Zellnor Myrie Plans to Approve 85K New Homes in Midtown if Elected Mayor

As the terrain of the New York City mayoral race constantly changes, candidate Zellnor Myrie seems to be keeping an eye on the prize, in this case, housing.

State Sen. Myrie announced Friday morning that as mayor he would create 85,000 new homes in Midtown alone as part of his “Mega Midtown” plan, a larger proposal to create 1 million new housing units in the five boroughs if he makes it past the crowded Democratic primary and is elected in November.

Up to 33,000 of those units could be within a five-block radius of Grand Central Terminal and would supplement Mayor Eric Adams’s Midtown South Mixed-Use Plan, which is still in the public review process and could create up to 10,000 new apartments in the neighborhood, according to Myrie’s campaign.

Myrie’s plan will rezone Midtown to allow for further density after the state recently lifted the floor area ratio (FAR) cap, making it possible for the city to approve taller buildings.

Housing has become an arms race in this mayoral election with candidates criticizing Adams’s City of Yes for Housing Opportunity as a plan that doesn’t deliver enough housing on a fast enough timeline, only 80,000 units over a 15 year period.New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, for example, proposed in early March that if he gets elected he would declare a state of emergency to build 500,000 housing units in the city, with the sacrificial lamb being municipal-owned golf courses, over the next 10 years.

The election’s frontrunner, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, has a housing plan that’s simple: cut red tape and streamline the approval process for new construction. But his campaign doesn’t have a specified threshold as how many units it’s aiming for.

Meanwhile, Adams had an eventful week after the federal indictment against him for an alleged bribery scheme was dropped by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Southern District of New York on Wednesday, clearing his calendar to make a greater effort in seeking a second term.

As such, Adams announced on Thursday that he was cutting his losses in the June Democratic primary and will instead run as an independent, which political observers said would allow him to pull focus solely on the November election.

The other candidates running in the Democratic primary include former city Comptroller Scott Stringer; state legislators Zohran Mamdani and Jessica Ramos; attorney Jim Walden; former hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson; former Bronx Assemblymember Michael Blake; and New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams.

While the majority of candidates were critical of City of Yes, their plans seem to mainly focus on augmenting Adams’s plan, trying to streamline the building process as much as possible, while others want to impose rent increase freezes on rent-stabilized apartments or revamp old programs like Mitchell-Lama for the 21st century.

Mark Hallum can be reached at mhallum@commercialobserver.com.