The city plans to turn the long-time home of its housing agency into housing.
During his State of the City address on Thursday, Mayor Eric Adams announced plans to turn the office building at 100 Gold Street into 2,000 homes.
The announcement was short on specifics, for this and other proposals. The mayor announced the project as part of a broader “Manhattan Plan,” an initiative he saw would bring 100,000 new homes to the borough over the next decade. (I’ll have more on that proposal next week).
The Department of Housing Preservation and Development is headquartered at the nine-story building, where other city agencies, including the Parks Department, the Office of Collective Bargaining and the Department of Education also have some office space.
The building will likely be demolished to make way for the new housing, and the Department of Citywide Administrative Services will use the proceeds from the redevelopment towards either leasing or buying new office space for the agencies. A senior center in the building will also need to be relocated.
It is worth noting that this announcement comes as city office leases are facing heightened scrutiny.
The city bought the building, which was constructed in the 1960s, in 1993 for $37 million (upwards of $80 million in today’s dollars), from Travellers Insurance Company. The agency had already long been leasing the top two floors in the nine-story building, the New York Times reported at the time. HPD’s predecessor agency (the Department of Housing and Urban Development, before it was split into two agencies in 1978) had also leased space in the building, alongside brokerage Prudential Bache, which moved out after the city bought the building.
The plan for Gold Street is a continuation of the mayor’s directive to agencies to identify public land that could be transformed into housing.
Rachel Fee, head of the New York Housing Conference, said the plans for the property are “symbolic of the extent of need for housing supply and the depth of our crisis.”
What we’re thinking about: What did you think of the mayor’s State of the City address? Send a note to kathryn@therealdeal.com.
A thing we’ve learned: Douglas Elliman closed its office at 575 Madison Avenue to staff on Friday, saying in an email the one-day shutdown was “in response to security concerns in New York around the safety of executives.” The nature of the threat is unclear, but the announcement comes almost exactly one month after a UnitedHealthcare executive was shot and killed in the city. Thank you to Ellen Cranley for passing this information along.
Elsewhere in New York…
— What year is it? Donald Trump is about to take office, and everyone in New York is talking about Andrew Cuomo. Politico New York reports that mayoral candidates are going after the former governor as he considers unveiling his campaign in February.
— The city plans to close a shelter housing 2,431 migrants in Brooklyn, Gothamist reports. The Adams administration announced that the Clinton Hill mega shelter, along with nine other smaller facilities, would shut down in June.
— As expected, Trump will not spend time in prison on his 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Citing Trump’s impending inauguration, Judge Juan Merchan imposed an unconditional discharge, meaning he faces no penalty or imprisonment, but he is entering the White House as the first president or president-elect who is a felon, the New York Times reports.
Closing Time
Residential: The priciest residential sale Friday was $10.8 million for a condo unit at 30 Park Place. The Tribeca unit is 3,100 square feet and sold at a discount from its last price of $15.8 million in 2017.
Commercial: The most expensive commercial closing of the day was $4.9 million for a one-story building at 439 Devoe Avenue in the Bronx. The lot is nearly 17,000 square feet.
New to the Market: The highest price for a residential property hitting the market was a condo unit for $6.8 million at One High Line’s 500 West 18th Street. The condo is a new construction unit spanning 2,000 square feet. Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group’s Deborah Kern and Steve Gold have the listing.
Breaking Ground: The largest new building application filed was 25,044 square feet for a six-story building at 562 West 171st Street, Manhattan. Full demolition permits were filed this past November. Alexander Zhitnik of Z Architecture was the applicant on file.
— Joseph Jungermann