City & State 06272016 _ manhattan issue

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EDITOR’S NOTE / Contents

Manhattan is an unrivaled hub of finance, business and culture – in New York, in the United States, in the world.

But ask any Manhattan elected official to share their vision for the future of borough, and you’ll likely hear about the need to strike a better balance.

As one of the country’s most densely populated places, where skyscrapers shoot up one after another, many officials emphasize the need to preserve a human scale, from building more green spaces and pedestrian pathways to protecting historical landmarks.

Known for its wealthy Wall Street bankers and highly paid CEOs, the island must continue to be a welcoming place by creating more affordable housing, investing in transit and ensuring an adequate safety net, officials say.

With that in mind, this latest installment of our series on New York City’s five boroughs looks at both the costs and the benefits of Manhattan’s bold march into the future.

Jon Lentz Senior Editor

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NEIGHBORHOOD OF TOMORROW The developers of Hudson Yards paint a picture of an allinclusive techtopia.

What will the new “smart” community mean for the future of New York City?

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INNOVATIVE ARCHITECTURE Exploring 10 of Manhattan’s most trendsetting structures.

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A HOME IN HARLEM? Nonprofits pay a “pretty penny” for a spot in a community on the rebound.

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VISIONS OF THE FUTURE From affordable housing to more pedestrianfriendly amenities, the borough’s elected officials share their visions for the future of Manhattan.

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EDITORIAL editor@cityandstateny.com Editorial Director Michael Johnson mjohnson@cityandstateny.com Senior Editor Jon Lentz jlentz@cityandstateny.com Albany Reporter Ashley Hupfl ahupfl@cityandstateny.com

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6/17/16 11:23 AM

PRE-PLANNING FOR SMARTER DEVELOPMENT

By GALE BREWER

THE RESIDENTIAL AND commercial building boom we’ve seen in Manhattan shows no signs of letting up. But to build healthy neighborhoods, what we build matters. Building healthy, sustainable neighborhoods requires a process that puts what the community needs in the spotlight, and gets people talking to each other.

Make no mistake, I’m a fan of our city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure – ULURP for short. The process creates an orderly schedule, with opportunities for review, comment and negotiation. But even at its best, ULURP is limited in scope by whatever the applicant originally asked for, and it can be an adversarial process.

Over the past few years, we’ve seen development proposals and zoning changes that could totally remake – or wipe out – communities. So when I took office, my team and I decided we needed to focus on a new, collaborative, community-focused process for these major proposals. We call it “pre-planning.”

The concept is simple: Put representatives of all major stakeholders – residents, developers, community institutions and government – in a room, discuss all the issues, and develop a framework together, instead of pushing and pulling separately after someone has already made a plan and filed an application.

Starting in 2014, that’s what we did. My

office has worked with the City Council members in East Midtown, the South Street Seaport and East Harlem to create working groups that put representatives of the neighborhood at the same table with developers, city agencies and us. These working groups established clear guidelines that highlighted neighborhood priorities – and we’ve hit the mark in all three efforts.

In East Midtown, the challenge was updating one of our borough’s most important commercial districts, which is also home to some of our most important landmarks – from Grand Central Terminal and the Chrysler Building to St. Bart’s, St. Patrick’s, and Central Synagogue.

With Councilman Dan Garodnick, I formed the East Midtown Steering Committee in 2014 to study the area’s needs.

Our team explored ways to encourage the growth of new, modern office space while improving the neighborhood’s pedestrian and transit network. We also prioritized the neighborhood’s landmarks, developing a mechanism to spur the sale of unused development rights throughout the district and fund the landmarks’ upkeep.

Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen credited the steering committee with providing “a solid foundation from which the de Blasio administration can craft a comprehensive approach to ensure the long-term vitality of one of our most important economic centers

of the city.”

Another example is in Manhattan’s oldest neighborhood, the South Street Seaport.

When the Howard Hughes Corporation planned to build a 494-foot tower in the Seaport that would block the neighborhood’s view of the East River, I helped form the Seaport Working Group with Community Board 1 and Councilwoman Margaret Chin.

The Working Group recognized that the piers, streets and buildings that constitute the Seaport are a unique and irreplaceable part of New York history. I was thrilled to hear last fall that Howard Hughes had scrapped its plans for the tower, and I credit the Working Group process for making it clear that the Seaport’s integrity as a historic neighborhood was a priority for the entire Lower Manhattan community.

Manhattan currently has two major neighborhood rezonings in the pipeline: one in Inwood and the other in East Harlem.

As borough president, some of my proudest moments this year involved working with East Harlem residents to help them develop a community-based blueprint for long-term growth and development.

Convened by Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, Community Board 11, Community Voices Heard and my office, the East Harlem Neighborhood Plan Steering Committee brought the community together before the city’s application for a neighborhood rezoning. Preservation and affordability emerged as huge priorities, and together we developed the East Harlem Neighborhood Plan, a living document to guide and inform city planning that works for and with the East Harlem community.

Manhattan’s true strength is that you can find anything here. As we see the rise of huge yet nearly empty glass towers and the spread of chain stores where small, independent businesses used to be, we know that diversity is under threat. I’m committed to making sure that Manhattan does not become the borough of a single economic class, and that it remains diverse and vibrant. That doesn’t mean no development, but it does mean development needs to be smart.

As long as I’m borough president, my office will be advocating pre-planning as our best strategy for ensuring development is smart, inclusive and addresses neighborhoods’ needs comprehensively. My hope is that we are building a future where developers and city planners will sit side-byside with residents as plans are drawn up – and that our borough’s future will be the brighter for it.

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Gale Brewer is the Manhattan borough president.

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PARKS, PLAZAS and PLAYGROUNDS Manhattan is a bustling borough with a tangle of transportation systems and towering skyscrapers, but despite its densely packed neighborhoods, there are still plenty of places to get out and enjoy some fresh air.

There’s Central Park, perhaps the most famous outdoor space in the world. There’s Bowling Green, the city’s oldest public park. And the borough also boasts a string of public squares along with a number of new green spaces that have beautified the city’s miles-long waterfront.

Of course, there are many more overlooked parks and green spaces dotting the borough, so we asked each elected official in Manhattan to share where they like to spend their time outdoors.

RIVERSIDE PARK. IT IS A GREAT PLACE TO LET MY MIND WANDER AND TO RECHARGE AMID THE NATURAL BEAUTY OF THE AREA. - Assemblywoman LI N DA ROSEN TH A L

WASHINGTON SQUARE PARK. IT’S REALLY GOOD FOR PLAYGROUNDS AND PEOPLE WATCHING, PLUS YOU COULD CATCH A GLIMPSE OF A REDTAILED HAWK. - State Sen. BR A D HOY LM A N

RUNNING THROUGH TIMES SQUARE AND DOWN THE WEST SIDE HIGHWAY WITHOUT TRAFFIC IN THE NYC HALF MARATHON. THE BATTERY, WHERE ONE CAN CATCH SOME BREEZE AND BE SURROUNDED BY NEW YORK’S EARLY BEGINNINGS. - Assemblywoman DEBOR A H GLICK

- City Councilman DA N GA RODN ICK

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FORT TRYON PARK AT THE ANNE LOFTUS PLAYGROUND WITH MY DAUGHTERS. - City Councilman Y DA N IS RODR IGU EZ

CARL SCHURZ PARK, OVERLOOKING THE EAST RIVER, WITH ITS DELIGHTFUL DOG RUNS, CHILDREN’S PLAYGROUND AND ACTIVE VOLUNTEER CORPS, IS A JEWEL IN THE CROWN OF OUR URBAN PARK SYSTEM. - State Sen. LIZ K RU EGER

CENTRAL PARK IS AN AMAZING PART OF MY SENATE DISTRICT, AND I ENJOY JOGGING, WALKING AND PICNICKING THERE WITH MY FAMILY. - State Sen. JOSÉ SER R A NO

“AS CO-CHAIR OF THE EAST SIDE ESPLANADE TASK FORCE, I LOVE SPENDING TIME ON THE ESPLANADE AND LOOK FORWARD TO WHAT IT CAN BE.” -Rep. CAROLYN MALONEY

T IC “I GREW UP IN WASHINGTON HEIGHTS, SO I’VE ALWAYS LOVED THE PEACE AND TRANQUILITY OF THE CLOISTERS.” -Assemblyman DAN QUART

“THE HUDSON RIVER PARK! IT HAS BEAUTIFUL VIEWS AND MANY DIFFERENT ACTIVITIES, AND I ENJOY SEEING THE RESULTS OF THE LEGISLATION I AUTHORED TO CREATE THE PARK.” -Assemblyman RICHARD GOTTFRIED

“I ENJOY A PARK BENCH OR A RESTAURANT ALONG THE RIVER, FOLLOWED BY A QUIET EVENING ON MY TERRACE WATCHING THE SUN SET TO MY FAVORITE MUSIC.” -Rep. CHARLES RANGEL

“CARL SCHURZ PARK – THE LOCAL CHARM AND SPIRIT OF THE PARK IS CAPTURED IN EVERY VOLUNTEER GARDENER AND CAREFULLY TENDED GARDEN!” -Assemblywoman REBECCA SEAWRIGHT

