{"id":622724,"date":"2026-02-28T17:15:44","date_gmt":"2026-02-28T17:15:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/622724\/"},"modified":"2026-02-28T17:15:44","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T17:15:44","slug":"city-needs-to-get-out-of-our-own-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/622724\/","title":{"rendered":"City Needs To ‘Get Out Of Our Own Way’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even\u00a0though some of\u00a0Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s first actions as New York City’s chief executive have\u00a0effectively\u00a0antagonized the real estate industry, his\u00a0Department of Buildings commissioner,\u00a0Ahmed Tigani<\/a>,\u00a0is trying to strike a more helpful tone.<\/p>\n

\"Placeholder\"\/<\/p>\n

\n Bisnow\/Sasha Jones\n <\/p>\n

\n Tannenbaum Helpern’s Melissa Billig, NYC DOB Commissioner Ahmed Tigani and STO Building Group’s Brooks McDaniel onstage at Bisnow’s 2026 New York Conversions and Building Upgrades conference.\n <\/p>\n

Speaking in front of a crowd of real estate professionals at\u00a0Bisnow\u2019s New York Conversions and Building Upgrades\u00a0conference Wednesday, Tigani emphasized the city\u2019s commitment to working with private industry, specifically on how to speed up development.<\/p>\n

Tigani, who was acting commissioner of the Department of Housing Development and Preservation under Mayor Eric Adams before Mamdani named him\u00a0DOB<\/a> chief last month, said collaboration with the industry is key to achieving the administration’s\u00a0ambitious housing goals.<\/p>\n

Adams focused on cutting red tape as well, assembling an advisory board stacked with<\/a>\u00a0real estate development, urban planning and legal expertise, identifying 111 specific ways the city could streamline processes\u00a0to \u201cGet Stuff Built<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

On his first day in office, Mamdani\u00a0signed an executive order<\/a>\u00a0instructing city agencies to find even more of the bureaucratic holdups that make housing harder and more expensive to deliver, using the same \u201ccohort of agencies, plus more,\u201d Tigani said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt put us in gear to think, \u2018What can we do to get out of our own way?\u2019\u201d he said onstage at Convene One Liberty Plaza. “As government, get out of our way, work with you, who is trying to deliver housing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mamdani is aware that the city\u2019s\u00a0long-running agency staffing problems<\/a>\u00a0need to be addressed to deliver on the ambitious goal of producing 200,000 new homes during his tenure, Tigani said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe actually saw some additional staff lines in the [preliminary] budget that was released, which is not something that happens in a prelim budget,\u201d he said. \u201cNormally, your real investments don’t actually come until you get to the executive budget. So I was giddy.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Tigani, a\u00a0longtime civil servant<\/a>\u00a0whose career has focused on housing and urban planning, said the administration wants to make it even easier for projects to get over the finish line.<\/p>\n

\"Placeholder\"\/<\/p>\n

\n Bisnow\/Sasha Jones\n <\/p>\n

\n KTA Engineering’s Kyle Twitchell, Magnusson Architecture and Planning’s Christopher Jones and Rudin’s Harrison Schaffer onstage at Bisnow’s 2026 New York Conversions and Building Upgrades conference.\n <\/p>\n

One of the ways he\u00a0hopes the DOB can meet that goal is\u00a0by expanding an existing program offered through the agency’s\u00a0online portal, DOB NOW. The\u00a0Major Projects Development Program<\/a>, launched in 2022, offers developers city coordination and consultation services at key junctures for large-scale, complex projects.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of what my effort will be over the next couple of years is to take this model that’s been successful, the [Major Projects Development Program], and expand it to the borough offices,\u201d\u00a0Tigani said.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the state and city’s recent pro-development policy initiatives \u2014 the\u00a0467-m office-to-residential conversion<\/a>\u00a0tax abatement,\u00a0the Midtown South rezoning<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0the combined city and state push to get\u00a0City of Yes<\/a>\u00a0across the finish line \u2014 have set the stage for an explosion of housing development,\u00a0he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The DOB has received 255 conversion project applications since 2020, Tigani said, and his department has approved and permitted about half of them. He assured the crowd that the remainder is largely also close to approval.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAlmost the entire pipeline of project applications that we’re seeing is moving through,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Conversion\u00a0projects in Manhattan hit their highest level in 20 years\u00a0in 2025, with 5M SF of office slated to be turned into housing,\u00a0according to\u00a0Cushman & Wakefield<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0467-m<\/a> program made that number of conversions feasible,\u00a0STO Building Group<\/a>\u00a0Senior Vice President for Building Repositioning\u00a0Brooks McDaniel<\/a>\u00a0said onstage. It eliminates the vast majority of property taxes for 35 years if a certain number of units are kept affordable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But the city’s alacrity to approve those projects has also made a difference. While change of use permits sometimes take years in other cities, New York City developers can get them within six months,\u00a0McDaniel said.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery conversion that I’m looking at is a 467-m project,\u201d he said. \u201cNew York is far and away the best place to do a conversion.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even\u00a0though some of\u00a0Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s first actions as New York City’s chief executive have\u00a0effectively\u00a0antagonized the real estate industry,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":622725,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[266406,237331,5229,63584,5289,266407,405,403,266403,5226,5225,5228,5227,266402,266405,266404,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,5301],"class_list":{"0":"post-622724","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-467-m","9":"tag-ahmed-tigani","10":"tag-america","11":"tag-city-of-yes","12":"tag-eric-adams","13":"tag-midtown-south-mixed-use-plan","14":"tag-new-york","15":"tag-new-york-city","16":"tag-new-york-city-department-of-buildings","17":"tag-newyork","18":"tag-newyorkcity","19":"tag-ny","20":"tag-nyc","21":"tag-nyc-dob","22":"tag-office-to-residential","23":"tag-office-to-residential-conversion","24":"tag-united-states","25":"tag-united-states-of-america","26":"tag-unitedstates","27":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","28":"tag-us","29":"tag-usa","30":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116149389123198300","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=622724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/622725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}