THE QUEENS POWER
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N O I T U L O V E R E TH S I R D A A E N L A L L GI LD PA
O E S A ’ Y H E MICOE CROWL
? G N O L ING A
CAN J
OR IS
@CIT YANDSTATENY CIT YANDSTATENY.COM
G G A T T S U J E H
MARIANNE WILLIAMSON GOT ALL HER CRAZY FROM NEW YORK August 5, 2019
A W H O L E N E W L AG UA R D I A
WE’VE GOT OUR OWN RANKINGS TO CLIMB: INVESTING $30 BILLION TO TRANSFORM OUR AIRPORTS INTO WORLD-CLASS GATEWAYS In congratulating the Queens Power 100, we’re committed to bringing the region’s airports to the front of the pack. The first new gates are now open as we build a whole new LaGuardia, and JFK’s transformation will deliver a unified, 21st century hub with two major new global terminals. Learn more about our progress as well as job and contracting opportunities at ANEWLGA.COM and ANEWJFK.COM
T R A N S F O R M I N G J F K F O R T H E 2 1 ST C E N T U R Y
August 5, 2019
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EDITOR’S NOTE
JON LENTZ Editor-in-chief
IN 2011, a little-known Republican businessman named Bob Turner beat Democratic Assemblyman David Weprin in a special election to win the House seat vacated by Anthony Weiner, who resigned in the midst of a sexting scandal. The GOP victory in a deep-blue district made national headlines. But Turner’s celebration was short-lived, as his seat, which spanned areas of Queens and Brooklyn, was redistricted out of existence the following year. Such upsets in the outer boroughs seem to be happening with growing frequency in recent years, at least in Queens. Margaret Markey, a Democratic lawmaker, lost her Assembly seat to primary challenger Brian Barnwell in 2016. Another Democrat, Elizabeth Crowley, was knocked out of the New York City Council in 2017. In 2018, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez vanquished Joseph Crowley, once the heir apparent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Jessica Ramos ousted then-state Sen. José Peralta, a former member of the Independent Democratic Conference. This year, Tiffany Cabán nearly beat establishment favorite Melinda Katz in the Queens district attorney race, and has yet to concede. The progressive movement likely will have more staying power than Turner. Today, policymakers are responding by pushing through progressive legislation and politicians are aligning with upstarts like Ocasio-Cortez, Ramos and Cabán. In this week’s magazine, we profile one of the most prominent figures to jump on the bandwagon: state Senate Deputy Majority Leader Michael Gianaris.
CONTENTS
MARIANNE WILLIAMSON … 6 Is this New Age guru fit to be president? MICHAEL GIANARIS …8
The Amazon foe rides the progressive wave in Queens.
QUEENS POWER 100 … 17
CELESTE SLOMAN; MICHAEL F. HIATT/SHUTTERSTOCK
The borough’s top power brokers
WINNERS & LOSERS … 46
Who was up and who was down last week
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The
July 29, 2019
Latest ROBERT MORGENTHAU DIES AT 99 Legendary Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau died on July 21. In over three decades as the borough’s top prosecutor, Morgenthau took on mobsters, corrupt politicians and Wall Street greed, and is remembered as a crusader for justice. Aside from making headlines for a number of major prosecutions, he was also the inspiration for the original district attorney in “Law and Order.”
KATZ CLAIMS QUEENS DA VICTORY
Former special counsel Robert Mueller testified for about six hours before Congress, but offered little information that was not already laid out in his more than 400-page report, despite the best attempts by both Democrats and Republicans to get Mueller to say something damning, and the absence of any bombshells may have lowered the odds of impeaching the president.
The New York City Board of Elections completed its manual recount of 91,000 votes in the Democratic primary for Queens district attorney. Queens Borough President Melinda Katz increased her lead to roughly 60 votes over insurgent Tiffany Cabán and is now claiming victory. However, 114 invalid affidavit ballots hang in the balance, and Cabán’s campaign intends to fight in court to have them counted.
The
Back & Forth Seven years after founding Riders Alliance, you’ve announced your plans to depart. Why leave, and why now? I have always believed that it’s important for the founder of a nonprofit organization to move on at some point for the health of the organization – and also the health of the founders. We’re coming off some significant wins on some of our key campaigns and (we) also have a clear path ahead of us of important work that has to happen over the next few years. It felt like the appropriate time for me to move on and for the Riders Alliance to find a new generation of leadership.
A Q&A with Riders Alliance’s outgoing executive director
John Raskin The
Kicker
How would you rate Cuomo’s performance in taking control of the MTA today? It changes month by month, and it changes year by year. The issue of the governor not being fully accountable for the transit system long predated Gov. Cuomo. And the challenge of holding the governor accountable will outlast Gov.
Cuomo. But, that said, in politics, if something is not a personal problem for somebody, it is not a problem that gets resolved. Community organizing 101: If the governor can solve the problem and he’s not doing it, you need to focus attention on the governor. Some would argue that Cuomo may have overstepped his authority on certain MTA issues, such as his move to cancel the full shutdown of the L train earlier this year. To succeed at running the MTA, the governor has to play an active enough role that he is overseeing the agency and taking charge, but also play a supportive enough role that he can attract and retain top talent to do day-to-day management. I think that the governor has to be careful when he gets too into the weeds, because the governor of the state is not always in the best position to make technical decisions about what’s best for transit.
“This race is not over. It is far from over.” – Queens district attorney candidate TIFFANY CABÁN, on the looming legal battle over invalidated ballots after a recount in the race ended without her victory, via Gothamist Get the kicker every morning in CITY & STATE’S FIRST READ email. Sign up at cityandstateny.com.
SARAH BLESENER; RBLFMR/SHUTTERSTOCK; KIT FOX/MEDILL; RIDERS ALLIANCE; MEGAN MAGRAY FOR CABÁN FOR QUEENS
MUELLER IN THE SPOTLIGHT
MAYORVS.PETE HIZZONER July 29, 2019
City & State New York
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BY ERICA SCALISE
ONE IS TAKING THE 2020 PRIMARY RACE BY STORM, THE OTHER IS BILL DE BLASIO.
A SITTING MAYOR has never become president of the United States, but that’s all about to change according to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg.
AGE 37
HEIGHT 5’9”
MARRIAGE
Married Chasten Buttigieg after coming out as gay at age 33
CITY SIZE
LEV RADIN, JSTONE/SHUTTERSTOCK
Population of about 101,000 people, as of 2018
OPERATING CITY BUDGET $386 million
BAD LOOKS
His repeated promises to address rampant unemployment have disappointed, with unemployment rates almost twice as high for African Americans and Hispanics than white residents in South Bend.
Though neither are currently leading in the polls, it appears de Blasio’s big-city background is no match for Mayor Pete’s Midwestern energy – at least when it comes to fundraising. Here’s the lowdown on the mayoral melee.
PAYING FOR SECURITY Uses campaign funds
CLAIMS TO FAME
Improved Indiana streets, which resulted in over 1,000 vacant homes cleared and about $90 million put into the downtown area, attracted startups to improve the city’s relationship with technology
RACE RELATIONS AND POLICING
South Bend’s long-standing issues between black residents and the police have reportedly not improved under Buttigieg. At a town hall last month, Buttigieg confessed that the city had not done enough in one breath, and in another said, “We have tried everything we can think of.”
2020 DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL POLLING (REALCLEARPOLITICS AVERAGE 7/6-7/21) 4.8%
PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN FUNDRAISING, SECOND QUARTER $24.8 million from 294,000 donors
AGE 58
HEIGHT 6’5”
MARRIAGE
Married Chirlane McCray who identified as a lesbian in a 1979 essay for Essence
CITY SIZE
Population of about 8.4 million people, as of 2018
OPERATING CITY BUDGET
More than $92 billion
BAD LOOKS
He promised to address homelessness by increasing the number of shelters, but homelessness has ballooned since he took office.
2020 DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL POLLING (REALCLEARPOLITICS AVERAGE 7/6-7/21) 0.8%
PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN FUNDRAISING, SECOND QUARTER $1.1 million from 6,700 donors
PAYING FOR SECURITY
Uses taxpayer dollars, at least $100,000 so far to fund travel for his NYPD security
CLAIMS TO FAME
Created universal pre-K and universal school lunch, passed the first and only minimum wage for ride-hailing drivers, passed the Climate Mobilization Act to combat climate change
RACE RELATIONS AND POLICING
After the death of Eric Garner at the hands of the NYPD, the mayor openly discussed the personal impact he felt raising a biracial son, but when the time came for de Blasio to call for one of the officers responsible to be fired, he repeatedly declined and delayed the trial for years, arguably worsening race relations between the NYPD and the city’s black residents.
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July 29, 2019
COMMENTARY
IT CAME FROM THE UWS Marianne Williamson’s New Age philosophy is as New York as Zabar’s. by L I N D S A Y B E Y E R S T E I N
Depending on who you believe, the author of “A Course in Miracles” is either Helen Schucman, a professor of psychology at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, or Jesus, or – according to Williamson – some other divine authority. I vote Schucman. Helen Schucman and her boss Bill Thetford had a relationship that could generously be described as tumultuous. The two were professors of psychology. Life in the department was characterized by “professional jealousy, fierce competition and outright backbiting,” and the outspoken Schucman frequently clashed with the more reserved Thetford. Eventually, in 1965, Thetford gave Schucman a pep talk about how there must be another way for them to work together, and according to the preface of “A Course in Miracles,” Helen really took Bill’s lecture to heart: She started experiencing visions and went on to write the text that became “A Course in Miracles.”
Schucman was ambivalent about the material that was coming out of her. She considered herself a militant atheist, yet here she was, apparently transcribing the thoughts of Jesus for posterity. It’s impossible to summarize “A Course in Miracles’” doctrine concisely because it’s not coherent. But let me give it my best shot: The external world isn’t real. All of our problems are illusions. You are the son of God, so am I, so is every other sentient being, so is Jesus who is writing the book. There is no sin. Evil does not exist. Sickness is an illusion. Williamson writes that she came across a multivolume set of “A Course in Miracles” on a friend’s coffee table in New York in 1977. As a Jew, she found the Jesus language off-putting. A year later, she returned to the text and was too depressed to notice the Jesus stuff. She never looked back. According to Williamson, not only is the real world an illusion, everything is an illusion, except love. God is love. We
MICHAEL F. HIATT/SHUTTERSTOCK
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CTRESS, #METOO activist and resistance icon Alyssa Milano shocked her fans by announcing on July 16 that she would be attending a fundraiser for New Age guru and Democratic presidential hopeful Marianne Williamson. Twitter exploded in condemnation. Many commentators noted Williamson’s opposition to mandatory vaccination requirements and other unusual beliefs. “I know. I know,” Milano replied on Twitter. “But she’s the only candidate talking about the collective, soulful ache of the nation & I think that’s an important discussion to have.” OK, let’s have that discussion: What does Marianne Williamson believe, and what impact might her beliefs have on her fitness to be president? Let’s start with the basics of Williamson’s ideology, which was first formed on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where she discovered the book “A Course in Miracles,” itself a relic of the neighborhood’s 1970s “mystical heyday,” according to The New York Times. Williamson burst onto the national scene in 1992 when talk show host Oprah Winfrey championed her first book, “A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles.” Oprah’s support turned the book into a smash hit. It sold over a million copies in its first year in print and spent 39 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list, making Williamson the most prominent interpreter of “A Course in Miracles.” “A Course in Miracles” is an authentic New York phenomenon, though hometown boosters should be warned that it isn’t anything to be particularly proud of. It is, however, a product of a mystical subway experience, crippling anxiety, psychotherapy, atheism, academia, Judaism and an explosively dysfunctional creative collaboration. Arguably, “A Course in Miracles” is the most quintessential New York religion of all time.
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City & State New York
“SHE CLAIMED THAT ATTENDING HER SPIRITUAL SUPPORT GROUPS COULD PROLONG THE LIVES OF AIDS PATIENTS.”
only think that we are separate from each other and separate from God – in reality, we are all one. All of our problems, including sickness, are illusory. If we could just get beyond the illusion of sickness, we wouldn’t be sick. “Sometimes a miracle is a change in material conditions, such as physical healing,” Williamson writes in “A Return to Love.” “At other times, it is a psychological or emotional change.” This is the bait and switch at the heart of Williamson’s teachings. Maybe you’ll get well, or maybe you’ll feel better about being sick, but either way, she’ll get your money. Williamson began lecturing about “A Course in Miracles” to small groups in Los Angeles in 1983 and her following grew rapidly. Many of Williamson’s early fans were gay men living with AIDS, and her theology seemed to promise the potential for miraculous healing. She even claimed that attending her spiritual support groups could prolong the lives of AIDS patients.
As a spiritual exercise, Williamson asked her clients to write letters to their disease expressing their feelings and to invent replies from the virus. She reproduces some of these dialogues in a bizarre section of “A Return to Love.” Steve, a young man living with AIDS thanks his virus for “making him a grownup” and “giving him a reason to live.” Steve’s AIDS virus responds: “If I was, as they say, ‘out to get you,’ don’t you think you’d be dead by now? I’m not able to kill, harm, or make you sick. You give me the power you should give to God.” When Carl begged to know why AIDS was killing him and his friends, Carl’s AIDS virus griped, “Right now, I feel like you only want to destroy me instead of dealing with whatever it is inside yourself that brought me here.” “A Course in Miracles” is part of an older American tradition known as New Thought. New Thought arose in the late 19th century as women rebelled against a male-dominated medical establishment that took it for granted that women were inherently sickly and feeble. As a result, some women, including Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, turned away from medicine and sought spiritual solutions to their mental and physical woes. The originators of “A Course in Miracles” were familiar with Christian Science. Bill Thetford was raised in the church, and Helen Schucman wrote in her autobiography that her mother had sent her to a Christian Science weight loss coach as a teenager. “A Course in Miracles” even credits Mary Baker Eddy as an important if “incomplete” insight into the nature of the fall of man. According to New Thought, meditatively affirming that you are strong and healthy actually makes you healthy. This belief in “mind over matter” can be applied to anything from making money to finding true love. The claim isn’t just that a positive outlook makes you a more energetic entrepreneur or a more attractive date. New Thought is selling a magical idea that what you ritualistically affirm in your mind becomes real because you thought about it. In the 20th century, New Thought got redirected toward making money. “God’s
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Salesman” Norman Vincent Peale published “The Power of Positive Thinking” in 1952, and the book so impressed Fred and Mary Trump that the family drove from Queens to Manhattan to worship at Marble Collegiate Church, where Peale served as senior minister. Throughout Donald Trump’s life, his pathological self-confidence has wreaked havoc on others, from the employees of his failed casinos to the soybean farmers crushed by his frivolous trade war. Magical thinking used to be considered evidence of immaturity or mental instability, but Trump’s supporters revere him for it. The idea that our thoughts determine our fortunes sounds empowering, but this kind of magical thinking also has very dark implications. “The delusional aspect of it is, if you could create your own reality, then if anything goes wrong, it’s of course your fault,” said Beryl Satter, a professor of American history at Rutgers University. Or, in Trump’s case, nothing is ever his fault and all evidence that conflicts with his self-created reality is “fake news.” When asked whether people get cancer because of bad thoughts, Williamson is quick to say that it’s not necessarily because of their own bad thoughts. Maybe a child got cancer because of someone else’s bad thoughts, she suggests, in “A Return to Love,” arguing that perhaps some evil chemical company executive’s bad thoughts led him to poison the water supply. But that argument conflicts with her theology’s core contention: If the child’s cancer is real (and not just an illusion) and the poisoned water is the real cause, then her claim that only love is real can’t be true. Nevermind that it was the chemical executive’s actions that caused the pollution, not his thoughts. Williamson claims that “disease is loveless thinking materialized,” noting that lovelessness can be collective, like racism, which does indeed harm people’s health and shorten their lives. But this doesn’t explain how children are born with diseases that have no environmental or social cause, such as cystic fibrosis. Marianne Williamson has made her fortune selling snake oil. In that, she has something in common with another candidate whose fortune started in New York City: President Donald Trump. And, like many of Trump’s assertions, her core ideas collapse under the slightest scrutiny. We’ve already seen in Trump the damage that a president can do with superstition and a willful ignorance of science. “The collective, soulful ache of the nation” may be real, but Williamson’s cure isn’t.
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Lindsay Beyerstein is an investigative journalist, podcaster and documentary filmmaker in Brooklyn.
