Calls on City to Reject Vornado/Stellar’s Incompatible Tribeca Supertall Proposal
Today, Mayor Mamdani and Deputy Mayor Bozorg released Block by Block: The Housing Plan for a New Era, a sweeping new housing plan that recognizes the scale of New York City’s affordability crisis and the urgent need for the City to protect tenants, preserve existing affordable housing, and build new homes for working New Yorkers.
The Community First Development Coalition commends the Mayor for taking affordability seriously and for putting forward a vision that treats housing not as a luxury commodity, but as the foundation of a livable city. Block by Block correctly identifies housing as New York’s most pressing crisis and makes clear that New York cannot remain a place of opportunity if working people are priced out of the neighborhoods they helped build.
That vision is exactly why the proposed Vornado/Stellar redevelopment at Independence Plaza in Tribeca must be rejected.
Independence Plaza was built as Mitchell-Lama affordable housing. For decades, it represented the kind of mixed-income, stable, affordable community that New York desperately needs more of—not less. Although the complex has been steadily pushed away from that original purpose, many long-time residents, including seniors, still live there under affordability protections secured after the landlord exited Mitchell-Lama. Those homes matter. They are not erased simply because a developer chooses to describe the site as having “zero” low- or moderate-income units.
The Vornado/Stellar plan would accelerate the destruction of that legacy. It would demolish existing residential buildings, eliminate previously affordable homes, and replace them with a supertall tower in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the country. Based on the scale and location of the proposed project, the likely result is not housing for working New Yorkers. It is a small number of ultra-luxury condominiums—large, high-priced units marketed to the very top of the global real estate market.
That is not affordability. That is not preservation. And it is not consistent with Block by Block.
The Mayor’s plan calls for building 200,000 new affordable homes while preserving another 200,000 existing homes over the next decade. It recognizes Mitchell-Lama housing as a critical part of New York City’s affordable housing history and makes preservation central to the City’s affordability agenda. A project that destroys historically affordable housing in Tribeca to make way for ultra-luxury condos runs directly against that mandate.
Vornado/Stellar may point to a promise of 251 “low- to moderate-income” units, potentially offsite. But vague future affordability cannot justify the loss of existing affordability. Even if those units are eventually built, the project would still leave the neighborhood with far less affordability than Independence Plaza originally provided. The City should not allow a developer to use the language of housing production while removing the very kind of affordable housing fabric the Mayor’s plan says must be preserved.
CFDC supports new housing. Tribeca should be part of the solution to New York’s housing crisis. But the question is not simply whether something gets built. The question is what gets built, who it serves, and what is destroyed to make room for it.
Mayor Mamdani’s housing vision calls for a city where working people can stay. The Vornado/Stellar proposal points in the opposite direction: fewer affordable homes, more luxury speculation, and the continued conversion of Lower Manhattan into housing for wealth storage rather than New Yorkers.
We urge the Mayor’s Office to apply the principles of Block by Block in Tribeca and make clear that the Vornado/Stellar plan, as proposed, is incompatible with the City’s affordability agenda.
Community First Development Coalition
Board of Trustees