Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration renewed its push Wednesday to overhaul a decades-old state law that she and Mayor Eric Adams argue is snarling efforts to transform empty office towers into badly-needed housing for New York City.
A Post investigation found that the 1961 law — known as the 12 FAR cap — has badly backfired, trading iconic Big Apple sites for soulless pencil towers, while thwarting the construction of potentially 200,000 apartments.
Many of the historic structures that line Central Park, such as the famed Eldorado, also would be barred from being erected today under the arcane residential construction statute, which blocks new mid-sized buildings from being built.
The Post’s review comes as Hochul’s top housing official made the case to state lawmakers once again that FAR cap needs to be repealed, describing it an “outdated” restriction during a Wednesday hearing in Albany.
“What remains abundantly clear is that the state’s housing crisis will only be remedied with bold and creative solutions that significantly increase our supply and, thereby, drive down prices,” state housing commissioner, Ruth Anne Visnauskas, said from the capitol.
“The urgency of this housing crisis demands action,” she added.
The law’s supporters argue it shields the Big Apple — Manhattan, in particular — from overdevelopment and protects the character of historic neighborhoods that they say would otherwise be filled with glass towers.
But The Post’s review of city records shows that the law has done the opposite: Allowing the construction of glass skyscrapers filled with just a handful of apartments, while blocking apartment buildings such as the elegant famed structures that line Central Park.
The statute restricts how high structures can be built based on the size of their footprint on the ground — the bigger the ground footprint, the fewer the stories.
That equation means many of the more spread-out 20- and 30-story historic residential buildings along Central Park West and Fifth Avenue could only be 12 stories tall if they were built today, including:
Meanwhile, 30 blocks south, the Steinway Tower at 111 West 57th Street — billed as the world’s “skinniest” skyscraper — complies with the regulations, even as its 86-stories jut more than 1,400 feet into the sky.
It contains just 60 apartments.
The One57 tower that sits nearby at 157 West 57 Street also clocks in at more than 1,000 feet tall and holds just 90 condos, stacked above a 210-room luxury hotel.
All told, there 117 buildings across the city that were originally built for residential uses that would be banned today because of the cap, the Post analysis shows.
Those buildings contain nearly 13,000 apartments, and the tallest of the bunch — the landmarked Sherry-Netherland at 781 Fifth Avenue — is just 38 stories, a fraction of the height of the permissible “pencil” towers.
When the law was enacted in 1961, supporters said it would prevent “vertical slums.” In practice, those tall buildings have kept sprouting while shorter designs with more units can no longer be built, The Post’s investigation found.
“I know the mayor is very enthusiastic about [a revised law]. Developers like [one]. But a lot of communities say, ‘Don’t we have enough tall buildings?’” said state Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal, who chairs the lower chamber’s Housing Committee and is one of the law’s key supporters, to The Commercial Observer in 2023.
“I am listening to all sides about the FAR cap,” Rosenthal said, in a statement responding to The Post’s findings. “We are in the midst of budget discussions and all these issues are open and on the table.”
Researchers at Colombia University estimated in 2015 that the building size cap, and its predecessors, has cost the five boroughs an estimated 200,000 homes and apartments over the decades.
That’s enough units to fill approximately two-thirds of the New York’s housing deficit, which stood at an estimated 342,000 units in 2019, according to a study by the RAND Corporation.
Now, Hochul and City Hall have a new impetus for attacking the law.
Commercial buildings have a larger cap under state law than residential buildings do, meaning that efforts to convert empty office towers into needed apartments are now being slowed down by the statute.
“The 12 FAR cap is an arbitrary and outdated restriction on New York City’s ability to build the homes New Yorkers desperately need — and it doesn’t even reflect the reality of many current buildings either,” said City Planning chief Dan Garodnick. “It’s long past time that the state lifts this prohibition on new housing and empowers the city to create housing.”
A 2022 analysis by the Regional Plan Association found that reforming the law to allow for wider buildings combined with other city zoning tweaks would have legalized a Steinway building that was half as tall while while containing six times the apartments.
“We hope that Albany will act on this so we can get the kind of development we need,” said Moses Gates, who authored the RPA’s study. “The FAR cap hasn’t stopped super tall development. By not changing this, we’re only going to get more of the same.”
He added: “Albany should lift the cap & give NYC the ability to better incentivize the kind of development it needs — shorter, mixed-income buildings with several times more units.”
Additional reporting by Vaughn Golden and Haley Brown