Crain's New York Business, June 3, 2024

KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND’S INSIDE GAME

The low-key leader has mastered maneuvering behind the scenes as a U.S. senator. But will her obscurity harm swing-district Democrats this fall?

By | Nick Garber

On a Sunday in late April, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand rose to speak at a church in Harlem. Although the pastor introduced her as “one of this nation’s leading senators,” Gillibrand received only polite applause as she stepped to the pulpit — the kind that might greet a little-known lawmaker who only recently ascended to higher o ce.

In fact, Gillibrand has represented New York in the U.S. Senate for 15 years, during which she has had a lifetime’s worth of political ups and downs —

See GILLIBRAND on Page 18

It’s the commute, stupid

Of ce workers are showing that no matter how nice their building is, if it’s not near transit, they won’t come in

By Eddie Small and Caroline Spivack

When consulting giant Bain & Co. was looking for a new o ce recently, one of its biggest priorities was nding something close to a transit hub. Its current o ce, near Bryant Park, was accessible enough, but the rm couldn’t have gotten much closer than its ultimate choice: more than 200,000 square feet at 22 Vanderbilt Ave., a

Steve Cohen’s casino is in jeopardy as state senator opposes crucial bill.

3 CRAIN’S LIST

See our ranking of New York’s top architecture rms.

recently renovated building from Milstein Properties that provides direct access to Grand Central Terminal and its system of commuter and subway lines.

“ e size of our New York team has doubled over the past several years,” Bain & Co. co-Managing Partner Allison Gans said in a statement, “and convenience to a

See COMMUTE on Page 21

11 GOTHAM GIG

City’s mental health chief is focused on understanding trauma.

Kirsten Gillibrand, known for her low-key leadership style, will take a more vocal role in helping elect a half-dozen swing-district Democrats this fall.

BUCK ENNIS

REBNY lobbies council against broker-fee reform bill

By Nick Garber

A bill that would prevent tenants from having to pay loathed broker fees appears to be gaining momentum in the City Council. But the Real Estate Board of New York, which seemed like something of a sleeping giant earlier this year, is now awake and on the march against it.

e bill by Brooklyn lawmaker Chi Ossé would require the fees to be paid by whoever hired an apartment’s broker — most often the building’s landlord. A majority of the council has signaled support for the bill, and an all-important hearing has now been scheduled for June 12, marking a shift from last year when council leaders let it die in committee.

In a show of force, REBNY says it plans to send at least 1,000 brokers to City Hall that day to testify against the legislation. e powerful group, which represents both landlords and some 14,000 brokers, argues that the bill would disrupt the rental market, threaten brokers’ incomes and force landlords to pass the fees on to tenants by hiking rents.

“If this bill were to pass, the cost of the service that a broker provides really doesn’t dissipate,” said Ryan Monell, REBNY’s vice president for government a airs, in an interview. Some small landlords would likely stop hiring brokers altogether since they would struggle to cover the new costs, he said.

But the bill’s supporters are unmoved. Ossé has argued that any potential rent hikes that result from the bill would likely be small compared to broader market-driven price uctuations, and would be spread over the course of a 12- or 24-month lease — less burdensome than broker fees, which typi-

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cally cost between 10% and 15% of a year’s rent and must be paid up-front. And rent increases would be a non-issue for rent-stabilized apartments, which make up nearly half of the city’s housing stock and often come with hefty broker fees.

“REBNY’s made all of their arguments, and luckily they’re easy to refute,” Ossé said. “A lot of my colleagues are starting to see through that.”

At the hearing, Ossé will be armed with his own slate of brokers who support the bill as a means of simplifying their unruly industry.

Among them is Brooklyn-based broker Anna Klenkar, who said tenants trying to determine whether they will be on the hook for fees currently need to sort through a number of variables, including whether a building has been listed through REBNY’s service and whether multiple agents are splitting the commission.

“If we could negotiate in advance, like, ‘I’ll do X-Y-Z for you for X amount of money,’ then everyone knows what they’re getting into, everyone’s going in eyesopen,” Klenkar said.

REBNY said little publicly about the bill after Ossé reintroduced it early this year. But the group has done more in recent weeks to mobilize members against it, sending email blasts with lists of talking points that lead with its potential impact on renters. Monell said REBNY’s strategy has also included setting up meetings between council members and brokers who live in their districts.

Going digital

Both sides have gone digital: Ossé, the council’s youngest mem-

ber at 26, has racked up thousands of views on slickly produced videos promoting the bill, while REBNY has countered with its own explainer-style video against it.

e brokers ghting the bill include Sarah Saltzberg, CEO of the Harlem-based rm Bohemia Realty. Saltzberg criticized the bill as a “knee-jerk reaction to rising housing costs,” and called it unnecessary since renters can already search speci cally for “nofee” apartments.

“ ey can choose to have the owner compensate the broker, build that structure into the lease and pay it over time, with the understanding that the rent is going to increase based on that number,” Saltzberg said. “To take the choice away from the consumer is ultimately what I think will be one of the unintended consequences of this.”

Brokers defend their work as consisting of much more than opening doors to apartments.

Good brokers also have knowledge of fair housing laws, conduct background checks, take high-quality photos and market apartment listings; if landlords take on that work for themselves, the market will grow less transparent and tenants will su er, Saltzberg argued.

Monell conceded that the current system has its aws when it comes to transparency, and said REBNY wants the industry to do a better job of emphasizing that broker fees can be negotiated.

Ossé and others who support reining in broker fees often note that New York is one of only two major cities, alongside Boston, that allows the fees at all. Monell, in response, said that New York “simply isn’t the same as other places in the country.”

REBNY’s plan to pack the June hearing looks much like the approach it took in 2019, when a different council bill sought to cap broker fees at one month’s rent.

Hundreds of brokers testi ed against that bill, which never advanced.

Ossé’s bill is now sponsored by 31 members of the 51-person council, an increase from 26 in the spring. Sponsors consist of a mix of progressive and moderate Democrats. Whether it reaches a oor vote will depend on Speaker Adrienne Adams, who has not taken a stance.

A growing number of unions have also signed onto Ossé’s bill in recent weeks, including the powerful Hotel and Gaming Trades Council and the New York State Nurses Association, he said — joining existing supporters including the city workers’ union DC37.

Mayor Eric Adams, who would need to sign the measure into law, previously told Crain’s in March that he would “look into the bill,” and said he knew from a prior stint as a realtor “how important it is to get paid.”

Hochul spends $58 million to bail out state health fund for babies harmed at birth

By Amanda D’Ambrosio

Gov. Kathy Hochul has allocated $58 million to rescue a nancially ailing state fund that covers lifetime hospital costs for people hurt by medical malpractice at birth, extending the program for the remainder of this year, state budget o cials con rmed. But the fund’s future remains unclear.

e Medical Indemnity Fund, which started in 2011, has served more than 1,000 families over its lifetime and cost the state just under $1 billion, said Tim Ru nen, a spokesman for the state budget ofce. e fund primarily helps families whose children developed neurological diseases due to medical errors, such as encephalopathy, cerebral palsy or spastic quadriplegia.

But as enrollment in the program grows and average medical costs per patient increase, New York is up against a shortfall of cash to cover care for medical injuries. e new funds allow the program to continue to accept new enrollees in the short term — a future that was

uncertain just one week ago. e bailout, announced May 24, comes a few weeks after the fund was forced to stop new patients from enrolling last month due to wide funding gaps. e state Health Department, which manages the fund, posted a notice to its website last month stating that the fund’s estimated future costs total more than 80% of its cash in the bank, requiring the agency to suspend enrollment under a state law.

Projected costs

Health o cials made clear that halting the enrollment of new patients would not prevent the funds from covering the costs of the 992 families currently enrolled in the program. But the projected medical costs of those families are more than $3.2 billion, leaving New York with a shortfall before adding the costs of any new enrollees onto its tab, according to a state-commissioned actuarial analysis of the fund published in April.

Currently, the fund has $147 million in assets, the analysis says. Hochul’s allocation reverses the suspension of new enrollment, allowing the Health Department to accept new patients in need of medical care for the remainder of the current budget year. e move was lauded by State Health Commissioner Dr. James McDonald, who said that agency sta have been “good stewards of the fund” since the Health Department was tasked to oversee it in 2019.

McDonald said that the Health Department will continue to work with agency partners and the governor’s o ce “to drive solutionbased strategies for current and eligible enrollees.”

e recent bailout isn’t the rst time state o cials have had to offer a lifeline to the nancially struggling bene t fund, and it likely won’t be the last. Last year, the state provided an additional $52 million to keep the fund up and running.

Councilman Chi Ossé of Brooklyn has gotten 31 lawmakers to sponsor his bill, which would require broker fees to be paid by whoever hired the broker.

The Real Estate Board of New York is mobilizing against a council bill that would reform the city’s broker-fee system ahead of a June 12 hearing. | BLOOMBERG

Gov. Kathy Hochul announced an additional $58 million for the Medical Indemnity Fund in her updated nancial plan released last month. | MIKE GROLL/OFFICE OF GOVERNOR KATHY HOCHUL

Gibson Levine

By Nick Garber

Steve Cohen’s $8B casino is in jeopardy as state senator refuses to back crucial bill

The billionaire Mets owner must now nd a way around Jessica Ramos, or win her back

Steve Cohen’s aggressive quest to build a casino next to Citi Field su ered a potentially fatal blow on May 28, as a local state senator announced she will refuse to back an Albany bill that his plan requires.

Cohen’s $8 billion proposal for a gaming complex, hotel, concert hall and park space on the parking lot west of Citi Field has hinged since its inception on the support of state Sen. Jessica Ramos. Because the parking lot is technically city parkland, the billionaire hedge-funder and Mets owner Cohen must persuade both the state Senate and Assembly to pass a bill to “alienate” the parkland and allow development.

But Ramos, who has withheld her support for over a year as she gathered community feedback, announced May 28 that she “will not introduce legislation” for the casino, saying that she wanted the site to be developed without it.

“I resent the conditions and the generations of neglect that have made many of us so desperate that we would be willing to settle,” Ramos said in a statement, released shortly after a New York magazine article revealed her decision. Ramos also said she will introduce a new bill that would alienate the parkland, but only for a convention center, hotel and park — a compromise that Cohen’s team has already said would make the project non-viable economically.

A spokesman for Cohen’s project, known as Metropolitan Park, remained upbeat on May 28. Karl Rickett said in a statement that while the project team respects Ramos’s point of view, “the state never intended any one person to have the ability to single-handedly stop or approve a gaming project.”

With the deadline to apply for a downstate casino license now delayed until 2025, Cohen’s team — which has enlisted a whopping 10 di erent lobbying rms, dwar ng the competition — has time to try to make a deal and win Ramos back. e other option would be nding a way around Ramos, but two people closely monitoring the process

told Crain’s on May 28 that it is highly unlikely that state Senate leaders would defy the Albany tradition of deferring to local members on land-use questions — and publicly burn Ramos on an issue of such high importance.

“As Metropolitan Park enjoys overwhelming support from elected o cials, unions, and the local community we are con dent that we have the best project in the best location,” Rickett said. “We have over a year and multiple pathways to secure the required approvals. Our team remains committed to bringing Metropolitan Park to life, with gaming as the only viable economic engine to make the 23,000 jobs, $8 billion investment and substantial community bene ts possible.”

Increased pressure

Asked whether she was open to any future deal with Cohen, Ramos said during a press conference on May 28 that “At this given point in time, I don’t feel that I can be convinced to allow parkland alienation for the purposes of a casino.”

Ramos acknowledged that Cohen could try to nd a way around her, but added that she would be “surprised and o ended” if Senate majority leader Andrea StewartCousins allowed that to happen.

