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Casino Bids, Zoning Reform To Shape NYC Real Estate In 2025

January 15, 2025 – Media Mention
Law360 Real Estate Authority

Mitchell A. Korbey, the chair of Herrick's Land Use & Zoning Practice, was quoted by Law360 Real Estate Authority in an article discussing how New York City real estate is anticipating major changes in 2025, including advancing casino proposals, implementing a major zoning reform and a new hotel licensing law.

Mitch noted that the plan is "a very important step to bring the city zoning resolution into this decade and to respond to the tremendous need to produce new housing... It's the largest set of changes to the zoning resolution since 1961, when the current resolution was created... It is a profound set of rule changes."

The article noted, "one of the major changes that Korbey pointed to was how the plan increased the city's cap for the floor area ratio of residential buildings. Floor area ratio involves the amount of space that a building's floor area takes up compared to the size of the building's lot."

According to Mitch, the city had a floor area ratio cap of twelve for its residential buildings, which meant that those buildings could be twelve times the square footage of the lots that they were built on. The modified housing plan aims to create "two new zoning districts" that allow for residential buildings with floor area ratios of fifteen or even eighteen, Mitch said.

Regarding the New York City Safe Hotels Act, Mitch told Law360 that he doesn't foresee the bill "having a significant impact in light of the fact that most hotels in the city operate as hotels would in the traditional sense in any event." Adding, "A significant challenge for new hotels is the special permit process, which is a [Uniform Land Use Review Procedure] process for hotels, but the city has demonstrated already that it can move forward with those applications," he said. "I think that that's a challenge, the fact that [for] hotels that are not 'as of right' in New York, there's a special permit process... I don't think that that licensing program is going to have a significant effect," he added.

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