Office vacancy in Manhattan hit a record 22.7% last year. That’s more than 75 million square feet of New York City office space sitting unoccupied—the equivalent of nearly 30 Empire State Buildings. Without significant intervention, the current vacancy rate is projected to persist through 2026.
The question on everyone’s mind, of course, is: What do we do with these empty office buildings? And, more importantly, how do we do it?
As office towers continue to sit partially empty, with an estimated $1.6 trillion in commercial property financing expected to mature in the next two years, the threat of default and stranded assets is real. At the same time, the housing crisis in New York City continues to worsen. It’s getting harder and harder for people to find a place to live in the city that is within their means. The urgency is being felt: New York City has established a moonshot goal of building 500,000 new dwellings by 2033.
However, for a number of technical reasons, including floorplate-to-envelope ratio, the distance between the core and perimeter envelope, and structural grid spacing, not all existing office buildings are conducive to residential conversion. For those buildings, New York’s market necessitates the creative integration of new programs into vacant spaces, with the goal of bringing each one back to full capacity.
Take the challenge of natural light as an example. With some existing office stock, a common challenge is that floorplates are too deep to facilitate residential conversion, limiting access to natural light and air, and inhibiting our ability to introduce livable suites that make economic sense. What if we thought outside the box? Film studios, for example, are not only operational under lower natural light conditions, but in fact benefit from a lack of natural light. Additionally, the advent of virtual filming technologies significantly reduces the need for large-scale studio footprints. High-profile films and TV shows, such as The Mandalorian, are increasingly being produced using virtual sets; as NYC embarks on a “studio boom” in an effort to turn the city into Hollywood East, there’s a very real opportunity to turn an office floor currently sitting vacant in Midtown Manhattan into the set of The Mandalorian.
This isn’t just a pipe dream. Our studio, BDP, for example, has converted underutilized office floors into media studios and broadcast hubs in Toronto, which is experiencing its own high level of office vacancy. One project included reconfiguring mechanical services to optimize ceiling height, leveling the floor slab, and implementing internal acoustic barriers along the exterior façade to enhance lighting control and mitigate urban noise pollution. It can be done—it just requires a bit of imaginative thinking.
It’s not only film studios that present opportunities for these outside-the-box conversions. Healthcare and medical facilities, life science hubs, vertical retail, community centers, and recreation space should all be given consideration when we’re analyzing what to do with surplus spaces that are currently sitting idle.
Whether it’s transforming empty office floors into a film studio or a new healthcare hub, the approach remains the same: deeply understand the context
and needs of the local area, assess the technical possibilities (different buildings present different opportunities for efficient conversions), and think creatively.
Imagine an office tower that currently sits underutilized being reimagined into a true mixed-use environment, with new residential floors providing housing, retail and grocery access, a community center, and office space as informed by existing structural and space constraints and floorplate optimization. Neighboring low-occupancy office buildings pres- ent even further opportunities to create complete communities.
By adapting existing buildings for new uses, we can create positive economic and social—as well as environmental—impact. By repurposing existing office space, we significantly reduce embodied carbon, when compared to constructing a new building.
This approach to addressing the city’s challenges is gaining significant momentum, including at the policy level: The City of Yes initiative, for example, seeks to reimagine zoning in New York City to unlock significant housing and economic opportunities through adaptive reuse.
The time is ripe, but it’s going to require creativity, collaboration, and outside-the-box thinking from the architecture, engineering and construction industry, as well as from the property developers, owners, municipalities, and policymakers with whom we work.
Rosalind Tsang, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, is New York City studio director at BDP, a global architecture, interiors and urbanism firm. She is passionate about addressing urban challenges centered on social value, sustainable design, and innovation.