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June 17, 2019
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Michael Gianaris was a “liberal regular.” Then Queens transformed around him.
leading from behind by A N N I E M C D O N O U G H
M
photographs by S E A N P R E S S L E Y
ICHAEL GIANARIS is aware of his surroundings. On a warm July morning at a café, just weeks after the end of a state legislative session that featured the passage of one blockbuster progressive bill after another, the state Senate deputy majority leader reflects on the successful session and his own role in orchestrating those victories. Before he orders a latte, Gianaris suggests moving to a “Godfather”-style booth in the corner where he can sit with his back against the wall, not running the risk of being approached unexpectedly. You never know where you’re going to run into an Amazon supporter, he jokes. At Queen’s Room – a bistro bar half full of 20-somethings working on laptops – Gianaris does not catch any grief for his fervid opposition to a planned (and since lost) Amazon headquarters in Long Island City, Queens. In other neighborhoods, contributing to the loss of more than 25,000 jobs that Amazon had promised to bring to New York might amount to a stain on one’s political re-
cord. Here, it’s another stamp of approval from Queens’ growing contingent of progressive Democrats. Astoria, after all, is one of the gentrifying neighborhoods where young newcomers helped elect Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over veteran congressman Joseph Crowley. It’s also the current home of insurgent Queens district attorney candidate Tiffany Cabán, another new voice that has energized a young and reform-minded electorate. For anyone just tuning in to New York state politics for the first time this year, Gianaris is recognizable as the guy who killed Amazon’s HQ2 plans. But those taking a longer view can see that Gianaris’ legwork propelled one of the most progressive state legislative sessions on record, which included the passage of comprehensive rent regulations, a set of ambitious climate targets and tighter anti-sexual harassment laws. As chairman of the New York Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, Gianaris led the effort to unseat former members of the breakaway Independent Democratic Conference last fall. He said he recruited five of the six can-
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didates – Jessica Ramos, Alessandra Biaggi, Zellnor Myrie, John Liu and Robert Jackson – who ousted the former IDC members. The other candidate, Rachel May, replaced David Valesky in Syracuse, while two former IDC members were reelected. To get to that point, conference leaders had to decide that they’d had enough of the IDC. The breaking point, Gianaris said, came when then-state Sen. José Peralta left the Democratic conference for the IDC in January 2017. Shortly after, Gianaris and Senate Democratic Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins plotted a strategy to not lose any more conference members. “Every day, there was a rumor about who was the next one to go; there were tweets about the IDC having more members than the regular conference,” Gianaris recalled. “I remember sitting with Andrea Stewart-Cousins, and we said, ‘Well, let’s just go to battle.’” Stewart-Cousins would hold down the fort and seek to ensure that no other Democrats defected, while Gianaris was charged with finding challengers to the IDC. As early as spring 2017, Gianaris began meeting with potential candidates. The next year, however, Gov. Andrew Cuomo brokered a reunification deal between Senate Democrats and the IDC, which included an agreement that the conference wouldn’t fund any primary challenges to former IDC members. While Stewart-Cousins endorsed those former IDC members, it was too late to stop the momentum of the insurgent candidates Gianaris helped recruit. “I don’t want to take credit for their electoral victories, but yes, we helped create the groundwork and support to get them moving,” he said. Those victories – along with Gianaris’ successful effort to knock out a number of incumbent Republicans – gave Democrats a real majority in both cham-
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bers and paved the way for the passage of progressive legislation on issues like criminal justice reform, rent regulations and sexual harassment. “They were able to pass these bills because of a Democratic majority that (Gianaris) played a leading role in helping to achieve, as chair of the DSCC. The bills passed easily and clearly and smoothly on the floor because he manages the floor on behalf of the leader,” said Evan Stavisky, a longtime friend to Gianaris and also a partner at the Albany lobbying firm The Parkside Group, which has been a lead consultant for the DSCC for years. “You point at the Child Victims Act – in any other year, that’s the biggest accomplishment in session. You point at the DREAM Act – in any other year, that’s the biggest accomplishment in session. You point at the conversion therapy ban – in any other year, it’s the biggest accomplishment in session.” And that’s just legislation that passed in January. “2019 will be a session that historians look back on decades from now and note how much got done,” Gianaris boasted. Yet some say that Gianaris’ progressivism – as displayed in his opposition to Amazon, for example – is a recent political move to keep up with his changing district. Others insist that he has always been progressive, even if the meaning of that word has evolved. But the notion that Gianaris has had a great year? Few can argue with that.
O
N PAPER, GIANARIS is not the picture of reform or insurgency. The 49-year-old son of Greek immigrants, Gianaris has served for nearly two decades in the state Legislature. Gianaris’ father was a professor of economics and statistics at Fordham University – where Gianaris received his undergraduate degree – and his mother was a homemaker. He was energized by fellow Greek American Michael Dukakis’ 1988 presidential run, but immediately after graduating from Harvard Law School, he went into private practice with the firm Chadbourne & Parke LLP. “I worked there out of law school for six months, at a firm in New York which doesn’t exist anymore,” he said. “It was one of these behemoth New York firms,
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(and it) paid off my student loans.” Gianaris took a leave from the firm to work for then-Gov. Mario Cuomo and then left the firm in 1996, going on to work as a lawyer for the Assembly before succeeding Assemblyman Denis Butler after Butler retired in 2000. For Gianaris, there was no turning back to the private sector: “Best decision I ever made was making this choice, even though the pay cut was massive.” Dukakis helped to light Gianaris’ political spark as a young son of immigrants, but to see the roots of Gianaris’ political drive, you’d have to go back to where his family is from: Kalavryta, a small Greek mountain municipality on Peloponnesus and the site of a World War II massacre in which nearly all of the town’s male population was killed. “My family has always had a kind of political sensibility, just growing up, it would always be a subject of conversation,” Gianaris recalled. “The suffering that they endured was always an intense part of our identity. My dad’s village was burned to the ground by the Nazis, and I would hear the stories about how he and his family – he had seven brothers and sisters – would literally sleep in the dirt because they didn’t have a home.” Gianaris’ maternal grandfather was the mayor of Ano Kleitoria, a village in Kalavryta. Assemblywoman Aravella Simotas, who took over Gianaris’ Assembly seat when he ran for state Senate, remembers Gianaris as the older kid next door who volunteered to mentor her high school’s mock trial team. “I remember when he was at Harvard Law School, and I’d look out the window to see when he would visit his house,” said Simotas, who immigrated from Greece. “His house was literally right next to mine. And he was always just a very respectful, honest, hardworking kid.” The Astoria that Gianaris grew up in, however, is not the same one that elected Ocasio-Cortez. Today, his district spans Astoria, Long Island City, Sunnyside and parts of Woodside, Maspeth, Ridgewood and Woodhaven. The street that he grew up on – four blocks away from the hip Astoria café where we met – is the same street he lives on now. The immigrant enclave welcomed his parents along with a wave of other Greek immigrants, though Irish, Italian and German waves came through too. In recent decades, the Arab population and those from the former Yugoslavian countries have grown. “But that all got stymied by a young energy that you’re seeing in the neighborhood now,” he said. “That’s why you see coffee shops like this and people walking down the street the way you do. It’s been really vibrant and a great influence on the community, but it has broken that traditional pattern of the next immigrant group coming and laying roots here, and now it’s become a place with a lot of energy, a lot of young people and the progressivism you see.” The neighborhood, and the borough at large, was poised for an even greater transformation with the arrival of Amazon. Last November, Amazon announced that it would split its second headquarters into two massive sites in Long Island City, and Crystal City, Virginia. Each site would get at least 25,000 new jobs and billions in investment, affirming each location’s credentials as a tech hub. For Gianaris – and other Queens representatives, including Ocasio-Cortez and New York City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer – the cost of those benefits came too steep. New York’s bid to win the new headquarters, struck behind closed doors by the governor – who offered to change his name to “Amazon Cuomo” – and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, involved roughly $3 billion in corporate incentives. Broken down, the $3 billion consisted mostly of performance-based and other incentives, plus a capital grant of up to $505 million if it hit its job creation target. “Then you had this symbolism of not only do we want $3 billion in incentives and grants, but also give me a heliport,” Gianaris said, referencing plans to secure Amazon
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CEO Jeff Bezos access to a helipad at the development site. “It was the ultimate example of hubris for the wealthiest man on Earth to be demanding that this community essentially hand its community over to him, and start making outrageous demands about helipads.” Add to that the potential for an incoming tech giant to encourage further gentrification and cause a shortage of affordable housing – as well as concerns about the company’s resistance to unionization, ties to federal immigration enforcement and meager efforts at community outreach – and progressive activist groups and lawmakers like Gianaris were dead set against HQ2. While Ocasio-Cortez drew national attention to the progressive case against HQ2, it was Gianaris who arguably prompted Amazon to pull out of New York in one of the messiest Valentine’s Day breakups in history. Many point to Gianaris’ nomination to the state Public Authorities Control Board – a state body which may or may not have had the ability to veto the HQ2 deal – as the breaking point.
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for HQ2? One showed 60% of Queens respondents wanted Amazon to come to the borough, compared to 26% opposed, and 55% approved of the $3 billion incentive package while 39% were against it. Questions asked in polls can be misleading and paint an incomplete picture, Gianaris said. “Once you dig into it and realize what effect it would have on the community and on the people, and you educate people about that, that opinion shifts,” he said. Gianaris said he has no regrets about losing HQ2. If he’s known as the “Amazon Slayer” for the rest of his life, so be it. Still, some Democrats supported Amazon, including Queens Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan and state Sen. Todd Kaminsky, the dean of the conference’s Long Island delegation. Days after the Amazon deal fell apart, Cuomo lamented the loss during a radio appearance on WAMC. “What happened is the greatest tragedy that I have seen since I have been in government,” he said. Later, he alluded to Gianaris specifically. “What happened here was a number of factors, but primarily, the state Senate made the misguided decision in my opinion, which I think is now clear to all, to treat Amazon as a local political issue and defer the decision-making to the local political senator,” he said. “There are people interested in dividing our conference for their own needs,” Gianaris told City & State. Asked to elaborate, he said he was referring to the governor, “I’m sorry for him that the IDC is gone and that the Republicans are not in charge anymore, but we now have a strong and unified Democratic conference, whether he likes it or not.”
“I WOULD NOT HAVE EXPECTED THE BIGGEST, BADDEST CORPORATION IN THE U.S. TO TUCK TAIL AND RUN, JUST BECAUSE I GOT NOMINATED TO A BOARD.” Looking back, Gianaris said he was careful not to say whether or not he would veto anything, because even he wasn’t sure of the board’s authority. He believed Cuomo wouldn’t approve his appointment, though the governor never gave a definitive answer publicly, other than to say he wouldn’t approve anyone who was there to “play politics.” “I would not have expected the biggest, baddest corporation in the U.S. to tuck tail and run, just because I got nominated to a board that I never actually sat on,” Gianaris said. “But it does speak volumes about how they view the need for community engagement.” But there’s two sides to every story, and Cuomo was never going to let Gianaris get away with having the last word. The governor’s office and other proponents of the deal pointed out that Gianaris had signed a 2017 letter inviting Amazon to come to New York, suggesting that he supported a new headquarters until it was not politically viable. “The local senator who now has to cater to the local politics, otherwise he gets a primary – he does a 180,” Cuomo said during a radio interview in February. While that letter didn’t mention anything about subsidies for Amazon, others noted that Gianaris then refused an invitation to join a Community Advisory Committee that was intended for all kinds of community stakeholders to provide input on the development. He also declined multiple requests to meet with Amazon representatives. “I’ve seen this playbook run before, where post factum, there is a committee set up to give input on a deal that’s already been set in stone,” Gianaris said. “I was not interested in being window dressing for Amazon’s PR campaign to show that it actually cared about the community when all evidence was to the contrary.” And what about the polls that demonstrated widespread support
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Y ALL ACCOUNTS, Gianaris is adjusting well to the new normal in Albany. To hear him tell it, he’s helping to lead both his district and the conference in a more progressive direction now that they have a real majority. To hear it from more cynical observers, Gianaris’ reputation as a stalwart progressive is the result of a recent, timely transition away from the more establishment wing of the party. “Mike is very politically astute. He’s always been ambitious, and I think once Crowley went down, he very quickly read the tea leaves,” one longtime Albany observer said. “And he knew for his own political survival – forgetting even the conference, but his own political survival – he was going to have to reinvent, in a sense. And he’s done that. I think it was like a day or two later, he was wearing an AOC T-shirt after Crowley lost, which raised a lot of eyebrows.” Gianaris’ office said it was actually two months later, at a voter register event co-sponsored by the state senator and Ocasio-Cortez. Political consultant George Arzt also pinpointed Ocasio-Cortez’s election as a turning point. “I don’t think I ever remembered him as the progressive,” Arzt said. “He was always a liberal regular, but a regular. Until AOC and the district shifted, and he shifted with the district. The district became more left and he became more left.” As a Queens Democrat who has been around for nearly 20 years, Gianaris can’t really escape associations with the infamous Queens machine, the county’s powerful Democratic committee whose chosen candidates – Joseph Crowley, Melinda Katz – have faced competitive challenges from the left. Arzt and others describe Gianaris as close with Crowley, the former party boss. Stavisky denies that Gianaris “came up through” the Queens machine in the traditional sense. “(It) wasn’t about working your way up through the clubhouse, but when the opportunity presented itself, he was someone who was a known commodity in Albany, he was a known commodity in the district, he was well-respected in both places,” Stavisky said. He may have been backed by the county party while running for the Assembly and endorsed by his predecessor in the state Senate, but Gianaris points out that he was a progressive alternative to the outgoing Democrats he was replacing. Former Assemblyman Denis Butler was known for putting up a budget amendment every year to
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D-DAY 75 YEARS AGO
Its Timeless Importance: Make sure the battle to defeat tyranny continues By Gregory Floyd, President, Teamsters Local 237 and Vice President-at-Large on the General Board of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters
You probably saw the pictures. 60 veterans, well into their 90’s, recently participated in the Normandy American Ceremony on the sun-drenched bluff above the Normandy beaches where 10,000 of their comrade soldiers gave their lives 75 years ago. One veteran on the stage with the world leaders received a helping hand from France’s President Emmanuel Macron, as he struggled to stand up to pay tribute to his fallen brothers, during the dramatic ceremony. 75 years earlier, 19-year-old Private Russell Pickett was a member of the famed 29th Infantry Division that was among the first to land and storm the French beaches at Normandy. Considering that an 18-yearold soldier then, would be age 93 today, this commemoration is expected to be the last to include living D-Day veterans. D-Day was the greatest amphibious invasion in history. Almost 7,000 vessels, 11,500 airplanes and 156,000 Allied soldiers crossed from Britain to five beaches in France to create a foothold against Nazi Germany. With the Soviet Red Army moving in from the East, the purpose of the maneuver was to begin the liberation of Europe from Nazi domination. It was the turning point of the War. With months of secret planning, this make-or-break military operation, which included soldiers from the United States, Britain, Canada and the Free France Movement, endured anywhere from 2,500 to 4,500 casualties before the broad front of soldiers even landed, neck-deep in the water, to make their way to beaches peppered with German snipers with machine guns, land mines, bodies and barbed wire. Stories of the heroism and suffering; terror, chaos and errors—paratroopers being dropped in wrong places, landing craft off course and heavily-laden troops dumped into too deep water and drowning—are put in proper perspective by the words of those who lived through the experience. President Franklin Roosevelt, for example, said: “They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate.” British Prime Minister Winston Churchill noted: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” General Eisenhower, at the 20th anniversary said: “These people gave us a chance, and they bought time for us, so that we could do better than we did before… to preserve freedom and systems of self-government in the world.” And, at the last D-Day ceremony to mark the 70th anniversary, President Barak Obama reflected: “It was unknowable then, but so much of the progress that would define the 20th century, on both sides of the Atlantic, came down to the battle for a slice of beach 6 miles long and 2 miles wide.” President Trump, speaking at the 75th anniversary, was surely correct when he called these veterans: “…among the greatest Americans who will ever live.” But just as D-Day marked a turning point in history, some now question whether this was an end to an era. The devastation wrought by the war helped to create a decades-long spirit of cooperation between European capitals that gave rise to the European Union. The European Union was viewed as cementing the Allied peace, and America became firmly ensconced as the savior of democracy—the free world’s protector; its police force. Times have surely changed. Britain is now in a national debate about leaving the European Union. America, under the current administration, seems to no longer relish its former status as democracy’s “watchdog”, following instead, a philosophical shift toward “super nationalism” resulting in concerns from old allies who fear abandonment. Some wonder: “Is this the new norm? Is this the beginning of an international trend where World War ll alliances and their memories reflect something applicable generations ago, but hold very little political cache for today’s generation and seemingly not enough to bind us forever?” Even Pope Francis recently weighed-in on this question when he said: “Someone could ask under his breath, ‘Is this the end of a 70-year-old adventure?” As D-Day soldiers and Tuskegee Airmen age and leave us, we may lose not only a living reminder of a gloried past, but also of a citizenry that instinctively knew that freedom is an earned privilege—something not bestowed upon us, rather, the result of a struggle to achieve and to maintain. How we proceed from this point will set the American path for the immediate future and beyond. We can debate how to proceed, but one issue of surefire importance in defeating tyranny that is almost upon us is the 2020 Census. Although it is done every 10 years, its impact can be permanent. At a recent House panel discussion at LaGuardia Community College, Congressman Meeks said it best. He argues that this is the most important federal effort since the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of the 1960’s declaring: “That’s what is at stake here.” Everything from federal funding to representation in Congress is contingent on the Census count. For example, before the 1950 Census count, New York State had 45 seats in the House of Representatives. Today, we have 27 Congress members and the fear is that we will lose two more of them. $678 billion in federal aid is up for grabs—$73 billion for New York alone, money for Medicare, Medicaid, highway and transportation infrastructure, education, school lunches, and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programs for women, infants and children, are just some of what is at jeopardy for the undercounted and the uncounted. Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, who oversees the Census, had proposed a new question on the 2020 Census pertaining to the individual’s citizen status, which Census experts view as a veiled way to suppress participation. Fortunately, on June 27th, the Supreme Court ruled against the Trump Administration’s plan, forbidding the Secretary of Commerce to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census one week before it is to be printed. Despite the ruling, a climate of fear is already permeating the Census process. But if people aren’t counted, we lose out. For New Yorkers, and especially for public sector union members, the effect would be devastating. As we commemorate the sacrifices of D-Day veterans and celebrate the valor of all of our soldiers, participating in the 2020 Census seems like the least we can do to continue their fight for our core values. Remember: Nazi Germany was built to create a “Master Race”. It did this by exclusion and terror. The 2020 Census is the best weapon to combat today’s tyranny in our own country. Let’s use it. We count, but you must be counted. Much is at stake.
