Crain's New York Business by crains-new-york-business

ASKED & ANSWERED Leveraging Instagram fame into growth opportunities

CRAINSNEWYORK.COM

MARCH 16, 2020

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BRAND STRENGTH Boutique fitness entrepreneur stretches into new offerings PAGE 12

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CORONAVIRUS ALERT HELP IS ON THE WAY Small businesses affected by virus to receive grants, loans PAGE 2

CALLED OFF St. Patrick’s Day Parade, Javits Center conferences postponed

RUNAROUND Red tape frustrates sick Westchester resident seeking a test

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‘WORSE THAN 9/11’ Hotel occupancy plummets, rates plunge

HOME WORK As virus spreads in offices, firms ask employees to work from home PAGE 19

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HOUSING

GENTRIFICATION WARS

NEWSPAPER

VOL. 36, NO. 9

BY GREG DAVID AND RACHEL RIPPETOE

ifteen years ago, the Bloomberg administration rezoned the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Greenpoint and Williamsburg in hopes of creating less-expensive housing units for low-income residents of the city. The de Blasio administration then carried on

See REZONING on page 16

GOTHAM GIG

RADIO VET FINDS NEW WAY TO USE HER VOICE PAGE 23

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New studies cast doubt on the notion that lowincome New Yorkers are being pushed out of their neighborhoods as a result of rezoning

WHO OWNS THE BLOCK

Could a Black Rock deal signal a market rebound PAGE 14

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CORONAVIRUS ALERT

Providing access to critical information THE NEW CORONAVIRUS is a serious threat. Not only does it imperil the health of millions of New Yorkers, but it also threatens to destabilize the city’s economy and could bring our local health care infrastructure to its knees. As a journalistic organization, our mission is to provide our audience with a deeper understanding of the news, events and ideas affecting how business gets done in New York City. We do that by producing premium content—that is, information you can’t get anywhere else and that readers pay to obtain. To that end, we’ve lifted our pay wall for all Crain’s articles related to Covid-19 so that, whether you are a subscriber or not, you can access all of our coverage related to this pandemic. We’re doing this because we care deeply about you—our audience—and want you to have our coronavirus coverage at your disposal as you make important decisions that will affect you, your family and your business. We’re also launching a daily newsletter rounding up the latest news on Covid-19. To subscribe (for free) go to CrainsNewYork/CoronaVirusUpdate. Like many of you, we are forced to make serious business decisions in the face of this spreading virus. Last week, for example, we decided to postpone many of the events we had planned for March and April. Like our reporters, our events team is working overtime. We’re trying to find new dates for those postponed events. We’re also looking into whether certain events can be reimagined in the form of webcasts, podcasts or videocasts. As I told my team last week in our monthly town hall meeting, the days and weeks ahead are likely to be fraught with challenges. It won’t be easy. But journalism—good journalism—is never more vital than when critical information is needed to make important decisions. For more than 30 years, Crain’s has provided business leaders and policy makers with that kind of information. We won’t stop now. ■

THE DAYS AND WEEKS AHEAD ARE LIKELY TO BE FRAUGHT WITH CHALLENGES

CORRECTION ■ New Lab is a community of 150 startups. This information was incorrect in Asked & Answered, published March 9.

Small businesses promised loans to offset lost revenue BY GWEN EVERETT AND BRIAN PASCUS

he de Blasio administration last week announced an assistance program aimed at offering financial help to small businesses slammed by the outbreak of Covid-19. “We have to provide some relief for the businesses that are hurting right now,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said. “So we have two forms of relief we’re going to implement right away.” Businesses with fewer than 100 employees could be eligible for an interest-free loan up to $75,000 as long as they can document a 25% loss in customer receipts because of the outbreak, the mayor said. Applications for programs will start to go live next week—the grant program first, and the loan program after—Department of Small Business Services spokeswoman Samantha Keitt said. The office is still determining eligibility requirements. The loan is intended for businesses in the service industry, such as restaurants and caterers, that have kept employees on the payroll and seen a decline in revenues, according to SBS Commissioner Gregg Bishop. It will be a 0% loan with a repayment term of 15 to 20 years, he said. “We want to give them the maximum amount of capital, with zero interest, on the lowest amount of payments we can provide,” Bishop told Crain’s. “We want to provide temporary relief.” The loan program would be financed by a loan-loss reserve underwritten by private financial in-

NYCMAYORSOFFICE/FLICKR

FROM THE NEWSROOM | FREDERICK P. GABRIEL JR. | PUBLISHER/EXECUTIVE EDITOR

DE BLASIO stitutions and guaranteed by the administration, Bishop said.

Front burner In addition to the loan program, the administration announced that businesses with fewer than five employees can apply for cash grants if they can prove similar revenue losses tied to the virus. “We will be able to get money in their hands to tide them over,” de Blasio said during his news conference. “The details of that initiative we’ll put out. This is something we’ve just got approved.” The grant program was intended for very small stores that may have to lay off workers, de Blasio said. Small businesses with fewer than five employees call 311 to learn more about receiving the assistance, the mayor said. Bishop told Crain’s the grant could cover up to 40% of payroll costs for the months related to revenue decline, which the administration anticipates will average $6,000 per business. Bishop said the grant would be paid for by a tax levy similar to other grant programs on the adminis-

tration’s balance sheet. Business owners said last week that they were frustrated with the pace of the program’s rollout. Shops that tried to apply for the loans last week were directed to an online survey. “They’re promising all of these relief packages, but there’s no path to that right now. It’s kind of just words,” said Phil Penta, who runs 3 Guys from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, a grocer. He worries that the loans will not be available quickly enough to provide the relief his store may need in the upcoming days and weeks. Keitt said the city was working as quickly as possible. “We just want to make sure that all of our T’s are crossed,” she said, so that “people don’t fall through the cracks because we rushed to get the program finished.” Some businesses are waiting to gauge the size of the hit before they apply for loans, said Marco Chirico, owner of Marco Polo and Enoteca on Court restaurants. His business at both restaurants was down 25% last week, he said. Loans do not offer a way to recoup losses to the bottom line, said Dawn Casale, founder of bakery and caterer One Girl Cookies. She saw every corporate and event order canceled amid the virus. “I hope something better is down the pike,” such as larger grants, she said. ■

Rush-hour traffic plummets since outbreak

f driving to work in the city seemed easier last week, there’s a reason. Rush-hour traffic here dropped 13% between March 8 and March 13, according to data-tracking company TomTom. “It’s quite significant actually,” said Gijs Peters, an analyst for the company. “This is a clear indication of less people on the road, and it may indeed be an indicator of changed economic activity.” The global traffic index looked at last Tuesday’s driving patterns starting at 8 a.m. compared to the same time last year. During last Monday’s evening rush, traffic was 14% lighter than in 2019, and there was a 17% drop at 5 p.m. Sunday, March 8. New York’s decline in traffic con-

gestion may continue as more cases of Covid-19 are confirmed throughout the city, Peters said. Last Tuesday morning, Milan saw a 54% decline in traffic, Rome, a 59% decline, and Seattle, a 30% decline, according to TomTom data. Rush-hour ridership numbers on the Long Island Rail Road last

David King, a transportation planner who teaches at Arizona State University, said he wouldn’t be surprised if the demand for entering New York by tourists or locals is down because of fears surrounding the virus. “We just don’t really know what the overall trend is,” said King, who taught at Columbia University for seven years. There may be further unintended consequences. An initial decline in car traffic could result as more people work from home. But people also could stop riding the subways and take private cars and ride-sharing vehicles. “If everybody works from home or the city locks down, then demand for transportation will cra-

A LIGHT DAY of traffic along Third Avenue

“IT MAY INDEED BE AN INDICATOR OF CHANGED ECONOMIC ACTIVITY” Wednesday were down 31% compared to last year, MTA spokeswoman Meredith Daniels said. Metro-North, which services the northern New York suburbs, was down 48% compared to the same Thursday in 2019.

BUCK ENNIS

BY BRIAN PASCUS

ter,” King said. “But if there’s some semblance of normalcy, the fear of being in a crowded train or bus will be problematic because it will push people to cars, whether Uber or

private vehicle.” Officials at the city Department of Transportation and the MTA said it was too early to draw any conclusions from the dip. ■

Vol. 36, No. 9, March 16, 2020—Crain’s New York Business (ISSN 8756-789X) is published weekly, except for bimonthly in January, July and August and the last issue in December, by Crain Communications Inc., 685 Third Ave., New York, NY 10017. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to: Crain’s New York Business, Circulation Department, PO Box 433279, Palm Coast, FL 32143-9681. For subscriber service: call 877-824-9379; fax 313-446-6777. $3.00 a copy; $129.00 per year. (GST No. 13676-0444-RT) ©Entire contents copyright 2020 by Crain Communications Inc. All rights reserved. 2 | CRAIN’S NEW YORK BUSINESS | MARCH 16, 2020

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CORONAVIRUS ALERT

Covid-19 testing stymies state Woman caught in red tape as New York struggles to meet demand BY JONATHAN LAMANTIA

See CANCEL on page 4

See VIRUS on page 4

BUCK ENNIS

he mass shutdowns all began in the world of sports. Last week the Atlantic 10 Conference canceled its postseason college basketball tournament at the Barclays Center. After playing the first half of the Creighton-St. John’s tournament game, the Big East Conference announced its postseason basketball tournament at Madison Square Garden would

couple of weeks ago Amelia Cason began to experience flulike symptoms. She started coughing and had a fever of 101 degrees. Ordinarily this wouldn’t have caused too much concern for Cason, a 40-year-old mother of three small children. But last week Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared the area of New Rochelle where Cason lives a containment zone because of a surge in cases of the new coronavirus, Covid-19. The containment zone restricts large gatherings in schools, houses of worship and other facilities within about 3 square miles. It does not restrict people’s ability to move freely. “When they announced the containment zone, I thought, I should get tested so I can know for sure,” Cason said. She reached NUMBER of out to her docprivate labs, tor’s office, including Mount which referred Sinai, NYU her to a White Langone and New Plains Hospital York-Presbyterian, hotline. The that the state is person who contracting with spoke to her to boost testing asked if she had capacity traveled to China or Iran and if she had contact with people who had traveled. Cason hadn’t left Westchester County. She said they also didn't ask her about places in New Rochelle that had been linked to the virus, such as Young Israel of New Rochelle, a synagogue where people who attended services became ill. Cason had never been there, however. The hospital asked Cason about her symptoms, then referred her to the Westchester County Department of Health, which told her to speak to her doctor. “I got a ‘Why are you calling us?’ vibe from them,” she said. Cason, who works from home, was waiting to hear from health officials late last week. “I’m not trying to consume services that I’m not entitled to,” she said. “I think I might have coronavirus or be getting over coronavirus, but it’s not worth banging my head against the wall to get a test.” Cason’s experience highlights the trouble New Yorkers have had in getting tested for Covid-19 as the

CANCELLED: Carnegie Hall and the Broadway show Tina were closed, and the NBA season was suspended after Utah Jazz’s Rudy Gobert, below, contracted the virus.