“I would think that the majority leader would be very wary of creating such a precedent in our house, where a member of the supermajority conference is ignored and bypassed in order to allow someone to profit o of their constituents,” Ramos said.

As Ramos’s decision neared, Cohen’s team in recent weeks had upped the pressure on her, rolling out letters from neighboring elected o cials and labor unions — with whom Ramos is typically cozy — urging her to green-light the bill. Both Ramos and Cohen touted their own polls showing opposition and support, respectively, for the casino.

Among those pressuring Ramos was Assemblyman Je rion Aubry, who also represents the casino site and blindsided Ramos by introducing Cohen’s desired bill last year without her knowledge. One person closely monitoring the process argued that Cohen’s team appeared to misjudge

their ability to muscle Ramos, citing another instance in which Cohen seemed to upstage her by announcing a $1 billion community bene ts package on the same night she was scheduled to host a town hall about the casino.

Support from labor, other of cials

“I think she’s been underestimated every step of the way by Steve Cohen and his team,” the person said. Ramos, for her part, said May 28 that Cohen’s team had made “unforced errors throughout this process.”

“I’ve been vocal about my resentment for just how many lobbyists and experts they’ve hired,” Ramos said. “It became a hindrance at one point early on for me to be able to have a conversation with experts, because it was hard to nd someone who wasn’t on their payroll.”

If Cohen’s bid ever secures the parkland approval, it would become an immediate frontrunner. Its huge size makes the bid favored among labor unions and, potentially, the state o cials charged with awarding the three downstate licenses. And it enjoys otherwise strong support from the local ofcials who will compose the six-person panels that will hold binding votes on each bid.

Among them is Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, who has supported casinos for their economic development potential, and who released his own statement May 28 calling on state lawmakers to give Cohen what he wants.

“No one single elected o cial should be the sole arbiter of this $8 billion investment in our borough, so I strongly urge Governor Hochul and the state Senate to explore other avenues in order to bring the Metropolitan Park proposal to life and ensure that Queens continues to get the money we are owed and deserve,” Richards said.

e city needs to pass its own bill granting Cohen the same parkland permission, but that appears to be an easier lift: local City Councilman Francisco Moya pledged his support earlier this year.

Queens state Sen. Jessica Ramos (right) announced May 28 that she will not introduce a parkland alienation bill that

billionaire Steve Cohen (left) needs for his casino to be built.

BLOOMBERG; NYS

Singaporean hoteliers list West Village townhouse for $30M

Renovated six-bedroom spread on Jane Street cost husband-and-wife developers $8M in 2007

Singaporean hotel developers

Satinder Garcha and Harpreet Bedi are looking for a taker for their West Village home.

e husband-and-wife team has listed 84 Jane St., a 6,000-squarefoot townhouse near Washington Street, for $30 million, according to an ad that appeared last month.

Garcha, chairman of the Garcha Group, which owns boutique lodgings in Singapore and South America, and Bedi, the CEO of the rm, paid $7.9 million for the townhouse in 2007 and so could realize a tidy pro t.

But they also appear to have made signi cant investments in the stylish, 24-foot-wide, red-brick property, which features six bedrooms, a living room with walnut

people.com, a sort of classi edad-type service to help California startups connect with Indian engineers (and that had nothing to do with People magazine) was eventually snapped up by the parent of monster.com for $115 million in 2000, just before the tech market crashed.

Garcha then relocated to Singapore, where he launched Elevation Developments, a builder of high-end villas tailored to executives new to Singapore looking for places to rent while they got the lay of the land. A designer of some of those villas, Manhattan-based architect Jonathan Schloss, also styled 84 Jane, according to Forbes Bedi, meanwhile, was trained as a lawyer and has also produced a documentary lm, Under the Turban, about life as a Sikh.

If No. 84 were to trade at its current asking price, it would be something of a high-water mark in the townhouse sector.

oors and a gas replace, and a bluestone-lined backyard, plus a top- oor primary suite that has angled windows that recall a greenhouse.

Born near the Himalayas in India and educated in computer science in Texas, Garcha headed to Silicon Valley after graduation just as the dot-com boom was starting to rumble, according to magazine pro les and a company biography.

A rm he co-founded in 1995,

In 2015, Bedi and Garcha co-founded the Garcha Group, which was around the time Forbes ranked Garcha as one of Singapore’s wealthiest people. If No. 84 were to trade at its current asking price, it would be something of a highwater mark in the townhouse sector, which has struggled along with the larger residential real estate market despite recent inklings of strength.

Sale prices up

In the rst quarter of this year, the average sale price of Manhattan townhouses, including ver-

sions with more than one unit, was about $8 million, up about 10% in a year, according to data from Leslie J. Gar eld, a townhouse-focused brokerage.

And the gains were even bigger in Greenwich Village and the West Village, the rm said; the average sale price in those downtown neighborhoods was about $24 million, up 67% in a year, though some of that surge is likely due to the stunning $73 million transaction in January involving 138-140 W. 11th St., a 10,800-square-foot combined property near Seventh Avenue.

Abigail Agranat, the Douglas Elliman agent marking 84 Jane, did not reply to an email by press time. And a message sent to the Garcha Group’s Singapore o ce also went unreturned.

Developer les plans for an affordable housing project at NYC Health + Hospitals clinic site in the Bronx

By Amanda D’Ambrosio

L+M Development Partners led plans last month to build affordable housing on a Bronx site owned by New York City Health + Hospitals, furthering city e orts to develop public hospital land to address its dire housing shortage. e project at 1225 Gerard Ave. is currently a parking lot for H+H’s Gotham Health clinic in Morrisania. It is set to become a 17-story mixed-use building that includes a health care facility and 328 units. It will span 357,000 square feet, according to city lings.

e building will include affordable and supportive apartments, o ering New Yorkers with housing and health challenges access to case management and social services. All of the apart-

ments will be available to New Yorkers with incomes below 80% of the area median income, or roughly $124,000 for a household of four. But the majority will be open to those with incomes below 60% of the area median income, said Leora Jontef, assistant vice president for housing and real estate at H+H.

Development plans also include a 40,000-square-foot health facility and community spaces where nonpro ts BronxWorks and the African Resource Center will operate social services.

First of its kind

e new development is the rst housing project operated by H+H that has a health care facility embedded within a residential building, Jontef said, providing

access to primary care appointments, women’s health and dentistry directly downstairs from where people live. “ is is the rst project that is truly health and housing,” she said.

H+H has several housing developments in the works, including one on the campus of Woodhull Hospital that is set to open this fall. e health system is in the process of developing 11 residential buildings.

L+M is one of a few developers spearheading the project at 1225 Gerard Ave., selected by the city alongside BronxWorks and real estate consultant Type A Projects in 2021. e Department for Housing Preservation and Development chose the developers to lead the project following the rezoning of Jerome Avenue, an effort that resulted in plans to build

more than 4,000 new a ordable apartments in the southwest

Although L+M led construction plans, Type A and Bronx-

Works will be the long-term owners of the project, said John DeSio, a spokesman for L+M. Developers are planning to start construction of the building in 2025.

The list price for 84 Jane St. located in the West Village

84 Jane St., West Village | DOUGLAS ELLIMAN

C. J. Hughes

Bronx.

An affordable housing development at 1225 Gerard Ave. is being planned at a site that is currently a parking lot for New York City Health + Hospitals’ Gotham Health clinic in Morrisania. |

The primary suite | DOUGLAS ELLIMAN

KEYNOTE SPEAKER:

Brendan G. Carr, MD, MA, MS Chief Executive Officer, Mount Sinai Health System

ADDITIONAL SPEAKERS:

Bunny Ellerin Co-Founder & CEO, Digital Health New York

Stephen B. Hanse, Esq President & CEO, NYS Health Facilities Association I NYS Center for Assisted Living

Arel Lidow Technical Co-Founder, Cedar

Wyley McCoy, PharmD, MBA Senior Vice President, The Craneware Group

Elisabeth Wynn EVP, Health Economics and Finance, Greater New York Hospital Association

Join Crain’s and Healthcare Financial Management Association, Metro NY Chapter (HFMA) for a day of live interviews and panels with the city’s top health care leaders and decision makers. We’ll engage in lively discussions on a wide range of topics, including regulatory changes coming to Medicaid and Medicare Advantage, the current state of the pharmacy benefit manager industry and how technology is reshaping the health ecosystem in the city.

City primaries could sway in uence in Albany

Watch these bellwether Assembly races between socialists and mainstream Democrats

Much of the attention for the June primary season in New York has naturally focused on Westchester and the northern Bronx, where Jamaal Bowman is desperately trying trying to hold his congressional seat against George Latimer, the Westchester County executive. What happens there could, in various ways, determine the shape of national politics over the next year and beyond.

But there are downballot elections on June 25 worth watching because they could have a much more direct impact on state government. After a legislative session that saw both centrists and progressives walking away dissatis ed around a housing deal that will extend new “good cause” protections to a large number of city tenants while weakening provisions of the sweeping 2019 housing law, these Democratic primaries could determine where state policy goes over the next two years.

Cortez’s and is usually receptive to legislation that the DSA and progressives want to push.

e Assembly, to the frustration of the left and the delight of the real estate industry and other wealthier interest groups, has emerged as the more moderate body. e farreaching good cause provisions that leftist lawmakers wanted — statewide protections from large rent hikes — could not make it through the Assembly.

DSA, tenant activists and progressive interest groups like the Working Families Party would love to drag the Assembly to the left.

Whether they can actually do this is an open question. One advantage insurgents and less well-wired candidates might have this year is the new state public matching funds system; what impact it ultimately will have is unclear, since — unlike the city system — there are no spending limits. It’s worth watching, regardless, what happens with all of the publicly funded candidates in this cycle.

Both chambers, the state Senate and Assembly, are Democratdominated, but it is in the Senate where progressives and democratic socialists have more in uence. e upper body is small — 63 members to the Assembly’s 150 — and the three Democratic Socialists of America lawmakers there work fairly closely with the legislative leadership. e deputy leader of the Senate, Michael Gianaris, represents a Queens district that overlaps with Alexandria Ocasio-

All of the action is in the primaries. e races to watch start in Brooklyn, where DSA-backed Eon Tyrell Huntley, a retail employee and local PTA president, is trying to oust Stefani Zinerman, who represents Bedford-Stuyvesant. Huntley, running on a pro-tenant and anti-landlord platform, is the underdog, but DSA has made inroads in central Brooklyn, and this race is quite competitive.

Emily Gallagher, a DSA incumbent in Greenpoint, is hoping to

beat back a strong challenge from Anathea Simpkins, an associate vice president of the gun violence prevention group Sandy Hook Promise. Simpkins is running to Gallagher’s right, hoping to galvanize support from those who opposed a controversial street safety redesign of McGuinness Boulevard. Simpkins has backing from a pro-charter schools PAC funded by Michael Bloomberg and a Walmart heir, forcing Gallagher to campaign harder than she’d likely prefer. If Gallagher secures backing from the Hasidic Jewish vote in the district — the Satmar sects sometimes oppose each other — and runs up the score among young progressives, she should be victorious.

Challenges

e DSA insurgent with the easiest path to o ce is Claire Valdez, a union organizer running in a western Queens seat held by Juan Ardila, who was accused of sexual assault last year and has refused calls to step down. (He initially denied the allegations by two women but later publicly apologized.) Local attorney Johanna Carmona is running a serious campaign as well, though Valdez, with endorsements from the WFP and nearby elected o cials, should be considered the favorite.

