Midtown South Rezoning Master Plan Clears City Council

The Midtown South Rezoning bill unanimously passed the City Council on Aug. 14, clearing the way for the largest housing overhaul in over two decades. Its backers say that not only will buses move faster on 34th Street due to a new busway that will ban all cars, but more important, nearly 10,000 new homes will be built in West Side neighborhoods around Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen that are now largely zoned for commercial.

While real estate deals can be contentious, this one passed the City Council with ease.

“This is a rare instance where the Council members brought forward the idea of rezoning this area for housing,” said Council Member Keith Powers, who co-sponsored the bill with City Council Member Erik Bottcher.

The rezoning area includes an area from Fifth Avenue to Eighth Avenue between 23rd and 41st streets, is dense and filled with a lot of office space.

The plan includes over $448 million in community and infrastructure investments for the Midtown South area. The Council also voted to pass legislation that would remove barriers to supportive housing, codify the City’s cooling-center program, and improve the safety of childcare centers.

“To confront the citywide housing and affordability crisis, our city must build more homes and invest in housing solutions that allow generations of New Yorkers to remain in this city,” said Speaker Adrienne Adams.

“The Council is proud to approve the historic Midtown South Mixed-Use Plan, as well as other housing projects, that will deliver over 10,000 new homes. The Midtown South Mixed-Use Plan will also invest nearly $488 million to preserve and support our city’s Garment District industries and help meet the needs of the surrounding communities,” Adrienne Adams said.

The proposed rezoning of Midtown South, the old Garment District around Penn Station, is so extensive that it deals with everything from turning factory buildings into housing to shoring up the boutique fashion-design industry, which is all that remains in what was once a bustling manufacturing zone. And it kicks cars off 34th Street so the buses can go faster than their current average 5 miles per hour.

“The Midtown South rezoning proves just how critical new homes, great streets, and reliable transit work are to New York City,” said Ben Furnas, executive director of Transportation Alternatives.

The main feature is that it allows residential construction in an area that for generations was zoned for manufacturing—in particular, the garment factories that were a core industry and employer in New York in the 20th century.

But those factories are all but gone, and legislators decided that nostalgia was no longer as important as countering the city’s severe housing shortage.

The law includes commitments for over $120 million in economic development resources to support the Garment District’s fashion and garment industry businesses. The neighborhood benefits also include: the preservation and advancement of the plan to establish a 34th Street car-free busway; completion of the Broadway Vision Plan to transform 21 blocks and create a car-free corridor on Broadway from 22nd to 25th streets; street safety enhancements; subway station improvements; and critical investments for nearby schools, emergency medical services, and Bellevue Hospital.

“We’re tackling New York’s housing crisis head-on by unlocking over 9,500 new homes in one of the most transit-rich, high-opportunity areas of the city—helping to bring down rents not just in Midtown, but citywide,” said Council Member Erik Bottcher.

In essence, the plan converts a former factory district, where people were not allowed to live (at least not legally), into 46 blocks of multi-use zoning where people, as the planners say, can live, work, and play.

The support for fashion trades, the Council said, include: Midtown Made, a state-coordinated campaign to connect businesses to expanded tools, a Local Production Fund to incentivize fashion designers to use local garment manufacturers, investing $50 million in the Greenlight Innovation Fund to help eligible nonprofit organizations secure and develop permanent, below-market space for the garment industry, and a reopening of the Manhattan Commercial Revitalization (M-CORE) program.

“New Yorkers deserve fast, reliable, and world-class bus service, and that is why Mayor Eric Adams and our administration are building the 34th Street Busway to speed up commutes for riders and make this corridor safer and less congested,” said NYC’s Transportation commissioner, Ydanis Rodriguez, when the bill first made it out of committee on Aug. 7. He said he expects the 34th Street busway to mirror the success of the 14th Street corridor, where bus speeds increased by 24 percent, traffic congestion virtually disappeared, and crashes dropped by 42 percent. “This new busway will prioritize buses and trucks while maintaining local access for pickups, dropoffs, and loading,” he said.