The Queens borough president says yes to the City of Yes, with some exceptions.
Donovan Richards is the last of the borough presidents to weigh in on the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity. He was also the only one to hold a hearing on the text amendment — no small thing, given that Queens is home to the most vocal opponents of the text amendment.
His support joins that of borough presidents in Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn. Staten Island’s Vito Fossella disapproved of the text amendment.
Richards’ support is conditional, with recommendations to salvage some minimum parking requirements in areas not especially close to train stations, including parts of eastern and southeastern Queens.
He also disagreed with the proposal’s legalization of garage apartments “in locations with existing infrastructure challenges … or where garage conversions would exacerbate concerns around the capacity of the location’s aging sewer and electrical infrastructure.”
Richards called on the city to create an amnesty program for homeowners to convert their basement apartments into legal units. A similar idea has been pitched at the state level, but the program included in the state budget this year only covered a few parts of the city.
Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson also opposed eliminating parking mandates citywide and instead recommended that minimums only be lifted in areas within half a mile of rail or subway stations. Brooklyn Borough BP Antonio Reynoso recommended parking maximums be related to transit proximity.
Even with Richards’ endorsement of the plan being conditional, Mayor Eric Adams reacted positively.
“Our fight is far from over, but today’s support marks a significant milestone in delivering the affordable housing that New Yorkers need and deserve,” Adams said in a statement.
In response to Richards’ recommendations, a spokesperson for the Department of City Planning pointed out that after Buffalo and Seattle ended parking mandates, most new development there still included off-street parking — the implication being that developers will include parking if they think customers want it.
The votes of confidence from the borough presidents are not binding, but can influence how the City Council handles the text amendment. The City Council is expected to weigh in on the text amendment in the fall.
What we’re thinking about: What lies ahead for the Safe Hotels Act? Send a note to kathryn@therealdeal.com.
A thing we’ve learned: Tickets for public drinking have doubled during the Adams administration. In June, police issued nearly 7,000 violations for public drinking, up from 4,000 during the same time last year, Gothamist reports. In 2019, police issued 17,000 tickets for public drinking, but nearly 40,000 in 2023.
Elsewhere in New York…
— R.G. Ortiz Funeral Home has agreed to pay $600,000 in restitution to customers and $100,000 in penalties to settle allegations of “deceptive and opaque business practices,” Gothamist reports. The funeral home was accused of preying on grieving families through misleading pricing, failing to provide services that customers paid for and refusing to tell customers the location of their loved ones’ remains.
— Nearly half of the number of people who rode city buses during the first three months of this year did not pay, the New York Times reports. A new report by the MTA showed that 48 percent of passengers boarded without paying the fare.
— In the 1960s, there were more than 2,000 Mister Softee trucks across 38 states. That number has dwindled to 630 in 21 states and parks, WABC reports. “There’s a lot more competition, especially in New York, than there was in the 1980s and 1990s,” Mike Conway, the vice president of Mister Softee and grandson of the company’s co-founder, told CNN. “Ice cream has become more popular — more stores are doing it. Everybody is getting into the business a little bit.”
Closing Time
Residential: The priciest residential sale Friday was $7.8 million for 159 East 65th Street. The 3,600 square-foot townhouse in Lenox Hills was listed by Vandenberg.
Commercial: The largest commercial sale of the day was $60 million for 219 East 42nd Street. The 10-story office building was once Pfizer’s headquarters. According to records, Alexandria Real Estate Equities is selling the property to David Werner. Newmark’s Adam Spies, Doug Harmon and Josh King had the listing.
New to the Market: The highest price for a residential property hitting the market was $8.5 million for the Carlton House’s Unit 8F. The Lenox Hill condo at 21 East 61st Street is 2,400 square feet. Douglas Elliman’s Katherine Gauthier, Wilfredo Rivera and Philip Lisiecki have the listing. — Joseph Jungermann