A non-DSA progressive in Flushing, Ron Kim, has faced several tough challenges from the right in recent years and has another one in June, this time from Yi Andy Chen, a local activist. Chen is well-funded and hammering Kim for his liberal

views on criminal justice reform. e heavily Asian district has trended Republican in recent years, and Kim has had to hustle to stay in ofce. Progressives and socialists would like to save Kim. ey also want to defeat the longtime education committee chairman, Michael Benedetto, in the eastern Bronx. Saving Benedetto is a top priority for Carl Heastie, the Assembly speaker and Bronxite, and he undoubtedly has the upper hand over DSA challenger Jonathan Soto. Soto, a Christian faith leader and education activist, won 36% of the vote two years ago and is hoping to build o that base with endorsements from Ocasio-Cortez and the WFP. Benedetto must be considered a signi cant favorite, but this is another race to watch.

Another primary to watch that falls outside of the DSA vs. centrist binary but still pits a leftist against a more center-left politician is the

open race for an Upper West Side Assembly seat that has long been held by Danny O’Donnell, who isn’t seeking re-election. Much of the area’s political establishment has rallied around Micah Lasher, who served as a top aide to Kathy Hochul and Michael Bloomberg, but O’Donnell, the WFP and other progressives are supporting Eli Northrup, a public defender. Lasher is the favorite in the home stretch, but Northrup has made the race competitive.

Finally, it’s worth following an Assembly race north of the city in Columbia County, where relative moderate Didi Barrett is facing down a WFP-backed insurgent, Claire Cousin, an activist involved in the criminal justice reform movement. Voters there have migrated to the left and Cousin might nd a receptive electorate in June. Ross Barkan is a journalist and author in New York City.

Manhattan borough prez shakes up community boards

By Nick Garber

New York City’s community boards have long been known as bastions of anti-development sentiment, capable of persuading city lawmakers to block new buildings seen as too tall, or unsightly, or out-of-character for the neighborhood. But Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine says he’s making progress in his quest to make the neighborhood groups more open to new housing.

Levine, one of the city’s most vocally pro-development elected ofcials, has limited power to in uence housing policy through his partly ceremonial o ce. But he does appoint half of the volunteer members of the borough’s 12 community boards — and starting last year, he added a new question about housing to the boards’ annual application, in an e ort to nd new members who view the city’s current housing shortage as a crisis.

Two years in, Levine says the effort is showing promise: Of the 111 new Manhattan board members appointed last month, 81% ranked

housing as either their rst or second-biggest priority. at’s a higher level than when the application rst posed the question in 2023, according to his sta , although they were unable to share last year’s gure.

“I think it re ects the magnitude of the crisis, and the extent to which particularly young people are directly confronting this in their own lives as they try to nd housing for themselves,” Levine said in an interview. Although community boards have no formal power, their symbolic votes are often enough to convince their local City Council members to block rezonings.

Members’ impact

e new members could have an immediate impact: Mayor Eric Adams’ ambitious City of Yes plan loosening zoning rules for housing has just begun its review by community boards, and City Council members are expected to closely watch the boards’ votes in the coming weeks as a sign of how potent the local opposition is.

Of course, ranking housing as a top priority doesn’t guarantee that a community board member will vote in favor of new development. But Levine says his o ce has other ways of screening out candidates who re exively oppose adding housing — for the past three years, Manhattan applicants have been asked to roleplay an imaginary rezoning application, and Levine’s o ce pays attention to whether the applicants indicate more interest in the new housing being created versus other factors like “neighborhood context.”

called growing in uence by prodevelopment forces.

Levine isn’t the only one seeking to shake up the city’s community boards. Members of the prohousing advocacy group Open New York have run for positions on several boards, including Midtown’s Community Board 5, where discord has erupted in recent months after longtime members resigned in protest over what they

Levine stressed that his o ce looks for a “diversity of perspectives” rather than uniformly yes-inmy-backyard attitudes. He does not expect that similar con ict will erupt at other community boards as a result of his new appointments, calling the situation at CB5 “extraordinary and beyond anything I have seen, not just in my time as borough president but in my time in local government.”

e new class of 111 board members joins an existing cohort of

members being re-appointed to another term this year. Levine says the new members have other strengths — 65% are people of color and 31% are parents or caregivers, chipping away at longstanding concerns that community board members skew white, wealthy and older.

Levine himself has taken some other steps to encourage development, last year releasing a list of 171 sites around Manhattan that he said could accommodate new housing. If a developer proposed a rezoning on one of those sites, Levine pledged to expedite his ofce’s review of the project from the typical 45 days to just ve days — and has since followed through on that promise by fast-tracking an apartment tower in Yorkville, and two in East Harlem.

Some of Levine’s peers have similar ideas for boosting growth. Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso last year unveiled a comprehensive plan for his borough that included a promise to greenlight rezonings proposed in neighborhoods that have historically under-built.

Ross Barkan

Manhattan borough president Mark Levine is trying to reshape his borough’s community boards to be more open to new development. WILLIAM ALATRISTE/NYC COUNCIL MEDIA UNIT

850 Third Ave. gears up for redevelopment as part of M-CORE program

Manhattan-based investment company Waterman Interests announced May 22 that it is teaming up with the global firm HPS Investment Partners to redevelop 850 Third Ave. — a 605,000-square-foot office building in Midtown that, together with another nearly-empty tower in the Financial District, locked in $100 million in tax breaks earlier this year in an attempt by the city to reinvigorate the ailing market.

quired the circa-1961 Third Avenue property last year for nearly $266 million from developer Jacob Chetrit, who bought it for $422 million in 2019. The building’s largest tenant, Discovery Communications, departed in 2020, contributing to a recent vacancy rate of 67% — equivalent to about 400,000 square feet that’s currently available. And the firm only expects the building to continue losing tenants and hit a vacant rate of 86% within three years, Crain’s reported in January.

1166 Sixth Ave. nds new tenants to replace big of ce departures

Aaron Elstein

e tower at 1166 Sixth Ave. is poised to ll nearly 250,000 square feet of recently vacated space, a coup for landlord Edward S. Minsko Equities.

e 44-story, 1.6 millionsquare-foot building at West 45th Street will lose hedge fund DE Shaw & Co. and hedge-fund services provider Arcesium after their leases expired last month.

DE Shaw is moving out of 200,000 square feet and relocating to Manhattan West. e new location couldn’t be learned for Arcesium, a former DE Shaw subsidiary that leases 40,000 square feet, according to Fitch Ratings.

CEO Edward Minsko told Crain’s that leases are out for signature with two tenants to occupy nearly all the available space.

“ ese deals will put us at 96% leased,” he said, while declining to identify the new arrivals.

Building upgrades

Filling vacant space is no sure thing for Midtown o ce landlords, especially for owners of buildings developed 30 years ago or more. 1166 Sixth was constructed in 1974 but Minsko said $64 million was invested a few years ago in elevator and lobby upgrades.

“It’s basically a new building,” he said.

Minsko owns, leases or manages more than 4 million square feet of commercial space, according to bond-rating rm DBRS, including 590 Madison Ave., 51 Astor Place, and 101 Sixth Ave. e rm co-owns 1166 Sixth with majority owner and anchor tenant Marsh & McLennan, the big insurance broker with nearly 900,000 square feet in the upper half of the building.

e tower has two Roy Lichtenstein tapestries in the lobby but its most distinguishing feature is a block-long privately owned public space with chairs, tables, a fountain, and trees. “ e host o ce tower used to be the headquarters for the International Paper Company,” urban planner Jerold Kayden wrote, “and this ‘forest’ literally advertised its business.”

The 21-story building, between East 51st and East 52nd streets, plans to transform its decrepit offices into an amenity-rich space, bolstered by the city incentive. The tax-break program, known as Manhattan Commercial Revitalization, or M-CORE, propels landlords to convert older offices south of 59th Street into high-quality buildings that are more appealing to workers.

Waterman has previously led successful office redevelopment projects at both 390 and 400 Park Ave. and is looking forward to doing the same at 850 Third Ave., said Joseph Tansey, managing director of HPS.

“With 850 Third we have an extraordinary opportunity to reintroduce the property as a sought-after address.”

Rebranded

A 31-story o ce building at 175 Water St. was the other tower to land the tax break as part of the program. It was recently rebranded with a new name — Water Street Associates or WSA — and a new address — 161 Water St. — to attract more creative-type tenants, New York Magazine recently reported.   HPS Investment Partners ac-

Francisco Miranda, a spokesman for Waterman, however, declined to provide more details about the building’s forthcoming redevelopment, including how much it’s expected to cost, when the renovation would begin or a timeline for completion. But Crain’s reported in January that in return for $60 million worth of renovations, the building’s property taxes and other obligations would be frozen for 20 years, resulting in a tax savings of $58 million.

The city also estimated at the time it announced the incentive that it would eventually profit $600 million in tax benefits as a result of the work to attract more tenants.

“With 850 Third we have an extraordinary opportunity to reintroduce the property as a soughtafter address,” said Simon Wasserberger, managing director at Waterman.

Julianne Cuba

Simon Wasserberger, managing director at Waterman

1166 Sixth Ave., Midtown | COSTAR

Replacing cannabis executive director quickly is key to getting on right track

Another day, another black eye for the state’s cannabis industry.

Chris Alexander, the executive director of the o ce of Cannabis Management, o cially resigned recently, after Gov. Kathy Hochul said in early May that she would not reappoint him to his post come September. Alexander said he did not see how he could continue his work, knowing that the governor felt he was responsible for how the state’s legal cannabis rollout has gone so far, a process she has called “a disaster.” If the governor wants to ensure the cannabis market picks up the pace, she should be speedy in replacing Alexander.

According to our sister publication Green Market Report, Alexander had both supporters and detractors in the local marijuana community, with some in favor of his support of a social equity focus to the market, and others blaming him for how slowly the recreational sales industry has gotten underway. To date the OCM has overseen the launch of 130 legal marijuana shops in New York, a minuscule amount compared with estimates of up to

PERSONAL VIEW

several thousand illegal cannabis stores operating statewide. Although it is clear that there have been major issues with the launch of the adult-use marijuana market, with a recent report issued by the O ce of General Services detailing the O ce of

Fix the voucher system to house more New Yorkers

There’s no way around it: our city is in the throes of a housing crisis.

Right now, more than 150,000 New Yorkers across our city are without a home, while more than 175,000 households are at risk of eviction. ere is no silver bullet that will solve this crisis overnight, but we do have proven tools that are designed to help more New Yorkers get into permanent housing and stay there.

ey’re housing vouchers — and they work.

When vouchers are used by families exiting shelter, only .3% return to the shelter system, compared to a 15.2% return rate among families without vouchers. ese vouchers also save the City money; a report released by Mayor Adams nds that CityFHEPS vouchers produce as much as $75,000 in cost-savings per family, per year by keeping families out of shelter.

To realize the full potential of housing vouchers across our city, we must do more to make them readily available and easily accessible.

First, we need to simplify the application process and clearly communicate what is required to apply for or renew a voucher. For instance, tenants are often forced to resubmit income information multiple times because of delays in the Department of Social Services review process that lead to the information expiring before it is reviewed. ere is also a complete lack of transparency in the process, so if an application is delayed in DSS, there is no way for the prospective tenant to know what is causing the delay. To improve transparency and efciency, the City must enforce and comply with Local Law 118, which requires that the status of rental assistance applications and renewal requests be available online. But we should go further, requiring that each voucher program establish a central public portal, accessible voucher checklist, and direct point of contact to ensure expectations for applicants and property owners are clear, and questions can be answered expediently.

