Out to Bid: One Conversion Beats Every NYC New Build Filed

Private owners put $506,454,917.15 of declared cost into the New York City Buildings Department file between September 10 and September 16, across 2,101 distinct jobs. One of them, a hotel conversion at 10 Rockefeller Plaza, carries more declared cost than every new building filed in the five boroughs that week, three times over.

Why it matters

For a contractor deciding where to put estimating hours, the private pipeline is not a new construction pipeline. New Building filings are 228 of the 2,101 jobs and $22,665,541 of declared cost, 4.5% of the money. Change-of-occupancy work, existing buildings converted to a different use, is 261 jobs and $217,628,810.40, or 43.0%, which is 9.6 conversion dollars for every new construction dollar. The mix favors selective demolition, mechanical, plumbing, sprinkler and interior trades over foundations, steel and site work.

The numbers

Method: every DOB NOW job application filed September 10 through 16, public-agency owners removed, rolled up to the parent job number so sub-filings on one project are not counted twice, declared cost summed from the applicant’s initial cost field. n = 2,445 filings, 2,101 parent jobs. The file lags, so September 16 adds only 4 filings and $86,000.

The largest is $74,946,373 at 10 Rockefeller Plaza, to convert part of the office building to an R-1 hotel under City Planning’s Major Project Program. The owner is Tishman Speyer, entered in the record as Tishaman Speyer. Second is $30,508,400 at 300 East 42 Street, a residential conversion of floors 6 to 15, 17 and 18, 133 units proposed where none exist. Third is $16,500,000 of plumbing at 111 Wall Street, filed in conjunction with that building’s change-of-occupancy application. Those three jobs are 24.3% of the window.

One address ran the full trade stack: 345 Hudson Street drew five separate jobs in five days, $28,298,264 combined, split across office buildout, mechanical, plumbing, sprinkler and standpipe. NYU Langone Health filed two boiler jobs at 320 East 22 Street worth $10,341,864. Empire State Realty filed $10,100,000 of interior construction at 1359 Broadway. Manhattan holds 35.4% of the jobs and 62.3% of the money.

What’s next

Against the prior week, September 3 through 9, the top thinned: 9 private jobs at or above $5,000,000 against 17, and new building money down from $62,899,800 to $22,665,541. None of this has been awarded. A filing is an application entering the Buildings Department file, not a bid, a contract or a start, and the cost is the applicant’s declared number. What it shows an estimator is where packages are forming, and they are forming inside existing buildings. For the public side of the same stretch, see our count of School Construction Authority filings, and the New York market.