Report: NYC needs 52M sq. feet of commercial space

A city Independent Budget Office report on Thursday gave a boost to the prospect of an east midtown with taller, denser buildings.

Among the concerns critics have about the Bloomberg administration’s plan to spur modern commercial space in the Grand Central Terminal area is that costly developments in other parts of the city will have to compete to attract big-name tenants and fill space.

But the IBO report shows that the city’s forecast for office-space needs in the next 30 years — 52 million square feet — is sufficient to support development projects such as Midtown East and smaller business districts like Downtown Brooklyn and the Atlantic Yards. City Councilman Dan Garodnick of the East Side said the report’s findings “gives some comfort” to those concerns.