Once a family has applied for a voucher,

Cannabis Management’s shortcomings and missed opportunities, the last thing that will make the agency run smoothly is a leadership vacuum. It makes sense that the governor would want it known, in light of the report’s ndings, that she is not OK

with the sustained wrinkles in the cannabis market, an industry that had lofty goals of social justice that may have stood in the way of its progress. One of the best ways to tamp down the illegal market will be to offer far more legal options. Quickly nding someone who will work to open legal dispensaries without catering to the needs of already-established cannabis companies, a worthy goal of the state’s to help people previously incarcerated for marijuana crimes bene t from the legal industry, is key.

Furthermore, the state is nally making some headway on enforcement of illegal shops. But the e ort could be wasted without a trusted leader to make sure it remains a priority. e worst thing that could happen is for the role to stay open for months, putting the industry at risk of falling further behind.  e governor has a great opportunity to showcase that she means it when she says she wants to x the legal industry’s botched rollout. Otherwise the illegal market, which has proved it can indeed move quickly, will continue to overshadow the regulated one.

whether via CityFHEPS or Section 8, which is funded through the federal government, administrative ine ciencies and technological challenges are delaying exits from shelter into permanent housing. e median wait time between a Section 8 voucher application and issuance increased by almost 120% last scal year due, in large part, to administrative issues including a cumbersome apartment inspection process.

Instill trust

Finally, we must also do more to promote con dence in these programs, for both voucher recipients and property owners. By preventing source-of-income discrimination through enhanced educational outreach to voucher recipients and continued collaboration with property

owners to help them identify helpful resources and opportunities to help service tenants, we can help both voucher holders and owners feel con dent in their engagement with a housing voucher program. Going a step further, the City Council, State, and Federal legislative bodies should pass legislation ensuring that voucher rent is paid within the rst ve days of the lease start date, as would a cash-paying tenant, and that the dollar amount of a voucher presented at the time of application is honored — two logical rarities under today’s system. ese simple acts will instill trust in both property owners and voucher holders.  Before our elected o cials and city agencies throw up their hands and declare the housing crisis unsolvable, they should look to improve the existing tools we have to make them more e ective.

We must do more to make housing vouchers readily available and easily accessible, write Christine Quinn of Win NYC and James Whelan of REBNY. | BLOOMBERG

Christine Quinn is the president and CEO of Win NYC, the largest provider of family shelter and supportive housing in the city.

James Whelan is the president of the Real Estate Board of New York.

SUSAN WATTS/OFFICE OF GOV. KATHY HOCHUL

PERSONAL VIEW

JFK project sets record with $2.3B in MWBE contracts

When we embarked on construction of a new John F. Kennedy International Airport, our commitment was not only to build a world-class global gateway, but to do so with record participation by minority and women-owned businesses (MWBE). While we are still several years away from completing the airport, JFK’s redevelopment has already made history by setting a record for MWBE–participation by any project in New York state with $2.3 billion in contracts awarded to date.

So far, the Port Authority and its private partners in the $19 billion transformation of JFK have awarded contracts to 680 MWBE rms. anks to our additional emphasis on including local businesses in the redevelopment of the airport, we have awarded $950 million in contracts to more than 200 Queens-based rms.

Our focus on MWBE participation in the airport’s redevelopment stems from a 2018 vote by the Port Authority Board of Commissioners to raise the goal for MWBE participation in our capital projects from 17 percent to 30 percent. MWBE participation was also identi ed as a key priority by the JFK Redevelopment Community Advi-

PERSONAL VIEW

sory Council, which has worked diligently with the Port Authority to ensure that a fair share of the economic bene ts from the airport ow to the communities that have hosted JFK for more than 75 years.

But it takes more than just setting a goal to set a new record — it has taken hard work, planning and the guidance of the advisory council, which has been an integral part of the airport redevelopment from the very inception of this project.

Not only did we recruit MWBE rms, but the advisory council also urged us to set up programs to help companies develop the skills to bid for, compete for and win contracts at the airport. An academy for the

principals at architecture and engineering rms focused on navigating the procurement process; contractor coaching programs taught small rms how to get through the rigorous process of applying for contracts; a construction mentoring program, really a boot camp, provided MWBEs and local rms with training to bid for and complete projects; the Institute of Concessions provides local retailers and restaurateurs the training they need to compete for and operate airport concessions. Meanwhile, our JFK redevelopment team, along with our private partners, sponsored hundreds of seminars, webinars and forums to help rms become MWBE certi ed and to network with prime contractors.

Our success to date at JFK was also built on our experiences at other Port Authority projects, including the redevelopment of LaGuardia Airport, where we set the previous New York state record for MWBE participation at $2.2 billion. No matter how successful we may have been, it is essential that we continue to listen to our community advisory council and work with our partners to improve our outreach to MWBE rms and local businesses. By expanding opportunities for MWBE rms, we are creating a deeper and richer pool of talent from which we can draw on to build these magni cent new transportation projects in a way that is equitable and inclusive.

Today’s 5G expansion is the key to tomorrow’s NYC

Hype about 5G-enabled technologies changing the world began long before 5G rollout: augmented reality would blur boundaries between physical and digital spaces, connected cars would end tra c jams, and our toasters would talk to our refrigerators about whatever toasters and refrigerators talk about. More than ve years later, we’re still waiting for these predictions to come true.

In the meantime, our mobile networks are near a tipping point, and strengthening 5G infrastructure is the single most important action we can take to preserve the mobile digital services many of us take for granted while boosting connectivity for millions of New Yorkers.

Just last year, U.S. cellphone users reported they had problems 11 out of every 100 times when they tried to use data, text, or make a call. at’s an increase from 2020 to 2021, when users reported about nine problems per 100 connections.

In a global city as densely populated as New York, our network capacity is being choked by an exponentially growing demand for data and an explosion of internet-connected devices. In heavily crowded areas like Fifth Avenue or a concert in Prospect Park, rising cases of dropped calls and falling mobile data speeds frustrate New Yorkers and tourists alike.

As leaders in the tech industry, we know that a failure to invest in and deploy more modernized wireless infrastruc-

Julie Samuels is the president and executive director of Tech:NYC.

Nick Colvin is the CEO of LinkNYC.

ture will force us into an endless game of catchup to meet ballooning data demands. Ultimately, we risk a collapse in the digital connectivity upon which our modern lives depend.

We must move quickly to expand nextgeneration networks across our city to sustain the mobile digital services so many of us take for granted and pave the road for our tech industry to deliver on 5G’s promised and even unimaginable possibilities in the near and not-so-distant future. In the meantime, it’s unreasonable to expect 5G to bring about the next industrial revolution while New Yorkers still have trouble loading things as basic as email while on the go.

As crucial as 5G is for all of us, it is most important for the 11% of New Yorkers — approximately one million people — that depend solely on mobile data for broadband access at home. And for those for whom home service is simply unavailable or too expensive,  xed wireless access —

5G to the home — reduces the time and expense of connecting the unconnected.

A rapid proliferation of 5G-enabled infrastructure is necessary to help our city foster more equitable, connected, and modern communities. It’s also key to New York City’s status as a global smart city, where tech companies and startups can drive cutting-edge progress, create more 21st century jobs for union workers, and contribute to the overall health of our local economy.

We need fellow industry leaders — not to mention elected o cials — to actively embrace and advocate for local pole-top and rooftop 5G radio deployments, public-private partnerships like Link5G, and even community-led mesh networks to reinforce the standard of reliable connectivity in all corners of the Big Apple; especially if we want to continue challenging Silicon Valley as the preeminent global tech center.

Installing broadband infrastructure in New York can be uniquely challenging, with aging conduits, di culties in attaching ber to utility poles, and scarcity of pole real estate. On any given city block, there’s little room for carriers to share existing poles to expand broadband access.

But Link5G smart poles o er a solution: with space for ve carriers’ equipment in a single structure, Link5G minimizes the need to install several 5G small cell radios on multiple di erent pole tops within one concentrated area. e design

reduces street clutter, increases bandwidth, and provides more reliable service, all while delivering free, high-speed public Wi-Fi, nationwide phone calling, device charging, maps, and connections to essential social services.

No one anticipated how 4G would transform our world — new business models like rideshare and delivery apps created thousands of jobs and reinvented the way we commute, shop, and eat in cities seemingly overnight. Suddenly, we streamed movies in airports and held video chats with our family while we sat in parks across the country from each other.

As 5G replaces 4G, it’s tempting to predict how it will reshape our day-to-day once again; but predictions are cheap, and pundits have never changed the world — it’s up to our innovators, technologists, startups, and entrepreneurs to uncover and harness 5G’s true capabilities.

Before we can give them that opportunity, we must rst address that today’s digital technology still falls short of basic expectations.

Link5G and other equity-minded connectivity solutions are vital for futureproo ng our telecommunications infrastructure, fostering more learning and economic growth, and keeping New York City competitive on the global stage while providing the platform for our thriving startup community to do what they do best: innovate.

Gregory W. Meeks (left) is a U.S. representative for the state of New York. Donovan Richards is the Queens borough president and co-chair of the JFK Redevelopment Community Advisory Council. Rick Cotton is executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

It’s essential to continue listening to our community advisory council and improve our outreach to MWBE rms, write U.S. Rep. Gregory W. Meeks, Queens Borough President Donovan Richards and Port Authority Executive Director Rick Cotton. | BLOOMBERG

ARCHITECTS CRAIN’S LIST

1

GENSLER 1700 Broadway New York,NY10019

2 PERKINS EASTMAN

115 Fifth Ave. New York,NY10003

3 HOK 5 Bryant Park New York,NY10018

212-492-1400 gensler.com

212-353-7200 perkinseastman.com

212-741-1200

RobinKlehr Avia,Joseph Brancato,RoccoGiannetti

Regional managing principals

CarlosMartinez,JosephLauro, AmandaCarroll

Managing directors, NY of ce

AndrewAdelhardt,ShawnBasler, NicholasLeahy Co-chief

CarrieMoore

Technical

JuliaMurphy,KenLewis, LauraEttelman

Managing partners

ChrisCooper,ColinKoop

Design

MollyMcGowan,RichardOlcott, TomasRossant,PeterSchubert, DonWeinreich,ThomasWong

ARCHITECTS CRAIN’S LIST

Northwell Health, Victoria and Lloyd Goldman Healthcare Pavilion; Hospital for Special Sugery, Kellen Tower

NewYorkarea includesNewYorkCityandNassau,SuffolkandWestchestercountiesinNewYorkandBergen,Essex,HudsonandUnioncountiesinNewJersey.Toqualifyforthislist, rmsmusthave aNewYork–areaof ce. Crain's usesstaffresearch,extensivesurveysandthemostcurrentreferencesavailabletoproduceitslists,butthereisnoguaranteethattheselistingsarecomplete.Incasesof ties in the number of New York–area architects, rms are listed alphabetically. n/d-Not disclosed. 1. Figures may not add up to 100% due to rounding. 2.

Blackstone COO sells Park Avenue co-op for $13 million

By C. J. Hughes

Financier Jonathan Gray, who through his three decades with Blackstone helped the asset manager assemble the largest commercial real estate portfolios in the world, has parted with a property closer to home.

Gray, Blackstone’s chief operating o cer, and his wife, Mindy, a philanthropist, have sold their ve-bedroom co-op on the Upper East Side, according to the city register.

e duplex apartment at 925 Park Ave., which features a living room with a replace, an eat-in kitchen with a pantry and a formal dining room, plus a primary suite with a replace and a spacious dressing room, traded for $13 million, property records show. e deal, which closed May 20, included two storage areas. Margaret Boyden was the buyer, records show.

Gray, who helped his buyout rm orchestrate one of the largestever takeovers, the $39 billion acquisition in 2007 of Sam Zell’s 600building Equity O ce company, seems to have a good sense of the local residential market.