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end taxpayer funding for elective abortions. “When I came around, it was like, ‘Oh, this guy is out there for us,’” Gianaris said. Later, Gianaris replaced state Sen. George Onorato, a Democrat who was one of the “no” votes on same-sex marriage. “My beliefs have been consistent, and the neighborhood is kind of now in a place that’s more consistent with where I’ve always been,” Gianaris said. Political consultant Jerry Skurnik noted that in contrast to Butler and Onorato, Gianaris was more progressive. It may not be his voting record that has shifted, but his endorsements. “He usually – not always – went along with the county Democratic organization’s candidates. And this year, he did support some insurgents. The most significant one was Cabán,” Skurnik said. Even still, until Ocasio-Cortez ran against Crowley last year, there wasn’t a surfeit of progressive challengers to choose from. “Nobody ran against Joe Crowley, so it wasn’t like he supported Joe Crowley over all these other progressive candidates over the years. Nobody ran against him. Nobody ran against (Queens District Attorney Richard Brown), so it wasn’t like he supported Dick Brown over the equivalent of Cabán eight years ago,” Skurnik said. “Those candidates didn’t exist. So it could be we’re just noticing it because those challenges are now happening when they were not happening earlier.” Responding to those who say his progressivism is only recent, Gianaris points to his legislation to eliminate bail, which he first introduced four years ago, and his leadership on same-sex mar-
THE WINDING ROAD TO PROGRESSIVISM MICHAEL GIANARIS’ POLITICAL HISTORY IS PEPPERED WITH ESTABLISHMENT TIES
State Senate Deputy Majority Leader Michael Gianaris is known today as the man who led the successful resistance to Amazon placing a headquarters in Queens last year and presided over a historically progressive legislative session in Albany this year, but the veteran lawmaker was viewed as a more moderate Democrat in the past. Gianaris’ understanding of the word “progressive” has even changed over time. “It’s a lot more impatient, is the word I would use,” he said. “I think the election of Donald Trump has kicked us all in the ass to realize that incremental change is not enough, when the other side is running up the score.” City & State gathered a few of his career milestones, reflecting both his progressive stances and his ties to the Democratic establishment.
2000
Michael Gianaris ran for the seat held by retiring Assemblyman Denis Butler, receiving the backing of the Queens Democratic Party.
2004
Gianaris pushed for tax credits to “sweeten the pot” for film and television production in New York, and still says such incentives are useful when created with appropriate oversight and targeted toward creating blue-collar union jobs.
riage. “My positions on the issues, which is all that New Yorkers care about, has been incredibly consistent,” he said. “(People) want to draw conclusions about political alignments, and the fact that the establishment doesn’t seem to recognize the change that’s happening – the positive change that’s happening,” he said. A number of his colleagues agree. “He’s always been progressive,” Simotas said. When Gianaris decided to leave the Assembly, he met with Simotas to talk to her about running. “The first question he asked me when we were talking during that February 2009 meeting, he asked me, ‘What is my position on choice and what is my position on marriage?’” And even those with doubts can’t deny that this session has largely been a progressive success. “They did accomplish stuff,” the Albany observer said. “A lot of it was low-hanging fruit, but I don’t think anyone necessarily expected the Green Light bill to pass. By all accounts, (Gianaris) worked really hard behind the scenes on that.” Ramos said she has always seen Gianaris as one of the more progressive elected officials in western Queens. But she doesn’t deny that the bar that progressives have to clear to hold on to that label has risen. “I think the word ‘progressive’ has progressed in a very positive way,” she said. “It went from something that used to be a lot more centrist than it is today.” In a separate interview after his first sit-down in that trendy Astoria café, Gianaris suggested his understanding of how progressive the party should be has evolved too. “I’m seeing that the party should change. It needs to change in the era of Donald Trump,” he said. “There are elements of the establishment that refuse to see that and are not willing to make the changes necessary that I think are necessary. So yes, over time, I realized that, and I wish the party at large would realize it, because it’s desperately needed for the Democratic Party’s success going forward.”
F
EW WHO SPEAK of Gianaris fail to note that he’s bright and driven. He has a commanding presence, whether he’s in a suit or a Jimi Hendrix T-shirt. And despite nearly 20 years in the state Legislature, he wears his experience well – a 49-year-old with a 30-year-old head of hair. He’s also noticeably laid-back in his demeanor, if not in his actions. “I think that’s a characteristic that he shares with the majority leader,” Myrie said. “He’s not fire and brimstone, unless it’s necessary.”
2010
Gianaris was elected to replace retiring state Sen. George Onorato, representing a shift to the left after Onorato voted against same-sex marriage in 2009. Candidate Gianaris called for reforms to redistricting, campaign finance and ethics.
2015
Gianaris introduced legislation to eliminate bail – an issue he’s taken up each year since. This year, with the help of celebrity advocate John Legend, a compromise was reached that eliminated cash bail for most misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies.
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In the past session alone, he’s earned the nicknames “Guccinaris” from Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou, and “G-Mobile” from Myrie. “He has very young energy,” said Biaggi, who sat behind him in the chamber this year, frequently accepting dark chocolate peppermint patties from Gianaris’ candy drawer. “I view my role as working with our newer members, but also helping people who have been around longer to break the mold that they’re accustomed to,” Gianaris said. While members like Myrie recognize him for serving as that bridge between the old and the new, others find another quality more notable. “He listens to women,” Ramos said, adding that such a trait is rare in Albany. “I mean maybe not rare, maybe medium. Medium-rare.” Whether Gianaris will be satisfied being a deputy or a “bridge” forever is not a question he’s ready to answer yet. A former candidate for state attorney general in 2006, Gianaris is a prolific fundraiser and currently has a campaign account with roughly $2.3 million. Colleagues like Ramos, Myrie and Biaggi would like to see him run for higher office – should he want that too.
But as a white, straight man, Gianaris’ role in an increasingly diverse and representative progressive wing isn’t immediately clear. “I think in some ways, the political atmosphere is more difficult now in the Democratic Party for him,” the Albany observer said. “Really since the racial and gender politics make it more difficult right now for him. The pendulum swings, but right now, I think it could be hard.” While noting the need for diversity in politics, Gianaris said it’s the ideas that have to prevail. “It’s about the issues,” he insisted. “If we agree on the things we advocate, we seem to work in sync well together. And I think there’s a value to having someone in the leadership in a position of authority in the conference to advocate some of these things, and help create the support in the conference to get them done.” He is also the son of Greek immigrants, and understands the struggle of other immigrant groups, Ramos said. Biaggi added, “I think that one of the dangers that we have as progressives is if we have purity tests where only certain people are allowed. That’s really not right.” Gianaris doesn’t rule out running for higher office, but says he’s focused on his upcoming election. Backlash to his role in driving away Amazon has produced at least one primary challenger: Justin Potter, a registered Republican up until this year. “The beauty of what’s been going on lately is people are engaged,” Gianaris said. “If someone wants to go make the case that Amazon should be here, we’ll have that debate in the election.” With Letitia James recently elected state attorney general, it’s not clear what higher office he would seek. Gianaris says he’s got enough on his plate at the moment, and will focus next year on unfinished business like recreational marijuana legalization and solitary confinement. He’s in a position where he can keep an eye on the evolution of the rest of his conference and his district. Whether he’s following that evolution or the one pulling it to the left depends on who you ask. For the time being, it’s from this spot that he’ll attempt to execute the progressive agenda – or what’s left of it after this past session. “I’ve been sitting around too long to not have these things happen,” he said. “Spending years in the minority waiting for this moment, my foot is on the gas, trying to get as much of it done as possible.”
2016
2018
HANS PENNINK/AP/SHUTTERSTOCK
Gianaris embraces Andrea StewartCousins after helping her gain the majority.
He supported Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary over U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders – who Gianaris has praised more recently – though Gianaris’ office says he was focused on state Senate races and was not an aggressive Clinton advocate.
2018
Gianaris endorsed Queens Democratic Party boss Joseph Crowley for reelection in New York’s 14th Congressional District, calling him “the progressive leader we need fighting for Queens families in Congress.”
■
Gianaris joined a growing chorus of progressive politicians vowing not to accept campaign contributions from the real estate industry.
2019
Gianaris endorsed and campaigned for Tiffany Cabán, the progressive insurgent challenging the party establishment pick for Queens district attorney.
CONGRATULATIONS RUSCHELL
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CITY AND STATE'S
QUEENS
POWER 100
QUEENS July 29, 2019
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O MATTER WHO ultimately wins the Queens district attorney race, the contest has demonstrated one thing: There’s a battle raging for political control of the borough. The Democratic old guard is facing an uprising of younger progressives, who helped propel Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Congress and followed that up by nearly electing Tiffany Cabán as the borough’s top prosecutor. Some veteran politicians, including state Sens. Michael Gianaris and James Sanders Jr. as well as New York City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer, are siding with the insurgency. Others, like Cabán’s rival, Queens Borough President Melinda Katz, are sticking with the establishment, led by Rep. Gregory Meeks, the borough’s new party boss. In our Queens Power 100, we assess the clout of each of these players, and where they fit in the borough’s evolving power structure.
City & State New York
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1 MICHAEL GIANARIS
STATE SENATOR
SEAN PRESSLEY
THIS YEAR, state Sen. Michael Gianaris embraced his status as a progressive figurehead in the state Senate and secured sweeping tenant protections, legislation allowing undocumented immigrants to get driver’s licenses and one of the most ambitious climate change laws in the country. Gianaris’ ascent began last year when, as chairman of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, he recruited the progressive primary challengers that toppled most of the former members of the Independent Democratic Conference. In the wake of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s earthshaking defeat of Joseph Crowley, who was once a major Gianaris ally, the No. 2 in the Senate Democratic conference committed himself to the ideals of the new insurgent faction of the party. His opposition to the Amazon HQ2 plan in his district solidified Gianaris’ split with party politics as usual. And with his controversial nomination to the state Public Authorities Control Board, he played a pivotal role in killing the city and state’s $3 billion offer to the e-commerce giant. In the weeks since the legislative session ended, Gianaris endorsed Tiffany Cabán for Queens district attorney over Melinda Katz in another rebuke to the Democratic establishment.
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2 ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ
CONGRESSWOMAN
THE EXPLOSIVE progressive energy that Alexandria Oc-
asio-Cortez’s congressional victory unleashed in Queens, the Bronx and across the country is realigning New York politics. From her support for Tiffany Cabán’s district attorney campaign to her rejection of Amazon’s Long Island City campus, Ocasio-Cortez’s praise and condemnation wield great power. Her profile – she is known simply as “AOC” – is rising outside the borough thanks to constant coverage on right-leaning networks like Fox News, which mentioned her nearly 76 times a day within a six-week period this winter. Her ascent sent shockwaves through the state and national Democratic establishment, which is cautiously watching every move after she proved herself committed to challenging their established hierarchies while driving the national conversation. While Ocasio-Cortez has shown that the county machine can bleed, it continues to hold a sturdy base in the southeastern part of the borough. Outside of backing Cabán, she has had little interest in ruffling the feathers of the Queens Democratic Party outside of the more reformist-minded neighborhoods like Astoria. But even though she’s avoided county politics, by virtue of her soapbox and the admiration she has inspired in progressive millennial activists, she speaks for the insurgency in Queens and beyond.
3 GREGORY MEEKS
REP. GREGORY MEEKS may have inherited a weakened Queens Democratic Party, but that doesn’t mean he’s ready to accept the progressive sea change sweeping the borough. And while Meeks represents the party establishment, he also represents a change himself: he’s the first black man to take the reigns of the borough’s Democratic Party, and the first party leader from the traditionally black, middle-class area of Southeast Queens, where he commands strong loyalty from the area’s electeds and religious community. While his access to county electoral support has helped him avoid any close congressional elections for more than 20 years, he won’t shy away from a fight. When left-wing insurgent Tiffany Cabán picked up steam in the district attorney race, Meeks shot back that he perceived her campaign to be disenfranchising black voters in his district. While democratic socialist Shaniyat Chowdhury has emerged as a 2020 primary challenger to Meeks, he has a long way to go to loosen the congressman’s grip on his district. Meeks is a force of personality who dresses loud and speaks fast and emphatically, especially when he’s on the attack. Since becoming party chairman, he has shown himself ready to resist the insurgent leftward push across the borough.
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4 GRACE MENG
CONGRESSWOMAN
AS A VICE CHAIRWOMAN of the Democratic National Committee, Rep. Grace Meng has shown herself to be an influential multitasker capable of focusing on national party politics without losing her strong connection to her own district in Queens, where she grew up and is raising a family. Unlike Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the squad of left-wing insurgents in the House, Meng is perfectly comfortable with the centrist wing of Democratic Party. As a freshman back in 2012, she helped form the Bipartisan Freshman Caucus. She is also cozy with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom she recently brought to Elmhurst Hospital to talk about the citizenship question on the U.S. census. That event showcased Meng’s ability to connect her constituents’ interests with what is happening on the national stage. The neighborhoods in her district have some of the highest foreign-born populations in the city, and as a member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee, which funds the U.S. Census Bureau, Meng can play a major role in fighting for their inclusion.
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Greenberg Traurig congratulates our own Mark Weprin for being recognized on City & State’s “Queens Power 100” list. Greenberg Traurig’s Government Law & Policy Practice offers something unique among New York law firms – a full service team of attorneys in New York City and Albany with government experience that helps clients creatively navigate the government procurement and lobbying process.
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G R E E N B E R G T R A U R I G, L L P | AT TO R N E Y S AT LA W | W W W.G T LA W.C O M The hiring of a lawyer is an important decision and should not be based solely upon advertisements. Greenberg Traurig is a service mark and trade name of Greenberg Traurig, LLP and Greenberg Traurig, P.A. ©2019 Greenberg Traurig, LLP. Attorneys at Law. All rights reserved. Attorney Advertising. All rights reserved. °These numbers are subject to fluctuation.. 32851
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5 MELINDA KATZ
QUEENS BOROUGH PRESIDENT AFTER A wild six weeks of vote counting and recounting,
the Forest Hills native now seems destined to be the next Queens district attorney. She’s promised to usher in an era of progressive change – if only her critics believed her. Nothing is set until the lawsuits between her campaign, Tiffany Cabán’s campaign and the New York City Board of Elections are settled, but it’s folly to think Katz’s power and influence ride on the outcome of the election. She’s been a player in Queens politics for 25 years and the borough president for nearly six. In that position and in other jobs, she’s become a pivotal figure in Queens real estate, shaping downtown Jamaica, envisioning a new Willets Point and slamming the proposed jail in Kew Gardens. Her ambition has gotten her far, even if she’s stumbled a few times while trying to climb the ladder to higher office. She’s kept her focus, building relationships in government and with the immigrant communities that make Queens special. That seems to have paid off this year, and the politician may get to try her hand at prosecution.
100
THE
Congratulations to the Power 100 from the members of 32BJ SEIU. 32BJ SEIU
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POWER
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QUEENS DISTRICT ATTORNEY CANDIDATE
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR PORT AUTHORITY OF NEW YORK AND NEW JERSEY
FOUNDER PATRICK B. JENKINS & ASSOCIATES
NEW YORK CITY COUNCILWOMAN
TIFFANY CABÁN
RICK COTTON PATRICK B. JENKINS
AS A long-shot can-
didate, Tiffany Cabán made Queens’ first contested primary for district attorney in over 60 years historic in unexpected ways. The 31-year-old queer Latina public defender gained momentum in her self-described “decarceral” campaign, which was also a referendum on the Queens Democratic Party. (It endorsed Melinda Katz.) Whether Cabán wins or loses after a post-recount legal battle, she caused a major disruption to establishment expectations.
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DANIEL DROMM
NEW YORK CITY COUNCILMAN THE RECENT celebration of the 50th anniver-
sary of the Stonewall riots has shined a spotlight on the city’s LGBTQ leaders. In Queens, Danny Dromm is the LGBTQ community’s leading voice. The former teacher is a tireless advocate for the vulnerable, and has recently been pushing to celebrate LGBTQ heroes in public schools. The Jackson Heights titan, now in his 10th year on the New York City Council, is chairman of the influential Finance Committee.
QUEENS HAS become a modern-day Ellis Island thanks to its two huge airports, which often serve as foreigners’ first point of entry to the United States. Dubbed “czar of infrastructure” by Gov. Andrew Cuomo after serving as the governor’s special counselor for interagency initiatives, Rick Cotton is now in charge of multibillion-dollar projects to upgrade JFK and LaGuardia airports. Keeping the massive renovations on time and on budget will test Cotton’s abilities.
A SOUTHEASTERN
Queens resident and lobbyist with long-standing ties to Gregory Meeks and Carl Heastie, Jenkins’ most notable victory at the close of the legislative session came from an education bill that never reached the Assembly floor. Jenkins’ firm was hired by billionaire cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder to advocate against a bill that would eliminate the admissions exam for specialized high schools. It got stuck in the Assembly Education Committee.
