New York City planning chief Dan Garodnick, who led major initiatives over the past four years, is set to depart.
Garodnick, 53, will leave his position as director of the New York City Department of City Planning and chair of the City Planning Commission. He was appointed by then-Mayor Eric Adams in February 2022.
“After four incredibly productive and rewarding years at the Department of City Planning, the time is right for me to move on from this role,” Garodnick said in a statement, adding that the city has created opportunity for more housing units to be created in the past four years than in the prior 20.
He said he’ll stay on in the coming weeks to support Mayor Zohran Mamdani to ensure a smooth transition. The city hasn’t named his successor.
Under Garodnick, New York approved its most significant zoning updates since 1961 in the so-called City of Yes plan and five neighborhood plans that will yield opportunities for more than 130,000 homes combined, the planning department said, describing his accomplishments as a “lasting legacy.”
The City of Yes initiative legalized the building of accessory dwelling units and rolled back parking mandates, among other changes, that officials have said will help create 82,000 housing units over the next 15 years.
The neighborhood plans, meanwhile, included the OneLIC zoning revamp of a 54-block Queens area in Long Island City that would add about 14,700 apartments in what the city has billed as its largest neighborhood-specific rezoning in at least a quarter century. The Midtown South Mixed-Use Plan, meanwhile, rezoned about 42 blocks just south of Times Square to add over 9,500 housing units.
Garodnick told Politico he’s taking “a little time to reflect and recharge and think about what’s next,” but he’s “always going to be deeply committed to New York City and public service.”
Garodnick’s career history includes a 12-year stint on the City Council, representing the east side of Manhattan. A lawyer, he also helped negotiate land-use matters that led to a midtown rezoning that reshaped the neighborhood and paved the way for SL Green Realty’s trophy tower One Vanderbilt and JPMorgan Chase’s headquarters at 270 Park Ave., which opened last year.
When Blackstone and Ivanhoé Cambridge, now called La Caisse, bought Manhattan’s massive Stuyvesant Town–Peter Cooper Village housing complex in 2015, Garodnick helped negotiate keeping 5,000 apartments below market-rate rent. His bio on the planning department’s website billed it as the largest affordable housing preservation deal in the city’s history.
Gardonick “will go down as one of the all time greats to lead” the city’s planning department, Jason Haber, cofounder of the American Real Estate Association, said on his X social media account. “Urban planning is one of those fields where the true level of accomplishment can only be judged in time. But in the years and decades to come, the city will be largely shaped by Dan’s ingenuity.”