Thanks to Empire State progressives, New York City can’t even be New York City anymore.
As Gov. Kathy Hochul — backed by Mayor Eric Adams — renews a 100% correct push to get state lawmakers to overhaul a 1961 law that vastly restricts the construction of new housing in the city, a Post investigation reveals that thanks to the law, a huge cluster of absolutely iconic Gotham structures built before its enactment could not exist in their current configurations.
These include the world-famous Eldorado on the Upper West Side, with its double towers overlooking Central Park; an East Side icon, 825 Fifth Avenue, would have to be some seven stories shorter.
The ’61 law — known as the 12 FAR cap — restricts the height of a building based on the area of its base.
It explains the prevalence of “pencil towers” in Midtown: ultra-tall, ultra-skinny buildings that serve as high-end homes for the very, very, very rich.
Like the Steinway Tower on West 57th, which nudges the clouds at more than 1,400 feet tall and contains only 60 apartments.
No wonder the cap and its predecessors are estimated to have cost the city an estimated 200,000 apartments since enactment — enough to cover approximately two-thirds of New York’s housing deficit.
That deficit is a key driver eroding middle-class affordability in the city, where a third of residents are paying more than half their income in rent.
The law’s protectors, like Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal — who’s sitting pretty in an inherited rent-stabilized Upper West Side apartment — and state Sen. Liz Krueger, justify their absurd position by trying to stoke fears about overdevelopment damaging neighborhood character.
Except that the law blocks precisely the type of building that gave old New York its character — while allowing for plenty of soulless skyscrapers where oligarchs keep megamillion-dollar pieds-à-terre.
Sure sounds yet again like New York’s friends of the little guy are actually making sure only the big fish can afford to live here.