KAREN KOSLOWITZ
“THE KOZ” might be the second-most powerful member of the New York City Council, and there is no doubt she is the leader of the Queens delegation. Her close ties to City Council Speaker Corey Johnson have helped her guide policy for the borough, and her finely tuned political instincts are an asset to both the speaker and her Queens colleagues seeking advice on how to get bills passed or which way to vote on a controversial issue.
Congratulations to our dear friend and colleague TRAVIS TERRY And to all of the honorees of City & State’s Queens Power 100 Awards
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PRESIDENT AND CEO QUEENS LIBRARY
NEW YORK CITY COUNCILMAN
NEW YORK CITY COUNCILMAN
STATE SENATOR
ACCORDING TO
LIKE STATE SEN.
commanding takeover of the state Senate has elevated this 20-year lawmaker to a new role of prominence. A former high school teacher, Toby Ann Stavisky is now chairwoman of the Senate’s Higher Education Committee. Her sprawling district is home to large pockets of Asian and Jewish voters, and she has skillfully delivered for the complicated communities over the years – navigating controversial questions like changes to the SHSAT by seeking common ground.
DENNIS WALCOTT
DONOVAN RICHARDS
IN A borough
known for its distinct neighborhoods, the Queens Library serves as connective tissue that binds cultural enclaves together with a shared mission of enlightening and empowering its residents. Under Dennis Walcott’s leadership, this institution that was once in disarray has reestablished itself as a core part of the community, with programs like English language classes or information on how to access city services.
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HOPE KNIGHT
PRESIDENT AND CEO GREATER JAMAICA DEVELOPMENT CORP. HOPE KNIGHT’S vision of a walkable urban center is becoming a reality in the booming neighborhood of Jamaica. The community has become an anchor of commerce and high-density residential living, with high-end shops, great restaurants and luxury apartment buildings. Knight took over as head of the organization in 2015, when the city invested $150 million to bolster the neighborhood’s potential. She has been a leading voice in driving smart development in the area ever since.
Congratulations and Best Wishes to Former Speaker of the New York City Council
Peter F. Vallone, Sr.
(Principal at Constantinople & Vallone Consulting)
political buzz, Donovan Richards was being lined up as the Queens machine’s preferred pick for borough president if Melinda Katz is elected Queens district attorney. Those plans may go by the wayside if Katz loses to Tiffany Cabán, but Richards’ reputation as a respected political leader hasn’t changed. Higher office is likely in his future – though it is not clear which office.
JIMMY VAN TOBY ANN BRAMER STAVISKY
Michael Gianaris, Jimmy Van Bramer helped lead the charge against bringing a new Amazon headquarters to Long Island City. The councilman representing Astoria, Long Island City, Sunnyside and Woodside encountered backlash from residents and business owners after the company scrapped the plan, which polls indicate a stunning 80% of Queens voters supported. Van Bramer has announced his candidacy for Queens borough president in 2021.
THE DEMOCRATS’
An advocacy campaign including CITY & STATE FIRST READ provides a targeted way to reach decision makers in NEW YORK GOVERNMENT and POLITICS. CAMPAIGNS INCLUDE
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City & State New York
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EVAN STAVISKY
TOM GRECH
PRESIDENT AND CEO QUEENS CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
PARTNER THE PARKSIDE GROUP
SINCE TOM GRECH
ALONG WITH
his partner, Harry Giannoulis, Evan Stavisky has built one of the most effective consulting firms in the state. He is a power broker in the Queens Democratic Party, where he is involved in high-level machinations, often smoothing out conflicts among elected officials and maintaining close ties to the borough’s most influential political leaders.
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HAEDA MIHALTSES
VICE PRESIDENT OF EXTERNAL AFFAIRS NEW YORK METS THIS FORMER Bloomberg administration
executive has been a godsend for the Mets, helping build strategic community partnerships the franchise lacked in the past. Haeda Mihaltses is an experienced government hand, serving as the budget point person for City Council Speaker Peter Vallone before spending 12 years as Bloomberg’s head of intergovernmental affairs. She was recently tapped by Gov. Andrew Cuomo to join the MTA board to help rebuild New York City’s transit system.
took the reins of the Chamber in 2015, the century-old institution has had a renaissance. Membership has grown to its highest level ever, with more than 1,100 organizations representing more than 90,000 employees. Grech has focused on embracing the borough’s diversity and forming strategic partnerships, increasing the Chamber’s influence in city and state government as it advocates for policies and investment to promote growth in the borough.
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JESSICA RAMOS
STATE SENATOR AFTER RIDING the
anti-IDC movement into office last year, Jessica Ramos distinguished herself as one of the most legislatively prolific first-term senators. Among her signature legislative accomplishments was a bill that expands legal rights for farmworkers. She also advocated for a wide range of issues, from the Green Light Bill to the Climate and Community Protection Act, often taking on the role of legislative ambassador at panels and town halls in her district.
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JOHN LIU
STATE SENATOR AFTER UNSEATING
Tony Avella in the primary and winning the general election, John Liu stacked up a list of accomplishments that quickly overshadowed his status as New York’s first Asian American state senator, including passing a law that will increase green roofs across the city and snagging the chairmanship of the subcommittee on New York City education. In April, he used his perch to criticize Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to diversify specialized high schools as “racist.�
SASHA SMOLINA; NEW YORK METS
Â
233 Broadway, Suite 2310 New York, NY 10279 Phone: 212-437-7373 Fax: 212-437-7378 www.cmw.nyc
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PRESIDENT LONG ISLAND CITY PARTNERSHIP
PRESIDENT AND CEO CFM DEVELOPMENT
CHAIRMAN AND CEO LEFRAK
WOOING AMAZON to
THERE IS no bigger
WHEN AN entire “city�
PRESIDENT NEW YORK CITY POLICE BENEVOLENT ASSOCIATION
ELIZABETH LUSSKIN
Long Island City was a tremendous accomplishment spearheaded in many ways by Elizabeth Lusskin. Insiders tell us she was the driving force behind the vision to attract the retail tech giant to LIC and worked tirelessly behind the scenes to try and keep the deal together. While Amazon’s decision to pull out of the deal was a blow to business, the future of the area is still optimistic with powerful advocates like Lusskin.
CARL F. MATTONE
name in Queens real estate than Carl F. Mattone. The Mattone Family Institute for Real Estate Law at St. John’s University is just one example of the Mattone family’s connections to the borough and its philanthropic endeavours. For decades Mattone and his brother, Michael Mattone, ran the company started by their father, Joseph. Last year, Carl Mattone and his son, Carl J. Mattone, started a brand new real estate firm.
RICHARD LEFRAK
with more than 14,000 residents bears your family name (LeFrak City), it’s easy to understand why you made this list. The son of real estate tycoon Samuel LeFrak, Richard LeFrak now controls one of the largest residential portfolios in New York City, with most of the properties concentrated in Queens. LeFrak has had a hand in rent regulation debates in Albany, and reportedly has close ties to President Donald Trump.
PATRICK LYNCH
A FIERCE and un-
apologetic fighter for the men and women in blue, Patrick Lynch has maximized press coverage to gain leverage with Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration over the NYPD’s contract dispute. Even when de Blasio flees the city, as he did in June for a Democratic debate in Miami, the PBA follows him to call attention to the bitter fight, arguing that the mayor is not paying the city’s police officers a fair wage.
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COSTA CONSTANTINIDES
NEW YORK CITY COUNCILMAN
GIVEN HIS environmental priorities, Costa
Constantinides hit a strong benchmark in 2019 when the New York City Council passed the “Green New Deal� he introduced. The councilman sees climate change as an immediate threat and is dedicated to making the city greener – traits that make him popular in progressive Astoria, but (from the perspective of more conservative Queens voters) an outsider in his potential bid to succeed Queens Borough President Melinda Katz.
We congratulate
Jason Naidich, MD
The Partners and Team at Bolton-St. Johns congratulate our Partner,
Northwell Health’s Central Region for being honored on City & State’s Albany Power 100 List for 2016 Executive Director, on his selection to City & State’s Queens Power 100
Bolton-St. Johns is proud of Emily Giske and our firm’s accomplishments in New York State Government R We thank our team members and clients for their amazing collaboration, and we could not be on this list with
Michael J. Dowling President & CEO, Northwell Health Michael A. Epstein Chair, Board of Trustees, Northwell Health
 NYC Albany � �
� �    € � 131 Park Street 7 World Trade Center, Suite 4641 146 State Street � �
 ‚ ƒ New York, NY 10007 Albany, NY 12207
718.882.3100 212.431.4748 518.426.1631
www.boltonstjohns.com
NYC
7 World Trade Center 250 Greenwich St., # 4641 New York, NY 10007 212-431-4748
ALBANY
146 State Street Albany, NY 12207 518-462-4620
www.boltonstjohns.com
BUFFALO
133 Park Street Buffalo, NY 14201 716-882-3100
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CEO JETBLUE AIRWAYS
BUSINESS MANAGER PRESIDENT AFTER THE sudden INTERNATIONAL death of 32BJ SEIU BROTHERHOOD President Héctor OF ELECTRICAL Figueroa in July, WORKERS LOCAL 3
FLOYD FLAKE ROBIN HAYES
SENIOR PASTOR GREATER ALLEN AFRICAN METHODIST EPISCOPAL CATHEDRAL OF NEW YORK
IF YOU look closely
NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL; LISA BERG
at the results of the Queens district attorney race you will notice that Melinda Katz performed best in heavily black Assembly districts near Floyd Flake’s powerful church, suggesting the former congressman still wields considerable influence in Southeast Queens. In addition to being a political power player, Flake also provides spiritual guidance to the more than 23,000 parishioners.
THIS FORTUNE 500
company started operations with a corporate headquarters in Queens and, after considering several other cities in 2010, ended up choosing Long Island City – becoming an anchor for the fast-growing community. Robin Hayes has maintained JetBlue’s reputation as an aviation industry powerhouse, and has played a key role in overseeing upgrades at JFK International Airport, where JetBlue is investing billions to expand and modernize Terminals 6 and 7.
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CHRISTOPHER KYLE BRAGG 32BJ SEIU ERIKSON
THIS POWERFUL union
has been in the headlines for its high-profile contract dispute with Charter Communications, which owns NY1. Christopher Erikson has led that charge, forging political partnerships with Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio, convincing elected officials to boycott NY1, and orchestrating a media campaign urging residents to cancel their service. Erikson has long been a powerful voice for electrical workers, helping thousands of union members.
another Queens resident has taken the helm of one of the city’s most influential labor unions. Kyle Bragg, who previously served as secretary-treasurer at the union, has experience in community organizing as well as labor. He serves on the Southern Queens Park Association and Community Board 13 in far Southeast Queens, and is the founder of the Mount Zion Youth Literacy and Sports Program.
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MICHAEL WOLOZ
PARTNER CONNELLY, MCLAUGHLIN & WOLOZ IN ADDITION to being among the city’s most sought-after consultants for real estate firms, the energy industry and health care, Michael Woloz is a leading voice in the world of Queens politics. He is co-chair of the Astoria-based Powhatan Democratic Club, with his finger on the pulse of Western Queens’ changing landscape. He’s also a leading advocate and lobbyist for the city’s taxi drivers and a member of the New York League of Conservation Voters.
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CONRADO “BOBBY” GEMPESAW
PETER TU
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR FLUSHING CHINESE BUSINESS ASSOCIATION
PRESIDENT ST. JOHN’S UNIVERSITY
ST. JOHN’S UNIVERSITY is a source of
pride for this heavily Catholic borough in both academics and athletics. The first lay person to lead the institution, Philippines-born Conrado “Bobby” Gempesaw took over as president in 2014, and since then he has upped academic standards, increased international partnerships and boosted graduation rates. But the school’s academic accomplishments tend to be overshadowed by sports.
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DANIEL NIGRO
COMMISSIONER FDNY THE BAYSIDE native
who’s spent more than 30 years with the FDNY comes from a family of firefighters and previously served in leadership positions in Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx before becoming commissioner in 2014. Daniel Nigro is committed to the fire department’s efforts to increase its ethnic diversity. He’s trying to keep morale up at the FDNY as city officials debate whether they can afford a fifth firefighter on all engine companies.
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JOSEPH ADDABBO JR.
STATE SENATOR
THE NAME Joseph Addabbo Jr. has been prominent in Southeast Queens for decades. Senior was a congressman for 25 years. Junior served on the New York City Council before winning a state Senate seat in 2009. With Democrats in power, Addabbo has taken on a powerful role as chairman of the Racing and Wagering Committee, working on implementing sports gambling while (with the Aqueduct Racetrack in his district) also advocating to keep horse racing strong.
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VICTORIA SCHNEPSYUNIS & JOSHUA SCHNEPS
PUBLISHER AND PRESIDENT; COPUBLISHER AND CEO SCHNEPS MEDIA ONE OF the largest local newspaper families in New York, with a weekly circulation of more than 350,000 and more than 2.5 million monthly page views, Schneps Media produces community newspapers distributed throughout Queens on a weekly basis. Victoria Schneps-Yunis and Joshua Schneps’ media empire features a full slate of events, conferences and special publications.
PETER TU is wellknown to politicians, consultants, lobbyists and campaign hands. For many, he’s a conduit to understanding the complex and robust Chinese immigrant community in the United States that is rapidly growing. He’s also a trusted leader in the community, helping small businesses get started and spearheading cultural events like the Lunar New Year Parade. “I want to keep the culture strong,” he told the Queens Ledger.
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PRESIDENT RESORTS WORLD CASINO NEW YORK CITY
STATE SENATOR
SCOTT MOLINA
FAR MORE than slot
machines, Resorts World Casino is a world-class entertainment venue that anchors the economy of Southeast Queens, along with neighboring JFK Airport and Aqueduct Racetrack. The casino employs more than 1,000 people and has generated nearly $2 billion in revenue for state education. Under Scott Molina’s leadership, Resorts World Casino is planning a $400 million expansion, including a new hotel.
LEROY COMRIE
FOR NEARLY two
decades, Leroy Comrie has been a prominent figure in Queens politics as a New York City councilman, deputy borough president and state senator, replacing his disgraced predecessor Malcolm Smith. A steady and constant voice of reason, Comrie is the type of politician who puts his community ahead of himself, which is why he is well-liked among colleagues and trusted by constituents in the Southeast Queens communities he represents.
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FOUNDERS SILVERCUP STUDIOS
SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AND REGIONAL EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CENTRAL REGION NORTHWELL HEALTH
STUART & ALAN SUNA
JASON NAIDICH
BROTHERS STUART
and Alan Suna had a dream in the 1980s – more than 30 years later, that dream has grown into one of New York City’s biggest film and television production studios. In addition to operating Silvercup Studios, where shows like “Sex and the City,” “The Sopranos,” and “Mad Men” were filmed, the Suna brothers have developed residential real estate in Long Island City, playing a role in efforts to woo Amazon to Queens.
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JACLYN MUCARIA
PRESIDENT NEWYORK-PRESBYTERIAN QUEENS THE FORMER Salvation Army Booth Memorial
hospital has gone through a transformation in recent years, with NewYork-Presbyterian taking over the facility and Jaclyn Mucaria leading efforts to make it a first-class experience for patients and their families. Located in the heart of Flushing, the hospital has expanded services, forged community partnerships, including with St. John’s University athletics, and is adding more primary care specialists so residents can receive on-site care.
NORTHWELL HEALTH is among the
biggest health care providers in Queens, and Jason Naidich is responsible for overseeing the majority of its facilities in the borough, including Long Island Jewish Medical Center, Cohen’s Children’s Medical Center, and Long Island Jewish Forest Hills Hospital. A respected radiologist, Naidich is charged with developing strategic plans to provide quality care to tens of thousands of Queens residents.
STATE SENATE; NEWYORK-PRESBYTERIAN QUEENS
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Congratulations to this year’s Queens Power 100, especially Kasirer team member Richard David! Kasirer is the #1 lobbying and government relations firm in New York. We advocate on behalf of a wide range of clients who seek local expertise in navigating the City. We advance our clients’ goals—building coalitions and consensus and influencing decision-makers in the dynamic political landscape that defines New York. And our team of professionals, whose careers intersect at politics, policy and government, achieve victory on behalf of our clients with an unwavering commitment to the highest standard of ethics in the industry.
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PRESIDENT AND CEO KAUFMAN ASTORIA STUDIOS
COMMISSIONER NEW YORK CITY DEPARTMENT OF BUILDINGS
BISHOP ROMAN CATHOLIC DIOCESE OF BROOKLYN
OVER THE course of nearly 40 years, Hal Rosenbluth helped build Kaufman Astoria Studios into one of the East Coast’s premier television and film production studios. Home to popular shows like “Orange is the New Black” and “Nurse Jackie,” KAS offers more than 500,000 square feet of sound stages and production suites, enabling shows to plan, shoot and edit in the same place. He is also a member of several local organizations.
A LIFELONG Queens resident, Melanie La Rocca in June took the reins of the agency charged with regulating over 1 million buildings and 45,000 construction sites. The role combines her knowledge of the construction industry – she previously oversaw the development of new schools as vice president of development and external affairs at the School Construction Authority – with her advocacy experience from her days as a community board member.
