How to Make the Most of Unused Space in New York City Apartments

My 2024 New Year’s resolution was a bust. Instead of removing from my apartment one old book, kitchen gadget and hair care product for every new one I brought in, I’ve managed again to have a ring of plastic bottles circling my tub, a stack of books on the floor and more than one coffee-making contraption atop the kitchen counter. It’s not all that much, but it’s more than I have space for. 

When it comes to apartment living, space is not so much the final frontier as it is the holy grail. Currently, the average size of a New York City apartment is 939 square feet. In my lower Manhattan co-op, no matter the size of our apartments, shareholders are always keeping our eyes out for more. This might include pouncing when a contiguous neighbor is thinking of selling. But it definitely occurs at the annual meeting in those years when our commercial tenant’s lease is up for renewal. What if we didn’t renew? Six thousand more square feet could mean storage rooms for all of us. Or a bike room. And maybe a small gym? Or a lap pool?

 The board lets this fantasy go on for a bit before pointing out the obvious: without a tenant, shareholders have to make up the loss of commercial rent with a colossal and permanent maintenance increase. Sometimes that ends the discussion. Other years we can’t move on to the next agenda item until a long-term shareholder reminisces about the adjacent lot the co-op could have purchased 30-years ago. Or a new shareholder wonders why we don’t just sell the commercial space and divide the proceeds. 

But there’s more empty space in the building that we never talk about. Another 4,000 square feet is located in the basement and 2,000 more on each of our two penthouse floors. It’s not locked or cordoned off. It’s hiding in plain sight. 

Before the next annual meeting, I grabbed a tape measure and walked down to the basement. The boiler room takes up most of it, even though our furnace sits only in one small corner. The rest is empty except for a web of colorful pipes, including those long ago capped off, that hang from the ceiling and along the walls. The basement also includes a room the size of our small elevator that contains its mechanicals and one wall that holds our main electrical panel. The remainder of the basement is a burrow of small alcoves that long ago stored coal and maybe ice and the original owner’s vaults. Now either they are empty or contain building supplies like paint cans and ladders. According to my math, putting aside the expense of rejiggering the equipment, enough potentially useful space exists down there to create a 10’ X 10’ storage unit for every apartment in the co-op.

My next stop was up top. Usually penthouses occupy the upper most floor. In my building, when the old warehouse was converted to a residential co-op in 1979, the top two floors were left undeveloped and unreachable by the elevator. They’re accessed by an elevator ride to the penthouse floor, a walk across its hallway and a climb up its fire stairs to the first unoccupied floor where a metal rung ladder bolted to the wall leads to the second. Today, both remain empty except for the new water tank. And the old water tank. Because their windows provide unobstructed views of the Hudson River, the board occasionally gets inquiries from potential buyers about this space. One visit usually ends the conversation. So far, those who’ve made the trek aren’t interested in the climb or in paying to extend the elevator.  

Recently, a friend told me about advice he received as a teenager from his father. “There are only two kinds of problems: the kind money can solve and the kind it can’t. Even if you can’t afford the solution, a problem that can be solved by money is always the better of the two to have.”

Making the fallow space in our building more useful is a problem that money, and plenty of it, can solve. Even without extending the elevator we’d need a whopper of an assessment or a giant Powerball win. Then again, while we endlessly complain about necessary expenses mandated by the board, such as façade work, we are more agreeable when it comes to shareholder-generated projects such as renovating the lobby. Perhaps I’ll canvas my neighbors before the annual meeting to see if anyone else is interested in exploring how we might better use what is essentially free real estate. In the meantime, my current problem is one that can be solved simply by putting away the measuring tape and cleaning my apartment.