MISSION
Liquidity and density for posterity.
AREA exists to promote air right liquidity, built density, and historic preservation for posterity. We serve owners, developers, and cities.
ORIGIN
AREA was conceived on a walk up the West Side Highway. Past the Whitney Museum, before Little Island, in a neighborhood of towering glass is 565 West Street. It is the humble, two-story home of the Meatpacking District’s final meat packer—Gansevoort Meat Market.
How can a building afford to be short in a city where square footage is priceless and homelessness is rife?
For the Meat Market, the answer is that it couldn’t. The site will be redeveloped to deliver mixed-income housing and new facilities for the Whitney and the High Line.
Owners across our country face this tradeoff: demolish to build taller or deny communities the square footage they need.
But using a lot’s full potential should not require tearing down and starting over. Unused air rights can be transferred to other lots. It may be too late for the Meat Market, but we can help other small owners and developers transfer air rights to build and preserve at the same time.
AREA creates this liquidity and density for posterity.
AIR RIGHT LIQUIDITY
“This is not only an underutilized asset, but an unknown one.”
“We would gladly sell our air rights if we had a buyer.”
We have heard these sentiments from all corners of the City.
8.1 billion square feet of zoned potential in New York City sits in limbo, with owners who have been left in the dark and no clear buyers. The City has recognized the difficulty of transferring air rights, selectively loosening air rights transfer rules for individual landmarks through City of Yes for Housing Opportunity. But for the most common types of transfer, the rules have not changed and illiquidity persists. By standardizing small-scale air rights transfers, AREA lowers the threshold for which transfers are viable. At our core, we facilitate more air rights transfers, creating liquidity for owners, developers, and cities.
BUILT DENSITY
770 thousand Americans are homeless, growing 12% per year. 104 million American households—77%—can’t afford the median-priced new home. And yet our densest cities are demonstrably underbuilt.
For New York City’s 3.6 billion square feet of existing housing, there are 3.3 billion square feet of air rights zoned residential but left unused. This is enough to nearly double the City’s housing stock if built. At this scale, even modest additions of air rights to already-planned projects—an additional floor here and there—create meaningfully more housing.
HISTORIC PRESERVATION FOR POSTERITY
The invention of air rights coincided with the demolition of the original Penn Station—a McKim, Mead & White masterwork—to build Madison Square Garden. The Supreme Court since has affirmed air rights’ centrality to historical preservation in cases like Penn Central I & II. Numerous cultural sites—from Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan to Trinity Church on Boston’s Copley Square—have benefited from air rights transfers either from their lots or nearby.
But today, the tide is turning. The West-Park Presbyterian Church’s inability to sell its air rights has become an argument for its de-landmarking. More air rights transfers, especially for historic sites, allow new development without demolition.
If AREA’s work speaks to you, we would love to hear from you. Please feel welcome to reach out or email us at contact@airrightexchange.org any time.