CO-EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR CENTER FOR POPULAR DEMOCRACY
THE COUNTRY was
Queens’ 2.4 million residents identify as Catholic, with the church’s education system serving as a pillar of the community from pre-K through high school. Nicholas DiMarzio is the spiritual leader for the borough and a leading international voice on protecting immigrants. He has consulted with world leaders on migration and testified before Congress about immigration issues.
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HAL MELANIE LA ROSENBLUTH ROCCA
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THOMAS SUOZZI
CONGRESSMAN
THOMAS SUOZZI represents only a small part
of Eastern Queens, but the neighborhoods in his district are vital to his success. Suozzi relied heavily on the borough to win the Democratic primary, running up the tally there in general elections, so it’s safe to say Queens is his safety net. And in Congress, he makes sure he delivers for the borough by advocating for quieter skies, standing up to ICE and much more.
JAMES GERARD SANDERS JR. SWEENEY, STATE SENATOR MICHAEL JAMES SANDERS REICH, JR. has always been something of a FRANK A. rogue Democrat. He was one of the few BOLZ III elected officials to
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MARK WEPRIN
SHAREHOLDER GREENBERG TRAURIG
THE FORMER New York City councilman,
assemblyman and trusted government aide to Gov. Andrew Cuomo now plies his trade at Greenberg Traurig, one of New York’s most influential law firms. Mark Weprin uses his extensive experience to help clients navigate city and state government and complicated land use issues. He was among lobbyists deployed to push back against the opposition to Amazon’s plans to bring its headquarters to Long Island City.
back Tiffany Cabán’s Queens district attorney campaign. While the Marine Corps veteran can sometimes be a pain for the Queens Democratic Party, that hasn’t stopped him from being an effective state senator and grabbing the chairmanship of the powerful Committee on Banks, where he fights for more access to capital for small businesses and entrepreneurs.
FOUNDING PARTNERS SWEENEY, REICH & BOLZ LLP
THIS LAWYER trio has long dominated the Queens court system. Michael Reich, executive secretary of the Queens Democratic Party, doles out funding to judges running for office; Frank Bolz gets petitions from challengers invalidated; and Gerard Sweeney rakes in cash from disposing the estates of deceased residents. But activists are looking to take the party by storm in 2020.
ANA MARIA ARCHILA
introduced to Ana Maria Archila when she confronted thenU.S. Sen. Jeff Flake during confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh – speaking powerfully about her experience with sexual assault. The Columbian-born activist has established a reputation as a fighter for racial and economic justice. Her tireless work helped grow Make the Road New York into a political powerhouse.
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DERMOT SMYTH
QUEENS POLITICAL ACTION COORDINATOR UNITED FEDERATION OF TEACHERS DERMOT SMYTH is
the borough’s leading voice for the powerful United Federation of Teachers, handling local issues and organizing teachers for larger actions like rallies at City Hall or in Albany. Smyth fights tirelessly alongside others from UFT to keep schools open, advocate for educators and push back against the de Blasio administration when necessary. He also leads the charge when it comes to identifying political candidates who will stand up for teachers once elected.
NICHOLAS DIMARZIO
ROUGHLY A third of
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JUKAY HSU
CO-FOUNDER AND CEO PURSUIT THIS HARVARD grad
and former Army officer has dedicated the past eight years to transforming the lives of those less fortunate through technology. With Pursuit, Jukay Hsu provides low-income adults a pathway to a tech career through an intensive four-year program that has landed hundreds of people well-paying jobs in the emerging industry. Because of the program’s success, elected officials and activists often seek Hsu’s advice on workforce development issues.
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES; GREENBERG TRAURIG; NATALIE CARTZ PHOTOGRAPHY; WILFREDO BENITEZ
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CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER CAPALINO+COMPANY
NEW YORK CITY COUNCILMAN
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR QUEENS ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CORP.
NEW YORK CITY COUNCILMAN
TRAVIS TERRY
IN ADDITION to
being one of the key players behind the success of Capalino+Company, arguably the most effective lobbying firm in New York City, Travis Terry is also a Queens power broker. The Forest Hills resident is one of the biggest backers of the QueensWay, a plan to convert 3.5 miles of railbed into a park. He also sits on the board of the influential Regional Plan Association, providing an outer-borough perspective.
PAUL VALLONE
PAUL VALLONE is
the latest in a long line of Vallones to serve on the City Council – including his father, Peter, who served as speaker. The Northeast Queens representative has set himself apart by securing budget funding for schools, libraries and parks, including $19 million in this year’s cycle. Now chairman of the City Council Economic Development Committee, he is considered a likely candidate for borough president when the seat next becomes available.
SETH BORNSTEIN
SETH BORNSTEIN
has run the Queens Economic Development Corp., a public-private entity aimed at creating jobs, for nearly a decade and was part of the team for another 30 years before that. Although he was disappointed by Amazon dropping its HQ2 plan, he hopes that lessons can be learned – that companies bringing jobs to the borough will better engage with locals and community advocates.
I. DANEEK MILLER
THIS FORMER labor
leader is one of the most prominent voices in Southeast Queens politics and a tireless advocate for workers – even if that means being arrested for protesting outside Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office. His ties with other elected officials in the neighborhood make him effective at moving legislation. He recently defended schools Chancellor Richard Carranza, who was criticized for his “divisive” remarks on race in the school system, according to the Queens Chronicle.
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ANNE MARIE ANZALONE & JOHN ALBERT
CONSULTANTS BOLTON-ST. JOHNS
ANNE MARIE ANZALONE joined Bolton-St.
Johns in January, bringing extensive experience in government affairs with a focus on constituent services – including working for late Assemblyman Denis Butler of Astoria and former Rep. Joseph Crowley. Born and raised in Queens, John Albert has wide-ranging experience in advocacy.
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PRESIDENT AND CEO ROCKAWAY DEVELOPMENT AND REVITALIZATION CORP.
CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER USTA BILLIE JEAN KING NATIONAL TENNIS CENTER
CO-FOUNDER AND CEO URBAN UPBOUND
PARTNER CONSTANTINOPLE & VALLONE CONSULTING LLC
SOUTHEAST QUEENS has been on
Queens hosts one of the world’s premier sporting events – the U.S. Open – where the world’s best tennis players compete in the final major of the year. Nearly 700,000 people attended the two-week extravaganza last year, and Daniel Zausner made sure the event went off without a hitch. He also led the recent $600 million overhaul of the grounds, which included adding a roof to Arthur Ashe Stadium.
KEVIN ALEXANDER
the rebound after suffering the devastating effects of Superstorm Sandy, thanks to a city-driven rezoning and a ferry link between Far Rockaway and lower Manhattan. But the groundwork was laid by local champions like Kevin Alexander, a Queens native who since 2011 has headed the Rockaway Development and Revitalization Corp.
DANIEL ZAUSNER
EVERY SUMMER
MITCHELL TAYLOR
PETER VALLONE SR.
SUPPORTERS OF
the Amazon HQ2 project in Long Island City were pleased when Mitchell Taylor blessed the deal, saying it would benefit residents of NYCHA’s Queensbridge Houses. The fact his support carried so much weight speaks to the influence he’s had in the borough throughout his career, as he worked to transform public housing communities. While Amazon ultimately bailed, Taylor continues to fight for projects that create jobs.
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THE PATRIARCH
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JOHN CHOE
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR GREATER FLUSHING CHAMBER OF COMMERCE BUSINESS IS booming in New York City’s real Chinatown – also known as Flushing. The neighborhood is always bustling with activity and residential high-rises keep popping up, signaling that things aren’t going to slow down. All of this is good news for John Choe, who is a constant and effective cheerleader for the area while also providing invaluable educational and networking support to local businesses – many run by recent immigrants.
of one of the most prominent political families in New York City, Peter Vallone Sr. may not hold elected office anymore but he still has a role to play. After retiring from politics, he began practicing law with his son, Peter Vallone Jr., who succeeded him in the City Council in 2002. Vallone Sr. also founded a lobbying firm with partner Anthony Constantinople and works closely with clients, including Waste Management.
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RUSCHELL BOONE
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CHAIRMAN; PRESIDENT TF CORNERSTONE
NEW YORK CITY HEALTH + HOSPITALS/ ELMHURST
BROTHERS TOM
ISRAEL ROCHA JR.
TOM AND ISRAEL FRED ROCHA JR. CEO ELGHANAYAN
GENERAL ASSIGNMENT REPORTER NY1
WITH A command-
ing presence and a joyful approach to covering the news, Ruschell Boone has become the face of Queens for NY1, covering the borough exclusively for more than a decade before branching out to cover other parts of the city. Over the years, she’s delivered impactful reports on the police shooting of Sean Bell, the impacts of Superstorm Sandy and garbage problems in Jamaica, picking up countless awards and honors.
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NILY ROZIC
ASSEMBLYWOMAN WITH PROGRESSIVE credentials, a good
relationship with the Queens Democratic Committee, a powerful voice on social media channels and a likeable and hardworking presence on the ground in her district, Nily Rozic is an example of the modern Queens lawmaker. By focusing on identifying problems in her district and passing legislation to fix them, instead of engaging in political fights to get headlines, Rozic has solidified herself as a rising star in the party.
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and Fred Elghanayan are among Long Island City’s biggest landlords, owning and operating at least 5,000 units in New York City’s fastest-growing neighborhood. Their work has included a major retail and residential development along the waterfront. They would have likely made a windfall in profits if the Amazon HQ2 project had gone through, but even with the setback, TF Cornerstone will likely remain a real estate powerhouse for years to come.
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DAVID O’ROURKE
JOSHUA MUSS
PRESIDENT AND CEO NEW YORK RACING ASSOCIATION
CHAIRMAN MUSS DEVELOPMENT LLC
HORSE RACING
scape where the bonds between the real estate industry and the Democratic Party are increasingly strained, Forest Hillsbased Muss Development has been scaling back its political contributions. Since 2018, Joshua Muss, who recently stepped down as president, donated $5,400 to the campaign of Borough President Melinda Katz, who promised in her district attorney bid to focus on investigating construction sites. The Muss family donated nearly $14,000 to Katz’s past campaigns.
is a major industry in Queens, with Aqueduct Racetrack and nearby Belmont Park (just across the border) providing thousands of jobs and a source of entertainment for many residents. The industry relies on money gambled on the races, and David O’Rourke has worked to increase revenue and up betting for the past few years. He took over as president and CEO earlier this year.
IN A political land-
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ARAVELLA SIMOTAS
ASSEMBLYWOMAN
HAVING WORKED as a staffer for Peter Vallone Sr., Aravella Simotas entered politics alongside a figure that rearranged the power dynamic of the New York City Council from his Astoria seat for over 16 years. Simotas herself is more of a community advocate than a power broker, working to give a voice to women, families, seniors and students. She recently introduced a law increasing the statute of limitations for second-degree rape and incest.
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FRANCISCO MOYA
NEW YORK CITY COUNCILMAN
THE APPEARANCE of
became head of Elmhurst Hospital Center in 2016, overseeing a medical network that serves one of the most ethnically and linguistically diverse places in the world. With nearly 1 million residents relying on the hospital’s care, Rocha has been proactive in combating troubling community health issues like high blood pressure. He is vice president of OneCity Health, which focuses on restructuring health care delivery.
Target stores across the borough has sparked problems for City Councilman Francisco Moya over the past year. Moya angered anti-gentrification advocates by blessing a rezoning that would bring a Target to Elmhurst, only to change his message several months later when the application was challenged by the City Council. Moya’s relationship with Joseph Crowley provided him with support from the Queens Democratic Party. Now that connection could be put to the test.
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PETER KOO
NEW YORK CITY COUNCILMAN
PETER KOO rep-
resents one of New York City’s largest immigrant communities and is an ardent protector of its cultural identity, both through his work on the City Council and his personal philanthropy. A pharmacist by training, Koo often advocates for small businesses on the City Council and has fought for additional funding for parks and libraries in his district. He was recently named chairman of the influential Committee on Parks and Recreation.
KEITH M. LITTLE
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR SCO FAMILY SERVICES
KEITH LITTLE came
to this vital nonprofit that reaches thousands of Queens residents with more than 30 years of leadership experience in health care, child welfare and juvenile justice. For more than 100 years, SCO has been providing vital services to children to help them reach their potential, including operating early childhood education centers, running programs designed to keep at-risk families together and providing a pathway to work or education for runaway and homeless teens.
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ASSEMBLYWOMAN
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR 82ND STREET PARTNERSHIP
ASSEMBLYMAN
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE
VIVIAN COOK
VIVIAN COOK is
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AUDREY PHEFFER
QUEENS COUNTY CLERK
THE PHEFFER name has been synonymous with political power for decades on the Rockaways. Audrey Pheffer served in the Assembly for 24 years, and now her daughter, Stacey Pheffer Amato, has taken over her seat. Pheffer now serves as the official record-keeper for Queens County – which includes keeping track of marriage and divorce records, business certificates and passports – as well as clerk of the Supreme Court and the Commissioner of Jurors.
THIS EX-BLOOMBERG
administration official has put her stamp on the Jackson Heights and Elmhurst Business Improvement District since she took over more than four years ago. By tapping into her background in finance at the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, Leslie Ramos has strategically brought in new businesses, tackled controversial development issues with grace and partnered with community organizations.
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PRESIDENT AND CEO NEW YORK HALL OF SCIENCE
ASSEMBLYWOMAN
PRESIDENT BUKHARIAN JEWISH CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA
FOUNDER 100 SUITS FOR 100 MEN
MARGARET HONEY
THIS LEADER in sci-
ASSEMBLY; SUBMITTED; NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL
like the grandma of Southeast Queens. She’s a trusted and steady voice of reason who speaks up when necessary but is also comfortable working behind the scenes for the greater good. Newly minted as the county committee chairwoman of the Queens County Democratic Committee, Cook is a trusted soldier in the party, which has helped her weather accusations that she has used politically incorrect language in the past.
LESLIE RAMOS
ence education has brought a series of innovative programs to the Flushing Meadows-Corona Park museum since taking over more than a decade ago. Margaret Honey has developed creative ways to make STEM learning appealing to kids with new exhibits like the current “Space Out Summer” event series celebrating the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11. She has recently pushed for a new pre-K center at the museum, which is slated to open soon.
ALICIA HYNDMAN
RESPECTED UNIVERSALLY both in
Albany and back home in her Southeast Queens district, Alicia Hyndman is a lawmaker on the rise. This year, she has been a powerful voice on forging a path forward to make New York City’s elite high schools more accessible to black and Latino students without outright scrapping the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test. She has also worked hard to forge partnerships to create a jobs pipeline for her constituents.
BORIS KANDOV
FOREST HILLS
and Rego Park are home to the largest population of Bukharian Jews in the United States – with restaurants, meat markets, bakeries and shops lining 108th Street between 63rd and 65th avenues. Boris Kandov, who co-owns a limousine company, is the voice of the community and has become increasingly politically active in recent years, encouraging community members to live the American dream.
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EDWARD CARL BRAUNSTEIN GOODMAN
THE BAYSIDE law-
maker doesn’t seek out headlines for the sake of seeing his name in the paper. Instead, Edward Braunstein works behind the scenes to forge alliances with both new and veteran Assembly members, racking up a record of legislative successes designed to have a positive impact on people’s lives. Last year, he led the fight to criminalize “revenge porn” and worked to get congestion pricing carve-outs for his constituents.
THIS ASTORIA
institution is one of the coolest museums in the city, featuring unique events and screenings like this summer’s 13-part film series “Grit and Glitter: Before and After Stonewall.” Carl Goodman oversees the entire operation, which includes among its main attractions a permanent exhibition dedicated to Muppets creator Jim Henson’s career.
KEVIN LIVINGSTON
100 SUITS was founded in 2011 with a simple mission: provide business attire for men and women looking to break into the professional world. Since then, celebrities have contributed to the cause and Kevin Livingston has been featured in the national media and on “The Steve Harvey Show.” A certified nonprofit since 2015, the organization remains dedicated to Livingston’s mission to help his fellow community members – one suit at a time.
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ERIC ULRICH
NEW YORK CITY COUNCILMAN THE QUEENS Republican Party has been in
disarray for almost a decade, creating an opportunity for Eric Ulrich to be a standard-bearer for some of the borough’s more conservative residents. Hardly your traditional Republican, Ulrich has succeeded in becoming a relevant voice in the New York City Council by establishing partnerships across the aisle. And he finished second in last year’s public advocate race, which included a field of 17 candidates.
CityAndStateNY.com
August 5, 2019
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EXECUTIVE AND ARTISTIC DIRECTOR FLUSHING TOWN HALL
PRESIDENT AND CEO JAMAICA HOSPITAL MEDICAL CENTER
PRESIDENT AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR QUEENS MUSEUM
BOARD CHAIRWOMAN EASTERN QUEENS ALLIANCE
EVERY WEEK,
ONE OF the bor-
THIS PROMINENT
THIS TIRELESS
ELLEN KODADEK
Flushing Town Hall features a variety of cultural experiences, musical performances and workshops, and Ellen Kodadek is the person who pulls it all together. In the past decade, she has transformed the historic building and the accompanying Flushing Council on Culture and the Arts, fixing its fiscal troubles and turning it into a vibrant gathering place. This summer’s lineup includes live jazz, puppetry from Taiwan and a Brazilian drum performance.
