Construction Projects

Chris

— 3 min read
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Construction Projects
Example project data: 542 W 36th St

Why do we even need projects?

In NYC, new construction becomes visible through DOB filings and permits.

So what even is a project? The true answer: There's no official definition for this. But we all have an intuition for it: A construction project happens on a single spot, and we can track its progress over time.

Ok, but do we need this? Why not just stick with filings? The reason: Filings are just too diverse. They can cover minor alterations from huge new buildings. A project changes occupancy (so it's new or alteration CO), and it also makes sense to follow it over time

You can ask:

  • How many projects are there in my neighborhood
  • What's the pipeline for them? Are projects filed, permitted, or completed? Or are they stuck?
  • What are recent changes for this project?

And we've now released this. With CityTracker, a construction filing creates a new project. It gets a nice link you can bookmark, and you can check later to see what's changed.

And note that these projects are also a key input into our pipelines. For an obvious reason: To understand the NYC development pipeline, we must first ensure we track each project and know its status.

Once we have projects, we can summarize them through the pipeline

What do we learn about projects?

Let's look at something recent, the huge 1,458 unit filing next to Javitts center.

What does this project look like?

Note: Format for a paid plan. With a free plan, you might see less information.

Multi Projects

Now here's a common problem: What if a developer creates multiple connected filings? More recently, we're seeing this a lot with 485-x: A developer decides to only build 99-unit buildings, so they end up putting two such projects right next to each other, for 198 units total.

This type of "Multi Project" isn't formally documented, but it's a real thing, and it's how developers think. So what we do is to use a simple algorithm to identify likely multi-projects.

You can find them at https://citytracker.ai/multi_projects, and we even give you a handy toggle to identify projects including 99-unit buildings: Aren't those funny unit counts?

And then, once you're interested in a multi-project, you can see all filings belonging to it:

What's coming up?

Our goal is to help you move beyond just the data, towards a holistic understanding. What does that mean for a project:

  • Get an intuitive summary of filings, permits, violations. Find out if there's delays or if the project has stalled completely.
  • Use AI to summarize everything we know for this filing.
  • Subscribe to updates for each project, e.g. any change in status

And then we move from the individual projects towards understanding them as a whole. We want you to know:

  • What are common delay reasons for previous projects?
  • If I'm considering a filing, can you show me expeditors who've worked on similar filings? Maybe I should hire them!
  • Show me what happens to sales prices are projects get filed, permitted, or rejected.

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