GETTY IMAGES

PANDEMIC SLAM-DUNKS CITY SPORTS, ARTS VENUES

Governor orders a halt to all large public gatherings BY BRIAN PASCUS

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CORONAVIRUS ALERT

CANCEL be canceled. Soon after, the NCAA announced its March Madness national championship basketball tournament would be called off. “There are some big events we should probably stop having,” said Dr. Danielle Ompad, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at New York University. “It’s probably a good idea to not go to these events and to cancel them because it’s a great opportunity for transmission when we don’t know the lay of the land.” No arena in New York City will feel the consequences of zero attendance quite like Madison Square Garden. As the landlord of the New York Knicks, New York Rangers and hundreds of sold-out concerts and live events, the venue took in $1.6 billion in revenue in 2019, Crain’s confirmed. “This is an example of a perfect storm of events,” said Gil Fried, the chairman of Sports Management at the University of New Haven. “While we can prepare for things such as lightning strikes, a bomb threat, a hurricane and fans rushing the court, here you can have anyone at your facility, at any given time, and you don’t know if they’re a possible carrier.” The moves to end sporting events in New York City followed decisions made in other parts of the country early last week. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine asked indoor sporting events to take place without spectators. The Ivy League canceled its entire postseason basketball tournament for both its men’s and women’s teams. The Indian Wells Tennis Tournament in California was halted as well. But then the floodgates opened. On March 11 the NBA’s Golden State Warriors announced its March 12 home game against the Brooklyn Nets would be played without any fans in the Chase Center. By the eve-

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FROM PAGE 3

CLOSED: Hamilton and the Metropolitan Musuem of Art were among the shows and museums shuttered last week because of the coronavirus. ning of March 11, the NBA announced the rest of the 2019-20 season would be suspended. Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League followed suit the afternoon of March 12, suspending all operations for their respective leagues. The suspension of live sporting events turned out to be just the start of measures designed to contain the spread of the coronavirus in New York City and other parts of the country. Last Thursday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that all events in New York state attended by 500 or more people would be banned, a move that affects Broadway shows and special events.

‘A scary time’ With the pause of Broadway productions, the heart of New York’s entertainment industry has temporarily stopped. “I would say that it’s definitely kind of a scary time for our members,” said Maria DiPasquale, a rep-

resentative for the Associated Musicians of Greater New York, the labor union that represents professional musicians across New York City. Many members are freelancers and rely on income from performance centers throughout the city. “As we follow the much-needed guidelines set out by Gov. Cuomo this afternoon, we now have to do everything possible to keep Broadway alive after this epidemic and support the local businesses that are the lifeblood of our city,” state Sen. Brad Hoylman said. Special events in the city also will be shuttered. Starting last Friday, all three Metropolitan Museum of Art locations were to close temporarily, the museum said on its website. Earlier in the week, the museum had planned to stay open. On March 10, the New York International Auto Show, which Cuomo was to kick off at the beginning of April at the Javits Center, was pushed back to the end of August to

VIRUS FROM PAGE 3

ees will have serious economic ramifications. Aside from the lack of box-office receipts, the ancillary parties involved in these events also will take a hit. They include food companies, ticket brokers, drink vendors, and transportation operators who ferry people to the games. New York City’s tax base also will take a hit because consumers won’t be able to spend money at these events. “The loss of revenue here to the state government is incalculable,” Cuomo said. Cuomo said on Friday that the state would be dealing with the virus outbreak for the next six months or more. “There’s no end date,” he said. “It will be calibrated to the spread of the virus and the treatment of the virus. “We are still on the upward trajectory of this disease,” he added. “This is an evolving situation. The numbers change every day, the facts change every day.” ■

chester County Health Department to support the county and, given the magnitude of the current situation there, to come up with new guidance for testing,” a spokeswoman for the state agency said.

around March 18. That’s compared with the 3,200 conducted during the first two weeks of March. “We’re continuing to prioritize ramping up testing capacity because the more people you identify as having the virus, the better you can contain it,” he said. Testing allows public health officials to determine who has Covid-19, and it helps them gauge the spectrum of severity of the disease and how it affects different types of people, said Dr. Robert Amler, dean of New York Medical College’s School of Health Sciences and Practice and a former epidemiologist and chief medical officer within an agency of the CDC. “This is a technological innovation,” Amler said of the tests for Covid-19. “Like all technological innovations, there’s a ramping up that takes place. It is natural to expect that any kind of new test is going to take a little while to perfect and take a little time to get production to full scale.” ■

Ramping things up

ISTOCK

state tries to ramp up its laboratory capacity and navigate federal approvals for additional labs to conduct tests. Gov. Andrew Cuomo acknowledged on CNN that the number of positive diagnoses would be much higher if the state had adequate testing capacity. “We do have a problem with testing,” he said March 11. “And people are getting more nervous and going to see the numbers go up and they can’t get a test.” White Plains Hospital said it set up the hotline Cason called to help identify potential Covid-19 cases; it fielded 3,000 calls in its first week. Its screening process follows guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the state Department of Health. It refers any person in need of immediate care to the Department of Health.

protect the hundreds of exhibitors and the more than 1 million visitors expected by the Greater New York Automobile Dealers Association. Conferences such as the auto show are the type of densely packed events that public officials have encouraged people to avoid. “It’s unprecedented. We’ve never been in this scenario at all,” said Kate Spellman, chief marketing officer at Questex, which sponsors the Beauty Experience New York and International Esthetics, Cosmetic and Spa Conference. Questex called off both conferences March 7, the day before they were to have begun. Also last week NBC, CBS, HBO and Comedy Central announced that The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Late Night With Seth Meyers, The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, and The Daily Show With Trevor Noah will broadcast without live studio audiences. The decision to close arenas, Broadway theaters and special events from large groups of attend-

“Right now the state does not have the ability to test everyone who requests to be tested,” a spokeswoman for the hospital said. “The governor has made it a priority to make more testing available, and we look forward to our physicians being able to order the tests directly to provide patients with timely, ap-

propriate care.” A spokeswoman for the Westchester County executive’s office said she couldn’t comment on a particular person’s experience and referred questions to the state Department of Health. “The New York state Department of Health is working with the West-

There have been 421 people diagnosed with Covid-19 in New York, including 158 in Westchester County and 154 in New York City, as of Friday, Cuomo said. Cuomo said there is a point at which there are so many cases that tracking all the people who’ve been in contact with someone who tested positive is not practical, but he still sees value in getting more people diagnosed. Northwell Health has set up a satellite testing facility in New Rochelle to make diagnostics available closer to the outbreak. Cuomo said the state is working with 28 private labs to increase its testing capacity. They will be able to process 6,000 tests per day, starting

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CORONAVIRUS ALERT

Outbreak ‘worse than 9/11’ for hotels BY DANIEL GEIGER

he city’s hotel market is in its own state of emergency as coronavirus has hammered room rates and occupancy levels. For the week ended March 7, occupancy in New York fell 13.1% to 72.1%, while the average daily room rate was down 8.3% to $188.59, according to STR, which tracks the hotel marketplace. “Right now we have a lot of cancellations coming in,” said John Lam, chairman and CEO of the Lam Group, a hotel developer and owner that has a portfolio of about 5,000

portfolio normally are above 90%. One of his particularly hard-hit hotel properties just sustained $300,000 worth of cancellations for March, he said, erasing about a third of its usual monthly revenue. “This is worse than 9/11,” Lam said. “During 9/11 you still had government employees and the Red Cross coming in and staying at hotels. Now no one is coming to New York.” Lam said his hotels have been especially affected by the sharp dropoff in business travel. “All of Europe and Italy have stopped coming,” Lam said. “Facebook and Google, they’ve all stopped traveling.” The wider hotel market appeared to be feeling the same dramatic downturn that Lam described. “The pace of future bookings is off 30% year over year, and we are seeing group cancellations in April through June,” said another Manhattan hotel owner, who asked not to be named. Online booking services adver-

“ALL OF EUROPE HAS STOPPED COMING. FACEBOOK’S NOT TRAVELING” rooms in the city spread across more than a dozen properties. “We’ve seen vacancies rise to about 30% in our portfolio, and room rates have fallen by as much as 50%.” Lam said occupancy rates in his

GETTY IMAGES

Halt on international travel has had a devastating impact on the hospitality trade

tised huge discounts for dozens of popular New York hostelries. On Sunday night, for instance, a room at the Standard High Line was listed for $165, a decrease from the hip property’s normal nightly price tag of several hundred dollars. The Andaz at 75 Wall St. in Lower Manhattan was offering rooms for $200 a night, down from $284, ac-

cording to priceline.com. The Paramount Hotel in Times Square was listing rooms for just $70 a night. Adding to the problems in the city’s hotel market, the Javits Center announced that several shows that together bring thousands of visitors into the city had been canceled or postponed. Vision Expo East, a 15,000-person event for the eye care

industry, canceled its Javits show at the end of the month and the New York Auto Show was postponed until August. “International travel restrictions played a significant role in the decisions by these event organizers to cancel or postpone their events,” Javits spokesman Tony Sclafani said in a statement. ■

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IN THE MARKETS

Panic grips Wall Street

Turmoil in the municipal bond market underscores the widespread fear collateral to pay for the purchase of stock and other assets. Conversely, when the price of risk-free money goes haywire, investors face massive margin calls and are forced to sell stocks or other assets to raise cash.

Hunker down In October 2008 renowned venture-capital firm Sequoia Capital warned its entrepreneurs to hunker down and brace for years of difficulties. The VC firm has sounded the alarm again. “Having weathered every business downturn for nearly 50 years, we’ve learned an important lesson—nobody ever regrets making fast and decisive adjustments to changing circumstances,” the firm wrote in a letter posted last week. “In downturns, revenue and cash levels always fall faster than expenses. In some ways, business mirrors biology. As Darwin surmised, those who survive ‘are not the strongest or the most intelligent, but the most adaptable to change.’” Several other VCs are issuing similar warnings. “If you have a business that is dependent on the capital markets (i.e. you are losing money), then you need to be very mindful of that and make sure you are making the financial moves to preserve your

