Office-to-Rez Conversion Coming to E. 43rd St. Tower
The conversion of 6 E. 43rd St., which is being pursed by Vanbarton Group, will take advantage of the 467-m tax break to add six stories to the existing building. It is slated to yield 441 new apartments.
| 03 Dec 2025 | 05:51
Vanbarton Group is seeking to convert a 27-story office building on E. 43rd St. into an apartment one, adding six stories in the process. (
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The same developer is pursuing a similar conversion at the Archdiocese of New York’s former 1st Ave. HQ, pictured above. (
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Another commercial-to-residential tower conversion is coming to Midtown, this one at 6 E. 43rd Street.
Vanbarton Group, which is behind the development, will be seeking to capitalize on a “467-m” property tax break derived from adding affordable units to the project; out of the 441 new apartments slated to come to the building, 111 will be designated affordable.
Vanbarton is also planning on adding six stories to the existing 27-story office tower, which was built in 1968 and is also known as the Emigrant Savings Bank Building. The current building has few remaining commercial tenants, with the exception of the ground-floor restaurant T-Squared Social.
The reconstituted building will reportedly span 4,000 square feet. Vanbarton secured the building from the Milstein family in September of this year, with the help of a $300 million loan from the firm Brookfield Properties.
This isn’t Vanbarton’s only current pursuit when it comes to residential conversions in the borough. Indeed, they purchased the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York’s headquarters on First Ave. back in July, and swiftly announced that they’d be taking advantage of a 485-x tax break to turn it into a partially affordable residential building.
They paid top dollar to do so, as well, by financing the $103 million purchase of the building with a $250 million loan from Eldridge Financial Corp. Meanwhile, the Archdiocese reconstituted its headquarters at a smaller building on Madison Ave., across from St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
The 485-x and the 467-m essentially serve similar functions, even though the former is technically reserved for developers that erect new buildings, while the latter is reserved for the conversion of existing ones.
Vanbarton’s new conversion project at E. 43rd St., for example, will receive a 90 percent property tax reduction for 35 years— if it’s fully permitted by June of next year. If not, it should still receive that tax break for at least 25 years. The project will be fully tax-exempt during construction.
Such tax abatements are a key part of the Midtown South Mixed-Use Plan, a rezoning package that corresponds to the other end of Midtown, between W. 23rd St. and W. 40th. St.
The plan, which passed into law this August, is supposed to create 10,000 new apartment units in Midtown; developers reportedly insisted that they’d require the 476-m provision to lend their support to the overhaul. Local politicians, including State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal and City Council Member Erik Bottcher, provided key support to the zoning package.
The Midtown zoning plan has already led to additional office-to-residential conversion projects, such as the planned transformation of a 12-story office tower at 29 W. 35th St., which is now slated to contain 107 studio apartments instead.
The citywide City of Yes zoning overhaul—which was spearheaded by outgoing NYC Mayor Eric Adams and passed into law last December—is also relying on office-to-residential conversions to create a housing boom.
Under the revised rules, the residential conversion “cut-off” date now applies to buildings erected in 1991 or earlier, instead of 1961 or earlier. In other words, an expanded array of office buildings can now be altered into apartment buildings, ostensibly boosting NYC’s residential housing stock.