“WALKING AROUND THE STREETS AND PARKS THROUGHOUT – FROM PIER 42 ON THE LES, TO LUNCH IN CHINATOWN, TO THE GREAT GREENERY IN BATTERY PARK CITY, AND ALL THE BLOCKS IN BETWEEN.” -State Sen. DANIEL SQUADRON “IN ANY OF THE MANY BEAUTIFUL PARKS IN MY DISTRICT – SOMEWHERE COOL, IN THE SHADE AND OUT OF THE SUN.” -City Councilwoman MARGARET CHIN “MY FAVORITE PLACE TO SPEND TIME OUTDOORS IS RIVERSIDE PARK, WHERE I ENJOY WATCHING TENNIS AND WALKING MY DOG PHOEBE.” -Assemblyman DANIEL O’DONNELL “I LOVE HUDSON RIVER PARK, STRETCHING FROM LOWER MANHATTAN TO MIDTOWN. IT’S AMONG THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND EXCITING PARKS IN THE WORLD.” -City Councilman COREY JOHNSON “CENTRAL PARK AND THE LOWER EAST SIDE.” -District Attorney CY VANCE “RIVERSIDE PARK – I LIVE NEARBY, AND MY WIFE JOYCE AND I LIKE TO TAKE WALKS ALONG THE WATER IN THE PARK.” -Rep. JERROLD NADLER

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MAILING IT IN: A Q&A WITH NEW YORK POSTMASTER KEVIN CROCILLA

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either snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night could keep Kevin Crocilla from the James A. Farley Post Office Building – but the weather was pretty clear anyway. There, on June 17, he was officially sworn in as New York postmaster. It’s a position that’s been around since at least 1753 with the same basic goal: get Manhattan its mail. City & State’s Jeff Coltin caught up with him ahead of the ceremony to talk about his path from Hells Angels’ mailman to chief of Manhattan.

C&S: What does a postmaster do all day?

KC: My responsibilities include managing the day-to-day operations for all the delivery and retail operations in

the borough of Manhattan, which is 67 different offices. And that would include all the carriers, all the window clerks and all the employees that process, transport and deliver the mail for the borough.

C&S: You’ve been with the U.S. Postal Service since 1983. Did you start by delivering mail?

KC: Yes, I did. I was a letter carrier. I started at Cooper Station on the Lower East Side back in 1983. That was before it became gentrified and NYU bought up all the property. (Laughs.) It was pretty tough back then. The Cooper zone actually goes from Houston Street up to Gramercy Park. So day-to-day you’re either delivering in the Bowery or you’re delivering to the richest of the rich. So

that was a little bit of a culture shock.

When I first started, I got to deliver to the Hells Angels clubhouse, which is down on East 3rd Street. Kind of a culture shock being a kid from Brooklyn, 21 years old, never delivered mail before. I got a lot of exposure to things that I had never really seen.

C&S: You’re a federal official. What kind of coordinating is there with local government?

KC: Being new to the role, not having a lot of other contacts, what I’ve been working on is doing just that. Reaching out to the Manhattan Borough President’s office, we actually had a meeting several months ago where I got to meet her staff and they introduced us to several of the

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commissioners or acting commissioners for the various departments within the city. Another strategy I’m working on, because I am new, is I’m trying to reach out to a lot of the community boards around Manhattan to either meet with them or attend their meetings so I can see what their agenda items are. Right now, probably not as much interaction as I would like, but that is something I’m working on, and I plan to continue doing that going forward.

C&S: Before this, you served as the emergency manager for Manhattan and the Bronx during Superstorm Sandy. What were the biggest challenges after that?

KC: Sandy was certainly one of the biggest challenges we had. There were so many moving parts to Sandy and even Irene. The biggest challenge is that, in Manhattan, we do have a lot of employees that live in other boroughs and even other states. So one of the challenges is getting people to get to work. So when mass transit is down or when it closes early it becomes very challenging because if you don’t have the people here, obviously, you can’t get the work done. On top of that, we had the gas shortages, so people that would drive to work couldn’t drive to work. And then there were restrictions on carpool lanes, you had to have three people in a car.

You know, a lot of people rely on mail.

Some will say it’s dying. I would argue that point. There’s definitely a shift between letter mail and parcels, but we still have our customers that rely on things as important as their medicine in the mail, not to mention sustenance checks, welfare checks. So it is a very important thing that we do and I’m very happy to be in this role right now.

C&S: I imagine when most people contact the postal service it’s out of anger – they didn’t get a package or it came late. How do you deal with that criticism?

KC: A lot of my career I have worked in customer service – I was the manager of a postal facility in charge of the carriers and clerks years ago. Unfortunately, I agree with you that a lot of the feedback we get is negative because people are frustrated.

A lot of people won’t take the time to write a compliment letter but they’ll certainly take the time to complain. And that’s one of the reasons I want to be proactive and get ahead of that – to reach out to the community so I don’t always have to react

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to things that went wrong. I want to find out what we need in different parts of the city.

C&S: On the other side, I saw you emceed the World Stamp Show at the Javits Center recently. That must have attracted a lot of people that have very good feelings toward the Postal Service.

KC: That was a lot of fun! I didn’t realize it was going to have the turnout that it did.

The (stamp) unveiling itself was in front of about 400 or 500 people. And the show itself drew thousands of people. I got over there about three days that week and I got to meet with customers and stamp collectors and vendors and it was a lot of fun. Those folks are pro-post office. They love us! It was good to meet a lot of them.

C&S: You’ve said you want to bring more automated kiosks at post offices, especially in upper Manhattan. What other changes can we expect to see with you as postmaster?

KC: I’m big on automation. About a year ago, we rolled out these handheld scanners for retail associates. We

don’t have them in every post office in Manhattan, but we have them in the majority right now. It’s really just an iPhone that can do basic functions. If you wanted to come in and just buy a roll of stamps or a sheet of stamps, something simple, we could actually keep you from even getting on line. We could have lobby directors asking, “What can I help you with today?” And if it’s something simple like buying a priority mail flat-rate box or buying a coil of stamps, you can do it right then and there with that lobby director, keep you off the line and get you in and out. I’ve been pushing that big.

We’ve also got other products and services like passports that we offer, and I’d like to do a better job of rolling out information to the public. I’d like to also take those services like passports and have extended hours and even weekend hours where we don’t have them now to make it more convenient hours. Let’s face it, people are working for the most part Monday to Friday, who has time to rush to a post office that might be closing at 5? I’m willing to look at that and extend hours where it makes sense for the convenience of the customers.

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What will Hudson Yards mean for

By JOHN SURICO the future of New York City?

N EW YORK,” the British journalist Alistair Cooke once wrote, “is the biggest collection of villages in the world.” And, in many ways, the city’s history is a compilation of this local lore: overlapping stories of how a neighborhood transformed as a result of the people who walked its streets, collectively creating the city we know and love.

In an earlier time, Manhattan was seen

as a staggered settlement, from downtown up, and then, as times changed, immigrant enclaves (Chinatown, Little Italy, Spanish Harlem). As newly minted subway lines and roads added to the urban sprawl, populations soon fanned out across the five boroughs, with houses and towns sprouting up and colonizing the city’s edges. Modernity brought forth new names, a series of portmanteaus (SoHo, Dumbo, Tribeca) to call home, and, as crime continued to drop, new chapters were written in neighborhoods once considered an afterthought to many of the city’s denizens (Williamsburg, Long Island City, Crown Heights).

And now, we have another page to add: Hudson Yards.

Once the Far West Side project is completed (ostensibly in 2024), New Yorkers will never have seen anything like it – or, at least, not in a while. According to its website, Hudson Yards “is the largest private real estate development in the history of the United States, and the largest development in New York City since Rockefeller Center.” The numbers, put simply, are massive: 14 buildings, across 28 acres; over 17 million square feet of residential and commercial space; and a projected 125,000

people living, working or visiting each day.

Yet perhaps what will define this manufactured neighborhood, and its role in New York’s history books, is not its architectural accomplishments, but its vision for what a city can do for its citizens. Because what is being built behind scaffolds, stretching from 30th to 34th Street, and 10th Avenue to the West Side Highway, is a fully-functional “smart” neighborhood – an all-inclusive techtopia, unprecedented in size; structurally separate from New York City, but also, somehow, part of it.

And so, when the system of sensors and sustainability goes online in 2018, Hudson Yards will begin to create a template of what New York City’s future could look like – although just what that future might mean for the rest of us is still anyone’s guess.

TO GET AN IDEA of what Hudson Yards will look like, it’s easier to think of its two sectors: the Eastern and Western Yards.

The Eastern Yards will feature the development’s star projects: 10, 30, 50 and 55 Hudson Yards – a collection of glimmering towers, with a futurist design that our skyline is now all too familiar with; the

RELATED-OXFORD

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sparkling Shops and Restaurants at Hudson Yards, which will feature high-end retailers, à la the new World Trade Center Transportation Hub; more retail and residential space; and the Culture Shed, a honeycomb-like hive for creative projects, connected to the High Line, which snakes its way through the building’s borders. The Western Yards, closer to the Hudson River, will respond to steel with green, providing nearly 14 acres of park space, a school, and some more space for tenants, offices and retailers.

And, of course, both sections of Hudson Yards are now accessible on the north side by the long-awaited 7 line extension. For the litany of corporations that have already staked out their territories here, that extension made the distance digestible.

What is particularly unique about Hudson Yards, though, is that the entire neighborhood, quite literally, is being built by one real estate firm: Related Companies.

Hudson Yards is a joint venture with Oxford Properties, but Related is considered to be the “master developer” of the project; an entity with near-complete control of what goes up in the sky. The two are inexplicably tied together, so much so that Hudson Yards is not just a new neighborhood, but also a company brand. (To think: What other neighborhood has its own flashy, made-to-be-marketed website?)