BLOOMBERG

hat’s special about as-a-mouse world of municipal the Pimco New York bonds underscores the panic that Municipal Income has spread to all corners of Wall Fund II? Nothing, re- Street. A measure of market fear, the Vix ally. The mutual fund invests in debt issued by local governments Index, hit a record Wednesday. The and pays steady, tax-free dividends. prior high-water mark was set in In January Moody’s deemed its 2008. “The market is crying out for polcredit profile “strong.” This is a icy help,” TD Securities strategist classic buy-and-hold investment. Priya Misra wrote last Not now, though. The week. Pimco sank 13% WednesIn a sign of how nerday, a huge move down vous corporate borrowfor an investment whose ers and banks have bevalue typically changes come about running by pennies every day. short on funding, the Investors fear that New Federal Reserve Bank of York’s economy will New York’s auction for nosedive and municipaltwo-week funding drew ities will default on the obligations taken on to AARON ELSTEIN $87 billion in bids for $45 billion offered. pay for schools, police In the early afternoon and so on. The worst-case scenario seems last Wednesday, the Fed said it unlikely, considering authorities would inject $1.5 trillion into the have the power to raise revenue by short-term funding market. The U.S. Treasury market has beraising taxes. But the odds of default are not as minute as last week. come “overwhelmed with liquidity "Incalculable," Gov. Andrew concerns,” Bank of America anaCuomo said last week when asked lysts said in a report Wednesday. In the past week, the yield on the how much the outbreak would cost benchmark 10-year bond has the state. “I wouldn’t mind if the govern- swung from 0.90% to 0.24%, then ment closed the markets for three back to 0.80%—wild changes in a weeks, like FDR closed the banks in market that typically moves no 1933, and I’m not joking,” a weary more than a few basis points per day. Treasury bonds represent the Wall Street analyst said last week. Turmoil in the normally quiet- risk-free rate of money and used as

cash,” Union Square Ventures partner Fred Wilson wrote on his blog last week. “I hope that this crisis will end quickly and that things will return to normal soon. But hope is not a strategy.” Tomasz Tungunz of Redpoint Ventures said that with sales cycles lengthening, “it’s prudent to construct a more conservative plan.” Sequoia has more credibility than most when it comes to warning of hard times ahead. It did so in 2000 too. In its latest missive, the firm urged founders to count on fund-

raising drying up and to conserve cash wherever possible. Customers are sure to change their spending habits, the letter warned, even if that’s not apparent yet. “Examine whether your capital spending plans are sensible in a more uncertain environment,” the firm said. As for headcount: “This might be a time to evaluate critically whether you can do more with less and raise productivity.” “Constraints focus the mind and provide fertile ground for creativity,” the VC firm said. ■

ON NEW YORK

Albany and City Hall dither as red ink looms If politicians can’t work together, the pandemic could destroy the economy

THE STATE NEEDS TO COMMIT THE EXTRA $700 MILLION TO RESERVES

bly off a cliff, by the end of the year. Other shoes will drop. More bad news is certain to come from the tourism sector, where losses will clearly be in the billions of dollars. And no one has a good take on how many other sectors will be affected, although there is sure to be fallout.

Sweating the details Remember, Cuomo has left the state woefully unprepared for a crisis like this. The state has a measly $3.4 billion in reserves compared with an expected loss of $34 billion in revenue over three years, according to a Citizens Budget Commission analysis. (California boasts almost $20 billion in the bank.) The city is in better shape than the state—but barely. Officials have put aside many more billions than the state has for downturns, but the city's rainy day reserve still equals only 9% of revenue. When the last recession hit, Mayor Michael Bloomberg could dip into a fund equal to 18% of revenue. Mayor Bill de Blasio claims his budget proposal is conservative. It still calls for spending increases that exceed revenue gains. And in previous crises mayors acted decisively. Ed Koch imposed a hiring

BLOOMBERG

y the end of the month, Al- creases in most areas by a couple of bany is supposed to pass a percentage points. (Meaning the state budget for the next 12 state would still spend more than months. By the end of the the previous year.) Democratic legislators immediJune, City Hall is required to do the same for the city. One outcome is ately balked at the plan and sugfor sure: If officials don’t gested higher taxes on change course, they will the wealthy. A few weeks set the state and city up ago it was announced for a fiscal disaster as the that the strong economy coronavirus delivers a was likely to produce an blow to the economy. additional $700 million Start with the pre-virus in revenue for the curstory. Because of rising rent fiscal year and the Medicaid costs and his upcoming one. Talk of unwillingness to confront spending more than the problem, Gov. Andrew GREG DAVID Cuomo proposed started Cuomo began the year to dominate the converfacing a $6 billion deficit. (To be sation in Albany. specific, the state was $6 billion Then came the coronavirus outshort of what it expected to spend break. The stock market downturn in the next fiscal year.) means revenue will almost certainHis solution was to defer a Med- ly fall. The state relies on the top 1% icaid payment, call upon a com- of taxpayers for approximately 40% of personal income tax dollars, or about $20 billion per year. These taxpayers rely primarily on capital gains and sources linked to Wall Street performission to find a couple of billion mance for their income. The result: dollars in government health care Because of the market plunge, persavings and reduce spending in- sonal income taxes will fall, possi-

freeze immediately after the 1985 stock market crash. Bloomberg asked agencies to prepare for 5% reductions in spending. Earlier this week Cuomo did ask the state comptroller to come up with a new economic and revenue forecast. The move is at best a baby step, given what is needed. Here is what fiscal experts say Albany and City Hall need to do immediately to prepare for the unknown future. • The state needs to commit the extra $700 million to reserves.

• The state needs to pare spending outside Medicaid. For example, it could forgo education aid increases to the wealthiest districts in the state. • The state needs to issue much more frequent revenue estimates, maybe monthly as the city does. • The city should institute an immediate 1% to 2% reduction in agency spending through productivity improvements. • The city should impose a hiring freeze, with exceptions requiring mayoral approval. ■

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ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

Changing tide at Governors Island

entury-old sailor homes on Governors Island will soon plot a new course to handle climate change. The Trust for Governors Island, a city-controlled nonprofit, is looking for proposals to bring life to two buildings on the island’s northern end, part of an effort to create a year-round arts and cultural destination and an incubator to study global warming. The revamped billeting, situated in the island’s Nolan Park, will mark the early stages of what the trust hopes for a new cultural campus within the park’s 1.3 million square feet. “We envision Nolan Park as the nexus of arts and culture activity on the island for years to come,” said Clare Newman, the president and CEO of the trust. An arts center run by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council opened on a nearby part of the island in September. Most of the Nolan Park buildings are suited only for seasonal use. Newman said the island drew about a million visitors last summer. “This is the next step to make this a 365-day destination,” she said.

“We already have success in partnering with arts and culture organizations, so this little neighborhood on an island could be one of the most unique destinations for arts in the city.” One of the buildings, 20 Nolan Park, will be converted into two 2,600-square-foot offices suites. Each will have first-floor exhibit and gallery space along with upper-level offices for classes or administrative use. The other building, 9 Nolan Park, is the former headquarters for the Military Division of the Atlantic. The 8,500-square-foot building is move-in ready, the trust said, with 13 studios that could host an artist residency program.

Many plans The facilities also could be open to commercial or educational operators to run programming for sustainability research. Another request for proposal will seek an operator for an incubator for startups focused on understanding and combating climate change. That would be separate, however, from the plans announced in October by the trust for a climate change laboratory on 4.2 million square feet of unused space on the island.

ISTOCK

BY RYAN DEFFENBAUGH

Newman said that plan is more long-term than the development of the Nolan Park building. The two locations will mark the start of several development proposals for the area that the trust will seek.

Additional plans include adding a restaurant and event space in a former munitions warehouse near the island’s new NYC Ferry terminal. A request for proposal will be released for that building during the spring.

“It is column-free space in this big building right near the waterfront overlooking all of New York Harbor,” Newman said of the site’s amenities. “It perfectly matches with the constant demand we get for events.” ■

BUCK ENNIS

RETAIL

Food Bazaar bids on Fairway BY AARON ELSTEIN

nother bidder has emerged in the upcoming auction for Fairway. The bankrupt grocer announced last week that the operator of Food Bazaar, Bogopa Enterprises, had offered to acquire its store in Pelham Manor and the five Fairway locations in Manhattan for $75 million. Food Bazaar’s bid tops one from Village Super Markets, operator of Gourmet Garage, which offered $70 million at the time of Fair-

way’s bankruptcy filing for the Manhattan locations only, leaving the fate of the nine Fairway locations in Brooklyn, Queens and the suburbs in doubt. Fairway said it has received bids for “various other stores” in addition to the locations wanted by Food Bazaar. An auction is scheduled for Monday. “Fairway’s store performance has generated significant interest in our stores,” said CEO Abel Porter. “We look forward to a robust auction.” Food Bazaar officials weren’t im-

mediately available for comment. The retailer was launched in Queens in 1988 by Francis An, a native of Korea. It operates 26 stores in the outer boroughs and suburbs. Earlier this year Food Bazaar signed a lease for its first Manhattan location, at 201 E. 125th St., and the store is expected to open in two years. Bogopa is Korean for “yearning for you.” Fairway issued its second Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection filing in four years in January. Last year the company posted a $65 million loss. ■

We provide the certainty manufacturers and distributors need to keep business moving. grassicpas.com/mfg

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VIEWPOINTS

president K.C. Crain senior executive vice president Chris Crain group publisher Mary Kramer

EDITORIAL

publisher/executive editor

Officials must do better this time with virus relief funds for business business, are set to cover up to 40% of payroll costs for the months related to revenue decline. We appreciate the sentiment that when businesses struggle, there is a place for government to intervene and help. But there are many recent examples in which none of the government’s best intentions actually worked. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, there were supposed to be many programs to help the city rebuild and to help its residents recover. Few programs fell short more than the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, a program so troubled that Jon Stewart called out Congress for its “callous indifference” toward the men and women who handled the aftermath of 9/11. During Hurricane Sandy in 2011, the Mayor’s Office of Housing Recovery Operations ran the Build it Back program to give homeowners money to help rebuild. But New Yorkers trying to access that program faced years of delays and endless enrollment hassles. It took 18 months for the city to mail out three reimbursement checks.

“IT TOOK 18 MONTHS FOR THE CITY TO MAIL OUT THREE REIMBURSEMENT CHECKS.” employees on payroll and seen a decline in revenues. It will be a 0% loan with a repayment term of 15 to 20 years. The city is also giving out cash grants to businesses with fewer than five employees. These grants, which the administration anticipates will average $6,000 per

EDITORIAL editor Robert Hordt assistant managing editors

Christine Haughney (special projects), Janon Fisher, Gabriella Iannetta (digital) senior editor Telisha Bryan associate editor Lizeth Beltran (digital) art director Carolyn McClain photographer Buck Ennis data editor Gerald Schifman senior reporters Aaron Elstein, Daniel Geiger,

Jonathan LaMantia reporters Ryan Deffenbaugh, Gwen Everett,

Jennifer Henderson, Brian Pascus columnist Greg David contributors Tom Acitelli, Ronald DeCicco,

Cara Eisenpress, Cheryl S. Grant, Steve Krupinski, Danielle McManus Sladek, Mark Yawdoszyn to contact the newsroom:

BUCK ENNIS

s the greater New York area has become engulfed in the global coronavirus outbreak, the entire business world has been left breathless by its scope. To help its smallest players, the DeBlasio administration announced it was going to offer some help to small-business owners. Businesses with fewer than 100 employees could be eligible for an interest-free loan up to $75,000 as long as they can document a 25% loss in customer receipts because of the coronavirus. The city made it clear the loan is intended for businesses in the service industry, such as restaurants and caterers, that have kept

Frederick P. Gabriel Jr.