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ANTONIOS BENETATOS
PRESIDENT DUTCH KILLS CIVIC ASSOCIATION AS WESTERN
Queens undergoes a development boom, public feedback is vital to ensure the rapid changes don’t cause residents irreparable harm. When not weighing in on ideas for the massive redevelopment, Antonios Benetatos is an advocate for the Dutch Kills neighborhood, convincing the MTA earlier this year to add its name to an N train stop. One of 45 people named to the short-lived Amazon Advisory Committee, he also sits on the Sunnyside Yards Steering Committee.
BRUCE J. FLANZ
ough’s oldest hospitals, Jamaica Hospital has gone through a transformation over the past few decades, becoming a vital health care institution for hundreds of thousands of Queens residents. Bruce Flanz took over in 2011, when the hospital was embroiled in a bribery controversy, and has managed to steady the ship over the past eight years by expanding care options and striking strategic partnerships in the community.
SALLY TALLANT
museum and cultural center known for its artistic displays and educational programs looked across the pond to find its new president, tapping Sally Tallant from Liverpool, England, for the position. Taking over for a predecessor who was removed from her post as a result of her political activism, Tallant has pledged to create a cultural space for “people to engage with the urgent issues of our time.”
BARBARA E. BROWN
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TIMOTHY LYNCH
INTERIM PRESIDENT QUEENSBOROUGH COMMUNITY COLLEGE THIS CUNY school has become a vital pathway for tens of thousands of students looking to forge a better future. Timothy Lynch had big shoes to fill when former Queensborough Community College President Diane Call stepped aside after a nearly 50-year career in higher education, but he’s upholding the school’s mission of providing a nurturing learning environment for a diverse student body, where nearly 80% of students are people of color.
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JOANN & DONNIE WHITEHEAD
SHARON LEE
QUEENS DEPUTY BOROUGH PRESIDENT
COMMUNITY ACTIVISTS
WITH QUEENS
THESE TWO dedi-
cated activists were already legendary in the minds of insurgent Democrats looking to break into politics before they had a high-profile cameo in the hit Netflix documentary “Knock Down the House.” Rising Democratic star Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called their activism “the war room for every insurgent campaign in Queens.” The Whiteheads were also vital early organizers for Barack Obama back in 2008, when much of the state was backing Hillary Clinton.
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RORY LANCMAN
NEW YORK CITY COUNCILMAN RORY LANCMAN’S hopes for the Queens district attorney primary fell flat, and with them his attempts to flank Melinda Katz from the left. Though he made an appearance alongside Queens Democratic Party Chairman Gregory Meeks, magnifying Meeks’ criticism of Tiffany Cabán, he denied that his decision to back Katz in the race was motivated by an “establishment” deal, reports the Queens Courier. What remains clear is that he is standing behind the Queens Democratic Party.
Borough President Melinda Katz in the midst of a back-andforth district attorney battle with Tiffany Cabán, the borough president’s office has been humming along, thanks in large part to Sharon Lee. A former communications director for Katz and past adviser to thenCity Comptroller John Liu, Lee was promoted to deputy borough president last year, and could join Katz in the district attorney’s office depending on how a Cabán court challenge plays out.
community activist has dedicated her career to bettering the lives of Southeast Queens residents, fighting for educational opportunities for children, speaking out against airplane noise and uniting area civic groups to solve local problems. Barbara Brown is also a leader in preserving parkland and advocating for a healthy environment. The EQA has led efforts to preserve and restore the wetlands in Idlewild Park Preserve.
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BRETT LITTMAN
DIRECTOR THE NOGUCHI MUSEUM
BRETT LITTMAN
has big shoes to fill as he takes over for former Noguchi Museum Director Jenny Dixon – but the former head of Manhattan’s The Drawing Center has a notable leadership record of his own. Designed by Japanese American sculptor Isamu Noguchi, the museum has become one of the city’s cultural gems over the past two decades. Plans to open its famed artists’ studio to the public for the first time were announced earlier this year.
QUEENSBOROUGH COMMUNITY COLLEGE; SUBMITTED
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DANIEL LEONE
PRESIDENT AND CEO QUEENS PUBLIC TELEVISION LOCAL TV channels
have been mocked in popular culture for years, but – in one of the most diverse places in the world – QPTV provides a vital and important outlet for communities to make their voices heard. The station features original shows profiling unique communities, like “Made in Queens” and “Around Queens.” Daniel Leone oversees daily operations and programming at QPTV, as well as developing strategies to keep the station relevant.
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MARCIA KEIZS
PRESIDENT YORK COLLEGE THIS KINGSTON,
Jamaica-born educator has led York College for more than a decade, as the CUNY institution grew alongside downtown Jamaica, Queens, experiencing a revival in unison with the flourishing neighborhood. Marcia Keizs has been widely recognized for her innovative leadership. Although she is retiring at the end of August and heading to Bronx Community College, where she will return to teaching, she will likely remain a leading voice in the community for years to come.
August 5, 2019
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CLYDE VANEL
WILLIAM TRAMONTANO
ASSEMBLYMAN
INTERIM PRESIDENT QUEENS COLLEGE
CLYDE VANEL
was vocal about his frustrations with the opposition to the Amazon deal. Aside from the jobs it would have brought to Queens, the deal represented an opportunity for Vanel to boost the impact of his role as chairman of the Subcommittee on Internet and New Technology. Vanel’s approach to the tech industry is based on studying how to harness its economic benefits. He recently created a task force studying the regulation of cryptocurrency.
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SHAMSI ALI
DIRECTOR JAMAICA MUSLIM CENTER
AFTER 9/11, Shamsi
Ali was a prominent national voice promoting interfaith dialogue. His work earned him recognition from former President George W. Bush, but he has been criticized by more conservative Muslims. These days he still speaks out against violence against any religion and works to build bridges between his Queens congregation and other religions. He doesn’t shy away from political criticism, calling out President Donald Trump for failing to appropriately denounce racism.
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JUAN RESTREPO
QUEENS ORGANIZER TRANSPORTATION ALTERNATIVES IF YOU ask Queens residents about some of the biggest changes they’ve seen in recent years, you will likely hear a lot about bike lanes. While this has been one of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s signature issues on a macro level, Juan Restrepo and his colleagues at Transportation Alternatives have been doing the heavy peddling locally, organizing rallies to draw attention to problem areas and pushing back against community boards opposed to the new lanes.
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ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT, NONPROFITS KASIRER
PRESIDENT HINDU TEMPLE SOCIETY OF NORTH AMERICA
RICHARD DAVID
THE HEAD of this
RICHARD DAVID
brought more than nonprofit experience to New York City’s highest-grossing lobbying firm; he brought his experience within the Indo-Caribbean and South Asian communities of Queens as well. A Guyanese-American who serves as co-district leader for Assembly District 31 and was a community board member for 10 years, David has provided a bridge into one of Queens’ largest immigrant groups. He came to Kasirer from the city Administration for Children’s Services.
AFTER A career in New York City higher education, William Tramontano got the nod this spring to take over as interim president of the CUNY school after Félix V. Matos Rodríguez left to take over as CUNY chancellor. Tramontano spent 22 years teaching biology at Manhattan College while getting a taste of administrative experience as department chair. He also helped develop curriculum at Lehman College and served as adviser to the president at Hunter College.
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PAUL ARCARIO
INTERIM PRESIDENT LAGUARDIA COMMUNITY COLLEGE
PAUL ARCARIO
has big shoes to fill as he takes over as interim president of LaGuardia Community College. Arcario is filling in following the departure of Gail Mellow, who served for nearly two decades as president of the CUNY school, which is known for serving mostly low-income students. But the school’s former provost, a Queens native who has been at the institution for more than three decades, knows his way around.
UMA MYSOREKAR
Flushing-based cultural and spiritual center has served as a representative of the faith at White House conferences under former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush – as well as meeting other world leaders. The basement of the temple is home to a popular vegetarian canteen with some of the best dosas in the city. It serves as many as 10,000 people during Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights.
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CATALINA CRUZ
ASSEMBLYWOMAN
CATALINA CRUZ, who came to Jackson Heights from Columbia at age 9 with a mother who worked selling tamales and empanadas to support herself, was the first DACA recipient elected to the Assembly. A fierce champion for immigrants’ rights and former counsel to the New York City Council’s Immigration Committee, Cruz played a significant role in pushing for the Green Light bill that would allow people to obtain driver’s licenses regardless of their immigration status.
HORSE AND DUCK STUDIO; CRUZ FOR NEW YORK
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PUBLIC and LEGAL NOTICES / CityAndStateNY.com
August 5, 2019
August 5, 2019 For more info. 212-268-0442 Ext.2039
legalnotices@cityandstateny.com Notice of Qualification of HOTELS STATLER EMPLOYER LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 06/17/19. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 06/11/19. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. DE addr. of LLC: 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State, 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity. JRP 143 LLC, Arts. of Org. filed with SSNY 04/26/2019. Office loc: NY County. SSNY has been designated as agent upon whom process against LLC may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: United States Corporation Agents, Inc. 7014 13th Avenue, Suite 202, Brooklyn, NY 11228. Purpose: Any Lawful Purpose. Notice of Formation of MJM ADVISORY, LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 06/20/19. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 245 E. 87th St., Apt. 9F, NY, NY 10128. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC at the addr. of its princ. office. Purpose: Consulting business.
NOTICE OF QUAL. of 477 Madison LLC. Auth. filed Sec’y of State (SSNY) 6/7/19. Off. Loc: NY Co. LLC org. in DE 6/3/19. SSNY desig. as agent of LLC upon whom proc. against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of proc. to NRAI, 28 Liberty St., New York, NY 10005, the Reg. Agt upon whom proc. may be served. DE off. Addr.: 160 Greentree Dr., Ste 101, Dover, DE 19904. Cert of Form. on file: SSDE, Townsend Bldg., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: any lawful activity. ANIONIX LLC, Arts. of Org. filed with SSNY 06/04/2019. Office loc: NY County. SSNY has been designated as agent upon whom process against LLC may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: ANIONIX LLC, Attn: 27 Endeavors LLC, 2146 NW Chrystal Drive, McMinnville, OR 97128. Purpose: Any Lawful Purpose. BZJ FITNESS LLC, Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 06/28/2019. Office loc: NY County. SSNY has been designated as agent upon whom process against the LLC may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: The LLC, 358 5th Ave., 5th Flr, NY, NY 10001. Purpose: Any Lawful Purpose.
LEGALNOTICES@ CITYANDSTATENY.COM
Notice of Qualification of 311 10TH AVENUE MARKET RATE RESIDENTIAL, LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 06/19/19. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 06/17/19. Princ. office of LLC: 60 Columbus Circle, 19th Fl., NY, NY 10023. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Corporation Service Co. (CSC), 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. DE addr. of LLC: c/o CSC, 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State of DE, John G. Townsend Bldg., Federal & Duke of York Sts., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity. Notice of Qualification of G&I IX EMPIRE THRUWAY PLAZA LAND LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 06/24/19. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 06/21/19. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Corporation Service Co. (CSC), 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. DE addr. of LLC: c/o CSC, 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State, John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
LEGALNOTICES@ CITYANDSTATENY.COM
8217 24th AVENUE LLC. Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 06/21/19. Office: Kings County. SSNY designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to the LLC, 8217 24th Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11214. Purpose: Any lawful purpose.
Notice of Qual. of EXTRA DELUXE LLC, Authority filed with the SSNY on 06/14/2019. Office loc: NY County. LLC formed in DE on 06/13/2019. SSNY is designated as agent upon whom process against the LLC may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: C/O Walsh and Tsempelis, 277 Broadway, Ste 510, NY, NY 10007. Address required to be maintained in DE: 310 Adler Road, Dover, DE 19904. Cert of Formation filed with DE Div. of Corps, 401 Federal St., Ste 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any Lawful Purpose. Notice of Formation of Bridges 777 3rd Ave LLC. Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 06/10/19. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: 399 Lafayette St., 2nd Fl., NY, NY 10003. Purpose: any lawful activities. Notice of formation of limited liability company (LLC). Name: HIPPIE ROCKSTARS, LLC. Articles of Organization filed with Secretary of State of New York (SSNY) on 5/11/2017. NY office location: Kings 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 C/O United States Corporation Agents, Inc.,7014 13th Avenue, Suite 202 Brooklyn, NY, 11228. Purpose/character of LLC: Any Lawful Purpose. Notice of Formation of HILLROSE 28 MANAGEMENT, LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 06/26/19. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: c/o Coral Realty, Attn: Cris Alcamo, Esq., 400 Broome St., 11th Fl., NY, NY 10013. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC at the addr. of its princ. office. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
MR. LIVIZ LLC, Arts. of Org. filed with SSNY 04/10/2019. Office loc: NY County. SSNY has been designated as agent upon whom process against LLC may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: MR. LIVIZ LLC, Attn: Michelle Lawton, 405 W 147th Street, New York, NY 10031. Purpose: Any Lawful Purpose. Notice of Formation of 28 STUBBE DRIVE LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 06/20/19. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 152 W. 57th St., 60th Fl., NY, NY 10019. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC at the addr. of its princ. office. Purpose: Any lawful activity. Notice of Formation of Limited Liability Company (LLC) Name: 153 COLUMBIA ST., LLC. Articles of Organization filed with Secretary of State of New York (SSNY) on May 31, 2019. Office Location: Kings County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to: 175 Van Dyke Street, Brooklyn, NY 11231. Purpose: to engage in any and all business for which LLCs may be formed under the New York LLC law. Notice of Formation of CROWN RC LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 06/26/19. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 667 Madison Ave., 12th Fl., NY, NY 10065. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
LEGALNOTICES@ CITYANDSTATENY.COM
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.Notice of Formation of CROWN IC LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 06/26/19. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 667 Madison Ave., 12th Fl., NY, NY 10065. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207. Purpose: Any lawful activity. Notice of Qualification of Ghost Town Blues LLC. Authority filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 06/12/19. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 06/05/19. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: c/o Ilyse Dolgenas, Withers Bergman LLP, 430 Park Ave., 10th Fl., NY, NY 10022. Address to be maintained in DE: The Corporation Trust Company, 1209 N. Orange St., Wilmington, DE 19801. Arts of Org. filed with the DE Secy. of State., Division of Corporations, John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: any lawful activities. NOTICE OF FORMATION of ESC Productions, LLC. Art. of Org. filed with the Secy of State of NY (SSNY) on 3/22/17. Off. Loc.: NY County. SSNY has been desig. as agent upon whom process against it may be served. The address to which the SSNY shall mail a copy to is: Emily Cohn, 40 West 77th St, Apt #3E, New York, NY 10024. Purpose: Any lawful act. Notice of Formation of MANHATTAN INDIVIDUAL AND FAMILY PSYCHIATRY PLLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 06/27/19. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of PLLC: 372 W. 250th St., Riverdale, NY 10471-2929. SSNY designated as agent of PLLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Frederic I. Kass, MD at the princ. office of the PLLC. Purpose: Medicine.
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CityAndStateNY.com / PUBLIC and LEGAL NOTICES
Notice of Formation of Liquid States LLC. Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 06/18/19. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: c/o Veltri Management, LLC, 27 W. 70th St., Ste. 2A, NY, NY 10023. Purpose: any lawful activities. Notice of Formation of Necessary Content, LLC filed with SSNY on May 8th, 2019. Office: NY County. SSNY designated agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to United States Corporation Agents, Inc., 7014 13th Avenue, Suite 202 Brooklyn, NY 11228 Purpose: any lawful act or activity. Notice of Formation of AVAILING HANDS OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY, PLLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 04/18/19. Office location: Westchester County. Princ. office of PLLC: 941 McLean Avenue, Suite 264, Yonkers, NY 10704. SSNY designated as agent of PLLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the PLLC at the addr. of its princ. office. Purpose: Therapeutic Service. Notice of Formation of DBR Group LLC filed with SSNY on June 14, 2019. Office: Richmond County. SSNY designated agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to LLC: 309 Wingham St, Staten Island, NY 10305. Purpose: any lawful act or activity. Notice of formation of IndUs Crafts LLC under the Articles of Organisation filed with SSNY on the 8th of July 2019, The office of Westchester County, SSNY designated agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shal mail copy of process to LLC at, 82 Random Farms Circle, Chappaqua, NY 10514 to purpose any lawful activity.
NOTICE OF SALE SUPREME COURT COUNTY OF KINGS, WILMINGTON SAVINGS FUND SOCIETY, FSB, D/B/A CHRISTIANA TRUST, NOT INDIVIDUALLY BUT AS TRUSTEE FOR PRETIUM MORTGAGE ACQUISITION TRUST, Plaintiff, vs. YOELLY RODRIGUEZ, ET AL., Defendant(s). Pursuant to an Order Confirming Referee’s Report, and Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale duly filed on June 14, 2019, I, the undersigned Referee will sell at public auction at the Kings County Supreme Court, Room 224, 360 Adams Street, Brooklyn, NY on August 8, 2019 at 2:30 p.m., premises known as 282 Hemlock Street, Brooklyn, NY. All that certain plot, piece or parcel of land, with the buildings and improvements thereon erected, situate, lying and being in the Borough of Brooklyn, County of Kings, City and State of New York, Block 4147 and Lot 53. Approximate amount of judgment is $485,489.15 plus interest and costs. Premises will be sold subject to provisions of filed Judgment Index # 501581/2016. Jeffrey Miller, Esq., Referee Knuckles, Komosinski & Manfro, LLP, 565 Taxter Road, Suite 590, Elmsford, NY 10523, Attorneys for Plaintiff Cash will not be accepted. NOTICE OF FORMATION of USC 3 East 3rd LLC. Art. of Org. filed with the Secy of State of NY (SSNY) on 6/18/19. Off. Loc.: NY County. SSNY has been desig. as agent upon whom process against it may be served. The address to which the SSNY shall mail a copy to is: USC 3 East 3rd LLC, 233 Broadway, Ste 1470, New York, NY 10279. Purpose: Any lawful act.