And the fact that Related is running the show is incredibly integral to understanding how Hudson Yards will function, especially considering neighborhoods rarely are created in such singularity, so monolithic in nature. With that freedom of design, Charlotte Matthews, the vice president of sustainability at Related told me, comes a great degree of leeway: “We

ONCE COMPLETE, HUDSON YARDS WILL FEATURE 14 ACRES OF PUBLIC OPEN SPACE AND CONNECT WITH THE HIGH LINE.

have an opportunity to build a city from the ground up.”

Michael Samuelian, the urban planning and design management head of Hudson Yards, said that’s the main distinction between Hudson Yards and, say, Rockefeller Center. “In some way, Rockefeller Center was a paradigm of urban planning in the 20th century, and Hudson Yards is a paradigm of urban planning in the 21st century,” he added, more grandiosely, “really the first time we’re embracing the digital age, in a way that you couldn’t do (if) you weren’t building this from the ground up.”

In turn, Related executives sometimes sound more like they work for a tech startup – Samuelian repeatedly referred to Hudson Yards as a “campus,” like Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino – than a real estate firm; one that is able to loop fiber throughout its buildings, with one antenna and satellite atop 35 Hudson Yards, powering the entire area with a signal. And on these fiber cables are wireless sensors, Matthews explained, which will stream continuous Wi-Fi to every inch of the development.

For energy, two cogeneration plants will be built into the retail pavilion and 10 Hudson Yards, forming a microgrid underneath the neighborhood. These plants, Matthews said, are twice as efficient as New York’s

grid, since they reuse energy most generators throw away. In effect, CoGen will provide up to 60 percent of the power and hot water for buildings in the Eastern Yard, using Con Edison’s normal utility grid to spread the energy to other properties on the campus.

All of the buildings will be either LEED Gold or Platinum certified, and for those that are not connected to the microgrid, there are eco-friendly diesel generators that can also provide backup power. And that backup power may be essential, given the location. “We’re providing it because we’re by the river, and on the southern half of the island,” Samuelian explained. “We learned our lessons from Sandy.”

Increasingly recurring environmental disasters, like the superstorm that engulfed New York City in 2012, shutting down power grids across the five boroughs, should be a wake-up call of resiliency for developers, Samuelian said. “Private developers need to take it upon themselves to provide their own energy,” he argued, “and tenants are going to begin to demand it.”

And so, when Matthews said the CoGen plants have tracers, so they can effectively disconnect from the larger grid should a blackout occur, and that the broader communication network also has eight levels of

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HUDSON YARDS

BY THE NUMBERS:

5 DEVELOPERS

THAT BID ON THE HUDSON YARDS RFP

14 PUBLIC OPEN SPACE, IN ACRES RELATED-OXFORD-MITSUI

28 TOTAL SPACE, IN ACRES

1,296 TALLEST

BUILDING ON SITE, IN FEET

4,000

EXPECTED RESIDENCES

125,000

EXPECTED DAILY POPULATION

1987 OPENING OF GEOFF BUTLER

THE WEST SIDE YARD, THE MTA’S RAIL YARD AT THE SITE

2009 RELATED

COMPANIES’ HUDSON YARDS BID APPROVED PARTS OF THE PROJECT ARE BEING BUILT DIRECTLY OVER THE MTA’S WEST SIDE YARD, WHERE LONG ISLAND RAIL ROAD TRAINS ARE STORED AND MAINTAINED.

2024 EXPECTED

COMPLETION OF HUDSON YARDS

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THE SHED WILL BE A HONEYCOMB-LIKE HIVE FOR CREATIVE PROJECTS.

redundancy, Samuelian quickly summarized, “In the case of another Hurricane Sandy or blackout on the East Coast, Hudson Yards will be up and running.”

IN FACT, A LOT of the thinking behind Hudson Yards has to do with what could happen. For example, every building is equipped with three chutes on each floor, intended for trash, plastic and paper recycling. At least, for now: “In the future, when we have food waste being collected by the city, we’ll probably take out one of those recycling streams, and then we’ll have food waste going down it,” Matthews explained. (In the meantime, the office sinks will extract water from food, to make waste less dense.)

But what is arguably the greatest impact Hudson Yards hopes to have, on both the city and its occupants, is to be a hub of the “internet of things,” a concept that our everyday encounters with the physical environment – temperature, energy use, waste, air quality, traffic – can be broken down into data, and used, theoretically, to make our lives better.

“The smart city already exists today,” Samuelian told me. “I would argue that Uber is a smart city. Seamless is a smart city. FreshDirect is smart. All of a sudden, things come to you … Having the data at your hands, but also, being smart enough in terms of the technology to change how you’re operating, to optimize.”

It may sound like you’ve unknowingly wandered into a TED Talk, but what this

means, essentially, is that those fiber sensors will suck up huge swaths of information from users – tenants, office occupants, retailers – at all hours, and send it to Related operators and researchers at NYU’s Center for Urban Science and Progress.

They will then crunch the data to make short- and long-term decisions that could streamline life at Hudson Yards, which is now tagged in press releases as “the first quantified neighborhood” in the United States.

A year and a half out from the system’s start, what that will look like is still relatively vague, as the only building currently completed is 10 Hudson Yards, which will act as a sort of laboratory for the module in the coming months. But Matthews mentioned a scenario in which energy use is monitored during peak and off-peak hours, so that Related can develop the most cost-effective and eco-friendly approach to its microgrid. Or, perhaps, pinpointing the best place to grab a cab during rush hour; picking up full trash cans first, before the rest; or notifying a tenant when a 7 train pulls into the station. Samuelian, however, went in a different direction.

“It could be something as simplistic as, are there free treadmills at Equinox? We like to joke that there’s a sale on cookies at Bouchon, for the office workers upstairs,” he recalled. “Pushing people, like a Burberry customer, knowing that they’re on the campus, and Burberry wants to have that information, so they can offer them a glass of champagne to come look at the

latest spring arrivals.”

“Everyone operates in a very Balkanized way in the city,” he said later, “because you’ve got private property, and office buildings don’t know what retailers are doing, and retailers don’t know what residents are doing.”

The thing is, not everyone wants everyone else to know what they’re doing. It is the same qualm over privacy that some users have with Facebook and other tech companies, which have been accused of selling people’s data for profit. And ultimately, it begs the question: Hudson Yards could be at the cutting edge of “smart” city initiatives, sure, but does living or working there translate into a potentially invasive, consumerist-driven experience?

When I posed this question to the Related officials, Matthews assured me that the company’s goal was user-driven, and that all data shared “will be held in confidential and proprietary, and anonymized immediately.” That’s when the real estate side kicked back in: “Our residents and tenants have to feel like whatever is being done, in terms of data, is a credence to their lives,” she added. “As soon as that starts becoming negative, then is it not worth it to us?”

Still, Cesar Cerrudo, a professional hacker and associate of Securing Smart Cities, a group of technology security experts who study smart cities’ vulnerabilities, said it is up to cities to be proactive on the issue. “I think it’s important for cities to have very clear policies about the infor-

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mation it’s collecting, and how it’s going to be used,” he told me, “but, at the same time, have hard penalties for people that use the information in any improper way.”

“It can be used for good, for feedback for the system, so they can provide a better sense of services,” he continued. “But, it can also be used for bad.”

Furthermore, Cerrudo – who has, himself, hacked into the traffic systems of Washington, D.C., Seattle and New York City – said it is imperative for private companies to put in place as many protections as possible against potential cyber attacks.

(The Related officials said cybersecurity was a top priority.) A smart grid and sensors, like those at Hudson Yards, are on his hit list of “attack surfaces,” or data-driven platforms which unfriendly, or foreign, forces could breach.

“Anyone can just send data, and just because the system can’t distinguish between a body sensor and an attacker, it will state the data as valued, and use it to make decisions,” he told me. “So an attacker can get into a smart grid, and block out one block or a big area.” He added, “It’s not something from the movies. It’s something that is technically possible. It’s a matter of finding the problem, and exploiting it to launch an attack.”

As more and more municipalities adopt “smart” tech in all aspects of life, New York City included, Cerrudo views these privacy and security concerns as inevitable, if not more prevalent. And so, he adds, a city should have a strategic response ready to go, should anything happen.

Were, say, Hudson Yards to shut down, City Hall must be ready for anything.

“You need to have a lot of really good coordination, to be able to resist the attack and recover from it,” he told me. “If you’re not prepared, it’ll be chaos.”

TO OWEN GUTFREUND, an associate professor of urban affairs and planning at Hunter College, Hudson Yards is another step along a road that New York City has been heading down for some time.

It is but one piece of the Bloomberg administration’s larger PlaNYC, launched in 2007 as a way to rethink the city’s tech potential, in light of demands caused by climate change and economic growth.

Think, Gutfreund said, of Cornell University’s applied sciences school on Roosevelt

17

Island, and the new LinkNYC Wi-Fi towers dotting Third Avenue, in Manhattan.

NYU’s CUSP program, in Downtown Brooklyn, was also part of this push. “It’s about embracing New York City as a center of tech innovation,” he added, “and a place that is breeding the future of the way we manage our cities.”

But also, he argued, Hudson Yards has deeper implications for the city’s development in the coming years, as population projections surpass the 9 million mark.

