The most recent tally of new and planned apartment construction in Lower Manhattan projects that more than 8,000 new residents will be joining the local population (already in excess of 60,000) in the next few years.
The Residential Development and Population Growth study by the Downtown Alliance for the last quarter of 2016 (the most recent period for which statistics are available) indicates that 17 buildings, containing a total of 3,319 apartments, are now under construction and slated to come online Downtown this year, next year, in and 2019.
The same study shows that an additional 11 buildings, with a planned 907 apartments, are now planned and close to starting construction. These buildings are scheduled to welcome residents in next year, in 2019, and in the years that immediately follow.
Both categories (buildings now under construction and those soon to begin work) yield a total of 4,226 apartments. Alliance researchers assume that each apartment will be the home for two people, the local average household size since 2007. This yields a grand total of 8,452 new residents. This represents a leap in the area’s population of more than 13 percent.
Moreover, if even ten percent of these new apartments contain a young child (and Lower Manhattan’s recent demographic trends indicate that significantly more than 10 percent will), then the buildings slated to open in the next few years will — all by themselves — swamp the additional capacity created by the public school expected to open on Trinity Place in 2022. Further, these buildings (and the children they will bring to Lower Manhattan) will all open their doors before the new school does.
And that may be the good news, at least in comparative terms. School have actually been the single greatest success in terms of building of new civic infrastructure to support the growing population of Lower Manhattan: Three new elementary facilities have been created Downtown since 2001, and a fourth is on the way. But this upbeat indicator is tempered by the fact that the area’s deficit in schools seats, relative to its exploding residential population, has actually increased during those years.
Park space has also grown or been upgraded, with the debut of the elevated Liberty Park in June, 2016, and transformative redesigns at the Battery and on Governors Island. And there may be more miracles in the pipeline: The proposed Elizabeth H. Berger Plaza, on lower Greenwich Street, is slated to create a new sylvan park space in what is now a barren stretch of concrete, while the long-planned East River Esplanade comes more into focus each year. But these expansions and improvements have barely kept pace with Lower Manhattan’s burgeoning residential population.
And in other areas, Lower Manhattan has clearly lost ground. One hospital serving Downtown (Saint Vincent’s Medical Center) closed in 2010, and another (Beth-Israel) recently announced plans to shut down. For transportation, the picture is more mixed: Lower Manhattan has gained ferry capacity on the Hudson and East River waterfronts, while the advent of bike-sharing services has given commuters a new option for moving around the City. And the long-promised Second Avenue subway, which recently opened for service on the Upper East Side, is slated eventually to reach the South Street Seaport and Hanover Square. But completion of this phase of the project, which has not been funded, and for which no start date has been announced, appears to be decades away.
The mission of the Downtown Alliance, which researched and published the Residential Development and Population Growth study, is to enhance Lower Manhattan for businesses, residents and visitors. The Alliance also provides local security and trash pickup, as well as operating the business improvement district, or BID, that covers the area south of Chambers Street. Among the services provided by the Alliance that Lower Manhattan residents especially prize is the Downtown Connection shuttle, which ferries passengers (free of charge) between more than 30 local stops that link residential areas with business and shopping districts, as part of a partnership with the Battery Park City Authority.