When you say "giant Midtown office", I feel like you are immediately thinking of the absolute hardest building to convert, but the plan is to make it easier to convert older smaller office buildings to residential. The stretch of Midtown that's specifically referenced in the article is full of tons of such buildings. This exact type of building has been converted to residential elsewhere in Manhattan.

As for the financial incentives—they aren't laws of nature, they're based on a status quo that everyone in the world knows doesn't exist anymore. They'll change and you'll make your killing. Get that paper!