Want to live in Times Square? Here's your chance with Ernst & Young building conversion
The conversion of the largely vacant office building at 5 Times Square in Manhattan promises to bring 1,250 new residential apartments to the area. Credit: Ed Quinn
As many as 1,250 apartments are to be built in Times Square inside the onetime headquarters of Ernst & Young, under a lemons-to-lemonade plan to convert New York City's underused office space into tens of thousands of homes.
Of the units in the building, in exchange for tax breaks, the developer must keep at least a quarter permanently restricted to applicants who are New Yorkers with incomes falling within income bands averaging 80% of the area median income, according to Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul’s offices, which issued a joint news release Thursday.
The building where the units will be built — 37 stories, at 5 Times Square, on the west block of Seventh Avenue between 41st and 42nd streets in Manhattan — will convert about 917,745 square feet of office space into 1,050 studio units and 200 one-bedroom units, the release said. There will also be 37,311 square feet of retail.
The building slated for conversion to apartments had served as the headquarters of Ernst & Young before the company moved out in 2022. Credit: Ed Quinn
Construction is expected to begin by the end of 2025, with the first units opening to residents beginning in 2027, said Adams spokesman William Fowler.
On Thursday, the state formally approved the plan — an amendment to the 42nd Street Development General Project Plan.
Construction of the original office building was completed in 2002. Ernst & Young moved out in 2022, the year after opening a new headquarters in the Manhattan West neighborhood near Hudson Yards.
The current commercial vacancy rate at 5 Times Square is a high of 77%, and the city’s residential rental vacancy rate is a record-low 1.4%. Adams’ plan to convert office space into housing is an attempt to address both problems: the relatively recent excess vacancy of office space, caused by a thinning of in-person attendance during the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of working from home, and the decades-old dearth of housing, stymieing the city's economic growth because people can't find a place to live.
As at other conversions done under the plan, the income-restricted units will be set aside for people based on the area median income, a benchmark set by the federal government. It is $145,800 for a three-person family for 2025.
According to the city’s Housing, Preservation and Development agency, 80% of the area median income is $90,720 for a household of one, $103,680 for a family of two and $116,640 for a family of three.
Those units will be assigned based on a lottery or set aside for a homeless person being placed into housing from a shelter, Fowler said. The rest of the units will be market rate, Fowler said.
Adams has set a "moonshot" goal of creating 500,000 new homes in the next decade.
Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.
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