www.crainsnewyork.com/staff 212.210.0100 685 Third Ave., New York, NY 10017-4024

Following the 2014 gas explosion in East Harlem, which killed eight people and destroyed two buildings, Gov. Andrew Cuomo set aside $425,000 to help the 60 businesses affected by the neighboring explosion But one year later, only one business had been approved for a loan, and that business's owner said getting a $75,000 loan became its own full-time job because of all of the required paperwork. We recognize that fraud is an issue and should not be tolerated. But what are the benefits of these kinds of programs if they don’t provide immediate relief that

small businesses need? City, state and federal governments must do everything they can to be clear with businesses about how to enroll and stay up to date with them so that they can actually access funds. They should recognize these funds need to be delivered in a timely manner, especially for small businesses trying to survive with little cash flow. These businesses are a crucial part of New York’s economy and contribute so much of the character that makes New York City stand out from other cities. Don’t leave New York businesses out in the cold. ■

ADVERTISING

www.crainsnewyork.com/advertise senior account managers Rob Pierce,

Stuart Smilowitz, Tori Weil account executive Devin Cavallo integrated marketing manager Jonathan Yan,

212.210.0290, jyan@crainsnewyork.com associate art director/marketing

Charles Fontanilla, 212.210.0145, cfontanilla@crainsnewyork.com people on the move manager Debora Stein,

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Sophia Juarez, sophia.juarez@crainsnewyork.com EVENTS

www.crainsnewyork.com/events

OP-ED

Inequality might make us all sick

uring the norovirus outbreaks between 2009 and 2012, contaminated food accounted for more than 25% of cases of illness. More generally, 70 % of food-borne illness can be traced back to ill food service workers. While we don’t yet know much about the coronavirus that is threatening to become a global pandemic, we know enough about existing infections like norovirus and the flu, which can be spread in similar ways. But don’t blame the food service workers. Blame the unjust, slaveera wage policies that force restaurant employees to show up for work even when they’re sick. Gov. Andrew Cuomo expressed earlier this year his desire for New York State to join 10 other states and the District of Columbia in requiring paid sick leave for workers. But paid sick leave would only be of limited help to restaurant workers who depend on tips and only receive a sub-minimum wage while out sick. For these workers, actually taking that paid sick leave would remain a luxury when workers

manager of conferences & events

Ana Jimenez, ajimenez@crainsnewyork REPRINTS director, reprints & licensing Lauren Melesio,

212.210.0707, lmelesio@crain.com

must be present at work in order to earn the tips that make up a livable wage. Two out of three restaurant workers cook, prepare, and serve food while sick, according to a nationwide survey of over 4,000 restaurant workers by the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United. The reason is simple: their wages are so low that they can’t afford to stay home. The restaurant industry may be the fastest growing industry in our nation, but it also employs the highest percentage of low-wage workers.

Full minimum wage Mandating companies to provide paid sick days to their workers is only part of the solution. According to federal law, tipped workers can be paid a sub-minimum wage, a literal holdover from the end of slavery when companies still didn’t want to have to pay workers. The federal tipped minimum wage is just $2.13 an hour and hasn’t been raised in 30 years. But seven states — California, Alaska, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada,

Oregon and Washington—have adopted One Fair Wage so that all workers in those states are paid the full minimum wage, with tips on top. Therein lies the advantage that states like California have over New York in preventing the spread of coronavirus. Because food service workers in California can rely on a full base wage from their employers, they are not as dependent on tips as New York restaurant workers are, who may well go to work regardless of their condition simply because they need tips to make ends meet. Cuomo pledged in 2017 to look into ending the sub-minimum wage in New York State, and, on the last day of 2019, the governor finally did just that, mandating One Fair Wage for all tipped workers—except for restaurant workers. As the prospect of a pandemic looms over New York State, and Cuomo looks to enact an earned sick time policy statewide, he must also recognize that adopting One Fair Wage for the restaurant industry is equally important for the in-

terest of public health and safety. Only if these two simple, straightforward measures are adopted in tandem would our tens of thousands of restaurant workers be able to actually stay at home when they are sick and thereby promote safety for the millions of New Yorkers who dine out every day. If you don’t have paid sick days, you go to work even if you’re sick. However, if you have paid sick days but critically depend on tips to make up a significant portion of your wages, you still show up for work when sick, or you don’t pay your rent. Yes, the idea of food service workers handling your food when they’re sick is, to say the least, unappetizing. But the policies that force restaurant workers and others to continue to work to make ends meet, even when they’re ill — that’s what is truly disgusting. ■ Dr. Steve Markowitz is a CUNY professor and occupational medicine physician and epidemiologist.

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www.crainsnewyork.com/subscribe customerservice@crainsnewyork.com 877.824.9379 (in the U.S. and Canada). $3.00 a copy for the print edition; or $129.00 one year, for print subscriptions with digital access. Entire contents ©copyright 2020 Crain Communications Inc. All rights reserved. ©CityBusiness is a registered trademark of MCP Inc., used under license agreement. CRAIN COMMUNICATIONS INC. chairman Keith E. Crain vice chairman Mary Kay Crain president K.C. Crain senior executive vice president Chris Crain secretary Lexie Crain Armstrong editor-in-chief emeritus Rance Crain chief financial officer Robert Recchia founder G.D. Crain Jr. [1885-1973] chairman Mrs. G.D. Crain Jr. [1911-1996]

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OP-ED

Congestion pricing alone won’t save subways MTA officials are too optimistic about cost of upgrades BY PHILIP MARK PLOTCH

and upgrade ventilation systems that prevent smoke from asphyxiating riders. The extent of the disrepair is not publicly known because—breaking with tradition—the MTA failed to issue a report last year that would have revealed the status of its upgrades.

Climate change BUCK ENNIS

he federal government is now delaying approval of the city’s congestion-pricing program, which had been expected to generate about $1 billion per year for transit improvements. As a result, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is facing a financial crisis in its efforts to modernize the subway system. But congestion-pricing funds are not enough to solve the subway’s problems. What makes the subway’s troubles nearly impossible to overcome is the lack of transparency about them. The city’s subway system, once the envy of the world, has lurched from one crisis to another for more than a century because elected officials tend to put their own shortterm priorities ahead of its long-

ed the original subway lines cut back on basic maintenance in the early 20th century because elected officials would not let the railroads increase the 5-cent fare. After taking over the transit system, city leaders prioritized generous union contracts over infrastructure investments. In the 1960s the governor pursued expansion projects that led to

“IT’S TIME TO FESS UP ABOUT THE SYSTEM’S NEEDS AND ANTICIPATED REVENUE” term needs. They routinely neglect the unsexy infrastructure behind the scenes and below the rails. The private railroads that operat-

the deterioration of subway services in the 1970s. In the early 2000s the state’s elected officials forced the MTA to take on too much debt, then the MTA had to cut expenses when a recession hit the city. For decades New Yorkers have been promised not only an expansion of the transit system, but also one that is in a state of good repair. The MTA, however, has yet to modernize signals that keep trains from crashing, replace pumps that protect equipment from being flooded

Our changing climate makes infrastructure improvements even more imperative because the city’s underground tunnels are among the public facilities most vulnerable to rising sea levels. Subway stations already have been getting warmer thanks to the heat released by new electronic equipment. With climate change exacerbating this trend, the MTA will need to invest billions of dollars in upgrades because high temperatures can disrupt service, deteriorate equipment, cause train tracks to buckle and, of course, make travel unpleasant for riders. While MTA executives dream of new signals and other necessary in-

frastructure improvements, they have nightmares about potential terrorist attacks. Their concern is well-founded because New York’s subway stations were designed with narrow stairways, few exits and poor ventilation. Even if congestion pricing is approved and implemented, the MTA’s financial status will be precarious. The MTA has made overly optimistic revenue assumptions, and it plans to spend 20 years of congestion-pricing revenue in just five years. It is time for New York’s officials to fess up about the transit system’s needs and anticipated revenue so that appropriate priorities can be set. If New York tries to significantly expand and modernize its transit system with insufficient resources, the subway’s financial crisis will turn into another service crisis. ■ Philip Mark Plotch is associate professor at Saint Peter’s University, former manager of planning and policy at MTA headquarters, and author of Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City.

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THE LIST LARGEST LOBBYISTS City firms ranked by total compensation

POWER BROKERS

INCOME FOR INFLUENCE

Lobbyist compensation increases for ninth straight year

$120

Total compensation (in millions)

otal compensation for city lobbyists rose in every year of the past decade, reaching $113.2 million in 2019. The record-setting amount, released in this monthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s report from the Lobbying Bureau at the Office of the City Clerk, is indicative of businessesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; reliance on lobbyists to navigate local bureaucracy. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The lobbying industry defies economic gravity,â&#x20AC;? said Blair Horner, executive director of the New York Public Interest Research Group, a state nonprofit for public activism. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Wall Street goes up and down, but lobbying only goes up.â&#x20AC;? Suri Kasirerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s firm repeated as the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s leader, increasing its compensation 11.5% from the year before. A distant second was James Capalinoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eponymous firm, which upped its earnings 7.9% on a diminished number of clients. Together, Kasirer and Capalino & Co. gobbled up more than one-fifth of lobbyist payments and had a whoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s who of major clients. Capalino & Co. aided the FWRA consortium, which poured more than $1 million into winning city approval to rezone the Flushing Creek area in Queens. Kasirer worked on behalf of Northwell Health, Vornado Realty Trust and Mount Sinai Hospital, which all ranked among the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 10 largest lobbying clients. While industry heavyweights pay to push their interests aggressively, most city businesses donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have the same resources at their disposal, creating inequity in the legislative process. â&#x20AC;&#x153;If youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re a small business and you canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t afford a lobbyist, you can get lost,â&#x20AC;? Horner said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Lawmakers wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t stay lawmakers for long if they ignore their constituents, but businesses may not know whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s coming up for a vote or the timing of anything. If youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re not part of the game, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hard to play.â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Gerald Schifman

RANK

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

40%

Lobbyist payments continued to grow in 2019, increasing 10.3% year over year.

PORTION of lobbyist clients based in real estate, construction, engineering and development

$100

$113.2 $80 $60 $40

â&#x20AC;&#x2122;10

â&#x20AC;&#x2122;11

â&#x20AC;&#x2122;12

2,461 NUMBER of lobbyist clients reported last year, a 1.7% increase from 2018

â&#x20AC;&#x2122;13

â&#x20AC;&#x2122;14

â&#x20AC;&#x2122;15

â&#x20AC;&#x2122;16

â&#x20AC;&#x2122;17

â&#x20AC;&#x2122;18

â&#x20AC;&#x2122;19

SEEKING COUNCIL Last year lobbyists mostly sought to influence the City Council and local agencies with their efforts. Less frequently did they go after the mayor and borough presidents. Portion of targets

CITY COUNCIL AND STAFF

47%

CITY AGENCIES

39%

MAYOR

5% BOROUGH PRESIDENTS 5% COMMUNITY BOARDS 5%

NOTE: Percentages add up to 101% due to rounding.

