The Daily Dirt: Governor moves to legalize basement apartments

The state is allowing the city to legalize basement apartments, sort of. 

Gov. Kathy Hochul said the state budget includes a “pilot program” for legalizing basement apartments in the city. 

Official details on this pilot, for now, are sparse. But while speaking to WNYC’s Brian Lehrer on Wednesday, the governor said “local involvement” — including by Assembly members and City Council members — will be paramount in shaping where the program is implemented. 

“What we have to do is also be sensitive to what communities want,” she said. 

“Some neighborhoods really want this, some do not,” she continued. “We don’t want Albany to always be dictating what’s going to happen at the street level. So you will see a compromise that allows for it to happen on a pilot basis.”

That statement probably elicited this response from supporters of the governor’s New York Housing Compact (which opponents framed as a seizure of local control over zoning): 

The governor’s executive budget had included a proposal similar to a measure previously introduced by Sen. Brian Kavanagh and Assembly member Harvey Epstein. That bill sought to create a program to legalize existing basement apartments, granting owners amnesty as they bring the units up to code.     

The City of Yes for Housing Opportunity text amendment includes proposals to ease rules around accessory dwelling units, but its impact on basement cellar apartments is limited. The city requires state action to address things like ceiling height and other rules that are typically barriers to converting such units.

The city’s track record with basement apartment pilots is not, shall we say, great. 

Last year, the Adams administration testified that only five of the 800 apartment owners who expressed interest in a basement apartment pilot program in East New York ultimately participated. Owners were deterred, in part, by the high costs of bringing such units up to code, which can run into the tens of thousands of dollars. Maybe this pilot will be different?

What we’re thinking about: Who is behind the cyberattack on the state Bill Drafting Commission? Send your conspiracy theories to kathryn@therealdeal.com. 

A thing we’ve learned: If you accidentally throw something away, you may be able to recover it by calling 311 and heading to your local marine-transfer station. Before trash is packed into a shipping container to be ferried away from the city, it is dumped into a pit at these stations. If you are lucky enough to catch the truck that collected your trash before it empties into said pit, the Department of Sanitation will let you watch the truck unload and then will give you 90 minutes to search through the refuse. This process is dubbed the Lost Valuables Search, according to the New Yorker. It has apparently united more New Yorkers with their lost items than you may think. 

Elsewhere in New York…

— We’re going to draft budget language like it’s 1994. After a cyberattack shut down the system used to draft budget legislation on Wednesday, officials turned to computers that are (almost) as old as I am, Politico New York reports. The attackers are apparently demanding money in exchange for restoring the commission’s access to its system. 

— Hundreds of ballerinas broke a world record on Wednesday at the Plaza Hotel. For 60 seconds, 353 dancers stood en pointe, Gothamist reports. The previous record was held by 306 ballerinas who stood on their tiptoes for that amount of time in 2019. 

— The state’s 100th (legal) cannabis retail shop, the Big Gas, opened on Wednesday in New Paltz, the Times Union reports. Cannabis sales in the state have topped $237 million. 

Closing Time 

Residential: The top residential sale for today was a condo unit at 220 Central Park South, for $33 million.The three-bedroom, 3,500 square-foot studio was sold by Vornado Realty Trust.

Commercial: The largest commercial sale was at 540 West 21st Street for $87.4 million. The vacant parcel hit a roadblock last summer when Casco Development filed for bankruptcy on the mixed-use condo project.

New to the Market: The priciest listing to hit the market on Wednesday was at Central Park Tower’s 217 West 57th Street, for $150 million. The duplex penthouse called Sky House has 11,535 square-feet of living space. The listing is represented jointly by Reuveni Development Marketing and Christie’s International Real Estate Group. — Joseph Jungermann