LEGALNOTICES@ CITYANDSTATENY.COM
August 5, 2019
INSIGHTS MANAGEMENT CONSULTING LLC. Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 02/22/19. Office: New York County. SSNY designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to the LLC, c/o Legalinc Corporate Services Inc., 1967 Wehrle Drive, Suite 1, #086, Buffalo, NY 14221, which also serves as the registered agent. Purpose: Any lawful purpose. Green Circled, LLC filed with SSNY 06/27/2019. Office loc: Richmond County. SSNY has been designated as agent upon whom process against LLC may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: Green Circled, LLC, Attn: Farrukh Chaudhary Mumtaz, 265 Seguine Ave., Staten Island, NY 10309. Purpose: Any Lawful Purpose. LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY Notice of Formation of Limited Liability Company (LLC) Name: HEYWOOD466, LLC Articles of Organization filed by the Department of State of New York on: 06/13/2019 Office location: County of Kings Purpose: Any and all lawful activities Secretary of State of New York (SSNY) designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail a copy of process to: Heywood466, LLC P.O. Box 19 New York, NY 10116
TUTTLECO LLC, Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 07/03/2019. Office loc: NY County. SSNY has been designated as agent upon whom process against the LLC may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: The LLC, 200 W 15th St, #12G, NY, NY 10011. Reg Agent: U.S. Corp. Agents, Inc. 7014 13th Ave., Ste 202, Brooklyn, NY 11228. Purpose: Any Lawful Purpose.
NOTICE OF SALE SUPREME COURT COUNTY OF KINGS, DEUTSCHE BANK NATIONAL TRUST COMPANY, AS CERTIFICATE TRUSTEE ON BEHALF OF BOSCO CREDIT II TRUST SERIES 2010-1, Plaintiff, vs. JASON PALMER, ET AL., Defendant(s). Pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale duly filed on June 14, 2019, I, the undersigned Referee will sell at public auction at the Kings County Supreme Court, Room 224, 360 Adams Street, Brooklyn, NY on August 22, 2019 at 2:30 p.m., premises known as 1962 Bergen Street, Brooklyn, NY. All that certain plot, piece or parcel of land, with the buildings and improvements thereon erected, situate, lying and being in the Borough of Brooklyn, County of Kings, City and State of New York, Block 1453 and Lot 18. Premises will be sold subject to provisions of filed Judgment Index # 515601/2016. Leo Salzman, Esq., Referee
SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK COUNTY OF KINGS WILMINGTON SAVINGS FUND SOCIETY, FSB, D/B/A CHRISTIANA TRUST, NOT INDIVIDUALLY BUT AS TRUSTEE FOR PRETIUM MORTGAGE ACQUISITION TRUST, V. JUANITA M. DIGGS, ET AL. NOTICE OF SALE NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN pursuant to a Final Judgment of Foreclosure dated May 3, 2019, and entered in the Office of the Clerk of the County of Kings, wherein WILMINGTON SAVINGS FUND SOCIETY, FSB D/B/A CHRISTIANA TRUST, NOT INDIVIDUALLY BUT AS TRUSTEE FOR PRETIUM MORTGAGE ACQUISITION TRUST is the Plaintiff and JUANITA M. DIGGS, ET AL. are the Defendants. I, the undersigned Referee will sell at public auction at the KINGS COUNTY COURTHOUSE, 360 ADAMS STREET ROOM 224, BROOKLYN, NY 11201, on August 15, 2019 at 2:30 PM, premises known as 569 HENDRIX STREET, BROOKLYN, NY 11207: Block 4059, Lot 108: ALL THAT CERTAIN PLOT, PIECE OR PARCEL OF LAND, WITH THE BUILDINGS AND IMPROVEMENTS THEREON ERECTED, SITUATE, LYING AND BEING IN THE BOROUGH OF BROOKLYN, COUNTY OF KINGS, AND STATE OF NEW YORK Premises will be sold subject to provisions of filed Judgment Index # 508849/2017. Philip Kamaras, Esq. - Referee. RAS Boriskin, LLC 900 Merchants Concourse, Suite 310, Westbury, New York 11590, Attorneys for Plaintiff.
NOTICE OF QUAL. of 100 SLD Owner LLC. Auth. filed Sec’y of State (SSNY) 6/20/19. Off. Loc: NY Co. LLC org. in DE 5/16/19. SSNY desig. as agent of LLC upon whom proc. against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of proc. to NRAI, 28 Liberty St., New York, NY 10005. DE off. Addr.: 160 Greentree Dr., Ste 101, Dover, DE 19904. Cert of Form. on file: SSDE, Townsend Bldg., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: any lawful activity.
Notice of Qualification of Intergate.Manhattan Office Holdings LLC. Authority filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 06/25/19. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 06/19/19. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: CT Corporation System, 28 Liberty St., NY, NY 10005. Address to be maintained in DE: The Corporation Trust Company, Corporation Trust Center, 1209 Orange St., Wilmington, DE 19801. Arts of Org. filed with the DE Secy. of State, John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: any lawful activities.
Evers Mental Health Counseling, PLLC, Arts of Org filed with SSNY on 06/25/19. Off. Loc: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail a copy of process to: The PLLC 875 6th Ave, Ste 1604, New York, NY 10001. Purpose: to engage in the profession of Mental Health Counseling
Notice of Formation of Alpine Properties Group LLC. Arts. of Org. filed with SSNY on 07/08/2019. Office location: Westchester County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process may be served. SSNY shall mail process to 265 Summit Avenue, Mount Vernon, New York 10552. Purpose: any lawful act or activity.
Berkman, Henoch, Peterson, Peddy & Fenchel, P.C., 100 Garden City Plaza, Garden City, NY 11530, Attorneys for Plaintiff
Notice of Formation of 102-104 FULTON ST RETAIL LLC. Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 03/28/19. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: Douglas Gladstone, Esq., Goldfarb & Fleece LLP, 560 Lexington Ave., NY, NY 10022. Purpose: any lawful activities. Notice of Qualification of DIG INN 460 PAS LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/01/19. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 03/26/19. Princ. office of LLC: 1235 Broadway, 2nd Fl., NY, NY 10001. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 122072543. DE addr. of LLC: 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State, Div. of Corps., John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
PUBLIC and LEGAL NOTICES / CityAndStateNY.com
August 5, 2019
SUPREME COURT - COUNTY OF KINGS
NOTICE OF SALE
CITIMORTGAGE, INC., Plaintiff -against- HSIN-CHEN LEE, et al Defendant(s). Pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale entered herein and dated January 9, 2019, I, the undersigned Referee will sell at public auction at the Kings County Courthouse 360 Adams Street, Room 224, Brooklyn, NY on August 15, 2019 at 2:30 p.m. premises situate, lying and being in the Borough of Brooklyn, County of Kings, City and State of New York, bounded and described as follows: BEGINNING at a point on the northeasterly side of Bath Avenue, distant 58 feet southeasterly from the corner formed by the intersection of the northeasterly side of Bath Avenue with the southeasterly side of Bath 8th Street; being a plot 100 feet by 19 feet 4 inches by 100 feet by 19 feet 4 inches. Block: 6393 Lot: 7 Said premises known as 1457 BATH AVENUE, BROOKLYN, NY Approximate amount of lien $706,038.23 plus interest & costs. Premises will be sold subject to provisions of filed Judgment and Terms of Sale. If the sale is set aside for any reason, the Purchaser at the sale shall be entitled only to a return of the deposit paid. The Purchaser shall have no further recourse against the Mortgagor, the Mortgagee or the Mortgagee’s attorney. Index Number 13975/2014. PHILIP L. KAMARAS, ESQ., Referee David A. Gallo & Associates LLP Attorney(s) for Plaintiff 99 Powerhouse Road, First Floor, Roslyn Heights, NY 11577 File# 5025.766
SUPREME COURT COUNTY OF KINGS, SELENE FINANCE LP, Plaintiff, vs. ISIAH SLAUGHTER A/K/A ISIAH B. SLAUGHTER, ET AL., Defendant(s).
BKGREENCART LLC filed Arts. of Org. with the Sect’y of State of NY (SSNY) on 7/1/19. Office: Kings County. SSNY has been designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served and shall mail process to: The LLC, 15 Maiden Ln, Ste 600, NY, NY 10038. Purpose: any lawful act. Notice of Formation of Piel Developmental Consulting, LLC. Arts. of Org. filed with SSNY on 6/27/19. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent for process and shall mail to: 400 Riverside Dr., Apt. 5A, NY NY 10025. Purpose: Any lawful activity. Notice of Formation of SOLIGHT2, LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 06/27/19. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
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HER HONOR, LLC, Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 04/18/2019. Office loc: NY County. SSNY has been designated as agent upon whom process against the LLC may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: The LLC, 3 Stuyvesant Oval Apt. 1E, NY, NY 10009. Reg Agent: David Silberg, 3 Stuyvesant Oval Apt. 1E, NY, NY 10009. Purpose: Any Lawful Purpose.
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NOTICE OF FORMATION of RIVERCENTER LS LLC. Art. of Org. filed with the Secy of State of NY (SSNY) on 5/7/19. Off. Loc.: NY County. SSNY has been desig. as agent upon whom process against it may be served. The address to which the SSNY shall mail a copy to is: 28 Liberty, New York, NY 10005. Reg. Agent: National Registered Agents, Inc., 28 Liberty, New York, NY 10005. Purpose: Any lawful act
Pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale duly filed on June 12, 2019, and a Decision and Order filed on June 21, 2019, I, the undersigned Referee will sell at public auction at the Kings County Supreme Court, Room 224, 360 Adams Street, Brooklyn, NY on September 12, 2019 at 2:30 p.m., premises known as 639 East 86th Street, Brooklyn, NY. All that certain plot, piece or parcel of land, with the buildings and improvements thereon erected, situate, lying and being in the Borough of Brooklyn, County of Kings, City and State of New York, Block 7991 and Lot 25. Premises will be sold subject to provisions of filed Judgment Index # 11848/13. Steven Z. Naiman, Esq., Referee Berkman, Henoch, Peterson, Peddy & Fenchel, P.C., 100 Garden City Plaza, Garden City, NY 11530, Attorneys for Plaintiff
G.A.S. PRODUCTIONS LLC, Arts. of Org. filed with SSNY 06/03/2019. Office loc: Richmond County. SSNY has been designated as agent upon whom process against LLC may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: The LLC, Attn: Gregory Scott, 81A Clark Lane, Staten Island, NY 10304. Purpose: Any Lawful Purpose. Notice of Formation of Leeza Garber Esq Consulting LLC filed with SSNY on June 21, 2019. Office: NY County. SSNY designated agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to LLC: 252 W 76th Street, NY, NY 10023. Purpose: any lawful act or activity.
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NOTICE OF FORMATION OF NEW YORK LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY The name of the limited liability company is Sally Rose Pond, LLC. The date of filing of the Articles of Organization with the Department of State was July 15, 2019. The county in New York in which the offices of the LLC are located is Richmond. The Secretary of State has been designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process may be served, and the Secretary of State shall mail a copy of any such process served against the LLC to Dr. Daniel Messina & Debra Messina, 17 Coverly Avenue, Staten Island, NY 10301 . The business purpose of the LLC is to engage in any and all business activities permitted under the Limited Liability Company Law of the State of New York.
Notice of Qualification of THE PRIVACY CO LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/09/19. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 06/25/19. Princ. office of LLC: Renee M. Lercher, CFO, 845 3rd Ave., Fl. 18, NY, NY 10022. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC at the addr. of its princ. office. DE addr. of LLC: c/o Corporation Service Co., 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with DE Secy. of State, John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Ste. #4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity. Notice of Formation of David and Dad LLC. Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/01/19. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: The Baker Law Firm PLLC, 1175 York Ave., #15D, NY, NY 10065, Attn: Brett R. Baker, Esq. Purpose: any lawful activities.
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STORAGE NOTICE Midtown Moving & Storage Inc. will sell at Public Auction at 810 East 170th Street, Bronx, NY 10459 At 6:00 P.M. on August 13th, 2019 for due and unpaid charges by virtue of lien in accordance with the provisions of the law and with due notice given all parties claiming an interest therein, the time specified In each notice for payment of said charges having expired household furniture & effects, pianos, trunks, cases, TV’s, radios, hifi’s, refrigerators, sewing machines, washers, air conditioners, household furniture Of all descriptions and the contents thereof, stored under the following names: -DIALLO, ALPHA -FERN, GIL -EILEEN, KOLAITOS -STEVENS, REAGAN -VILLEGAS- WOODS VANESSA -PETRILLI, ANDREA/ KARVALIS ADNAN -MYERS, WESLEY/MYERS WILLIE AND RANDY -HUNTER, WILLIAM -ALPORGUN, BURAK -ALMONTE, JACQUELINE/DEARMAS, JOSE -BANO, SHAH -BRADEN, ALEXA/HENDRICKS WILLIAM -CIPOLLA, PAUL -CAMACHO, MELISSA -DIFIORE, TIMOTHY -DIAZ, NATHANIEL -DIAZ, MARC -DWAYNE, CORWIS -GARCIA, WILFREDO -GROSS, EMANUEL -GILLIGAN, CLAIRE -HOPE, WINSTON -HILLIARD, ANDREW/ WASHINGTON
KIMBERLY/DOE JOHN -HARRIGAN, SARAH/ HIBBERT, SAMANTHA -JONES, LAVELL -LOPEZ, JOSE -LATAO EUGENIO DOE/ QUINTINO AND JOHN DOE/JANE DOE -MARTIN, FRANTZCIS -MCCLESTER, CEDRIC -MARTINEZ-EMINOGLU ANSELMO/WMINOGLU AHMET -NEVILLE, KAREN/MEJIA, YVETTE -ORTIZ, JULIO -ODURO, SETH -OSMAN, TAHER -PORFIL, RAQUEL -RAMOS, DELILA -RODRIGUEZ, MICH ELLE -ROBERTSON, HEYWARD -SKOLNIK, ELIYOHU -SOSA, DENISE -STARK, DANIEL -SAVIC, DEJAN -VACA, KATHERINE V -ZEHMISCH, HAROLD/ ZEHMISCH, LOUISE
Notice of Qualification of BEGI, LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/11/19. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 06/28/19. Princ. office of LLC: TAG Associates, LLC, 810 Seventh Ave., 7th Fl., NY, NY 10019. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC at the addr. of its princ. office. DE addr. of LLC: Corporation Service Co., 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State, State of DE, Dept. of State, Townsend Bldg., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
NOTICE OF FORMATION of BAYSIDE LS LLC. Art. of Org. filed with the Secy of State of NY (SSNY) on 5/7/19. Off. Loc.: NY County. SSNY has been desig. as agent upon whom process against it may be served. The address to which the SSNY shall mail a copy to is: 28 Liberty, New York, NY 10005. Reg. Agent: National Registered Agents, Inc., 28 Liberty, New York, NY 10005. Purpose: Any lawful act
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Notice of Formation of Fora Financial Advance LLC (f/k/a Empire Merchant Advance, LLC). Articles of Organization filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/29/09. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to 519 8th Ave., 11th Fl., New York, NY 10018. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
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CityAndStateNY.com / PUBLIC and LEGAL NOTICES
Notice of Auction Notice of Auction Sale is herein given that Access Self Storage of Long Island City located at 2900 Review Avenue, Long Island City, N.Y. 11101 will take place on WWW. STORAGETREASURES. COM Sale by competitive bidding starting on August 9, 2019 and end on August 22, 2019 at 12:00 p.m. to satisfy unpaid rent and charges on the following accounts: Contents of rooms generally contain misc. #429-Fernando Quinones; 1Suitcase, stuffed doll, lazy chair and 10 boxes, #816-Angel Crutchfield; 3-4 duffel bags, lady’s bag, shoes, boots, magazines, 2 black jackets, #2606Tara Kulukundis; round table, long square table, 1 glass table, 8 chairs, #3111- David Genao; 1 laundry bag, 1 pair of sneakers, 2 bottles of lotion, 3 bags, #3457- Robert T Kennedy; 2 lamps, 4 picture frames, 6 plastic containers, 7 medium boxes, 1 tote bag, 1 chair, love seat, 5 bags, 1 printer, 1 typewriter, round table. The contents of each unit will be sold as a lot and all items must be removed from the premises within 72 hours. Owners may redeem their goods by paying all rent and charges due at any time before the sale. All sales are held “with reserve”. Owner reserves the right to cancel sale at any time. MARV HOLIDAY, LLC. Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 07/03/19. Office: New York County. SSNY designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to the LLC, 434 E. 57th Street, New York, NY 10022. Purpose: Any lawful purpose.