Building over train yards, Gutfreund told me, is “an example of allowing us to grow by building new stuff where there wasn’t anything.” Atlantic Yards, in Brooklyn, is also part of this formula. He added, “These are things that we need to do, because we need to identify the places that have room for growth. And this is a part of that future.

“I think we built most of the 20th century buildings in the same, static way, that wasn’t a lot of advancement,” Gutfreund argued. “And so, if we’re moving forward, and this isn’t the newest and shiniest any more in 20 years, that’s the way it should be.”

One term that stood out to me in the Hudson Yards blueprint was “future-readiness,” or how Hudson Yards can remain relevant as technology advances at seemingly exponential rates. So when it goes online in 2018, the system isn’t already outmoded by something newer, faster, and more efficient. In order to avoid that, Samuelian argued, Hudson Yards will offer the platform, constantly gathering feedback to learn and grow.

“It’s like putting in the pipe, and making sure the pipe is big enough to anticipate any type,” he told me. “We can’t predict the future, but we can anticipate change that’s going to occur, and make sure each of our uses and partners and tenants and occupiers and visitors have, to the extent possible, the data that’s appropriate to fit their needs.”

In other words, the neighborhood, like so many before it, offers a blank slate for residents to build a legacy upon it – but this time, it’s digital. Luckily, the progress of this grand urban experiment is the city’s, too, the successes and failures of which could inform future designs. And should it be rebuilt in many years, so be it – that’s just another chapter of the story.

■

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GLASS STEE

MORE THAN

By JEFF COLTIN

The Chrysler Building screams 1930s, the Seagram Building still lives in the 1950s and 1 Police Plaza is a creature of the 1970s. As we move into a new era, which Manhattan buildings will be carrying the flag of the 2010s?

City & State checked with two architecture experts to find out. Richard Anderson, president of the New York Building Congress, chose the most visible and iconic edifices of the current boom. Carol Loewenson, 2016 AIA New York president and partner at Mitchell Giurgola Architects, analyzed the trends and picked architecture that represented them. And it’s not just buildings. “There’s so much more attention paid to the human experience,” she said. “Thirty years ago Bryant Park was like a DMZ, now it’s everybody’s backyard.”

At the same time, while what’s cutting edge is still the ongoing race to build ever higher, it’s also increasingly about concepts like sustainability and adaptability.

“What was once considered futuristic was spaceships and shiny tall buildings,” Loewenson said, “and today it’s more nuanced and there are pressures that are leading people to think beyond that.”

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THE NEW SCHOOL UNIVERSITY CENTER Higher education has changed, and architecture is helping to facilitate it. “It’s much more collaborative,” Loewenson said. “There are a lot of ‘maker spaces,’ project spaces.”

The Greenwich Village school’s new building, a winner at the 2015 AIANY Design Awards, is a prime example.

EEL

432 PARK AVE. “You can see it from everywhere,” Anderson said, making this toothpick tower on Billionaires’ Row the most visible and iconic illustration of Manhattan’s current residential building boom – at least until a taller one gets built.

111 EIGHTH AVE.

DILLON FORSBERG

“One trend is keeping older buildings that might have been torn down, figuring out how to reuse them,” Loewenson said. This massive city-block-sized former headquarters of the Port Authority is now owned by Google and holds much of the infrastructure for computer networks in our connected city.

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WORLD TRADE CENTER TRANSPORTATION HUB “It already is a world-renowned structure,” Anderson said, and it’s not even done yet. While critics have called it “a magnificent boondoggle,” and a “symbol of excess,” the Oculus’ soaring arches and white marble acreage continue to speak to Lower Manhattan’s bright future.

COLUMBIA’S MANHATTANVILLE CAMPUS The best illustration of the current “institutional building boom,” along with NYU Langone’s Kimmel Pavilion, is still under construction, but “moving along very well,” Anderson said. Columbia University promises environmental sustainability and a pedestrian-friendly campus that welcomes the public.

ESSEX CROSSING This massive mixed-use development under construction on the Lower East Side will include a public park, affordable housing and a Warhol museum. “A shift towards the social, cultural and environmental pressures on design and construction and the potential impact that buildings can have on people’s’ lives is being considered,” Loewenson said.

DSA, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, JJBERS, BROOKLYNSCRIBE, ED LEDERMAN, COLIN W, SYNAPSE

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HUDSON RIVER PARK

PERCH HARLEM

The West Side’s paths and green spaces represent the trend of expanding and improving public space, Loewenson says: “We have a ribbon of parks around the waterfront that didn’t exist 30 years ago. Everybody can use them, it’s not just for rich, famous people. It’s for everyone.”

Airtight windows and air filters substantially cut down on energy use in the first Manhattan rental built to strict “passive house” standards, now open on 153rd Street.

“There’s a strong emphasis on resilient buildings, more resource-conserving buildings, and I don’t think that will lessen in any way,” Anderson said.

FDR FOUR FREEDOMS PARK “A great addition to the built environment,” Anderson said of the park on Roosevelt Island’s southern tip. Designed in 1972 and opened in 2012, Hillary Clinton chose it as a stage to announce her presidential run as supporters called it “the physical embodiment of the concept that government can help people.”

THE WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART “The cultural scene is having a building boom of its own,” Anderson said, “and while MoMA has addition plans, no institution is building bigger than the Whitney and its industrial-inspired new home, towering over the High Line on one side and the Hudson on the other.”

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A home in Harlem?

By DAN ROSENBLUM

Nonprofits pay a “pretty penny”

for a spot in a community on the rebound FOR THE PAST two years, Glenn Martin has run his Harlem-based organization, JustLeadershipUSA, from coffee shops or anywhere else he can find to get his work done. Since founding the group, which is dedicated to halving the number of Americans in prison by 2030, he has hired several former prisoners as part of his staff of 13.

He said it was critical to be based in Harlem, where New York City Department of Correction figures show that residents are disproportionately incarcerated compared with the rest of the city.

Now, Martin expects his new storefront on Lexington Avenue near East 118th Street to be ready in July; four other locations fell through because landlords broke off talks when competing prospective tenants made better offers. He needed a security deposit equal to one year’s rent, which, along with other upfront costs, amounted to $80,000 to secure the space. It cost a “pretty penny,” he said, but he wanted to have an inviting storefront where clients felt comfortable.

“It’s great to be in Harlem,” Martin said, “but we’re going to pay for it for the next 10 years.”

While the shortage of affordable housing and other effects of gentrification weigh heavily on low-income residents of Harlem, JustLeadership and other Harlem-based nonprofits are facing their own related challenges: rising operating costs, a

lack of space to expand existing operations, or, for others, a struggle to find a suitable location in the community in the first place. While prices generally remain lower in Harlem than in Midtown and lower Manhattan, some organizations seeking to be closer to the people they serve are having a hard time competing with commercial tenants.

For other nonprofits in the city, these trends have actually helped. Price increases in parts of Manhattan – such as Gramercy and Flatiron, where technology startups have contributed to growing demand for space – paved the way for established charities to capitalize on the changing market. The Mission Society, Community Service Society and Children’s Aid Society in 2014 sold their stakes in the United Charities Building on Park Avenue South for a reported $128 million and used the proceeds to move elsewhere.

The Mission Society, a two-century-old social services agency which had been located in the building since 1892, moved to its Minisink Townhouse, a community center it built in 1965, on Malcolm X Boulevard off 143rd Street. The organization’s president, Elsie McCabe Thompson, said it “made perfect sense” to move closer to its constituents in Harlem and the South Bronx. “If you live among the people you serve, then you have a daily reminder of why you do what you do,” she said.

While owning the building helps resist market pressures, Thompson said other groups find it hard to move to Harlem. “I know there are a number who would like to be uptown, but there is limited office space uptown, particularly large swaths of office space,” she said. Those who can operate out of storefronts have more opportunities, she added, but they also compete with commercial ventures.

Thompson said she would love to have more nonprofit space in her neighborhood, but finding it is a challenge. “I know a number of other nonprofits who I never would have imagined leaving their preferred Midtown or lower locations who are looking to headquarter in the South Bronx because of affordability,” she added.

Residential rents in Central Harlem and East Harlem increased by 53.2 percent and 40.3 percent, respectively, between 1990 and 2014, according to an annual NYU Furman Center report released in May. The de Blasio administration has made it a priority to build or preserve more affordable housing for residents, but Thompson said smaller nonprofits could use help, “because not everyone in the nonprofit sector is a large hospital or large educational institution that have major endowments.”

By contrast, when the Community Service Society left the United Charities Building, it bought an office condo in a Midtown Manhattan building shared by

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Gov. Andrew Cuomo and other nonprofit tenants because it was a central location for its workers’ commutes and offered easy access to all five boroughs it serves.

CSS President and CEO David R. Jones said many nonprofits, particularly nonarts organizations in poor neighborhoods, are already financially strapped. As a neighborhood improves, a nonprofit’s financial challenges can grow: “If I’m sitting there providing HIV services or services to the formerly incarcerated in a gentrified neighborhood, suddenly the political and the local support for that begins to wither,” he said.

Jones said market forces could result in more nonprofit failures or consolidations without government intervention. “As this price escalation goes up, in addition to providing low- and moderate-income for people to live, you’re also probably going to have to provide some incentives to provide a boost for not-for-profits,” he said.

For his part, Martin said the city should provide more resources for smaller nonprofits, such as loans to cover moving or security costs.