SOURCE: Crainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s analysis of Lobbying Bureau data from the Office of the City Clerk

COMPANY/ ADDRESS

PHONE/ WEBSITE

TOP EXECUTIVE(S)

Kasirer 321 Broadway New York, NY 10007

212-285-1800 kasirer.nyc

Suri Kasirer President

Capalino & Co. 233 Broadway New York, NY 10279

212-616-5810 capalino.com

James Capalino Chief executive

Bolton-St. Johns 7 World Trade Center New York, NY 10007

212-431-4748 boltonstjohns.com

Constantinople & Vallone Consulting 233 Broadway New York, NY 10279

2019 LOBBYIST COMPENSATION (IN MILLIONS)/ % CHANGE VS. 2018 1

2019 CLIENTS REGISTERED/ % CHANGE VS. 2018 2

2019 TOTAL NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES 3

YEAR FOUNDED

$14.3 +11.5%

217 +6.4%

1997

$11.9 +7.9%

283 -10.2%

2000

Tom Connolly, Samara Daly, Giorgio DeRosa, Ed Draves, Emily Giske, Teresa Gonzalez, Bill McCarthy, Patrick McHugh, Mike Keogh, Juanita Scarlett Partners

$5.6 +23.0%

105 +29.6%

1992

212-393-6500 candvconsulting.com

Anthony Constantinople, Tony Constantinople, Perry Vallone, Peter Vallone Sr. Partners

$5.1 +14.2%

88 +10.0%

1998

Pitta Bishop & Del Giorno 120 Broadway New York, NY 10271

212-652-3890 pittabishop.com

Vincent Pitta Founding and managing member Robert Bishop, Jon Del Giorno Founding members

$4.4 -8.2%

85 -10.5%

14 4

2008

Davidoff Hutcher & Citron 605 Third Ave. New York, NY 10158

212-557-7200 dhclegal.com

Sid Davidoff Founding partner, chair of government relations

$4.0 +30.1%

87 +29.9%

1975

Greenberg Traurig 200 Park Ave. New York, NY 10166

212-801-9200 gtlaw.com

John Mascialino Chair of New York City government law and policy practice

$3.8 -3.5%

93 +20.8%

1967

Geto & de Milly 276 Fifth Ave. New York, NY 10001

212-686-4551 getodemilly.com

Michele de Milly, Ethan Geto Principals

$3.4 +16.6%

n/d

12 4

1981

CMW Strategies 5 233 Broadway New York, NY 10279

212-437-7373 cmw.nyc

Michael Woloz President, chief executive Martin McLaughlin Founding partner

$3.1 +18.9%

66 +11.9%

1988

MirRam Group 215 Park Ave. South New York, NY 10003

212-505-6633 mirramgroup.com

Luis Miranda, Roberto Ramirez Founding partners Eduardo Castell Managing partner

$3.0 n/d

n/d

17 4

2000

Â Â? Â? 1- Â? Â Â Â Â 2-Â? Â? Â 3- Â Â 4- Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 5-Â&#x20AC; Â Â Â Â Â&#x201A; Â Â&#x192;Â Â&#x201E; Â&#x2026;

10 | CRAINâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S NEW YORK BUSINESS | MARCH 16, 2020

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Kasirer is the #1 lobbying and government relations firm in New York. We advocate on behalf of a wide range of clients who seek local expertise in navigating the City.

We advance our clientsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; goalsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;building coalitions and consensus and influencing decision-makers in the dynamic political landscape that defines New York. And our team of professionals, whose careers intersect at politics, policy and government, achieve victory on behalf of our clients with an unwavering commitment to the highest standard of ethics in the industry.

CN019622.indd 1

321 Broadway, 2d Fl New York, NY 10007 T: 212 285 1800 F: 212 285 1818 kasirer.nyc info@kasirer.nyc

3/10/20 4:24 PM

SMALL- BUSINESS SPOTLIGHT

Boutique fitness entrepreneur strengthens her portfolio SLT founder expands with stretching studio BY DIANE HESS

“I WOULD KICK MYSELF IF I WEREN’T THE ONE TO BRING THIS WORKOUT TO NEW YORK”

FREEMAN’S SLT workout centers around the megaformer machine.

BUCK ENNIS

n a business trip to Los Angeles 11 years ago, Amanda Freeman discovered a fitness machine that would inspire her to create her boutique fitness brand, SLT. At the time Freeman, 43, was a trend forecaster, and the low-impact, core-strengthening routine Pilates was her favorite workout. “A friend told me I had to go to Sebastien Lagree’s class in West Hollywood, because he had built a souped-up version of the Pilates reformer and a workout for it,” Freeman said. “Immediately I thought it was everything.” In 2011 Freeman opened SLT, which stands for strengthen, lengthen and tone, in a studio with 10 “megaformers” on West 57th Street. The machines have a platform on two ends and a spring-loaded, sliding carriage between them. Back then specialized fitness studios such as Barry’s Bootcamp, Flywheel and SoulCycle were popping up around the city. Freeman loved the idea of boutique fitness—“one studio, one workout”—but she felt she wasn’t getting the “longer, leaner” Pilates results from the options on the market. “I wanted to get a Pilates body in a SoulCycle setting,” Freeman said. “I knew someone was going to bring the megaformer to New York and I would kick myself if it wasn’t me.” Today there are 26 SLT studios in the Northeast, 12 of which are in New York City. Freeman has 200 employees and did nearly $20 million in sales last year. She owns SLT with her brother, Heath Freeman, a venture capitalist. Four years ago they sold a 45% stake to North Castle Partners, a private-equity firm, which has invested in Barry’s Bootcamp and Brooklyn Boulders. Freeman began her career at the Intelligence Group, a trend-forecasting firm. She worked with brands including ESPN, L’Oréal and Target to help create products, services and messaging meant to resonate with young consumers. In 2006 she co-founded Vital Juice, a daily health e-newsletter. She sold it to Tasting Table in 2012. “I’ve always had an entrepreneurial spirit,” Freeman said. “In college, I worked at a store delivering sub sandwiches to dorms and invested in an on-campus bar.” In her first deal for SLT, Freeman became the exclusive licensee of megaformers in the tristate area. The machines cost about $10,000 each. She also trained to be a Pilates instructor. Freeman was conservative with her initial location. She signed a 30-month lease for a 900-square-foot space on the seventh floor of a Midtown building. She hired 12 instructors and brought on a public relations firm. A year later she opened a second location, on the 10th floor of a building in SoHo. An expansion to the suburbs happened in 2013. A dive in the retail market in 2015 enabled Freeman to begin to lease ground-floor space, where she estimates foot traffic is 30% better than on higher floors. About half of SLT studios are currently street-level. In the last decade the boutique fitness market has exploded. According to the International Health Racquet & Sports Club Association, 40% of health club members belong to a boutique fitness studio. However, there are signs of a slowdown for some players, including Flywheel and SoulCycle, and reports of a boutique fitness bubble. As other Pilates brands have emerged, SLT competes by focusing on innovation. “We are always looking to improve,” said Melody Davi, an SLT instructor for six years. While Freeman believes her original workout will stand the test of time, she has been open to branching out. The owner has fine-tuned the megaformer and in January debuted a megaformer-treadmill class at the James Hotel in NoMad. “For eight years when I tried to convince certain people to try SLT, the pushback was ‘I like traditional cardio,’ ” she said. In 2018 Freeman launched a separate business, Stretch-d, an assisted-stretching studio. There is one location in the Flatiron District, and she opened a second this month, in Westchester. Stretch-d also has signed a lease on the Upper East Side. A single mother of two young children, Freeman is a mentor to entrepreneurs and women who own businesses such as The Wing, a network of community spaces for women. One of its co-founders, Lauren Kassan, was her first SLT hire. “As the first employee, I got to see SLT transform from a concept to a company that is part of people’s everyday life,” Kassan said. “An idea is only as good as its execution, and I learned so much about building a business from the ground up in my time there.” ■

COURTESY OF SLT

Exploring new directions

FOCAL POINTS LOCATION 26 studios in the Northeast; 12 in New York City EMPLOYEES 200 OWNER Amanda Freeman EDUCATION Bachelor’s in sociology, Duke University; MBA, Harvard Business School 2019 REVENUE Nearly $20 million AVERAGE REVENUE GROWTH, 2016 TO 2019 27% PRICE PER CLASS $40 AVERAGE STUDIO SIZE 2,000 square feet WEBSITE sltnyc.com

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HEALTH CARE

Docs don’t feel prepared for Alzheimer’s demand: survey

Specialist-advice startup raises $18M

BY JENNIFER HENDERSON

BY JONATHAN LAMANTIA

Sometimes comfortable In New York and nationwide, the association determined that current and future shortages in specialist care are placing the burden

ISTOCK

octors nationwide say they are not prepared to meet the demand of treating people with dementia, a condition expected to spike over the next five years, according to an Alzheimer’s Association survey. The findings are particularly alarming for the state, as the association estimates that there are more than 410,000 New Yorkers ages 65 and older living with Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia. The number is expected to grow more than 12%, to 460,000, by 2025. The figures represent about 10% of the national totals. Additionally, the report found that New York should increase its current number of geriatricians, 605, by 35% to meet its anticipated Alzheimer’s population needs in 2050.

“There’s a high expectation from patients, usually over the age of 65, that their primary care physicians know about Alzheimer’s or how to diagnose it,” said Jermaine Ross, director of translational medicine at biotechnology company Immuneering and a member of the board of directors of the Alzheimer’s Association’s New York City chapter. In addition to addressing speof dementia diagnoses and care on primary care physicians. However, cialist shortages, more resources 2 in 5 of those physicians report need to be allocated to helping prithat they are “never” or “only mary care physicians obtain additional education on Alzsometimes” comfortable heimer’s. making a diagnosis of “But it's not just eduAlzheimer’s or other cation,” Ross said. “It’s dementia. quite clear that we also About one-third report NUMBER of New need to provide them that they are “never” or Yorkers ages 65 with more time and re“only sometimes” comand older living sources. Some of that fortable answering pawith Alzheimer’s burden has to be shifted tient questions about the disease toward a supportive staff diseases. of social workers, nurses Primary care physiand pharmacists to build cians recognize that they are on the front lines of the crisis, up a robust network to be able to the association said, but they also handle this huge wave of individuhave a lack of adequate prepara- als who will develop the disease in the next five to 30 years.” ■ tion and training opportunities.

410K+

ubiconMD, which offers doctors a way to access expertise from specialists, said it has raised $18 million to expand into new products for primary care clinicians. The financing was led by Deerfield Management, with participation from Optum Ventures, HLM Venture Partners, Waterline Ventures and Heritage Provider Network. RubiconMD has raised about $40 million since it was founded in 2013. The company’s product allows doctors to get timely advice from colleagues in more than 120 specialties. It allows patients in remote areas or places where wait times for specialist appointments can span weeks or months to get medical attention for complex care. RubiconMD is now in 37 states and works with thousands of physicians. Its customers are insurers and physician practices involved in value-based payments—a system in which health care providers are paid by insurance companies for keeping patients healthy and not simply for conducting certain

tests and procedures. It has about 50 employees at its SoHo office. The Series C funding will allow the company to expand further, said Gil Addo, co-founder and CEO of RubiconMD. “We’re adding the resources on the commercial side—sales and marketing—to be able to keep pace with the demand we’re seeing for eConsult,” he said. “We’ll invest in taking the data we have to provide additional offerings to support primary care physicians.”