In November Gray listed the apartment, which spans the third and fourth oors of a 14-story prewar building at East 80th Street,

for $12.5 million. So the unit, where the couple raised their four children, managed to nd a taker

vestment overall. e Grays purchased their co-op in 2005 for about $8 million before adding the

The duplex apartment at 925 Park Ave. features a living room with a replace, an eat-in kitchen with a pantry and a formal dining room, plus a primary suite with a replace and a spacious dressing room.

relatively quickly and at a slight premium to boot.

e co-op, which was designed in part by architect Peter Pennoyer, looks to have been a solid in-

two storage areas, in 2015 and 2016, for a total of about $600,000, the register shows, so the property cost about $9 million all in.

Joining Blackstone in 1992 after

earning English and business degrees at the University of Pennsylvania, Gray spent his early years helping to run the company’s then-much-smaller real estate group.

In the years that followed the blockbuster Equity O ce deal, Blackstone shed most of those commercial towers—a seemingly prescient move based on what’s become of the o ce sector in the Covid era—but also dramatically ramped up its residential holdings along the way.

Today the rm, co-founded by Stephen Schwarzman in 1985, reportedly owns and manages 300,000 units of rental housing in

the U.S. but has remained active in commercial sectors such as warehouses, data centers and student housing.

e billionaire Gray, considered Schwarzman’s heir-apparent, is also a major donor to the Democratic party and supports causes across the city through his family’s decade-old philanthropic group Gray Foundation, which recently stepped in to fund swim lessons for second-graders.

A Blackstone spokeswoman said Gray was unable to comment by press time. And Hilary Landis, the Corcoran Group agent who marketed the home, did not return an email for comment.

The formal dining room | CORCORAN GROUP

925 Park Ave., Upper East Side | CORCORAN GROUP

Council moves to rein in Mayor Adams in escalating feud

By Nick Garber

City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams is pushing ahead with a plan to give her body more oversight over the mayor’s commissioner-level appointments, fueling a new clash between the branches of government at a moment when Mayor Eric Adams hardly needs it.

Con rming weeks of rumors, the speaker introduced a bill on May 23 that would give the council the power to vote on the mayor’s choices to lead 21 city agencies, including powerful departments like Buildings, Health and Mental Hygiene, Social Services, Sanitation and Transportation. Currently, the mayor only needs council approval for a handful of major appointments, including the Department of Investigation commissioner and corporation counsel — the city’s top lawyer.

“We think it’s an important conversation to have,” Speaker Adams said at a press conference on May 23. “Commissioners serve the city and all New Yorkers, not a single o cial.”

Mayor Adams has already taken steps to ght the council’s plan, which comes as he prepares to appoint Randy Mastro, a lawyer with a long and controversial career, as corporation counsel in the face of staunch opposition from many council members.

e council’s bill to expand its so-called “advice and consent” powers would need to be approved by voters in a referendum, since it seeks to amend the City Charter. e mayor could stop that from happening by appointing his own Charter Revision Commission, which could knock the council’s measure o the November ballot — and Mayor Adams did just that on May 21, making a seemingly abrupt announcement that he had convened a new charter commission, which he quickly stacked with loyalists.

e mayor’s o ce has denied

that the commission was created in response to the council bill, although it was announced just hours after City Hall received an inquiry from the New York Times about the speaker’s plan. Speaker Adams said with a smile on May 23 that the timing of the announcement appeared “convenient” for the mayor.

“I believe that advice and consent actually improves government by ensuring our commissioners are the most quali ed, and they start their tenures by building con dence and support across the government,” she said.

e mayor’s latest dispute with the City Council may harm his standing among lawmakers when he can barely a ord to lose more support. By the end of June, his administration needs to work out a deal with the council on a new city budget, and lawmakers have been largely uni ed in their desire to roll back Adams’ cuts to city agencies.

And the mayor also needs the council to approve the remaining two of his wide-ranging City of Yes zoning plans, especially the hotly contested housing package expected to face a vote this fall, which will likely require intense persuasion e orts. ( e second of the three plans, focused on busi-

ness growth, passed council committees last month and is expected to be approved by the full body in June).

“ ey don’t have much in uence within the body,” a Council sta er told Crain’s of the administration last month. “Even the things that are his agenda items are things that we have to carry over the nish line.”

Fabien Levy, the deputy mayor for communications, disputed that claim in a statement.

“Working in unison to support working-class New Yorkers is how government is supposed to operate, and we know our neighbors on the Council will put people over politics by voting for the housing New Yorkers desperately need,” Levy said.

Connections

e Charter Revision Commission’s chair will be Carlo Scissura, president and CEO of the New York Building Congress and a longtime ally of the mayor’s. e remaining dozen members, announced May 22, are largely longtime friends — and in some cases, campaign donors — of Adams’, including former SEIU 32BJ union leader Kyle Bragg, former Bronx Borough President Ruben

Diaz Jr., and former deputy mayor Lorraine Grillo.

ree of the commission’s appointees are active lobbyists: Diaz, Bragg and Max Rose, the former congressman who now works for the rm started by Adams’ exchief of sta Frank Carone. Adams’ o ce has asserted the commission has been in the works since before the council plan was publicized. His o cial marching orders for the group are to consider ways the charter could “better promote scal responsibility” and increase public input on laws that “would impact public safety” — both of which resemble the mayor’s objections to recent council bills that a ected criminal justice and expanded costly housing vouchers.

e mayor’s o ce also shared a series of documents with Crain’s and other outlets last month which Levy said proves the charter revision e ort began separately from the council bill. City Hall said a group of community advocates requested a meeting with the mayor in late April to discuss how to increase their input on those issues, and the topic of a charter revision was raised by one of the advocates during a May 2 meeting, according to minutes shared by the mayor’s o ce.

“Today marks a signi cant step forward towards enhancing transparency, responsiveness in city government, and further civic engagement,” Mayor Adams said in a statement announcing the commission members on May 22. “ eir mission to explore innovative ways for the public to contribute to our city’s governance will be critical in moving our city forward.”

Speaker Adams said May 23 that she would “wait and see how things play out as it relates to the ballot.” In a similar ght under Rudy Giuliani in 1998, a state court sided with the mayor, ruling that a Charter Revision Commission he convened over campaign nance issues “must take precedence” over the council’s attempt to add a referendum about the new Yankee Stadium.

But Speaker Adams’ bill appears to anticipate the mayor’s potential delay tactic: It includes language that would allow the advice-and-consent powers to be approved in a subsequent special election if the measure is “prohibited from being voted on” in a regular November general election. e bill would omit some key agency leaders, including Police, Fire and Education, from the new layer of review.

Goldman Sachs sells stake in Suffolk tower to Blackstone

By Eddie Small

Investment giant Blackstone has purchased a minority stake in a massive Lower East Side mixeduse project from Goldman Sachs.

Blackstone has taken a roughly $171 million stake in e Su olk, a 30-story project at 55 Su olk St. led by developer the Gotham Organization, according to property records. e move is part of a $200.5 million nancing package the development has received from Wells Fargo.

Blackstone bought its stake through Blackstone Strategic Partners, a company fund that manages $69 billion worth of assets.

Blackstone and Gotham declined to comment on the deal. Representatives for Goldman

Sachs and Wells Fargo did not respond to requests for comment by press time.

e Su olk features 378 luxury apartments, split between 75% market-rate and 25% a ordable, and includes retail space on the ground oor. It is also home to the headquarters for the ChineseAmerican Planning Council. e $236 million project spans 400,000 square feet and was completed in 2023, according to Gotham’s website.

Major bet

e Su olk is part of Gotham’s Broome Street Development, which also features e Norfolk at nearby 64 Norfolk St., a 16-story building with 115 a ordable se-

nior apartments.

New York rents hit all-time record highs last year and appear poised to do so again this summer, with consistently high interest rates keeping many would-be homebuyers in the apartment market. Rents at available units in The Suffolk range from $4,690 for a studio to $11,700 for a three-bedroom, according to StreetEasy.

Blackstone placed a major bet on the multifamily market earlier this year, when it struck a deal to buy the apartment landlord AIR Communities for about $10 billion. e rm also recently sold a portfolio of its industrial properties in Queens and New Jersey to Terreno, a San Francisco-based real estate rm, for $246 million.

Mayor Eric Adams said May 21 he was opposed to the council proposal, defending New York City’s “strong executive system.” | ED REED/MAYORAL PHOTOGRAPHY OFFICE

Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, speaking during a May 23 press conference, said the mayor’s announcement of a Charter Revision Commission appeared “convenient” given the council’s own plan to increase its oversight. | JOHN MCCARTEN/NYC COUNCIL MEDIA UNIT

Seagram Building toasts new lease deals and of ce expansions as mortgage maturity looms for the property

By Aaron Elstein

e Seagram Building has many fewer vacancies than a year ago, a welcome development for landlord RFR Holding and one that underscores the rising gap in fortunes for Park Avenue towers over the rest of Midtown.

The landmarked building at 375 Park Ave. is 98% occupied, up from 90% a year ago, according to a report on May 22 by bond-rating firm KBRA. The increase is owed in part to Blue Owl Capital expanding its footprint to 155,000 square feet from 100,000, at a base rent of about $148 per square foot.

The landmarked building at 375 Park Ave. is 98% occupied, up from 90% a year ago, according to a report from bond-rating rm KBRA.

e Seagram’s second-largest tenant, private equity rm Clayton Dubilier & Rice, expanded its

footprint by about 10,000 square feet and now leases 69,000 square feet at $153 a square foot. A new tenant this year, investment rm Advent International, moved into 34,000 square feet at $193 per square foot, KBRA said. ese rents are well above the avenue’s asking rate of $110 per square foot, according to Savills.

Welcome news

ose leases are welcome news for RFR’s Aby Rosen and Michael Fuchs, who acquired the Seagram at East 52nd Street in 2000 for $375 million from TIAA. RFR invested millions in upgrading the 38-story, 860,000 square-foot tower developed in 1958 and designed by architects including Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. e Seagram was the rst building with oor-to-ceiling windows, and its look has been imitated by high-rises everywhere. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2006.

But the Seagram has big bills coming due. Its $760million mortgage matures next year and, after being extended twice, could be di cult to re -

nance next year considering it carries just a 3.53% interest rate. e building also carries an additional $217 million in mezzanine debt.

RFR’s portfolio has some challenges. It owns 50% of the Chrysler Building with an insolvent Austrian rm called Signa. And 90 Fifth Ave., a handsome o ce tower at West 14th St. riddled with vacan-

cies that missed a property-tax payment last year. e bill has since been paid. Against such di culties, common among older o ce buildings across Manhattan, the Seagram’s rising fortunes stand out. Rental income at the tower has risen to $72 million from $66 million 12 months ago, KBRA said, thanks to

the new tenants paying high rents. “ e changes increase the likelihood that the borrower will be able to re nance at its next maturity date,” KBRA said, “which it failed to do at its original maturity date.”

An RFR representative said the Seagram Building is 99% leased with $85 million in net operating income and valued at $2.3 billion.

Seagram Building, 375 Park Ave., Midtown WIKIPEDIA

Vornado investors rebuke CEO Steven Roth over $20M payday, citing ‘pay-for-performance misalignment’

By Aaron Elstein

More than 40% of Vornado Realty Trust’s shareholders voted against CEO Steven Roth’s pay May 23 in a potent gesture of investor discontent.

e vote was in response to Vornado doubling the pay of its longtime CEO, to $19.7 million last year, at a time when Manhattan’s second-largest commercial landlord slashed its dividend payout by 68% due to falling earnings.

holders did so.

e Vornado vote stands in contrast to votes at other public companies. Shareholders in Russell 3000 companies have approved CEO pay packages this year with average support of 92%, according to consulting rm Semler Brossy. Only two CEO pay packages were rejected this year, both for energy companies.

