NYC Mayor Adams Unveils Plan to Attract Businesses, Fill Offices

New York City Mayor Eric Adams speaks at City Hall in New York City on Jan. 3, 2025. Oliver Mantyk/Epoch Times

New York City Mayor Eric Adams unveiled his new “Race for Space” strategy to bring in more businesses and fill the city’s staggering amount of vacant office space.

On Feb. 3, Adams announced that his administration would try to lease 50 million square feet of office space by the end of 2025. Attracting out-of-state businesses to the city, he said, would also create more jobs, which has been a big focus of the Adams administration.

The announcement coincided with Adams’s celebrating the eighth time that the city had set a new employment record under his administration. The city had 4,770,981 total jobs as of December 2024, including “an all-time high private-sector job record with 4,197,501 jobs,” according to a statement from the mayor’s office.

“When our administration sees vacant space, we see opportunity,” Adams said. ”An opportunity to revitalize and reimagine places like Midtown into economic engines and an opportunity to give New Yorkers access to good-paying jobs.”

The strategy consists of multiple programs to create jobs, attract talent, and fill office vacancies, including numerous empty retail locations. Adams said that retail vacancy in the city is at 11.4 percent but has been dropping for the past five quarters.

A pilot  “Relocation Assistance Credit for Employees” (RACE) program will incentivize out-of-state companies to set up offices in New York City. By the end of 2025, the administration will be targeting 15 new anchor tenant stores to move to the city. This would occupy about 800,000 square feet of office space and create 3,000 jobs.

The Relocation and Employment Assistance Program, which offers an income tax credit for businesses relocating above 96th Street, will be extended another five years.

A new International Landing Pad Network will be created. Launched by the New York City Economic Development Corporation, the network will help bring in growth-stage international companies.

The idea is to help develop businesses, make them more globally competitive, and strengthen New York City’s brand as the entry point to the U.S. market and the center of global innovation.

The Manhattan Commercial Revitalization Program (M-CORE) is the final major player in the “Race for Space.” Launched in 2023, M-CORE aims to renovate 10 million square feet of aged and decrepit office space and attract companies with new, high-quality spaces.

Manhattan, the city’s business center, has 450 million square feet of office space. New York City contains nearly 11 percent of the office space in the entire United States.

It has an extremely dense office space-to-land ratio of 1.5 million square feet of office for every square mile.