Increased access While at Harvard Business School, Addo co-founded the company with Carlos Reines as a way to make specialized care more accessible. The importance of access to such care became clear as he watched his grandmother travel between Barbados and Boston for follow-up visits after brain surgery. Dr. Julian Harris, a partner at Deerfield and a primary care physician, said RubiconMD is helping more physicians move toward value-based payments. Harris is joining the board of RubiconMD as part of the investment. ■

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MARCH 16, 2020 | CRAIN’S NEW YORK BUSINESS | 13

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WHO OWNS THE BLOCK

Is billion-dollar Black Rock sale a one-off or part of a trend?

51 W. 52ND ST.

A big tower deal could be the start of something BY TOM ACITELLI

1335 SIXTH AVE. Park Hotels & Resorts, a REIT based in Virginia, owns the 1,878-room New York Hilton Midtown here, which the hospitality giant operates. It’s one of the largest hotels in New York City by room count.

RXR Realty, the Manhattan-based developer and landlord headed by CEO and Chairman Scott Rechler, acquired this 39-story, 623,221-square-foot office building for $400 million in 2010. It had last traded pre-recession, in 2006, for $498 million. In 2011 RXR reportedly sold an approximately 50% stake in six buildings, including 1330 Sixth, to private-equity giant Blackstone in a $4 billion deal.

1301 SIXTH AVE. Paramount Group paid $1.5 billion for this 46-story, 2 million-squarefoot office building in 2008. Macklowe Properties was the seller. That firm, led by Harry Macklowe, had bought eight office buildings in 2007, just before the real estate crash, and ended up unloading several around the same time, including 1301 Sixth Ave.

53 W. 53RD ST. In 2007 the Museum of Modern Art sold a sizable vacant tract of land covering six addresses to Houston-based developer Hines for $126 million. Hines, with partners Goldman Sachs Real Estate Principal Investment Area and Singapore’s Pontiac Land Group, then built a 1,050-foot-tall tower that wrapped construction last year. The building includes 145 condos and 52,290 square feet of MoMA exhibition space.

1285 SIXTH AVE. In a series of deals that closed in May 2016, RXR Realty and partners acquired this 39-story, 2 million-squarefoot office building for $1.7 billion. Chinese insurer China Life was RXR’s biggest partner in the deal. UBS is the building’s biggest tenant, with 900,000 square feet.

666 FIFTH AVE. A fund associated with Toronto-based Brookfield Properties purchased a 99-year lease of the 40-story, 1.5 million-square-foot office building in August 2018 in a deal that valued the tower at $1.2 billion. Kushner Cos.—which was then led by Jared Kushner— President Donald Trump’s son-inlaw and senior adviser—bought it for $1.8 billion in 2007. Brookfield is revamping the tower, which it will rename 660 Fifth Ave.

51 W. 52ND ST. CBS owns this 38-story, 1 millionsquare-foot tower. National Amusements, the Norwood, Mass.-based holding company that the Redstone family controls, owns CBS—which merged with National Amusements-owned Viacom late last year to form ViacomCBS. Brokerage CBRE is marketing the building for a potential 10-figure sale.

1330 SIXTH AVE.

31 W. 52ND ST. 1290 SIXTH AVE. Manhattan-based Vornado Realty Trust acquired a 70% stake in this 43-story, 2.3 million-square-foot office building in 2007 in a more than $1.8 billion deal that included a skyscraper in San Francisco. The other 30% is owned by the Trump Organization. The entirety of the building last sold to a group of Hong Kong investors for more than $1.2 billion in 2006.

Paramount Group owns this 29-story, 904,534-square-foot office building. The Manhattan-based real estate investment trust acquired the 36% stake that it did not own for approximately $230 million in cash in 2015. Paramount—led by Albert Behler, its longtime president and CEO—had been part of a $595 million acquisition of the tower in early 2008. BUCK ENNIS, GOOGLE MAPS

lack Rock—the longtime headquarters of CBS, at 51 W. 52nd St.—was put on the block last month. ViacomCBS announced it was looking to shed the property in February after weeks of speculation. The company, formed through a merger between the home of MTV and the 60 Minutes network months before, said that it was selling the 55-year-old monolithic skyscraper, designed for the broadcaster by architecture giant Eero Saarinen, during an earnings call. The company said it hoped to close a deal before the end of the year. A deal could serve as a bellwether for billion-dollar investment sales in Manhattan—a sluggish sector of real estate. If the tower trades for a billion-plus dollars, it would be one of the biggest building sales in Manhattan in the past two years, a particularly incandescent bright spot in an investment-sales market that brokers say is in the midst of a years-long correction. Prices are dozens of percentage points off the market peak in 2015, according to brokerage Jones Lang LaSalle. According to Costar, recent comparable investment-sales deals struck in 2018 and 2019 include WarnerMedia’s $2.2 billion sale-leaseback of its office condos at 30 Hudson Yards, SL Green’s 45% stake purchase in 245 Park Ave. for $1 billion and Google’s $2.4 billion Chelsea Market buy. The Coca-Cola building, at 711 Fifth Ave., sold twice last year in two separate deals totaling $1.9 billion. So what are Black Rock’s chances of joining the exclusive club? Better than most, even with the recent volatility in the market. The tower—a stone’s throw from NBC’s and Fox’s headquarters—sits in a neighborhood that has hosted some of the bigger building trades in recent Manhattan history. Such comps matter in pricing real estate. These deals have involved some of the biggest names in real estate, including Brookfield Properties, Macklowe Properties, Paramount Group, Vornado Realty Trust as well as the Trump Organization and Kushner Cos., the firm that President Donald Trump’s son-in-law once led. A further clue to the tower’s potential value can be found in Brookfield’s revamp of nearby 666 Fifth, the lease for which the company acquired from Kushner Cos. That revamp—launched in October and scheduled to wrap in 2023, complete with a new address for the tower—will cost upward of $400 million. CBRE, which is listing Black Rock for ViacomCBS, declined to comment. ■

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ASKED & ANSWERED

INTERVIEW BY CARA EISENPRESS

WHO HE IS Co-founder, Black Tap Burger

ive years ago Black Tap Burger set the standard for how restaurants use Instagram to drive business. Images of its elaborate themed ice cream shakes led to lines out the door at the original location, in SoHo. Using that viral status as an engine, founding partner Chris Barish and his wife, architect Julie Mulligan, are expanding Black Tap as fast as they can. There are now more than a dozen locations, with three in New York City. Barish, who started his hospitality career by investing in ’90s hotspot Moomba, went on to found the nightclub Light, invested in Marquee and later was a partner in restaurants in Las Vegas with Gordon Ramsay. How do you build on the initial success of those milkshakes?

The shake is great awareness, and people come in for it. But they keep coming back for the burger. Instagram was a huge part of getting people in the door. Now we do collaborations to keep customers engaged.

What was the strategy behind opening a Black Tap in Midtown—far from your downtown roots?

People always want to do parties, and we didn’t have the ability because of the crowds. Now we have this great new flagship in Herald Square. We’re taking advantage of having so many office workers come in.

How did those investments do?

Marquee was one of the best investments I’ve ever had. Investing got me a small group who want to keep coming along. Basically, I’m old and have made a lot of friends with money over the years. They keep funding me.

AGE 46

Black Tap is one of dozens of “gourmet” burger joints. How do you differentiate your offering?

BORN Upper East Side

You have to be so focused on every aspect of your business. We pride ourselves on our milkshakes, and we’re very design-conscious. We have curated music from a DJ with a focus on ’80s pop and ’90s hip-hop. Right now so many people just do takeout and delivery. When someone actually comes in in person, you have to make sure you give the customer a great experience.

LIVES Union Square EDUCATION Bachelor’s in film and television, NYU, Tisch School of the Arts REGULAR ORDER “My go-to is the all-American burger, and I love our wings.” MARRIED PARTNERS Barish admits he annoys his wife sometimes. But because running a restaurant is a 24/7 job, they wouldn’t see each other as often if they didn’t work together. “Now maybe we see each other too much,” he said. “We get to travel the world together— Singapore and Seoul and Tokyo.”

With your background in hospitality investing, what have you had to learn about running a restaurant that’s different from funding it?

When you are an investor, you can give your opinions, but they don’t have to take them. Now with Black Tap as my sole focus, I get to see my vision come to fruition.

What’s your plan for continuing to grow?

At first the thought process was, if you open in New York, you want to look in Miami, Vegas, Los Angeles. But now with Instagram and Facebook and all the new tools, it’s a lot easier to get awareness around the world. That makes it easier to expand. The overseas locations are license deals. We are opening in Zurich this summer, and we have a letter of intent in London that’s advanced, plus two high-profile locations in Dubai. In North America, we have a target list of eight to 10 cities--from Chicago to Toronto and across Texas.

Chef and co-founder Joe Isidori left, and you’ve been sued by employees claiming to have invented your milkshakes. How do you deal with all that?

My father has been a serial entrepreneur, and as he says, startups are messy and hard. With Joe, we had differences on how to grow the business. I can’t speak about the lawsuits, but they are messy, and it’s stressful. We try to put it behind us so we can focus on growth and building the brand. ■

BUCK ENNIS

CHRIS BARISH Black Tap Burger

DOSSIER

NOMINATIONS CLOSING SOON! Crainʼs is seeking Rising Stars in Real Estate, a celebratory program honoring young professionals making an impact in real estate early in their careers. Candidates must have knowledge, skills, integrity and a high degree of ethics and have already contributed to their profession and the community. Criterias include: • Program is open to professionals working in real estate and those in other industries with a real estate focus • Candidate has no more than 15 years of industry experience • Candidate must work within the five boroughs of New York City or the counties of Nassau, Bergen, Westchester and Rockland to qualify • Nomination must include reference from senior leadership at firm Crainʼs will publish the list of honorees online and in print in our editorial coverage on May 11, 2020.

Nominate today at: www.crainsnewyork.com/risingstarsrealestate2020 Deadline: March 27 | Questions? risingstars@crainsnewyork.com

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REZONING FROM PAGE 1

TH RE ste the be

THE DOMINO SUGAR REFINERY in Williamsburg in 2013. An 11-acre megaproject there by Two Trees includes Domino Park and four new buildings.