City government does offer some programs and services to help nonprofits. The city’s Economic Development Corporation provides incubators and workspaces for such organizations. In Harlem, the Oberia D. Dempsey Multi-Service Center, run by a local nonprofit on behalf of the Human Resources Administration, houses roughly two dozen programs offered by providers such as City Health Works, Graham Windham and Harlem Grown.

Others point to poor transportation and a limited supply of office space. Suzanne Sunshine, the head of S. Sunshine & Associates, a real estate firm whose portfolio includes nonprofits, said many organizations have gravitated toward Lower Manhattan, which has better transportation access.

While prices in Harlem can be as low as $36 per square foot, versus $51 downtown, she said, few clients have expressed an interest in moving there. Only one of the 10 nonprofit deals she has completed over the past two years was in Harlem. “Right now, there are no nonprofit neighborhoods in Manhattan,” she said. “Harlem does make sense, but there’s just not a lot of product there yet.”

David Nocenti, the executive director of Union Settlement, which runs community spaces and facilities for early education, seniors and mental health services at 15 locations around East Harlem, said he encountered a “shrinkage” of available space throughout the neighborhood due to the

rising costs. At one center on East 122nd Street, the landlord is planning to “substantially” raise the rent by double digits after June. While the city’s Administration for Children’s Services, which fully funds the program, is picking up the increase, he said, a non-governmental grant may have been less flexible.

But city government also poses an additional challenge for nonprofits like Union Settlement. All but two of the organization’s locations are in spaces owned by the New York City Housing Authority. According to the agency’s NextGeneration plan, a blueprint on shoring up the ailing public housing provider, more than 20 percent of NYCHA’s community spaces are vacant. In order to generate more revenue and ensure that tenants’ rents are covering NYCHA’s operating costs, it plans to “aggressively lease its retail space portfolio” and begin “re-examining its current lease arrangements, including utility cost pass-throughs and rental rates” for community-based organizations. This strategy favors commercial tenants and makes community and retail spaces harder for nonprofits to get because they often don’t have enough capital to fix up spaces in disrepair, Nocenti said. The situation mirrors the challenges faced by residents and “mom-and-pop” stores, he added.

“It’s a microcosm of what’s happening all across the neighborhood, in that space is going to become at some point unaffordable for nonprofits, and that’s why I’m very concerned about NYCHA taking community space offline,” he said. “Because that’s really going to be the last space that’s available. And if they rent it out to a laundromat or a restaurant or a nail salon or something like that, then families aren’t going to get other services they need.”

NYCHA spokeswoman Zodet Negron said that the agency has leased more than 27,000 square feet of empty community space to community-based organizations since May 2015, including the Dominican Women’s Development Center, Jacob Riis Neighborhood Settlement and a branch of the New York Public Library. It has also stepped up efforts to start collecting enough money to sustain rent and utility costs for some 160 stores and 415 organizations operating out of its retail and community spaces.

“To that end, we launched a comprehensive leasing strategy to maximize the use of our ground floor spaces, bring online spaces that have been offline for years, decrease subsidies to tenants in order to lower the authority’s operating costs, generate rental

DAN ROSENBLUM

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MARK GOLDSMITH OF GETTING OUT AND STAYING OUT

revenue – and, most importantly, provide strong services for residents,“ she said.

Regardless of the struggles reported by some organizations, Mark Goldsmith, the co-founder and president of Getting Out and Staying Out, another prisoner re-entry organization, said groups can still find storefront space in the neighborhood. He said he likes the convenient access for clients and his staff at his East 116th Street location. “You couldn’t get me out of here for love nor money,” he said.

After former President Bill Clinton moved his offices to 125th Street in 2001, Goldsmith tried to find an affordable space in that corridor, too, but failed. Tired of high rates and struggling to find a landlord who would take on a tenant with a number of former inmates as clients, Goldsmith knocked on doors and inquired about vacant storefronts until he found a location.

He negotiated an expansion with his landlord two years ago, doubling the local capacity to serve 500 people per year.

“If you do your homework and go the way I did, building by building, literally knocking on doors to find the right spot, and I did it, and I’m still here,” Goldsmith said, arguing that gentrification is the least of the problems facing the struggling nonprofit sector.

Martin of JustLeadershipUSA echoed the sentiment about the importance of staying uptown. He turned down a spot on Maiden Lane in Downtown Manhattan in favor of a spot in Harlem, where he has served on the local community board and become a more visible criminal justice reform spokesman.

“We could have went and gotten a turn-key office in Downtown Manhattan where people have to go past a tremendous amount of security to get in and so on,” he said. “And that did not fit the brand, it didn’t fit our mission.”

■

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VISIONS of the FUTURE In New York City, Manhattan has always taken the lead.

The first European settlers in the area settled in Lower Manhattan, and as the city has grown and expanded, the borough has maintained its role as the center of government, banking and trade. Today, its buildings are the tallest, its residents are the richest, its tourist destinations the most visited.

But while the island enjoys a wealth of assets – financial, cultural, intellectual, educational, physical, historical – Manhattan’s elected officials have no shortage of ideas about how to make it a better place for their constituents.

In this section, we asked each of them to share with City & State what they see in the borough’s future. Read on to learn what they envision.

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NYDIA VELÁZQUEZ CONGRESSWOMAN Democrat - District 7 Manhattan has long been an entry point to our nation for cultures around the world.

New York’s 7th District, which I represent, contains two neighborhoods that exemplify this characteristic – Chinatown and the Lower East Side.

Chinatown, today, remains a bustling, vibrant epicenter of entrepreneurship and a home to many recent immigrants. It is important that as the island of Manhattan evolves, this neighborhood retain its local culture, while continuing to provide affordable housing for local residents. That will mean working to advancing tenants’ rights and also ensuring our immigrant communities can access basic federal, state and city services.

The Lower East Side is another local gem and part of Manhattan with distinct traits.

For hundreds of years, different generations of immigrants have landed in the LES, making the area home and continually reshaping its evolving culture. From German immigrants, followed by Eastern European Jews to Greeks, the neighborhood has always been culturally dynamic. This area today is also buzzing with entrepreneurship and promise. We must ensure that its evolution is respectful of long-term residents and the area’s unique history.

Today, like these neighborhoods in my district, all of Manhattan is changing rapidly. In a city as dynamic as New York, this is inevitable, but it also means that we must be certain we care for long-term residents of the borough. In that regard, I will continue seeking greater affordable housing options and fighting to retain the valuable social, nutritional and educational services New York’s working families rely on.

JERROLD NADLER CONGRESSMAN Democrat - District 10

As Manhattan continues to grow and attract individuals, families and businesses, we must make sure that there is a place in the borough for everyone.

We must ensure that there is real affordability in all of our neighborhoods so that we can continue to maintain the diversity that makes this city so special, allowing those from all income levels to live side-by-side and to raise their families here. I’ve been in a leader in Washington and in New York on affordable housing – fighting for funding for Section 8 housing and HOPWA, obtaining funding for housing and services that allow seniors to stay in the homes they raised their families in and fighting to protect rent regulations here in New York year after year. We must also make sure that Manhattan’s residential growth is matched with growing infrastructure, such as quality school capacity, transportation and other local needs.

We must also protect our small businesses – the backbone of our local economy and neighborhoods. As rising rents and competition from large chains

make it more challenging to succeed as a small business throughout New York City, we must use every tool at our disposal to support local entrepreneurs and our mom-and-pop businesses. I fought for small businesses after 9/11 and Superstorm Sandy and continue to fight for funding and support for small businesses in Washington and here at home. We cannot have a thriving city with only one sector, one size of business or one type of economy. We need to protect small businesses, which add diversity to our marketplaces and opportunities for workers and entrepreneurs.

Manhattan’s future must also recognize its past. That is why I have been working so hard to create a national monument at Stonewall Inn, which would be the first national monument to LGBT history in the country and would recognize the events of the 1969 Stonewall Uprising as the spark that launched the modern LGBT civil rights movement. Protecting and preserving this site as a critical part of our nation’s civil rights history – in the always dynamic borough of Manhattan – must be a priority.

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CHARLES RANGEL CONGRESSMAN Democrat - District 13 My vision for the future of Manhattan is a more fair distribution of the cost of living in the borough. We have attracted immigrants and low-income people from all over the world, who have made great contributions to our city and country.

Now, it appears that newly developing luxury condominiums have begun to squeeze out these invaluable residents. I would hate to see an island of wealth in the future, rather than an island of diversity made up of people from all backgrounds, races, religions, and incomes. The Statue of Liberty that stands tall off the shore of Manhattan is there for a reason; it is not asking the poor to come to high-rise luxury condos. It stands as a reminder of the immigrant history of this island, which must not become a place where only the wealthy can afford to live.

I am proud to represent a district that is a beautiful mosaic – a mix of ethnic groups, languages and cultures that coexist with people who were born and raised in the city. Educational institutions such as City College of New York enable individuals from poor or foreign backgrounds to return a wealth of knowledge and services to our country. I hope that Manhattan will remain a welcoming and affordable place for anyone to call home and pursue their American Dream.

LINDA ROSENTHAL ASSEMBLYWOMAN Democrat - District 67 This city’s future will be bright if it is a place where all hardworking New York families can find an affordable place to live. We must take dramatic action to increase the number of new permanently affordable housing units and stem the loss of existing units of affordable housing by putting an end to vacancy deregulation and stopping Airbnb’s incursion into our city.

We must also make a robust investment in improving New York City Housing Authority; NYCHA residents have lived in deplorable conditions for far too long.