So-called say-on-pay votes have been mandatory for public companies since the nancial crisis and are non-binding. But an embarrassing outcome can cost a CEO their job.

“The optics of creating a new…bonus pool when earnings continue to decline doesn’t look good.”

Piper Sandler analyst Alexander Goldfarb

Roth’s compensation was mostly paid in shares and stock options, but he also was granted a $3.7 million cash bonus, most of which rewards him for a project that won’t be nished for eight years.

Citing “unmitigated pay-forperformance misalignment,” Institutional Shareholder Services recommended investors vote against Roth’s pay at Vornado’s annual meeting, and 43% of share-

Former Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit was shown the door after a majority of investors voted against his pay in 2012. e more common result, however, is a few tweaks and assurances that performance and pay will be better aligned in the future.

Last year, 23% of shareholders voted against Roth’s pay. Opposition rose this year after Vornado’s board awarded Roth a $2.2 million cash bonus in December that was linked to redeveloping 350 Park Ave. into a supertall tower for hedge fund mogul Ken Gri n’s rm, Citadel. e project isn’t expected to begin construction until

next year and nish in 2032 but members of the board’s compensation committee rewarded Roth and other top o cials for “seeking and nding new opportunities.”

Who’s on the commitee

Vornado’s compensation committee is chaired by Daniel Tisch, a son of former Loews Corp. chief Laurence Tisch, and includes for-

mer mayoral candidate Ray McGuire.

e bonus didn’t sit well after investors swallowed a substantial dividend cut.

“ e optics of creating a new… bonus pool when earnings continue to decline doesn’t look good,” said Piper Sandler analyst Alexander Goldfarb when the payment was disclosed.

In a regulatory ling, Vornado

said bonuses based on long-term development projects will “only be made on an episodic basis” and not annually. ISS observed that bonuses awarded to Roth and others “do not appear to have been conditioned on pre-set forwardlooking goals.”

e company’s stock traded May 24 at $23.50 a share, two thirds below its pre-pandemic level. Vornado declined to comment.

MTA drops OMNY tap-and-go fare system contractor for commuter rail rollout after costs, timeline spike

By Caroline Spivack

e OMNY tap-and-go fare system is coming to the region’s commuter rails next year, but the contractor launching the years-delayed network is no longer running the show.

e Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s board voted May 22 to drop Manhattan-based Cubic from the process of integrating

“[ e contract] really didn’t clearly gure out the cost and the process for bringing the railroads into contactless fare payment,” Lieber said. “All projects have risks but there were some serious ones here with respect to our contractor performance and software integration.”

“[The contract] really didn’t clearly gure out the cost and the process for bringing the railroads into contactless fare payment.”

Janno Lieber, MTA chair and chief executive

OMNY, which stands for One Metro New York, into the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North’s popular ticketing app MTA TrainTime. Instead, the London-based rm Masabi will do the work.

e MTA dropped Cubic in part because it’s three years behind schedule on the commuter rail integration, and the contract has ballooned $200 million past its original budget. MTA Chair and Chief Executive Janno Lieber conceded May 22 that the problems trace to “gaps” in the 2017 contract negotiated with Cubic.

e integration of trains, buses and subways with OMNY and the TrainTime app has been touted by transit o cials as a way to create more seamless connections for travelers. But the process has been rife with dysfunction owing to missed deadlines, buggy software and management challenges at both the authority and Cubic, according to MTA documents and people familiar with the project. e Covid-19 pandemic also caused delays to mount.

Cubic initially inked a $573 million contract in 2017 with the MTA, with an October 2020 deadline to launch OMNY on the city’s subway and buses; that expected date now is August 2024.

e company’s contract with the MTA has since grown to $772 million, including $85 million in change orders from Cubic, and more than $100 million in added costs by the MTA.

e original deal envisioned

Cubic nishing the commuter rail work by roughly 2021, but Cubic recently gave the MTA the updated timeline of 2027. At that point, transit o cials said they decided it would be “more expedient and cost-e ective” to replace Cubic with Masabi, according to contract documents.

By the numbers

Under the new arrangement, the MTA will shrink its contract with Cubic by roughly $36 million

and pay Masabi nearly $60 million over ve years to operate and expand the TrainTime app and to support the use of OMNY features, such as automatic discounts based on ridership history. Included in Masabi’s contract is one ve-year option that would bring the contract’s value up to $97 million if the MTA decids to extend the deal.

Masabi said it can integrate the commuter rails, OMNY and TrainTime by the end of 2025. However, new fare gates with the tapless tech, similar to what’s currently in

the city’s subway system, are not planned for commuter rail stations, said MTA Construction and Development President Jamie Torres-Springer.

“I just want to be clear that it was not anticipated in our scope that we were going to gate every one of the railroad stations — it’s simply not practically possible, wouldn’t make sense for the riders.” Torres-Springer said. “What we have here is a contactless system that is integrated and that’s the real value.”

Vornado Realty Trust CEO Steven Roth | BLOOMBERG Riders can tap into the city’s subway using the OMNY system. Commuter rail riders will soon be

TrainTime app. BUCK ENNIS

Kirsten Gillibrand’s political progression

2010

GILLIBRAND

From Page 1

winning the passage of major laws on gun tra cking and military sexual assault, embarking on a failed bid for president and now coasting to what should be an easy re-election to a third full term in November.

But she remains low-pro le in her home state. A May poll found nearly one-third of New York’s registered voters had no opinion of her, a remarkable result for someone who will likely end up serving at least 21 years in the Senate. Gillibrand’s reputation among New York’s political class has remained largely the same as when she was rst appointed in 2009: a policy heavy politician, skilled at fundraising but unknown in wide swaths of the state, distant from its New York City power center and seemingly uninterested in courting political activists or press attention.

Leader Hakeem Je ries.

“I’m not necessarily a headline-getter for our state. I would give that role to Sen. Schumer,” Gillibrand said in one of three interviews over two months for this pro le — acknowledging the alltoo-constant comparisons she gets to the ever-present Senate majority leader. “But I do really good work.”

Senate appointment

In person, Gillibrand is selfassured and polished, friendly but without the high-octane extroversion one might expect from someone who not long ago sought to be president. Seated at a table inside a lounge at a Midtown hotel where she was holding court on a recent afternoon, New York’s junior senator grew animated when talking about legislation but seemed disinterested in questions about herself and her career arc, imploring a reporter not to “get stuck in the earliest days.”

2012

Gillibrand shows no intention of retreating to the backbenches, though, and is poised this year to play a bigger role for New York Democrats than she has in a long time. In the Senate, she is in the middle of high-pro le pushes to regulate cryptocurrencies and expand paid family leave; on the campaign trail, she de ed longrunning retirement rumors — unfounded, she says — and, thanks partly to her formidable fundraising, deterred any wouldbe primary challengers despite speculation that she might be vulnerable.

counts at the time described. Descended from an in uential Albany political family, she was already plotting her eventual runs for ofce while working as a Manhattan lawyer in the early 2000s. After what one magazine article later described as a “carefully calculated” move back upstate, she upset a Republican incumbent in a high-pro le House race in 2006, drawing national attention.

But the Senate appointment was a new kind of challenge. e rst few weeks, Gillibrand said, were “like drinking from a rehose — it was everything, all at once, aimed right at your face.”

“You just had to be calm, patient, thoughtful, and realize it’s going to take time to introduce yourself to the whole state and that there would be a lot of criti-

gave up her right-leaning House district, she makes no attempt to chalk them up to an ideological awakening. Instead, she said, it was her own lack of experience that drove her to adopt those “parochial perspectives.”

But she was willing to revisit the day in January 2009 when she, a young upstate congresswoman, was instructed to catch a ight to Albany and learn whether Gov. David Paterson had chosen her for a life-changing appointment to the Senate. Whatever the outcome, Gillibrand was told she would need to stand behind the winner in a show of solidarity.

“We didn’t know I was picked,” Gillibrand recalled. “It was always a long shot.”

In fact, she had already won over Paterson, who chose Gillibrand from the crowd of betterknown New York political gures vying to ll the Senate seat being vacated by Hillary Clinton. What set Gillibrand apart in her interviews, Paterson recalled recently, was her willingness to talk about the policy issues she wanted to tackle in the Senate, rather than playing up her fundraising prowess or chances of beating a Republican in November.

“I didn’t want to hear all that political talk,” Paterson said. “She was a lot more comfortable being herself.”

And she has a more urgent task in the coming months. In November, New York Democrats, despite their grumbles over Gillibrand’s visibility, will be counting on her — the only statewide incumbent on the ballot — to help lift the fortunes of the half-dozen swing-district Democrats whose races might decide control of the House of Representatives. She will be lending her name and pocketbook to a new “coordinated campaign” aimed at winning those seats, serving as a co-chair along with Gov. Kathy Hochul and House Minority

Gillibrand was hardly the novice that some ac-

Political strategist Camille Rivera

cism along the way,” she said. In those early trips around the state, she had to make frequent stops to nurse her infant son.

One of the rst people Gillibrand sought out after her appointment was the Rev. Al Sharpton, who recalled being stunned by the new senator’s willingness to take questions for more than an hour from the attendees at his Saturday morning civil rights rally.

“No one, before or since, has done that. And I’ve had everybody,” Sharpton said. He has continued to ally with Gillibrand on e orts to end cash bail and combat police misconduct and said the senator “rarely makes a big move without checking in.”

“If I was a more mature politician at the time, I don’t think I would have felt that I had to be so representative on those issues,” she said.

She is similarly direct about the role she played in pressuring Minnesota Sen. Al Franken to resign in 2018 after seven women accused him of sexual harassment. Gillibrand was the rst Democratic senator to call on him to step down — although dozens of others quickly followed suit — and the subsequent anger among Democratic donors over

“I think (progressives) see her as a moderate. I think progressives are looking for her to be more localized, taking stronger positions around housing.”

Franken’s swift downfall was seen as a contributor to the failure of her ve-month presidential campaign.

Gillibrand said she has no regrets about the stand she took — she was working on an e ort to curb harassment in Congress when the scandal broke, and felt she would have been a hypocrite had she stayed silent. Perceptions of sexual misconduct vary by generation, she said, and “a lot of voters do not think harassment is a big deal.”

Gillibrand speaks with the frankness of someone accustomed to achieving her aims through dealmaking, not mass mobilization. Unlike so many question-dodging politicians, she can be startlingly open about the political realities of her job. Asked about her much-publicized leftward shift on issues like gun control and immigration since she

Gillibrand’s powerful allies

Throughout her political career, Kirsten Gillibrand forged friendships with some of New York and Washington’s most powerful players.

“I don’t think I could do it differently. I wish I didn’t get burdened so much, or punished so much,” she said. “I probably could have protected myself more, if I was really thoughtful and strategic about it. I didn’t think I needed to.”

Willing to collaborate

On an afternoon in April, Gillibrand could be found inside a sleek computer lab at St. John’s University in Queens, seated at the head of a table surrounded by students and a few city o cials. 2006

Gillibrand is elected to the House of Representatives from the Hudson Valley, defeating an incumbent Republican in an upset.

2019

Gillibrand suspends her presidential campaign ve months after formally announcing it after failing to qualify for the next round of debates.

2023

Gillibrand declares her intent to run for re-election, quieting speculation that she might step down.

Gillibrand emerges as a vocal supporter of gun control laws in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting, cementing a shift from her House days.

2018

Gillibrand is easily re-elected to a second full term in the Senate.

2009

Gov. David Paterson surprises New York by choosing Gillibrand to replace Hillary Clinton in the Senate.

