The Market Report: July 2024

Developed or Destroyed

Sights are up for the city, as more ground is broke, and buildings also come down to make way for new development. In just the first quarter of this year alone, proposals for 19,819 new residential and hotel units were filed with the city, over 26 million square feet of buildout, more than doubling what the city saw the same quarter last year with 9,138 filings. This first quarter push was on the heels of Q4 2023, the quarter with the largest number of filings thus far for new buildings of any quarter in the 2020s. By this time next month, we will be able to report on the additional filings for 2024, with Q2 numbers.

There is a demand to be met for residential space in the city, rental and sale. The need hasn’t just persisted, it has grown since the pandemic, defying the forecasts of shortsighted naysayers of the city’s demise back then. It’s hard to forget their predictions now.

As we look to new development and growth around the city, we can have the optimism that housing challenges can be tackled and that our interaction with the spaces we live in – both on the street and in our homes – can be enhanced. The developers who file for new construction and the people in public positions who both monitor and promote the building and changes in zoning requirements are stewards of the city’s fabric.

Too often “development” is a misnomer. We can look at the past 20 years alone of development in the city to see successes, and unfortunately significant failures. Rezoning whole stretches of the city brought us great opportunities for improving the lives of us here today and for leaving great legacies for generations to come. Those opportunities also brought us cheap-and-fast throwaway architecture and irresponsible detriments to the fabric of the city, where thoughtful contributions could exist today.

Buildings can be testaments to human achievement – innovations in materials, enhancements in systems, new extraordinary capabilities to build upward and improvements in structure and safety. They can also ignore the city and people around them, defying the context in which they exist – blighting a pedestrian thoroughfare by offering no retail or commercial spaces, existing on land that once provided a beautiful historic building without thought to preservation or incorporation, depriving the fabric of any architectural merit, and instead of standing out as a contribution, sticking out like a sore thumb.

As a city, we are staring out on some amazing opportunities. Certainly, there have been several developers and architects who have taken their roles very seriously over the past few years. We hope the bar they raised in neighborhoods – examples like Downtown Brooklyn, or the corridors of Second Avenue in Manhattan and 4th Avenue in Brooklyn – that endured bruises in years prior, set examples to achieve or be embarrassed by.

Good residential development isn’t just creating apartments and amenities; it stimulates population density to support the growth of small businesses and companies, the need for green space, added entertainment options and the expansion of transportation systems and ultimately the quality of life of those who call New York City home. We look forward to all the innovations and enhancements the city could experience in the next half of the decade ahead.