By doing this, we will help to maintain the diversity that gives New York its wonder, as well as reduce the number of people who are sleeping in shelter or on the streets each night.

I envision a future where we have ample access to comprehensive addiction treatment and recovery services in supportive environments that prioritize harm reduction over punitive measures that focus on incarceration over treatment.

We would expand access to medical marijuana, and ensure that New Yorkers in pain from a variety of diseases and conditions could obtain it easily and in geographically convenient locations.

In my future New York, education planning will reflect the needs of the community, and new school seats will be created to accommodate new housing units to avoid the crisis of overcrowded conditions. All will be able to attend their zoned schools, where they will receive an excellent education in a safe and supportive environment. Parents will be partners in their children’s education.

We’d also open five full-time animal shelters for lost, stray and homeless animals and ensure that our municipal shelter system is truly no-kill.

My vision for New York would continue a tradition of progressive leadership at all levels of government, where the best interests of the people and not the special interests drive policy.

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BEN KALLOS CITY COUNCILMAN

BRAD HOYLMAN

Democrat - District 5

STATE SENATOR Democrat - District 27 The great urbanist Jane Jacobs wrote over 50 years ago about the necessity of preserving the unique individuality of cities. The same is true of Manhattan, where Jacobs lived in Greenwich Village, but even more so today with the onslaught of development in nearly every corner of the borough.

To the visitor, Manhattan seems to have it all. My district alone is home to some of the best restaurants, theaters, architecture and museums in the world. Let’s face it, that’s why so many people want to live here.

But success also has reaped with it rampant housing speculation that threatens to upend entire neighborhoods – pushing out longtime tenants and small businesses in favor of chain stores, towering buildings and the global super-rich.

Only smart growth can disrupt this trend. We need action at all levels to safeguard Manhattan against the excesses of the market. At the same time, we have to keep our economy moving in a sustainable manner by strengthening investments in our public education system, mass transit, open space, health care, cultural institutions and other critical infrastructure.

This Manhattan project is a complicated and enormous balancing act. Thankfully, leaders like Gale Brewer, our community boards and others recognize, as Jane Jacobs did, that the greatness of our borough lies in its special character. We must use every level of government to defend it.

LIZ KRUEGER STATE SENATOR Democrat - District 28 It’s not news that one of the greatest challenges facing Manhattan is the need for real affordable housing. Our borough is already unaffordable for the vast majority of New Yorkers. This has long been the case, and will continue to be so into the future unless officials at all levels of government grasp the nettle and come up with thorough and fully resourced plans to tackle affordability for people across the income spectrum.

At the same time, we must not allow Manhattan to become another Singapore – overcrowded and overbuilt, with luxury towers cutting off access to the sky for all but a wealthy few. Development must be rational and contextual, with participation and input from affected communities.

New development also means new burdens on our infrastructure, so we must make sure that some of the value created by growth is captured for the public good.

It is critical that school space keeps up with growing populations in all of our neighborhoods. And on the East Side it is absolutely vital that we see a complete, full-length Second Avenue Subway and an expansion of bus rapid transit, so that we can finally achieve a 21st century transportation network.

I grew up in Manhattan. It is where my family and I live and where I want to grow old. But mom-and-pop shops and affordable housing are being displaced in favor of big box stores and buildings for billionaires that most current residents cannot afford.

Overdevelopment has made the Upper East Side the densest residential census tract in America. This density means crowded commutes on a public transportation system that is strained past capacity and avenues and side streets gridlocked with vehicles during rush hour. Smart, sustainable, and affordable development is the only way to ensure that as we grow, we are building the infrastructure needed to sustain us.

Manhattan and our city must have a sustainable development plan that builds the infrastructure future residents will need now. I have and will continue to focus on protecting affordable housing in our neighborhoods from displacement by fighting superscrapers and out-of-context development; forcing new development to include affordable housing and school seats, as I have proposed in a rezoning for Sutton Place; protecting commercial districts from the influx of residential buildings for billionaires and industrial neighborhoods from being eroded by both; building out public transportation infrastructure such as CitiBike, Select Bus Service, and the Second Avenue subway; and securing more than $45 million in public and private dollars to reinvigorate the East Side’s crumbling greenways.

Despite forces ignoring quality of life by attempting to cram more people into an already dense neighborhood, I am here to empower residents to work together to not only protect our neighborhood, but improve the city we love.

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JOSÉ SERRANO STATE SENATOR Democrat - District 29 When beginning to envision the future of Manhattan, one must first and foremost think about ways we can work to preserve and expand high-quality affordable housing. We have been moving in the wrong direction when it comes to affordable housing, losing roughly 400,000 affordable housing units in New York City over the last 12 years. The loss of these units has only served to further squeeze the poor and middle class out of New York City in search of more affordable places to live. Manhattan is an incredibly diverse borough, and we need to expand the affordable housing options across the borough for it to remain a great place to live and raise a family.

My district is home to some of the most world-renowned cultural institutions. In addition to the tremendous enrichment and educational opportunities the cultural sector provides, it also drives a major economic engine in the form of tourism.

My hope is that we will continue to support the arts as both an educational tool and as a boost to our local economy.

Finally, residents of East Harlem suffer from some of the worst health disparities of any community in Manhattan. We must address the immediate health factors which cause these alarming disparities while also addressing the long-term needs for green space and expanded parkland in our neighborhoods.

CAROLYN MALONEY CONGRESSWOMAN Democrat - District 12 My vision for the future of Manhattan includes more green space, a fully refurbished East Side Esplanade, and a completed Second Avenue Subway running from 125th Street to Hanover Square.

Although Manhattan is already home to some of the most beautiful parks in the entire country, in such a hyperurban area there is always a need for more green space. Our population is exploding, and we all need space where we can be outside and escape the hustle and bustle that is a prerequisite of living in Manhattan. One source of outdoor space that is sorely in need of attention is the East Side Esplanade, which runs from 38th to 60th streets in one of the areas of New York City most starved for open space. The esplanade has been crumbling for decades, but once repaired will be a breath of fresh air for the community.

As a member of the East Side Esplanade

Task Force I am working diligently to secure the necessary funding to make the improvements we are all eager to see.

When we aren’t relaxing in a beautiful park, New Yorkers need to get around the city. Phase 1 of the Second Avenue subway is nearing completion and will be a massive boon for the district. The new line will help relieve the severe congestion on the Lexington Avenue line, with Phase 1 carrying more than 200,000 riders each day. When all four phases are complete the Second Avenue subway will provide a one-seat ride from the Upper East Side to Times Square, lower Manhattan, and Brooklyn. I have worked tirelessly to secure the funding for Phase 1 and have watched the project closely to ensure that it remains on schedule. Now gearing up to fight for Phase 2 – and 3 and 4, when the time comes – I look forward to taking my first ride on the Second Avenue subway when Phase 1 opens in December.

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RICHARD GOTTFRIED ASSEMBLYMAN Democrat - District 75 I envision a Manhattan that has successfully resisted the pull toward becoming a gilded enclave for the very wealthiest New Yorkers, with a skyline increasingly dominated by too-tall luxury buildings.

A successful Manhattan needs strong rent laws and tenant protection. We need well-funded and maintained mass transit and a more pedestrian-friendly environment, with nonessential automobile traffic incentivized to avoid clogging our streets and fouling our air.

I want an environmentally sustainable Manhattan whose businesses and residents do comprehensive recycling and composting, enjoy cleaner air and waterways, and have more and better-maintained parks and public open space, including a fully completed Hudson River Park. Manhattan should have a healthy respect for its culture and history, including its amazing cultural institutions, and the preservation of its historic neighborhoods and buildings.

All Manhattanites – and all New Yorkers – will have publicly funded, single-payer health insurance coverage providing affordable, quality health care regardless of their socioeconomic status.

I want a Manhattan where a diverse population is free from discrimination in civil rights, housing, and the criminal justice system, and can find affordable housing, good jobs, and a business environment conducive to a healthy mix of different-sized commercial enterprises, including small businesses serving their surrounding communities, to sustain our neighborhoods and create local jobs.

Manhattan should be a place where everyone can come together and no one is left behind.

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REBECCA SEAWRIGHT ASSEMBLYWOMAN Democrat - District 76

I envision a Manhattan that includes many more equal opportunities regardless of socioeconomic status. That means a Manhattan with more affordable housing, quality public education starting with pre-K and finishing with accessible graduate schools, and services for all our seniors so they can enjoy their lives with dignity and the support they have earned. I envision a Manhattan with safe streets for all – pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists. I envision a Manhattan with affordable healthcare and public transportation that is much more responsive to the needs of our communities. And I envision a Manhattan that remains the cultural and arts capital of the world, with cuisine extraordinaire, where greenery still matters, and solar becomes more ubiquitous. That is the Manhattan I want for my constituents.

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DANIEL SQUADRON STATE SENATOR Democrat - District 26 Affordability: There’s been progress in the fight for a $15 minimum wage, but affordability in Manhattan means housing.

Our future must include strengthening rent laws that have too long been watered down in Albany, and fully funding NYCHA. Resiliency: When it comes to ensuring our community is storm-resilient, there has been important progress working with the community and federal, state, and city governments, but there’s more to do to get to comprehensive resiliency around lower Manhattan.

Coordination: Increased construction has been a part of lower Manhattan’s renewal, but also presents new challenges, which is why continued construction coordination in lower Manhattan is so important.

Schools & Families: The growth of residential communities in lower Manhattan has meant new challenges for school capacity planning. As neighborhoods grow, school capacity must also grow.

