdoor rooftop lounge, coworking spaces, and entertainment spaces.
GFP Real Estate’s head, Brian Steinwurtzel, stated:
The expectation is that there certainly will be younger single folks who are just sort of starting out in New York, up to families with children that will be looking for these larger units. It’ll help to continue the transition of the financial district into a 24/7 mixed-use neighborhood.
The project is expected to finish in November 2025.