Gillibrand secures the passage of major bills providing health care to Sept. 11 responders and repealing the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

Sen. Chuck Schumer

Rep. Nydia Velazquez

The Rev. Al Sharpton

Gov. Kathy Hochul BLOOMBERG, GETTY IMAGES

She was there to urge the students to apply to the Cyber Service Academy, a scholarship program linked with the Department of Defense that she created in 2023 after a legislative push aimed at countering threats from China and Russia.

“What would it take to get you into public service?” she asked the students, taking notes on their answers. A few minutes later, asked what advice she would give to prospective federal workers, she was pragmatic: “Don’t smoke pot if you want to serve,” she said, “and don’t make threats online.”

e visit was quintessential Gillibrand: a policy that seemed crafted in a boardroom at the Pentagon or the Capitol, brought home to her constituents in New York and announced not in a headline-grabbing press conference but on a quiet college campus.

Gillibrand is proud of her fairly proli c legislative record in recent years, largely targeting big national issues. anks in part to her ability to work with conservative Republicans, she has managed to pass bills making gun tra cking a federal crime, providing bene ts for military veterans exposed to toxic burn pits, and giving new legal protections to victims of workplace sexual harassment.

Many of her ongoing pushes are with strange political bedfellows: South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham is her top partner on an age discrimination bill; Missouri rebrand Josh Hawley is working with Gillibrand to ban stock trading by members of Congress. For someone who has served in Congress long enough to remember a very di erent Republican Party, Gillibrand can be surprisingly blasé about the GOP’s transformation at the hands of Donald Trump.

“President Trump, unfortunately, is a little cynical,” Gillibrand said, lamenting his role in tanking a delicate immigration deal in January. “ e good news is, I have not found the Republicans that support him have adopted a donothing posture.”

But Gillibrand’s national focus, and willingness to collaborate with right-wingers, holds less appeal for some in New York. Camille Rivera, a political strategist in the city, said few people in progressive circles see her as an ally.

“I think they see her as a moderate,” Rivera said, pointing to Gillibrand’s staunch support for Israel throughout its contentious military campaign in Gaza. “I think progressives are looking for her to be more localized, taking stronger positions around housing.”

Gillibrand defends her record in New York, pointing to a 2022 analysis that ranked her ninth out of 100 senators for the amount of money she steered toward her home state. But the perception of Gillibrand as being disconnected from the city has become an article of faith in political circles, and may persist as long as she serves alongside Schumer, the gregarious Brooklynite known for showing up at the smallest of ribboncuttings.

“She gets a bad rap sometimes because people say they don’t see her around. But the people saying that live in New York City,” said Paterson, who remains proud of his appointment. “In the upstate region she’s seen a lot more, and they really like that.”

For a while, that discontent was channeled into intense speculation that Gillibrand might not run for re-election, which quieted only after she announced her campaign in early 2023. ose rumors, which swirled for months, had been “largely led by people who wanted my position,” she said with a laugh. She did not name any suspects, but New York City Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had been widely seen as a potential primary threat, and she did little to dispel the rumors before her o ce announced cryptically that she was “not planning” to challenge Gillibrand.

Gillibrand called the retirement rumor “wishful thinking,” describing a musical-chairs scenario of vacant o ces that would be a bonanza for candidates and consultants alike. “A lot of people who were positioning themselves, either to run for Senate or run for attorney general or run for governor, all loved this rumor, because if one person moved up, other people might move over, and then there might be that one spot they want.”

e speculation was fueled partly by confusion over Gillibrand’s own place of residence: She and her husband listed their Hudson Valley home for sale in 2020 and described plans to move to the North Country, far upstate. Ultimately, though, she purchased her childhood home in the city of Albany, where she now lives for a portion of the roughly six months she is able to spend outside of Washington.

“It gives us the opportunity to take long walks in the woods,” Gillibrand said. e move has also let

her two sons, ages 20 and 16, spend more time with Gillibrand’s mother, now in her 80s. (Gillibrand’s husband Jonathan, a former venture capitalist, now works for the State Department.)

Some New York City power brokers have no qualms about Gillibrand’s downstate ties. Kathryn Wylde, president of the probusiness Partnership for New York City, said Gillibrand has evolved during her tenure from a “clear upstater” into “a very sophisticated operator in New York City and Washington.” Gillibrand’s sta point to fruitful friendships with Schumer, Sharpton, Brooklyn congresswomen Nydia Velazquez and Yvette Clarke, and Gov. Kathy Hochul, a fellow upstater who was herself thrust into statewide o ce.

Indeed, despite constant chatter about a primary challenge, no threat to Gillibrand has ever materialized. One sure factor is her prodigious fundraising — her political action committee had $10 million on hand as of March, and recent donors have included Broadway executive James Nederlander and real estate developers Scott Rechler of RXR and Je Blau of Related.

It’s hard to square her highpowered donor list with the conventional wisdom that Gillibrand lacks connections in the city. More accurate, perhaps, is that she has cultivated the relationships that matter.

On that front, Sharpton said, “She has probably been more thorough than people think.”

Focused on re-election

Would Gillibrand ever run for president again? She hasn’t ruled it out, she says — but she would only launch a campaign if she felt she could really win.

“I think the country is not quite ready for a woman president in a lot of ways,” she said. “I’d have to have a much higher stature, and I

think the country would have to be a little more ready for it.”

Joe Biden’s campaign considered Gillibrand for vice president in 2020, she said, a fact that went unreported at the time. But the vetting never went further than a few interviews “early in the process” and submitting a list of recommenders, she said.

For now, Gillibrand’s focus is on her re-election, where she will be heavily favored against Republican Mike Sapraicone, a former police detective. Arguably more important, Gillibrand will help lead the Democratic Party’s statewide coordinated campaign, which aims to boost

tions still re ect Gillibrand’s low pro le — the campaign is widely seen as Je ries’s baby, and one well-connected political consultant told Crain’s they were unaware that Gillibrand was even involved.

Whatever mixed opinions she faces at home, Gillibrand shows no intention of changing her style after winning another term this fall. Six more years in the Senate will raise her chances of scoring a leadership position, and she describes herself as probably “next in line” to chair the powerful Armed Services committee. Often, Gillibrand repeats her personal outlook like a kind of

“I’m going to spend the money I’ve raised on good, thoughtful ads around the state about the good, bipartisan work that we’ve done.”

Kirsten Gillibrand

swing-district House candidates through uni ed messaging, getout-the-vote e orts and millions of dollars in fundraising.

“I’m the only person running statewide, so I felt I had a responsibility but also an opportunity to help them,” she said. Gillibrand believes the campaign could have the side e ect of reminding New Yorkers she exists — since she ran no TV ads during her 2018 campaign, many voters have not seen her face in 12 years, partly explaining her low name recognition in polls.

“I’m going to work hard to x it,” she said. “I’m going to spend the money I’ve raised on good, thoughtful ads around the state about the good, bipartisan work that we’ve done.”

Gillibrand hopes the campaign will raise as much as $8 million, with plans to open over a dozen eld o ces and focus on outreach to communities of color and college students. But early percep-

mantra: “Common-sensey and bipartisan, but progressive.” e ground-level appeal of the Gillibrand approach was on display once she began speaking at the Harlem church in April. After her modest reception, Gillibrand got the congregation rolling once she started rattling o quotes from Scripture.

Gillibrand’s aides say church speeches are among her favorite engagements, and the senator found her groove as she used a passage about the “armor of God” as a metaphor for passing bills.

“When I’m just about to pass a really important piece of legislation, something that’s going to help lots of people, is when all the criticism comes,” she said, drawing whoops from the crowd. “You were just about to do that big thing and people who don’t want that big thing done are going to ght you down. Put up your shield of faith, it will protect you.”

BU CK ENNIS

During Crain’s Tech Summit last fall, Gillibrand called for government agencies to be smarter and more proactive in regulating emerging technologies.

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Mount Sinai sticks with July 12 closure for Beth Israel

By Amanda Glodowski

Mount Sinai is holding firm to a July closure timeline for Beth Israel hospital in a new closure plan it submitted to the state. The revised document was submitted May 23, after the state Department of Health deemed the initial closure plan incomplete in April. It aims to address the state’s concerns about the hospital’s communication with elected officials about the clo -

addressed once the hospital closes, and reveals additional financial information.

State o cials declined to comment on whether or not they would allow the closure to proceed until the review was complete.

Hospital’s efforts

e revised plan lays out the hospital’s e orts to involve the community in the process, noting that hospital president and chief operating o cer Elizabeth Sellman appeared at a Nov. 28, 2023 public meeting with 148 attendees.

Mount Sinai says it has coordinated with neighboring institutions to discuss ways to patch gaps in patient care and pointed to its other locations as alternative options.

sure, how the community weighed in during the process and how patient needs will be

COMMUTE

From Page 1

major transportation center was a nonnegotiable as we searched for a new home.”

e company plans to move from 1114 Sixth Ave. into 22 Vanderbilt by 2026, apparently looking to ensure attendance in the o ce will be high by making employees’ commutes as easy as possible.

Easy access to transit has become a stubborn demand of many New York workers who dutifully schlepped to the o ce ve days a week prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. After getting accustomed to clocking in remotely during the past four years, they are now resistant to give up the perk, with a recent study from the Partnership for New York City nding slightly fewer workers are in their o ces on an average weekday now than last September. e percentage has dropped from 58% to 56%, according to the study.

(Data on how full individual ofce buildings are on a typical day is harder to come by. Representatives for o ce watchers Placer.ai and Kastle said the rms do not share this information.)

O ce landlords have unsurprisingly been among the biggest cheerleaders of getting workers back in their buildings but have been more focused on building renovations, surmising that employees will come in more often if their o ce is lled with amenities. is makes sense to a certain extent, as it is much easier for them to upgrade the properties they control than to upgrade the transportation network.

But the quality of the building itself can only matter so much if it is not easy to get to. And in a city as notoriously expensive as New York, many workers have found themselves living farther and farther from central business districts. at can make commuting to an

Mount Sinai says it has coordinated with neighboring institutions such as Bellevue, NYU Langone and Lenox Hill to discuss ways to patch gaps in patient care and also pointed to its other locations as alternative options for patients.

Beth Israel plans to help Bellev-

o ce that is also far from transit even less appealing. So despite calls for them to return to the o ce, workers just aren’t showing up.

Short trips, happy people

Multiple studies on commuting across multiple countries have all reached the same broad conclusion: People don’t like doing it and tend to be happier the shorter their ride is. is was true before Covid as well, but the issue has gained new salience after workers got a taste of not having to commute at all during the pandemic.

Recent data stresses how important it is for companies to be as close as possible to commuter hubs and how even marginal distances can make a huge di erence.

A study from real estate tech rm VTS comparing the number of tours companies took of properties during the rst half of 2023 to the rst half of 2022, for instance, found that o ce buildings within a veminute walk of the city’s major transit hubs saw 51% more tours than buildings that were 10 minutes or more from them. e study de ned Grand Central, Penn Station and the Union Square and Fulton Street stations, each of which provides access to multiple transit lines, as the major hubs.

In addition to an easier commute, these areas also help ensure that, when workers do come in, they will not just be stuck at their desks, VTS Chief Strategy O cer Ryan Masiello said.

“Neighborhoods around major transit hubs tend to be more oriented to the convenience of o ce workers and commuters,” he said. “ ink fast-casual restaurants to grab lunch, bars to grab happy hour drinks after work, sit-down restaurants to entertain colleagues and clients.”

e Grand Central area, in particular, has reemerged as a popular place for o ces, which is a marked shift from the city’s prepandemic

ue renovate its emergency department, including acquiring an additional CT scanner and creating additional respite care services to help o set the impact of the closure, the documents show.

The plan also includes find -

landscape, said Andrew Lim, director of New York research at the brokerage JLL.