Families also need more support, including universal evidence-based maternal home visiting (like Nurse Family Partnership), a Childcare Advance tax deferral, and flexible work schedules.

Transportation: All the growth in lower Manhattan has highlighted the need for increased transit investment. With the MTA Capital Plan finally approved, innovation and good planning, like regularly occurring Full Line Reviews on every line, are critical.

CY VANCE DISTRICT ATTORNEY Democrat - New York County Terrorists, cyber criminals and those who fund their operations will find no foothold on this island and no financing through our markets. International, federal and local law enforcement agencies will collaborate seamlessly to share intelligence and neutralize nascent plots.

We will have forged cross-sector, publicprivate alliances focused on prevention to fight these bad actors en masse, and we will continually arm our companies and residents with up-to-the-minute tools and protocols to defend against contemporary threats. We will take the proceeds of what criminal misconduct remains and invest those dollars in our neighborhoods and our public safety infrastructure, because crime-fighting won’t just be about what we remove from Manhattan, but also what we put back in.

In our reformed, 21st century justice system, district attorneys will do more than prosecute cases. Fewer New Yorkers

will end up in criminal court in the first place, because – through data-driven engagement with Manhattan communities – we will prevent more crimes than we prosecute. Rather than merely reacting to crimes as they happen, we will use state-of-the-art data analysis to identify the handful of individuals driving crime, and work proactively to get them off our streets.

Those who commit low-level violations for the first time and pose no danger to public safety will be treated fairly and rationally, because programs like our Manhattan Summons Initiative – under which more than 10,000 New Yorkers will be issued summonses for low-level offenses each year instead of being arrested and processed – will become a matter of long-standing practice, or codified into law.

This will be a safer, fairer Manhattan for all who live, work and visit here.

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HELEN ROSENTHAL YDANIS RODRIGUEZ CITY COUNCILMAN Democrat - District 10 Manhattan is the epicenter of so much that happens globally. We have a massive number of diverse industries; world-class restaurants and entertainment; and urban parkland to rival any across the globe. As we continue to improve on anything and everything in the borough, there are some key steps we’ll be taking to strengthen this treasured island for decades to come.

Transportation remains a vital part of the island, and with the Second Avenue Subway on the way we’ll see less congestion on the most heavily ridden subways in the world. Speaking of congestion, the future of Manhattan would be considerably strained without the passage of a MoveNY-style plan to lower the number of cars on our streets and reinvest in our mass transit system.

Northern Manhattan will be a key focus in the coming decades as well. With rezonings in East Harlem and Inwood currently in the planning phases, new investments in job development, affordable housing and revitalized neighborhoods will preserve communities while delivering improvements and new amenities. Our

island will continue to grow and remain an attractive place to live, but preserving the long established neighborhoods and their respective characters will be key.

The future of our special island will also reap the dividends of programs like universal pre-K and afterschool programs for middle schoolers that are helping to bolster our public education system, providing students with education earlier and more often. This will provide a more skilled, intuitive and creative workforce, capable of higher achievement and greater ingenuity across a wide array of sectors.

Finally, our children and younger generations will continue to welcome one another with open arms, free from many of the prejudices of the past. Our kids are so fortunate to live in a time when divisions of the past are less impactful on their day-to-day interactions. While it is incumbent upon each of us to battle existing discrimination and prejudice at every turn, if we do our part, the future of Manhattan will be more free of racism and injustice than ever before.

CITY COUNCILWOMAN Democrat - District 6 Manhattan is overwhelmed with gentrifying neighborhoods and the “mallificiation” of our communities. We are losing affordable housing and commercial retail space hand-over-fist. My vision for Manhattan starts with enforcing protections for residential and commercial tenants. Tenants must continue to organize to ensure that their rights are protected.

Rent regulated tenants living through construction can better fight against harassment when they are organized into an association with singular focus.

Recognizing harassment and pushing back early is critical to stopping evictions.

My office will continue to offer monthly housing clinics to support tenants with legal advice, and we encourage you to come in.

Commercial tenants also have an uphill battle. Coming to the end of a lease can mean significant rent increases or complicated lease renewal language. Retailers may need access to capital or financial services.

My office will hold a small business forum in July to give our independent mom-andpop business owners access to legal and financial advice, credit and loans.

My vision for Manhattan is one that is affordable for all New Yorkers.

Commissioner Loree Sutton

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DEBORAH GLICK

DAN QUART

ASSEMBLYWOMAN

ASSEMBLYMAN

Democrat - District 66

Democrat - District 73

As a native New Yorker, I can’t imagine living anywhere else on the planet. When I moved to The Village over 40 years ago, it was the Bohemian grandchild of Belle Époque Paris. It had a vibrancy and cultural excitement that my Queens neighborhood, where I grew up, lacked. It still resonates with the energy of artists, writers, hardworking folks of all types and dedicated community activists, who strive to preserve New York as the world’s preeminent city.

Manhattan is a magnet for enterprising young people who see New York as the best place for their new ideas; it is a mecca for technology innovators, and our lives are more and more connected ones. For visitors, Manhattan is the museums and theaters and unique historic sites. For New Yorkers, Manhattan is a combination of neighborhoods that resemble small towns woven together, and our challenge is to move with the times without destroying the essential nature of what brought us here in the first place.

Manhattan is getting more densely populated and more expensive all the time. We need to be focused on more than affordable housing – we need affordable neighborhoods, where people can afford to live, and shop and have necessary services available. Our successful mixed-use, mixedincome neighborhoods are threatened by overdevelopment and rampant real estate price gouging.

We need to protect our air and light. I look forward to continuing to fight against inappropriate development, for a cap on height limits and to protect our landmarked districts.

Our vitality comes from our diversity.

I am a proud New Yorker and I hope that we can preserve the essential character that makes Manhattan the unique destination that it is.

MARGARET CHIN CITY COUNCILWOMAN Democrat - District 1

DANIEL O’DONNELL ASSEMBLYMAN Democrat - District 69

My vision for Manhattan is a borough lined with clean, functional, reliable buses and subways, transporting those who live here, those who work here and those who are visiting where they need to go. Our public schools continue to draw students from all over the city. The skyscrapers of Midtown are visible from the affordable housing available in every neighborhood.

Manhattan is, and always will be, a borough that is just as welcoming to visitors from across the globe as it is to the families who’ve made their home here for generations.

My vision of the future of Manhattan would be one that is more affordable, with neighborhoods that have retained and built upon the diversity that has made our city the capital of the world. Specifically, I would like to see more parks, pedestrian plazas and amenities on our waterfront – with a revitalized South Street Seaport acting as a cultural anchor, not just for Lower Manhattan, but for the entire city.

I would also like to see a friendlier city for the growing number of elderly New Yorkers, with well-funded senior centers, expanded rental assistance programs and more activities to keep our seniors engaged in the neighborhoods they helped build.

Last, but not least, I see the Manhattan of the future as a place with far fewer cars and trucks than today, with streets made safer for pedestrians and cyclists, and our goal of Vision Zero finally realized.

My vision for Manhattan is one in which it remains a welcoming, diverse borough with room for all types of people – whether they have been here for generations or they have just arrived. With room for artists, activists, families, young adults, the elderly and small businesses, I envision Manhattan to be a thriving and vibrant place to live and work. Diversity draws people into our great city and we have a lot of work to do to maintain this. We need the community to defend and advance affordable housing, living-wage jobs and a culture that welcomes people regardless of race, gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation. The future of Manhattan shall be one that does not make it a crime to be who you are, one that maintains our green spaces, and one that protects the grandeur of our communities.

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COREY JOHNSON

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Manhattan must continue to be a place for New Yorkers of every stripe: middle class, working class, those who are wealthy and people who are struggling to make it. Into the future it must be a place where all people can thrive and support themselves and their families, not just those with seven-figure salaries. The rising cost of real estate is forcing out lifelong residents and tearing at the fabric of our great borough. We’ve got to preserve and expand our affordable housing stock, or else we stand to lose much of the diversity, culture and history that makes Manhattan such an amazing place to live and work.

CITY COUNCILMAN

DAN GARODNICK CITY COUNCILMAN Democrat - District 4

Manhattan is a borough with a rich history that deserves to be celebrated. We need to take steps to protect our historic resources, while also promoting sensible growth. And when we allow development, we need to deliver infrastructure and other public benefits at the same time – a strong and vibrant transit system, access to affordable housing and high-quality public schools.

Democrat - District 3

An Energetic Manhattan Needs Reliable Electricity B Y J E S S I C A WA L K E R

When I think of New York City, I think of energy. This city hums 24 hours a day.

As president of the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce, my job is to help ensure that this most dynamic place on earth can welcome and sustain the enterprise that puts New Yorkers to work and brings visitors here from around the world. And every one of them benefits, whether they appreciate it moment-to-moment or not, from reliable electricity.

If that electricity stops flowing, we feel it immediately. We’re coming up on the anniversary of the 2003 Northeast Blackout, a painful reminder of the cumulative stresses on our aging transmission grid. All of us experienced inconvenience, but several New Yorkers actually lost their lives. Nearly ten years later, the devastation and darkness that followed Superstorm Sandy harmed more than three-quarters of a million New York residents and more than a quarter of a million of our businesses, at a cost estimated to be as high as $19 billion.

Assuring that our city has the power it needs, whatever demands and challenges we face, requires careful planning and smart policy.

