From the November issue: While audiences and actors may be interested in what takes place inside Times Square’s theaters, landlords are often focused on what’s above them.
The historic, low-rise properties have acres of unused development rights that dangle like ripened fruit over their roofs. And since 1998, that untapped space has been easier to harvest. An amendment to a special zoning regulation passed that year gave theater owners the right to sell, or “float,” their air rights to other locations in the neighborhood, and not just combine them with adjacent parcels. The owners would simply have to pay into the specially created Theater Subdistrict Fund in order to do so. [more]