“One of the things that surprised us the most in 2023 was how much more demand we saw by Grand Central. e center of gravity when it came to leasing pre-Covid was Hudson Yards,” he said. “If they’re coming in on Metro-North [Railroad], they don’t want to transfer. ey just want to be able to walk to work.”

(Andrew Rosen, chief operating o cer of Hudson Yards at e Related Cos., stressed that 99% of the development’s o ce space is leased up, and more than 7 million workers live within a 40-minute commute.)

e launch of Long Island Rail Road service into Grand Central Madison has also been a game changer for the area. e LIRR, which is the busiest commuter rail network in the U.S., nished 2023 with ridership growth of 65.2 million customers, a 24% uptick compared to 2022, according to Metropolitan Transportation Authority data.

e boost of travelers put the railroad at 71.6% of its prepandemic ridership. And it grew at a higher rate among people traveling for nonwork purposes than among commuters, according to an MTA analysis.

The housing factor

Major pushes from the city and the state to build more housing, especially near transit, are connected to the push for shorter commutes as well. If it is easier to nd a home in the ve boroughs, after all, it should be easier to have a short trip to the o ce.

e MTA, for instance, is seeking to ramp up developments near train stations in the boroughs and the surrounding suburbs. And the e ort behind o ce-to-residential conversions could open up opportunities to live a short walk from your workplace, given that many of

cash reserves at $29 million as of the end of 2023. The hospital’s revenue also decreased by about $270 million before inflationary adjustments between 2014 and 2023, the new plan says.

In a cover letter, submitted alongside the plan, Sellman held rm on July 12 as a closure date for the hospital, noting that it is “even more imperative” now than when the initial closure plan was announced, as the hospital has reduced sta and stopped some services.

ings from an independent financial assessment of the hospital, which found that the facility spent $219 million from 2020 to 2023 to offset $302 million in operating cash flow deficits at the campus, leaving the hospital’s

these revamped buildings will, by design, be in neighborhoods with plenty of o ce buildings, Department of City Planning Director Dan Garodnick noted.

Adding housing has a tangible impact on the return-to-o ce goal, along with the city’s economy in general, Garodnick said.

“When businesses look at their prospective workforce and the amount of time they have to travel, sometimes they make other decisions, which are not in NYC’s favor,” he said. “I de nitely think it is a key issue here and impacts the return-to-o ce dynamic in a real way.”

Employee choice

Of course, the commute is not the only factor involved as workers decide when and how often to go to the o ce. e shifting priorities of employees since the pandemic also play a major role.

“I think some of it comes down to employer enticement and mandates, some of it is transit-driven, and some of it is just really personal,” said Lisa Daglian, executive director of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA.

“ ere are some folks who will not ever commute again,” Daglian added, “and that’s their prerogative if they have alternatives.”

Evan Jones, a software engineer who lives in Dyker Heights, is one of those people.

Before the pandemic, Jones would walk 15 minutes, or sometimes catch a bus during the colder months, to hop on an R train at the 86th Street station. He would then ride the train for at least 45 minutes to reach his o ce in the Financial District. All that time spent commuting felt like a waste, he said.

“I did like seeing my colleagues, but I’m writing code on my computer all day,” said Jones. “Do I need to be in an o ce to do that?

No, I don’t.”

Jones’ company went fully re-

There are other forces at play that could impact the hospital’s closure date, namely a lawsuit filed by community activists and local politicians against Mount Sinai and the DOH which alleges that the hospital prematurely stopped services and suggests the closure, which would impact a slew of properties, is a realestate cash grab.

Sellman requested that the state, which deemed the rst version of the report incomplete, respond to the updated plan within 30 days.

mote during much of the pandemic, and it was an eye-opening experience. So when management began encouraging workers to return to the o ce, Jones resigned and found a fully remote position. “I just enjoy my life more,” he said. “I take trips all the time now. e world is my o ce.” e greater work-life balance that results from a short or nonexistent commute has become essential to many New York workers who saw going to the o ce ve days a week as their only option prior to the pandemic.

Marleen Meyers similarly spent a decade leaving her White Plains home each weekday at 6 a.m. She’d drive 20 minutes to catch an hourlong Metro-North train to Manhattan followed by a 10-minute walk to her Midtown o ce building, where she worked in marketing. e trip typically took 90 minutes each way.

Now she works remotely three days a week and is relishing the newfound exibility.

“ e time I spent commuting took me away from being present with my family,” said Meyers. “I’d argue I’m a happier, more productive worker because of my improved work-life balance, and if the work is getting done, then what’s the problem?”

Meyers says she enjoys occasionally traveling to her o ce to connect with fellow workers and have meetings in person but would consider moving closer to the ofce, or looking for another job, if faced with an ultimatum to commute four or ve days a week.

“People don’t want planes, trains and automobiles to get to the o ce anymore. Everyone did it for years and years. It became our culture. You never thought twice about it as much as you complained,” said Fred Cerullo, president of the Grand Central Partnership, a business improvement district. “If I’m going to go to work, I want to get on a train and o a train and be in my neighborhood.”

Mount Sinai Beth Israel in Stuyvesant Square | BUCK ENNIS

Life sciences rms embrace City of Yes business plan despite restrictions to development in the outer boroughs

Amanda D’Ambrosio

Life sciences businesses are eager for the passage of a new zoning plan that could expand neighborhoods where they can build labs despite new changes from city lawmakers that restrict development in the outer boroughs.

e city’s $3 billion life sciences industry is getting behind Mayor Eric Adams’ City of Yes plan for business growth, a proposal that rewrites zoning laws that determine which types of businesses

“Laboratories

are not compatible with local retail corridors where residents go to pick up a bagel and do laundry.”

can build where. e plan could open up opportunities for life sciences businesses; if passed by the City Council this month, the rules will open up more commercial areas for life sciences development and allow pharmaceutical compa-

nies and biotech rms to develop lab space on hospital and academic campuses.

City lawmakers voted to advance the City of Yes business plan on May 22, pushing it one step closer to approval. But along with that vote, they made modest changes that limit life sciences growth outside of Manhattan, restricting companies from building labs in commercial strips in residential neighborhoods that are typically reserved for grocery stores and dry cleaners.

Not all residential areas are ripe for research and scienti c activity, as pointed out by Councilman Kevin Riley, chair of the zoning and franchises committee, at the May 22 council hearing.

Residential limits

“Laboratories are not compatible with local retail corridors where residents go to pick up a bagel and do laundry,” he said, adding that lawmakers welcome job growth from the city’s life sciences sector. e changes will primarily limit development in low-density residential neighborhoods, he noted. Although the re-

cent changes restrict some commercial areas outside of Manhattan, industry leaders agreed that the existing plan will create even more opportunities for a growing life science sector.

Jennifer Hawks Bland, chief executive of the life sciences industry group NewYorkBio, said that the

Council’s move to advance the City of Yes plan shows that New York has made “tremendous strides” in expanding where life sciences businesses can grow — especially given that current zoning rules haven’t changed since 1961.

Hawks Bland said she would have liked to see the original life

sciences proposals in City of Yes advance to promote development in commercial districts in outer boroughs. Nevertheless, the moves will set up business development for years to come and it’s probably not necessary to build a lab next to every bodega. “I don’t think that is realistic,” she said.

e city’s bid to ease development restrictions for pharmaceutical and biotech companies is part of its overall plan to strengthen New York’s life sciences industry.

e Economic Development Corporation, the city’s development arm, launched its $1 billion LifeSciNYC in 2016 under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, pledging to add 10 million square footage of lab space and 40,000 life sciences jobs in the next decade.

O cials are counting on the City of Yes to help New York’s life sciences dreams come to fruition, and have led zoning applications to boost life sciences growth in anticipation of the new laws. Last month the EDC led plans for its life sciences hub Innovation East in Kips Bay, citing changes under the City of Yes.

e full City Council is set to vote on the City of Yes business plan this month.

Kevin Riley, chair of the zoning and franchises committee

Life sciences companies are anticipating the City of Yes plan for business development to expand where they can develop labs. | GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO

Mental health chief focused on trauma

Dr. H. Jean Wright II is tasked with addressing some of the city’s most pressing challenges, including a record-high overdose crisis and depression and anxiety among kids, teens

By | Amanda D’Ambrosio

The human brain has been an interest of Dr. H. Jean Wright II since he was a kid.

“I was that 12-year-old nerd that went to the mall, and instead of buying sneakers or hanging out with friends, I was almost certainly people-watching,” he said. “I was always interested in human behavior.”

After a short stint studying orthopedic medicine in college, Wright pivoted to psychology. A career in public behavioral health felt like a natural progression, Wright said, as he followed in the footsteps of his father, who was a trained psychologist, public servant and minister.

Now, as the city Health Department’s new top mental health official and years into New York’s persistent mental health crisis, Wright says effective behavioral health treatment, including for substance abuse and serious mental illness, all comes down to understanding trauma.

Wright, a longtime public behavioral health expert, joined the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in April to oversee mental health initiatives. He’s tasked with leading the agency through some of the city’s most pressing challenges: a record-high overdose crisis, staggering rates of depression

and anxiety among kids and teens, and widespread mental illness among the city’s homeless population.

Public pressure to address the crisis is elevated, in light of high-profile attacks in the subway system by individuals with serious mental illness and police violence against people in distress. That pressure has led to some turnover; Wright succeeds former executive deputy commissioner Deepa Avula, who had stepped into the role a little over a year ago.

Wright brings to the job two decades of experience as a public behavioral health official. Before coming to New York, he spent nearly three years as Philadelphia’s deputy commissioner of behavioral health and intellectual disability services. Before that, he directed behavioral health and justice initiatives in Philly.

Program development

Trained in forensic psychology, Wright spent over 10 years developing mental health programs for people leaving state psychiatric hospitals and county jails. He learned early that many individuals behind bars are bright and talented and have hopes and dreams that just haven’t yet come to fruition. But they had experienced some sort

of trauma that derailed their life course. Understanding that trauma broke down barriers to treatment, he said.

“People are just people,” Wright said. “We need to get past the labels we put on one another.”

Faith and community play a big role in Wright’s career. He is a public speaker who frequently makes appearances at religious events and conferences. He’s also the author of Find Strength in Your Struggle , which explores the relationship between spirituality and mental health challenges.

As he settles into his new role, Wright is focused on the overdose epidemic, high rates of suicide and access to mental health treatment. The commissioner is also prioritizing youth mental health challenges, attempting to fulfill one of the central focuses of Mayor Eric Adams’ administration.

Wright says he’s excited to address behavioral health challenges in New York, a city he has looked to as a model for mental health care.

“Behavioral health encompasses not just folks that have challenges with mental illness and substance use, but so many other things,” Wright said. “New York has a very, very good history of supporting individuals in that space.”

Grew up Germantown, Ohio

Resides in Wright is still looking for the place in the city that he will call home.

Education Bachelor’s in psychology, English literature and cultural studies, Ohio State University; doctorate in psychology with a focus on forensic and clinical work, Wright University

Early days Wright, a high school and college athlete, thought he wanted to go into orthopedic medicine early in his college career to treat sports injuries. But he realized what he liked about health care most was talking to people. “If you’ve ever been to a physician’s of ce, you know once you’re out the door, the next one comes in. That’s just not enough time to impact someone’s life.”

Teaching Wright is an adjunct psychology professor at Temple University in Philadelphia. Free time When he’s not working, Wright enjoys spending time with family, going to restaurants and listening to live jazz.

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Dr. H. Jean Wright II

Dr. H. Jean Wright II was appointed as the city Health Department’s executive deputy commissioner of mental hygiene in April 2024. | BUCK ENNIS