The fundamentals include generation, transmission, and consumption—and the system they comprise must be affordable for all who want to live and work here. A city that’s vibrant, diverse, and competitive—and New Yorkers are nothing if not competitive— can’t hobble its residents and businesses with excessive energy taxes.

To lower our bills and get the most out of the wattage we’re paying for, energy-efficiency measures are crucial. Mayor de Blasio’s OneNYC plan incentivizes technologies and processes, in both retrofits and new construction, that will reduce consumption and shrink our carbon footprints—a win-win for our economy and the environment.

Getting electricity to Manhattan’s towers depends on up-to-date transmission; and we must press our legislators to support grid modernization, which requires years of planning statewide.

Finally, the way our state generates our energy is about to undergo dramatic transformation, thanks to the wide-ranging plans represented in Governor Cuomo’s Reforming the Energy Vision and Clean Energy Standard. Especially

in the city, with our concentration of activity and traffic of all kinds, we know how important it is to keep pollutants out of our air—which makes developing renewables as alternatives to fossil fuels especially appealing. We’re also fortunate that 25 percent of our electricity comes from zero-carbon nuclear generation at Indian Point, the largest member of a nuclear fleet whose continued operation accounts for 20 percent of our entire state’s clean energy.

Walk with me through the streets of Manhattan and you’ll see life bustling in every storefront and restaurant, shining brilliantly in the lights of Times Square, and inspiring our highest aspirations in our museums and educational institutions. Let’s make sure that the collective energy of the millions of people who make our city thrive will be matched by a power supply engineered and priced to be sustainable for the 21st Century and beyond.

About the Author: Jessica Walker is the President of the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce, representing the voice of more than 100,000 businesses in Manhattan.

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A fresh perspective on opinions/ Edited by Nick Powell

WHAT’S HAPPENING TO THE LANDMARKS PRESERVATION COMMISSION?

he old New York is disappearing.

Neighborhood by neighborhood, street by street, some of our most distinctive buildings – witnesses to the long and remarkable history of this city – are being sacrificed to development. And as a result, the uniqueness of so many communities is being suffocated by scaffolding, franchises and impersonal modern construction.

This is the reality facing the Gansevoort Market Historic District and iconic Gansevoort Street.

With its cobblestone paving and low buildings – the last intact block of oneand two-story, market-style structures in Manhattan – Gansevoort Street is a gateway for visitors to not only the Meatpacking District, the High Line and the Whitney Museum, but also to the past. It is one of the only places in New

ALBERT PEGO

T

By ZACK WINESTINE AND ELAINE YOUNG

York where you can turn a corner and seemingly walk back in time, picturing meatpackers and other food wholesalers handling their goods underneath the metal canopies still in place today.

Gansevoort Market’s architecture is exactly why the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission decided to designate the Gansevoort Market Historic District as a landmark in 2003 – to preserve the area’s “strong and integral sense of place as a market district.”

But this is all at risk of changing.

Now, the New York City Landmarks

Preservation Commission is paving the way for the destruction of the history and character of Gansevoort Street, a profound loss for generations of residents and visitors to come.

Just recently, the commission ruled that massive new buildings – one of them nearly six times as high as the market building it would replace – could be constructed on Gansevoort Street due to the fact that tenements existed on this block more than 75 years ago. That this argument, advanced by the developers, actually won out with the current

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commission is shocking. One could equally argue that, because this block was once the site of the Indian village of Sapokanikan, it should be rebuilt with the one-story wooden longhouses that stood here in the 17th century.

The commission’s verdict is a complete reversal from the decision made by the same agency under a different administration. After all, there was a reason why the area was designated as the Gansevoort Market Historic District and not the Gansevoort Tenement Historic District. Today’s commission has disregarded what its predecessors deemed as the most historically valuable

drive economic growth in this city, and has always welcomed new businesses and employers – and that’s the way it should be.

But change should not and does not have to come at the detriment of preserving history. Change does not have to mean deformation: It can be focused on restoration and revitalization. It can be respectful of the traditions and intrinsic character of our neighborhoods.

In today’s New York City, that should be the purpose of landmarking: to enable developers to grow local economies while making sure that change in our most historic communities respects all that

“TODAY’S COMMISSION HAS DISREGARDED WHAT ITS PREDECESSORS DEEMED AS THE MOST HISTORICALLY VALUABLE ASPECT OF THIS AREA – ITS MARKET-STYLE BUILDINGS – AND ALL FOR THE SAKE OF DEVELOPMENT.” aspect of this area – its market-style buildings – and all for the sake of development.

Without question, our community is distraught at the thought of losing what drew us all to this part of the city to begin with. But as New Yorkers who care about preserving the past, we are even more disturbed by the precedents set by the commission’s actions.

The point of landmarking is supposed to be to preserve an area of great historical value forever – not just for one mayor’s tenure. If the city’s commitments to protecting one neighborhood can shift arbitrarily depending on the person living in Gracie Mansion (and the group of people he or she appoints to administer those commitments), what is the value of a landmark designation?

We don’t object to change; thoughtful, unobtrusive changes that are sensitive to history and character have always been allowed in historic districts.

Completely freezing our landmarked neighborhoods in time would be neither feasible nor reasonable. The Gansevoort Market Historic District has helped to

defines those communities.

Going forward, it must be the responsibility of the Landmarks Preservation Commission to walk that careful line rather than bowing down to developers, as they did with their ruling on Gansevoort Street. And if they do not fulfill that obligation, it will raise very real questions about whether the commission can continue to function as the steward of New York City’s heritage.

The future of New York City’s past is at stake.

■

Zack Winestine and Elaine Young are community organizers and co-founders of Save Gansevoort (www.savegansevoort.org). Zack has lived in the far West Village for 28 years, and Elaine has been a resident since 1986.

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PUBLIC & LEGALS NOTICES JUNE 27, 2016

Notice of Formation of Shaw PR. Articles of Organization filed with the Secretary of State of NY (SSNY) on April 13, 2016. Office location: New York County. SSNY has been designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served. The Post Office address to which the SSNY shall mail a copy of any process against the LLC served upon him/ her is: 225 5th Ave. The principal business address of the LLC is: 225 5th Ave. Purpose: any lawful act or activity.

Notice of Formation of Greenstone Capital Holding, LLC. Articles of Organization filed with the Secretary of State of NY (SSNY) on June 10, 2016.

Office location: New York County. SSNY has been designated as agent upon whom process against it may be served. The Post Office address to which the SSNY shall mail a copy of any process against the LLC served upon him/ her is: 120 West 45th St., 29th Floor, New York, New York 10036.

The principal business address of the LLC is: 120 West 45th St., 29th Floor, New York, New York 10036. Purpose: any lawful act or activity.

Notice of formation of Carlson Design & Planning, LLC Arts of Org filed with the Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on May 31, 2016. Office location: NY County.

SSNY designated agent upon whom process may be served against LLC to: PO Box 14 NY, NY 10276. Principal Business Address: 270 Lafayette St. NY, NY 10012. Purpose: any lawful act.

Notice of Formation of FIUME LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on June 02, 2016. Office location: NY County.

Princ. office of LLC: 118 Chambers St., Apt. 5, NY, NY 10007. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Eric Schwimmer at the princ. office of the LLC. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of Shaw PR. Articles of Organization filed with the Secretary of State of NY (SSNY) on April 13, 2016. Office location: New York County. SSNY has been designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served. The Post Office address to which the SSNY shall mail a copy of any process against the LLC served upon him/her is: 225 5th Ave. The principal business address of the LLC is: 225 5th Ave. Purpose: any lawful act or activity.

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DAVID BUCHWALD – Many advocates had a lukewarm reaction to this year’s ethics reforms, but one thing that was included was the first step toward pension forfeiture for public officials convicted of corruption. While Buchwald’s bill wasn’t the one that ultimately passed, the assemblyman has long championed the issue – even before the arrests of two disgraced legislative leaders. This is one lawmaker who didn’t just jump on the ethics bandwagon.

THE BEST OF THE REST BARBARA BOWEN - CUNY union reaches deal NIGEL ECCLES & JASON ROBINS - CEOs save fantasy sports JULISSA FERRERAS-COPELAND – Free tampons LOVELY WARREN - State pork for Rochester

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WINNERS

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In their long-running feud, Gov. Andrew Cuomo tends to get the better of Mayor Bill de Blasio. But not in this week’s Winners & Losers! New York City’s mayor got just one more year of control over the city’s schools, but it’s been clear for weeks that he wasn’t going to get a long-term extension. Cuomo, meanwhile, talked a big game on ethics reforms, but couldn’t – or wouldn’t – deliver on several of his biggest promises.

ANDREW CUOMO – Not many elected officials walked from this year’s end-of-session agreements very happy – with at least one notable exception.

The governor called this year’s session one of the most “remarkably productive” ones he’s overseen.

But those pushing for upstate ridesharing, a 421-a renewal, affordable housing or a change in the statute of limitations on child sex abuse would disagree – and the same goes for ethics reform.

THE REST OF THE WORST YOUGOURTHEN AYOUNI - Tracker or stalker?

JOSH MELTZER - Airbnb exec hit with more regulation TOM PRENDERGAST - MTA sexual harassment reports up BILL BRATTON - Cops arrested, “broken windows” questioned

WINNERS & LOSERS IS PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY MORNING IN CITY & STATE’S FIRST READ EMAIL. SIGN UP FOR THE EMAIL, CAST YOUR VOTE AND SEE WHO WON AT CITYANDSTATENY.COM.

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