Speaker Spotlight: Adam Greene of RXR

Adam Greene, Executive Vice President of Development at RXR, joined Commercial Observer’s Future of New York Forum to discuss the future of New York City’s real estate market, including the growing momentum behind office-to-residential conversions, the continued demand for high-quality office space, and how evolving industries like artificial intelligence are shaping the next generation of development across Manhattan.

Commercial Observer: You recently spoke at Commercial Observer’s Future of New York Forum. Starting with a macro view of New York and the real estate market, what are today’s top priorities for leveraging real estate to advance and further strengthen the city’s economic position?

Adam Greene: New York’s greatest competitive advantage is that more people want to live here, work here or visit than any other city in the country. Our talent pool is why companies want to be here, capital wants to be here, and the next generation of industries, from finance to AI, wants to grow here. But to sustain that advantage, the built environment has to keep pace.

At RXR, we think about that through three connected priorities.

First, we need more housing, at all income levels. That means new construction, but it also means converting obsolete office buildings where the economics and physical conditions make sense. Our projects at 5 Times Square and 61 Broadway demonstrate how underutilized commercial assets can become new homes in transit-rich locations.

Second, we need to reinvest in the best assets in the best locations. The office market is bifurcated, but high-quality buildings in irreplaceable locations continue to win. That’s why RXR acquired 1211 Avenue of the Americas and 590 Madison Avenue in 2025.

Third, we need to build the next generation of offices for companies that are driving the future.  That’s the premise behind 175 Park Avenue — not simply another office tower, but an architecturally significant workplace integrated with transit, public space, a new hotel, and the civic infrastructure around Grand Central.

For New York to remain the world’s leading business capital, we need to do all three: convert where conversion makes sense, reinvest where existing assets can be made meaningfully better, and build new buildings as the city’s population continues to rise.

RXR is active across the office sector, repositioning, and mixed-use development. How are you underwriting conversion opportunities to mitigate construction costs and regulatory uncertainty?

Conversions are fascinating because every building tells you what it wants to be. You have to look at a building for what it actually is, and work within the puzzle of various constraints it presents. RXR approaches conversions from the perspective of minimizing structural and overbuild work to speed delivery and mitigate risk.

That analysis looks very different for a historic building like 61 Broadway, which dates to 1913, than for 5 Times Square, completed in 2002. One is an early 20th century building with all the opportunities and constraints that come with it. The other is a modern office tower with a completely different floor plate geometry, building systems, façade conditions, and infrastructure. Same strategy, very different execution.

From there, we’re disciplined. These projects only work if you have good data, a clear plan, and the ability to execute. One of RXR’s advantages is the depth of our construction team and our relationships with construction managers and subcontractors. We’re not underwriting in theory, we’re working with people who are in the market every day, tracking real costs, real lead times, and real execution risk. That allows us to plan ahead, buy out work intelligently, and get ahead of problems before they arise.

The 467m program is a great example of effective public policy: identifying a problem — in this case, rising vacancies in office buildings and a strong demand for new housing — creating a clear and predictable framework, and enabling the private market to act with confidence. That certainty matters enormously when you’re making such a large investment. As a result, we achieve a true win-win by addressing a societal need while fostering economic growth, which is the sign of a successful public-private partnership.

Do you see any of NYC’s major business corridors or neighborhoods shifting their character in the coming years as rezoning projects take shape? Which neighborhoods do you think are most primed for office-to-residential or mixed-use conversion?

Midtown South is the clearest and most immediate example. The rezoning is already beginning to transform the Garment District and the area south of Times Square from a largely 9-to-5 commercial district into something much more dynamic and mixed-use.

You’re seeing it in real time. The corridor now being called 42Below, roughly the low 30s to 42nd Street between Sixth and Eighth avenues, is gaining serious momentum as a live-work-play district. Commercial Observer noted 71 new restaurant openings there over the past two years. That kind of street life and retail energy doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when you layer transit, housing, office, restaurants, hotels, entertainment, and public realm together in a dense, walkable environment.

But if I’m being direct about where the conversion opportunity is most compelling, it’s Manhattan’s core. The structure of 467m offers a meaningful tax structure in Manhattan that differs from that in the outer boroughs. Transit access, building stock, and the tax structure all come together in Midtown Manhattan in a way that makes the economics work.

RXR has often been at the forefront of innovation and modern office development. How is your team future-proofing your office portfolio to remain competitive with shifting tenant expectations?

I’d actually reframe the question slightly, because future-proofing implies you’re reacting to change. What we try to do at RXR is run toward change as the new normal in real estate is a world that is continuously evolving.

Scott Rechler coined the term Project Kodak internally a few years ago, and it captures the mindset well. Kodak invented digital photography and still went bankrupt because they couldn’t bring themselves to act on what they knew. We didn’t want to make that mistake. So we did a rigorous, unsentimental review of our entire portfolio and sorted every building into one of two buckets: “film,” assets that are competitively obsolete in the post-pandemic world and need to be converted, repositioned, or exited, and “digital,” assets that are genuinely competitive and warrant continued capital investment to improve the tenant experience and drive leasing velocity.

That exercise produced real decisions. 61 Broadway and 5 Times Square became residential, and 450 Lexington saw a significant capital investment that paired with a long-term lease renewal for Davis Polk. And 175 Park Avenue is being built from the ground up as a next-generation workplace because we saw that Grand Central’s ecosystem demanded a product that simply doesn’t exist yet.

The through-line is honest self-assessment, and the willingness to act on it. This is a hallmark of RXR’s approach. Future-proofing isn’t about chasing trends. It’s about being clear-eyed enough to see the market for what it is, and having the conviction to pivot when the situation calls for it.