BUCK ENNIS

Bloomberg’s plans under a new name, mandatory inclusionary zoning, with requirements that at least 20% of newly built units be affordable. The Greenpoint-Williamsburg rezoning began after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, when the city was still uncertain of its future. The area, long home to manufacturing and industrial companies that were disappearing, was being haphazardly reclaimed by artists and others willing to move into a gritty neighborhood in search of large spaces and affordable rents. Rezoning thus enabled the city to turn nearly 200 blocks of manufacturing and industrial properties that often were neglected into residential towers and open spaces. Instead of being suspicious of the Bloomberg initiative, the community was grateful. It feared the alternatives; the waterfront had been considered as a place for garbage transfer stations, and in the early 2000s, an independent power company proposed a much-despised 1,100-megawatt plant for the area. But officials such as Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and Comptroller Scott Stringer view what has happened in Greenpoint-Williamsburg and the rest of the city as nothing less than a disaster. They say higher-income, mostly white newcomers flooded the rezoned neighborhoods and sent rents soaring, pushing out longtime, lower-income minorities. Outlining his housing plans a few weeks ago, Stringer, a mayoral candidate, called Mayor Bill de Blasio’s low-income housing program “the military-industrial complex of gentrification.” Williams introduced legislation in the City Council requiring a gentrification study before any new rezoning can proceed. “Black and brown people are being pushed out,’’ he said. “Bloomberg’s housing policy was horrible, and (de Blasio’s) mandatory inclusionary zoning was putting gasoline on the fire.” But new research from the Department of City Planning and New York University’s Furman Center shows that these assumptions have not proved true. The data shows rezonings have simply not pushed out minorities, and rents decline when new construction changes an area. Rather than forcing out minorities, rezoning has reversed a decline in the Hispanic population in both neighborhoods that had started in 1990. The two neighborhoods have even seen a small increase in the number of African-American

residents. Most tellingly, the number of less-well-off households remained the same even as higher-income residents moved into the area. “As long as you have a growing and vibrant city, changes are going to happen,” said Rafael Cestero, who helped draft the Bloomberg affordability housing plan. The challenge is to mitigate negative consequences, said Cestero, now the president of the Commu-

with a solution. “Our object was a plan that would be meaningful, would not stop market construction, and would stand the [test of ] time by surviving economic cycles,” Cestero remembered.

What’s different, the same

There is no doubt the neighborhoods have changed. Today the Williamsburg waterfront is dominated by six high-rises between 30 and 40 stories tall and accompanying buildings with affordable apartments that are between six and eight stories tall. The northernmost part nity Preservation Corporation . The of the neighborhood is seeing a Greenpoint-Williamsburg rezon- burst of similar construction along ing, he said, is a great example of the East River; developers at first how to do that. hesitated to gamble on an area with The Bloomberg administration less convenient subway connecwas under increasing pressure to tions. deal with the need for lower-cost But that doesn’t mean longtime housing. Up until then, the city had residents view these changes as entried to tie new construction to set- tirely bad. At the northern end of asides of affordable units, mostly in Williamsburg, butcher Al Santiago a few parts of Manhattan. Then it wraps a half-dozen cow calves in a tried to encourage affordable hous- plastic bag and weighs them over a ing by providing subsidies, but not counter displaying a variety of a single developer opted into the meats for a customer making bone plan. broth. Santiago, who is from Puerto On his first day on the job at the Rico, has been working for the city’s Department of Housing Pres- store’s owner, Mario Zollo, for five ervation and Development, Ces- years and lives with him in a tero was dragged into a meeting at five-bedroom apartment in the City Hall about the affordability building that was purchased 30 problem and ended up being as- years ago. Zollo, 78, has embraced signed to lead a team to come up him like family, much the way the neighborhood, including the newcomers, has emSince Greenpoint and Williamsburg were rezoned in 2005–06, 17,100 units have been brought into the area. braced the butcher A portion of dwellings qualify as affordable, with more on the way. shop. Santiago finds the changes are good for business. He points to the construction AFFORDABLE AFFORDABLE ADDITIONAL NEW RESIDENTS JOBS ADDED site across the street, units added to units preserved in units expected in Greenpoint and to the which will soon be a Greenpoint and the area to come on line Williamsburg neighborhoods in new six-story apartWilliamsburg in through permits the past ment complex. the past decade and applications 15 years and a half “Once that building gets built, we’ll have SOURCE: Department of City Planning people in here all

“IN A GROWING AND VIBRANT CITY, CHANGES ARE GOING TO HAPPEN”

THE BROOKLYN REZONING

2,100 1,070 7,000 11,500 8,600

the time,” he said. Santiago, 56, also says the neighborhood still has a thriving Puerto Rican community. “They’re a little quieter, but they’re here,” Santiago said. The Latino population maintains its presence in the neighborhood through a summer music festival called WEPA, celebrating music with Colombian roots. El Puenta, a north Brooklyn human rights organization, runs a community school, Middle School 50, which fosters community programs for Latin families. Since 2005, developers have built 17,100 units in the rezoned parts of Greenpoint-Williamsburg, including 2,100 affordable apartments. An additional 1,070 low-rent units were preserved, according to the detailed City Planning study released late last year, and the area is expected to see an additional 7,000 apartments in coming years. The city has increased open space and spurred the addition of 8,600 jobs in the rezoned area between 2010 and 2017, a129% increase. The population increased from 32,000 to 45,000, with most of the gains coming among working-age adults and children under the age of 5.

Williamsburg-Greenpoint Work from the New York University Furman Center also shows that gentrification does not elevate rates of displacement. An in-depth study of children in New York City covered by Medicaid , which the center published last year, showed that children in gentrifying areas were no more likely to move than children in nongentrifying areas. When they moved, the study found, there was no difference in the areas they moved into. Another paper, published in December, contradicted one of the most widely held beliefs of New Yorkers—that the construction of larger and taller buildings leads to rent increases. In fact, the basics of supply-and-demand economics hold true. For every 10% increase in

housing in areas of the city with new high-rise construction, rents in the immediately surrounding area fall by 1%, said Xiaodi Li of NYU’s Wagner school. “This research doesn’t deny the reality of gentrification, the reality of displacement or the reality of crushing rent burdens,” said Ingrid Gould Ellen, NYU Wagner professor and faculty director of the Furman Center. “But it suggests that building more housing in a neighborhood won’t exacerbate those high-rent burdens and may actually help to alleviate them.”

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Old Brooklyn charm

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Even in the transformation, Williamsburg and Greenpoint in no way look like the Emerald Cities of Long Island City or Hudson Yards. Many of the rowhouses near the waterfront remain. Streets like Manhattan Avenue have kept the charm bestowed on them by the Polish immigrant enclaves that built businesses there a hundred years ago. Greenpoint, often considered Brooklyn’s “Little Poland,” has kept its refurbished clock tower from 1891 that stands in front of Peter Pan Pastry and Donut Shop. The shop, one of the oldest businesses in the neighborhood, is still operated by Polish women in blue dresses with pointed white collars. The Starbucks and Rite Aid on Manhattan Avenue still resemble the vaudeville theaters that stood in their place back in the early 1900s. This is the draw for residents such as Megan Penmann, 39, who moved from Greenpoint in 2010 to take a job in San Francisco but returned to her old neighborhood five years later. She says the neighborhood feels, in some ways, better to her now because it has more amenities. “I still see the same older Polish people and the same guys playing bocce in the park as I did 10 years ago,” Penmann said. “That’s what I’ve always liked about it—you kind of feel like you know your neighbors.” Research nationwide has found results similar to the work of the

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16 | CRAIN’S NEW YORK BUSINESS | MARCH 16, 2020

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HEALTH CARE

Major hospitals file thousands of suits against patients BY JONATHAN LAMANTIA

N THE DOMINO SUGAR FACTORY REDEVELOPMENT is making steady progress. The interiors of the 138-year-old building are being entirely renovated. City Planning Department and Furman. Two major studies of large cities nationwide, by the Kalamazoo-Mich.-based UpJohn Insitiute, found the market-rate apartment buildings in low-income areas slowed rent increases even when the new units are expensive. It also found new construction increased the number of low-income people migrating to the neighborhoods from other low-income areas. “We studied large buildings with 50 or more units,’’ said Upjohn economist Evan Mast. “The effect is both regional and national.’’

Research critics Councilman Antonio Reynoso, who represents Williamsburg, dismisses the City Planning Department study. Even if the number of minorities in the rezoned area increased, he said, the rezoning accelerated gentrification in the areas adjacent to those rezoned by spur-

ring landlords to aggressively move out poorer people. Reynoso and Williams point to a study, also issued late last year, from Churches United for Fair Housing that found the Latin population in the community district encompassing the rezoning dropped by almost 15,000 as the population grew by 30,000. But the Churches study isn’t comparable to City Planning Department’s work. It studied from 2000 to 2010, before the rezoning, when the Hispanic population was declining. It also included the part of South Williamsburg that was not rezoned, where the surge in the Orthodox Jewish population has displaced minorities. Still Williams and Stringer have won over public opinion. A 2018 Quinnipiac Poll found that New Yorkers disapproved of the mayor’s handling of affordable housing by 56% to 31%.

Speaking to Crain’s, Deputy Mayor Vicki Been wouldn’t take a definitive stance on whether the research showed the program she runs has helped deter gentrification and rent increases; she focused on steps the administration has instituted to keep residents in place. “Our administration’s rezonings have delivered tenant protections and affordable apartments to buck the trend of displacement. We stand by them,’’ a representative said in a follow-up statement. “But, no question, there are still huge pressures in our city that people fear are driving up rents. Our job is to listen and to directly address those fears, and that’s what we’re doing.” With the de Blasio administration in its final two years, housing policy has emerged as a central issue in the 2021 mayoral race. The stakes for the city could not be higher. ■

GENTRIFICATION: HOW TO DEFINE IT ONE OF THE BIGGEST PROBLEMS with gentrification: No one can agree on what it means. It’s a definition even dictionaries clash over. The Oxford Dictionary describes it as “the process of renovating and improving housing or a district so that it conforms to middle-class taste” or “the process of making someone or something more refined, polite, or respectable.” Merriam-Webster has a more political take by describing it as “the process of repairing and rebuilding homes and businesses in a deteriorating area (such as an urban neighborhood) accompanied by an influx of middle-class or affluent people and that often results in the displacement of earlier, usually poorer residents.” That’s what academics have found is the core of the problem. “‘Gentrification’ is one of the most loaded terms in urbanism—its very definition subject to intense analysis and variation,’’ the NYU Furman Center recently wrote in a report. “While many agree that community reinvestment and revitalization may bring certain benefits—increased safety, greater access to high-quality schools and enhanced economic opportunity—critics fear that rapidly changing neighborhoods erode local cultures, raise rents and displace longtime residents.” Activists see an assault on minorities, especially from the New York attempt to spur housing through rezonings. “Racialized displacement has followed neighborhood rezonings in New York City,” said Alex Fennell of the Churches United for Fair Housing during a rally on the steps of City Hall. “Colorblind policies that pretend this is not a race issue have gotten us where we are today, and it’s well past time not just to stop this, but to reverse it.” Evan Mast, who has studied the impact of new construction on rents as part of his work on changing neighborhoods at the Kalamazoo, Mich.-based W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research suggests the political environment may have changed underlying assumptions. “In the older school of thought, what has happened in areas like Greenpoint and Williamsburg was seen as a success story,’’ Mast said. “That doesn’t seem to be the prevailing way of looking at it. Now there are a substantial number who say that it’s wrong that this used to be a low-income neighborhood and now —Greg David and Rachel Rippetoe it is for high-income people.”

