The City Council on Thursday is expected to pass a plan aimed at invigorating Midtown Manhattan by allowing the development of some 9,500 additional homes, as New York City leaders continue a push to make room for more housing.
The plan targets about 42 blocks across four areas of Midtown and Midtown South where decades-old rules have prevented new residential construction.
The goal, city officials said, is to address New York City’s severe housing shortage while also revitalizing a part of the city’s business center that has struggled to recover from the pandemic.
“This is one of the biggest leaps forward in creating new housing in Manhattan in quite some time,” said Keith Powers, the Democratic councilman whose district includes some of the targeted areas and who supports the plan.
The housing crisis is one of New York City’s most daunting challenges. The share of apartments available to rent is at its lowest level in nearly 60 years, according to the most recent city figures, while rents continue to rise and homelessness remains high.
City leaders have wrestled with how and where to add housing. The administration of Mayor Eric Adams, who is running for re-election in November, pushed through a sweeping plan last year, known as City of Yes, that is allowing more development citywide. His biggest rivals, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, have both pledged to unleash much more construction.
Midtown, in particular, was a hot target because it has become a symbol of the challenges faced by urban commercial centers after the widespread shift to remote work during the pandemic. The city is also encouraging the conversion of old office buildings to housing.
The four areas affected by the plan, which will largely be rezoned from manufacturing to residential, include swaths between West 35th and 40th Streets south of Bryant Park; between West 34th and 41st Streets west of Broadway; and two chunks between West 23rd and 31st Streets on either side of Sixth Avenue.
There are already a variety of buildings in these zones, including several high-rises that were built before zoning restrictions were put in place in the mid-20th century.
Still, the plan for Midtown had generated opposition, particularly from businesses and civic leaders focused on the future of the garment district, which is part of the rezoning area.
One worry is that the plan would encourage property owners to tear down commercial buildings that contain fashion-related businesses and build housing there instead. The New York Fashion Workforce Development Coalition — which includes nonprofit groups that support local manufacturers, like Made in NYC, as well as some businesses — had opposed the rezoning.
Joe Rose, a developer who was city planning director under Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, said he supported allowing residential construction in some of the manufacturing zones, which he called “anachronistic.”
But he argued that the city was not grappling with the potential consequences of the rezoning, which will be bolstered by a separate move by the state to relax limits on residential construction in Manhattan. The combination, he said, could give rise to enormous skyscrapers.
“I think five, 10 years down the road, people are going to be asking: Who allowed this to happen? How did this happen?” Mr. Rose said.
He added that the plan would make “57th Street look like the foothills.”