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GRAND STUDIO MANAGEMENT LLC filed Arts. of Org. with the Sect’y of State of NY (SSNY) on 7/16/19. Office: Kings County. SSNY has been designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served and shall mail process to: T. Rufus Cappadocia, 295 Grand St, Brooklyn, NY 11211. Purpose: any lawful act. Notice of Formation of Grandstar Original LLC filed with SSNY on June 12, 2019. Office: NY County. SSNY designated agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to LLC: 115 4th Avenue, Apt 4A, NY, NY 10003. Purpose: any lawful act or activity. NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN THAT A LICENSE, SERIAL # 1319561 FOR WINE & BEER HAS BEEN APPLIED FOR BY THE UNDERSIGNED TO SELL WINE & BEER AT RETAIL UNDER THE ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE CONTROL LAW AT 544 LORIMER ST. BROOKLYN, NY 11211. KINGS COUNTY, FOR ON-PREMISE CONSUMPTION. LORIMER PIZZA LLC NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN THAT A LICENSE, SERIAL # 1319725 FOR LIQUOR, WINE, & BEER HAS BEEN APPLIED FOR BY THE UNDERSIGNED TO SELL LIQUOR, WINE, & BEER AT RETAIL UNDER THE ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE CONTROL LAW AT 180 9TH AVE NY, NY 10011 NEW YORK COUNTY, FOR ON PREMISE CONSUMPTION. QANOON CORP Notice of Formation of ASHES TO ASHES LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/22/19. Office location: Kings County. Princ. office of LLC: 99A Stuyvesant Ave., Apt. 2, Brooklyn, NY 11221. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC at the addr. of its princ. office. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
August 5, 2019
NOTICE OF SALE SUPREME COURT COUNTY OF KINGS, DEUTSCHE BANK NATIONAL TRUST COMPANY, AS CERTIFICATE TRUSTEE ON BEHALF OF BOSCO CREDIT II TRUST SERIES 20101, Plaintiff, vs. JASON PALMER, ET AL., Defendant(s). Pursuant to a Judgment of Foreclosure and Sale duly filed on June 14, 2019, I, the undersigned Referee will sell at public auction at the Kings County Supreme Court, Room 224, 360 Adams Street, Brooklyn, NY on August 22, 2019 at 2:30 p.m., premises known as 1962 Bergen Street, Brooklyn, NY. All that certain plot, piece or parcel of land, with the buildings and improvements thereon erected, situate, lying and being in the Borough of Brooklyn, County of Kings, City and State of New York, Block 1453 and Lot 18. Premises will be sold subject to provisions of filed Judgment Index # 515601/2016. Leo Salzman, Esq., Referee Berkman, Henoch, Peterson, Peddy & Fenchel, P.C., 100 Garden City Plaza, Garden City, NY 11530, Attorneys for Plaintiff Notice of Formation of MADE F&B LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/25/19. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Mark Devli, 460 Main Ave., Ste. A, Wallington, NJ 07057. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
LEGALNOTICES@ CITYANDSTATENY.COM
Notice of Qualification of 24 WEST 25TH STREET HOLDINGS IV, LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/19/19. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 03/04/19. Princ. office of LLC: 430 Park Ave., Fl. 12, NY, NY 100223505. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. DE addr. of LLC: 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of the State of DE, 401 Federal St. - Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity. Notice of Qualification of 24 WEST 25TH STREET INVESTORS IV, LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/19/19. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 03/04/19. Princ. office of LLC: 430 Park Ave., Fl. 12, NY, NY 100223505. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. DE addr. of LLC: 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of the State of DE, 401 Federal St. - Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
LEGALNOTICES@ CITYANDSTATENY.COM
NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN THAT A LICENSE, SERIAL # 1319713 FOR LIQUOR, WINE, & BEER HAS BEEN APPLIED FOR BY THE UNDERSIGNED TO SELL LIQUOR, WINE, & BEER AT RETAIL UNDER THE ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE CONTROL LAW AT 182 8TH NY, NY 10011 NEW YORK COUNTY, FOR ON PREMISE CONSUMPTION. NEW HK 2 LLC
PUBLIC NOTICE Cellco Partnership and its controlled affiliates doing business as Verizon Wireless (Verizon Wireless) proposes to collocate wireless communications antennas at two locations. Antennas will be installed at a top height of 272 feet on a building with an overall height of 314 feet at the approx. vicinity of 5 Hanover Square, New York, New York County, NY 10004. Antennas will be installed at a top height of 68 feet on a building with an overall height of 70 feet at the approx. vicinity of 1491 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10029. Public comments regarding potential effects from these sites on historic properties may be submitted within 30 days from the date of this publication to: Trileaf Corp, Madison, m.warfield@ trileaf.com, 8600 LaSalle Rd, Suite 301, Towson, MD, 21286, 410-853-7128. PUBLIC NOTICE Cellco Partnership and its controlled affiliates doing business as Verizon Wireless (Verizon Wireless) proposes to collocate wireless communications antennas at three locations. Antennas will be installed at a top height of 142 feet on a building with an overall height of 180 feet at the approx. vicinity of 42-41 201st Street, Bayside, Queens County, NY 11358. Antennas will be installed at a top height of 56 feet on a building with an overall height of 56 feet at the approx. vicinity of 198-40 32nd Avenue, Flushing, Queens County, NY 11358. Antennas will be installed at a top height of 49 feet on a building with an overall height of 49 feet at the approx. vicinity of 127-02 101st Avenue, South Richmond Hill, Queens County, NY 11416. Public comments regarding potential effects from these sites on historic properties may be submitted within 30 days from the date of this publication to: Trileaf Corp, Madison, m.warfield@trileaf.com, 8600 LaSalle Rd, Suite 301, Towson, MD,
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Notice of Qualification of LHL SHORE PARKWAY, LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/17/19. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 07/11/19. Princ. office of LLC: 183 Madison Ave., Ste. 1602, NY, NY 10016. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Bennet L. Schonfeld at the princ. office of the LLC. DE addr. of LLC: c/o Corporation Service Co., 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State of the State of DE, 401 Federal St., Ste. #4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity. Notice of Qualification of CaaS Capital Management LP Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/11/19. Office location: NY County. LP formed in Delaware (DE) on 05/01/19. Duration of LP is Perpetual. SSNY designated as agent of LP upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the Partnership, 800 Third Ave., 26th Fl., NY, NY 10022. Name and addr. of each general partner are available from SSNY. DE addr. of LP: c/o Corporation Service Co., 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of LP filed with the Secy. of State of DE, Dept. of State, Div. of Corps., John Townsend Bldg., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
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PUBLIC and LEGAL NOTICES / CityAndStateNY.com
August 5, 2019
NOTICE OF POSTPONEMENT SALE SUPREME COURT FOR THE STATE OF NEW YORK, COUNTY OF BROOKLYN CROSBY CAPITAL USA, LLC; Plaintiff v. WAHEED EGBO, et al; Defendants Attorney for Plaintiff: Hasbani & Light, P.C., 450 7th Ave, Suite 1408, NY, NY 10123; (646) 490-6677 Pursuant to judgment of foreclosure and sale granted herein on 05/29/19, I will sell at Public Auction to the highest bidder in the Supreme Court of the State Of New York, County of Kings - 360 Adams Street, Room 224, Brooklyn, NY 11201. On August 1, 2019 at 2:30 pm. Premises known as 107 Harman Street, Brooklyn, NY 11221, Block: 3275 Lot: 62 All that certain plot, piece or parcel of land, situate, lying and being in the Borough of Brooklyn, County of Kings, City and State of New York. As more particularly described in the judgment of foreclosure and sale. Sold subject to all of the terms and conditions contained in said judgment and terms of sale. Approximate amount of judgment: $963,987.79 plus interest and costs. Index Number: 502722/2014 Aaron Maslow, Esq., Referee SAPPHIRE VISION, LLC, Arts. of Org. filed with SSNY 2/12/2019. Office loc: Kings County. SSNY designated as agent upon whom process against LLC may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: LLC, 805 Saint Marks Avenue, Apt. B3D Brooklyn, NY, 11213. Purpose: Any Lawful Purpose. Notice of Formation of DPR OPPORTUNITIES 1 LLC. Arts. of Org. filed with SSNY 06/17/2019. Office loc: NY County. SSNY has been designated as agent upon whom process against LLC may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: The LLC, Attn: Robert D. Lindsay, Goldberg Lindsay & Co. LLC, 630 Fifth Avenue, 30 FL, New York, NY 10111. Purpose: To be a qualified opportunity fund.
Notice of Formation of DPR OPPORTUNITIES 2 LLC. Arts. of Org. filed with SSNY 06/17/2019. Office loc: NY County. SSNY has been designated as agent upon whom process against LLC may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: The LLC, Attn: Robert D. Lindsay, Goldberg Lindsay & Co. LLC, 630 Fifth Avenue, 30 FL, New York, NY 10111. Purpose: To be a qualified opportunity fund.
Notice is hereby given that a license, number 1319511 for a restaurant wine has been applied for by the undersigned to sell wine and beer at retail in a restaurant under the Alcoholic Beverage Control Law at 485 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10123 on premises consumption.
Notice of Formation of DPR OPPORTUNITIES 3 LLC. Arts. of Org. filed with SSNY 06/17/2019. Office loc: NY County. SSNY has been designated as agent upon whom process against LLC may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: The LLC, Attn: Robert D. Lindsay, Goldberg Lindsay & Co. LLC, 630 Fifth Avenue, 30 FL, New York, NY 10111. Purpose: To be a qualified opportunity fund.
Notice of Formation of MINH HOLDINGS, LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/15/19. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
Donatella Moxy 7th Avenue, LLC d/b/a Prova Pizza Bar
Notice of Formation of THE LFS LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/03/19. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 1540 Broadway, NY, NY 10036. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Duane Morris LLP, Attn: Jon H.I. Grouf, 1540 Broadway, NY, NY 10036. Purpose: Investments. Notice of Formation of 136 West 92nd Street Associates LLC. Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/11/19. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: the Company, c/o Trinity Episcopal School Corporation, 139 West 91st St., NY, NY 10024, Attn: Joan Dannenberg. Purpose: any lawful activities.
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CityAndStateNY.com
August 5, 2019
CITY & STATE NEW YORK MANAGEMENT & PUBLISHING CEO Steve Farbman, President & Publisher Tom Allon tallon@cityandstateny.com, Comptroller David Pirozzi, Business & Operations Manager Patrea Patterson, Administrative Assistant Lauren Mauro
Who was up and who was down last week
LOSERS
DIGITAL Digital Director Derek Evers devers@cityandstateny. com, Digital Marketing Director Maria Cruz Lee, Digital Content Coordinator Michael Filippi, Social Media Editor/ Content Producer Amanda Luz Henning Santiago
SCABBY THE RAT In a deflating development for organized labor, the National Labor Relations Board might exterminate one of New York City’s most union-friendly traditions: Deploying a massive blow-up rat named Scabby to target management. It is easy to think that this would be a yuge victory for union-busting fat cats – unless you are Fat Cat himself, Scabby’s 10-to-15-foot inflatable, cigar-chomping, feline frenemy.
THE BEST OF THE REST
THE REST OF THE WORST
KIRSTEN JOHN FOY, TAMIKA MALLORY & LINDA SARSOUR
BILL DE BLASIO
They threw off de Blasio’s debate groove with their chant: “Fire Pantaleo!”
JUDY GRIFFIN & TODD KAMINSKY
Their bill says teachers need to find a way to make kids cram without packing heat.
DANNY HARRIS
He and other advocates are rolling over local residents to get their UWS bike lane.
MELINDA KATZ
The Queens beep threw a victory party thanks to her 60-vote lead. Too soon?
CREATIVE Art Director Andrew Horton, Senior Graphic Designer Alex Law, Graphic Designer Aaron Aniton
His debate performance was pretty much the worst, says the Times.
KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND
Her campaign is struggling. Maybe Clorox needs a spokeswoman?
ADVERTISING Vice President of Advertising Jim Katocin jkatocin@ cityandstateny.com, Account/Business Development Executive Scott Augustine saugustine@cityandstateny.com, Event Sponsorship Strategist Danielle Koza dkoza@ cityandstateny.com, Sales Associate Cydney McQuillanGrace cydney@cityandstateny.com, Junior Sales Executive Caitlin Dorman, Legal Advertising Executive Shakirah Gittens legalnotices@cityandstateny.com, Junior Sales Associate Chris Hogan EVENTS events@cityandstateny.com Sales Director Lissa Blake, Events Manager Alexis Arsenault, Event Coordinator Amanda Cortez, Editorial Research Associate Evan Solomon
Vol. 8 Issue 29 August 5, 2019 THE QUEENS POWER
100
TION EVOLU R E H T NARIS LEAD EL GIAS OLD PAL MICJOHEACROWLEY’ CAN
OR IS
ONG? ING AL
ST TAGG HE JU
@CIT YANDSTATENY CIT YANDSTATENY.COM
MARIANNE WILLIAMSON GOT ALL HER CRAZY FROM NEW YORK August 5, 2019
Cover photo Sean Pressley
JOE LHOTA
If you run MSG, you might be biased about Penn Station. Who’d a thunk?
JOHN VENDITTO
The former Oyster Bay supervisor pleaded guilty to corruption, shocking literally nobody.
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.
CITY & STATE NEW YORK (ISSN 2474-4107) is published weekly, 48 times a year except for the four weeks containing New Year’s Day, July 4th, Thanksgiving and Christmas by City & State NY, LLC, 61 Broadway, Suite 1315, New York, NY 10006-2763. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to City & State New York, 61 Broadway, Suite 1315, New York, NY 10006-2763. General: (212) 268-0442, subscribe@cityandstateny.com Copyright ©2019, City & State NY, LLC
STATE SENATE; ASSEMBLY; ALAN BUDMAN/SHUTTERSTOCK
SHELLEY MAYER & LINDA ROSENTHAL Sure, you can use your campaign cash on liquor and vacations. But a babysitter? With a new state law passed last week, candidates can officially dole out their campaign funds on child care. It’s a big win for the bill’s sponsors – Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal and state Sen. Shelley Mayer – and, of course, ladies looking to run for office. And it was actually a Long Island congressional hopeful, Liuba Grechen Shirley, who paved the way last year.
OUR PICK
OUR PICK
WINNERS
This year’s crop of Democratic presidential candidates didn’t learn from U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s “New York values” comments in 2016 (we haven’t forgotten, Zodiac Killer). First, faceless mannequin and/or Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan railed on Brooklyn’s native son, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, for talking LIKE A NOO YAWKUH. Then, former Vice President Joe Biden had the audacity to question the mathematical aptitude of us in the Big Apple. Our response? TAKE IT EASY. And leave slamming New York to us New Yorkers.
EDITORIAL editor@cityandstateny.com Editor-in-Chief Jon Lentz jlentz@cityandstateny.com, Managing Editor Ryan Somers, Senior Editor Ben Adler badler@cityandstateny.com, Special Projects Editor Alice Popovici, Copy Editor Eric Holmberg, Staff Reporter Jeff Coltin jcoltin@cityandstateny.com, Staff Reporter Zach Williams zwilliams@cityandstateny.com, Staff Reporter Rebecca C. Lewis rlewis@cityandstateny.com, Tech & Policy Reporter Annie McDonough amcdonough@ cityandstateny.com, Staff Reporter Kay Dervishi
Remember our fallen heroes
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PATRICK J. LYNCH PRESIDENT
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RECORDING SECRETARY
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CITY-WIDE TRUSTEE
FINANCIAL SECRETARIES MERRITT RILEY MANHATTAN SO. COREY T. GRABLE TRANSIT RAYMOND SALAMONE QUEENS NO. DREW BAILEY BROOKLYN SO. ARTHUR EGNER BROOKLYN NO. ALBERT R. ACIERNO LWR. MAN. & RICHMOND JOSEPH A. RAO QUEENS SO. FREDERICK WINTER BRONX RICHARD DIANA HOUSING JOSEPH STRONG MANHATTAN NO.
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AUGUST 15, 2019 City &State’s Education in New York summit will offer industry executives, public sector leaders and academics the opportunity to share ideas and debate over critical issues such as school choice, closing the achievement gap, and school safety. The full-day event brings together the most influential leaders and thinkers in New York’s education fields. Hear from the decisionmakers who set policy and determine the future of New York’s education system. PANEL TOPICS WILL INCLUDE: SCHOOL SAFETY COLLABORATIVE STRATEGIES THAT ADDRESS EQUITY, ACCESS AND AFFORDABILITY ONE ON ONE DISCUSSION ON THE “ROLE OF GOVERNMENT IN PRIVATE EDUCATION” STEM, TECHNOLOGY, AND INNOVATIONTHE FUTURE OF STANDARDIZED TESTING
FE ATURED SPE AKERS RICHARD A. CARRANZA, Chancellor, New York City Department of Education BILL CHONG, Commissioner, Department of Youth and Community Development Council Member DONOVAN RICHARDS, Chair, Committee on Public Safety Council Member MARK TREYGER, Chair, Committee on Education State Sen. TOBY ANN STAVISKY, Chairwoman, Higher Education Committee JOHN D’AGATI, Deputy Commissioner, Higher Education, New York State Education Department State Sen. SHELLEY MAYER, Chair, Education Committee LILLIAN LLABMELIS, Deputy Commissioner for Community Partnerships and STEAM, NYC Department of Design and Construction State Sen. JOHN C. LIU, Chairman, New York City Education Committee Assemblymember MICHAEL BENEDETTO, Chairman, Education Committee State Sen. JESSICA RAMOS, Education Activist RSVP at CityAndStateNY.com/Events For more information on programming and sponsorship opportunities, please contact Lissa Blake at lblake@cityandstateny.com
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