und the

ew York hospitals have sued thousands of patients to collect on unpaid medical bills since 2015, calling into question why the nonprofits have received considerable tax benefits and state funding to treat the poor, according to a new report from the Community Service Society. The nonprofit found nearly 31,000 civil cases filed by 139 hospitals in 26 counties from 2015 to 2019, with a small group of health systems accounting for most of the lawsuits. Some of the most litigious were part of the area’s largest systems, including NYU Langone Health, Northwell Health and New York–Presbyterian. “Many of these charitable institutions are not behaving as altruistically as we would like to see,” said Elisabeth Benjamin, vice president of health initiatives at the society and a co-author of the report. Crouse Hospital in Syracuse, a clinical affiliate of Northwell Health, filed the largest number of lawsuits, 5,546, during the span, nearly double that of the second-most-litigious hospital. A spokesman for Northwell said the report misrepresented the facts by listing Crouse as part of its health system. Northwell doesn’t own Crouse or perform its patient billing or collection functions. “There was no attempt to present this information fairly or honestly,” he said. A spokeswoman for Crouse did not respond to a request for comment. Even when excluding Crouse, Northwell hospitals filed around 10,000 lawsuits against its patients, including 2,233 from North Shore University Hospital. One of the contributing factors to the trend has been the rise of high-deductible insurance plans, which require patients to pay a larger portion of their medical bills. The average deductible for a New York employee was nearly $2,500 in 2018, or almost double the average in 2008, according to the Commonwealth Fund. The Northwell spokesman said the health system takes legal action only when a patient has been unresponsive to multiple attempts to resolve the existing balance, including offers of financial assistance, and when the patient has “a strong ability to pay.” “Health care providers, under the current collection paradigm, are unfairly tasked with pursuing patient cost-sharing responsibilities that should more appropriately be the responsibility of the health insurers,” the spokesman said. The report found a few hospitals represented an outsize number of the lawsuits. Twenty-five facilities filed 93% of all legal actions. NYU Winthrop in Mineola, Long Island, filed 2,749 lawsuits from

2015 to 2019. The hospital officially joined NYU Langone in August, and a spokeswoman for the health system said it is now abiding by NYU Langone’s more generous financial-aid policy and practice of avoiding litigation against patients. A breakdown of the lawsuits shows Winthrop filed 815 in 2019, which was the most of any year in the five-year span. It adopted NYU Langone’s financial-assistance program when they merged, changing Winthrop’s recoupment practices, the spokeswoman said. The median amount for which hospitals sued was $1,900, and the median judgment against patients was $2,300, including interest and court fees. Hospitals have as long as six years after treatment to sue and are permitted to charge up to 9% interest on unpaid bills. Not all institutions opt to impose interest.

Egregious actions? The report’s authors characterize the hospitals’ debt-collection practices as particularly egregious given the government benefits they receive as nonprofits. Those include an estimated $2 billion in tax exemptions and $1.1 billion in money distributed through the indigent care pool, which reimburses hospitals for uncompensated care provided to the poor and uninsured. “These nonprofit charitable entities get billions in tax relief and capital funding and $1 billion to offset their uncompensated care costs,” Benjamin said. “It is really inconsistent with their nonprofit charitable status to be suing patients.” To highlight that disconnect, the report showed how many hospitals received more in indigent care pool funding than they provided in financial assistance. Crouse received $4.7 million more than it provided to patients in 2018. At New York– Presbyterian, which filed about 2,000 lawsuits against patients, the hospital group received $20.4 million more than it paid out. A New York–Presbyterian spokeswoman declined to comment. Of course, unpaid medical bills add up, and some of the state’s nonprofit hospitals lose money or barely generate revenue beyond their spending. Hospitals operate financialassistance programs to help patients. In Northwell’s case, the health system said patients earning up to 500% of the federal poverty level, or $131,000 for a family of four, are eligible to receive some aid. It provided $250 million in charity care, not including bad debt, in 2018. Benjamin said the amounts for which hospitals are suing are inconsequential and wouldn’t make or break a hospital. “You’re ruining people’s lives for $1,900,” Benjamin said. “That’s making someone not eat that month—or pay rent.” ■

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CORONAVIRUS ALERT

Tech companies ask for tax-break extension

he advocacy group for New York’s tech industry is part of a coalition of business organizations calling on the state to renew a tax credit for companies that locate jobs in the boroughs outside Manhattan. The somewhat standard lobbying push for Tech:NYC and others has taken on a different meaning, however, as the new coronavirus threatens more than a decade of economic growth in the city. Some advocates for the credit say its extension will become even more important as the city’s small businesses spend at least the next year recovering from the significant economic damage brought by Covid-19.

nology jobs, the letter from Tech:NYC said. The program, established in 1987, offers employers a $3,000 credit per job for 12 years in designated areas in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island and northern Manhattan. It costs about $33 million per year.

Paying off Tech:NYC called on Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins to pass an extension for the credit before it expires in June. “The city and state have spent decades investing outside of Manhattan to create jobs and opportunities throughout the five boroughs—everything from rezoning Downtown Brooklyn to expanding Metro-North in the Bronx to promoting vibrant mixed-use communities from Long Island City to Lower Manhattan,” Tech:NYC executive director Julie Samuels said. “These steps are beginning to pay off and produce tangible results.” A bill that would extend the REAP credit to 2025 is under review

“IT WOULD BE IRRESPONSIBLE TO JETTISON INCENTIVE PROGRAMS” The Relocation and Employment Assistance Program, known as REAP, has helped neighborhoods beyond Manhattan benefit from the city’s more than 330,000 tech-

PEERS

BUCK ENNIS

BY RYAN DEFFENBAUGH

in the Senate, sponsored by Queens Sen. Leroy Comrie. Brooklyn has outpaced Manhattan with its growth in technology and innovation jobs for the past decade, according to a report released in June by the Center for an Urban Future. Tech:NYC’s letter was sent March 9, before Covid-19 was declared a global pandemic and Gov. Andrew Cuomo called the financial impact of Covid-19 to be “incalculable.”

The state Legislature is negotiating a series of bills to blunt as much of that damage as possible, opening the question of whether lawmakers will have the bandwidth to weigh the tax-credit extension.

Major hurdle The credit was already facing a major hurdle following the collapsed Amazon deal in Long Island City last year. Progressive politicians have vowed to clamp down on much of

the nearly $3 billion in credits and incentives the e-commerce giant planned to cash in on for bringing 25,000 jobs to Queens. Zachary Hecht, policy director for Tech:NYC, said the organization believes lawmakers in Albany can balance the coronavirus response with a budget that advances the credit to help small businesses. “Small businesses are often the ones to benefit from these tax credits, so it is something important, whether in a recession or any other condition,” Hecht said. Randy Peers, president and CEO of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, said REAP, along with an energy-savings program also set to expire, could be a tool to help businesses recover from the economic damage. “We don’t know the long-term impact of this crisis, so I think it would be irresponsible to jettison incentive programs that encourage business relocations, particularly in the outer boroughs, which we know are going to be disproportionately hit,” said Peers, chairman of the Five Borough Jobs Campaign, a group advocating for the tax credit’s extension. ■

18 | CRAIN’S NEW YORK BUSINESS | MARCH 16, 2020

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CORONAVIRUS ALERT

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PEOPLE ON THE MOVE

BUCK ENNIS

To place your listing, visit crainsnewyork.com/people-on-the-move or for more information contact Debora Stein at dstein@crainsnewyork.com

NEWMARK HIRED a nurse to screen employees

Real estate starting to sweat BY DANIEL GEIGER

eal estate firms felt the impact of the coronavirus last week, with several major companies reporting infected employees. Newmark Knight Frank, Merdian Capital and Brookfield Asset Management each had a worker who tested positive for Covid-19, the companies said. Newmark, which reported the case last Tuesday, had taken steps to try to head off infections in its workplace by installing a nurse a day earlier in the reception area of its office at 125 Park Ave. to screen guests and take the temperatures of anyone exhibiting symptoms. The contagion prompted employees across the city to work from home. After a Meridian employee at the

tion deals in the city’s multi-billion dollar sales market for commercial property. Buyers, these observers feared, would shun deals over economic uncertainty created by the virus. “No one is going to be able to do anything with investment sales for at least 30 days,” said Martin Burger, the CEO of Silverstein Properties. “Everyone is going to have to wait for the dust to settle and reassess where everything is because there’s a bit of panic right now, which is never a good thing for markets.”

Fevered pitch The jump in coronavirus cases and the radical actions by government officials to contain it, including cutting off travel to Europe and closing Broadway theaters, roiled the stock market, sparking fears the situation could push the economy into a recession. The performance of the city’s commercial real estate market is closely tied to the greater health of the economy. Some real estate executives said that some major real estate transactions in the city continued to proceed, and there were hopes that the crisis would pass without dealing a long term blow to the economy. There was evidence for that. RFR Realty entered into a contract to acquire the roughly 600,000 square foot office building at 522 Fifth Ave. for around $350 million—a bet that the city’s office market will remain strong for years to come. “We’re still doing deals, we’re just avoiding unnecessary meetings and working remotely,” said Jon Mechanic, a partner at the law firm Fried Frank, and a top transactional attorney in the city who helps arrange major sales and leases. “People in the industry are doing what they need to do to accomplish what they need to accomplish. Everyone is hoping that this is something that’s a short term blip.” ■

“THERE’S A BIT OF A PANIC RIGHT NOW, WHICH IS NEVER A GOOD THING” company’s downtown office at One Battery Park Plaza came down with the virus, the company opted to temporarily close that location, a source familiar with the firm said. Another office it has in Midtown was not closed but was virtually empty, the source said. An employee at Brookfield Asset Management Inc.’s U.S. headquarters tested positive for the virus, prompting the company to ask anyone who sat on the same side of the floor where the employee’s desk was and those with compromised immune systems to work from home for the time being. It is also sanitizing common areas every two hours and doing a deep clean of the floor where the employee sits, according to a company memo. Some real estate executives worried that real estate transactions would grind to a halt or be substantially curtailed, especially acquisi-

ACCOUNTING

CONSTRUCTION

REAL ESTATE

Bookkeeper360

Structure Tone

Industry City

Canine Companions for Independence is pleased to announce Bookkeeper360 founder and CEO Nick Pasquarosa has been elected as the nonprofit’s Northeast Region advisory board president. Pasquarosa says his love for animals, paired with his compassion for people with disabilities, has driven his dedication to the organization. “I am honored to be a part of such a meaningful organization dedicated to improving the lives of children, adults and veterans with disabilities. By taking on the role of Board President of the Northeast Region, I’m excited to continue my support for Canine Companions Mission.” Established in 2013 in Woodbury, New York, Bookkeeper360 is an accounting platform for startups and growth-stage businesses.

Michael Neary has spent his entire 36-year construction career with Structure Tone. Most recently he served as COO of Structure Tone’s New York operations. In his new role, Neary oversees Structure Tone New York, London, and Dublin, as well as Toronto-based Govan Brown, to more closely align business in those important international cities. Neary is active with many charitable organizations, including serving as a board member of the Muscular Dystrophy Association and the ACE Mentor Program.

Industry City, the six million-square-foot creative campus in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, announced the appointment of Mark Jackson as Vice President & General Counsel. Jackson brings more than two decades of real estate leasing & legal experience to Industry City, home to companies across the media, production, food & beverage, manufacturing, retail, and design industries. Jackson joins Industry City from Two Trees Management, where he served as Commercial Leasing Director & In-House Counsel.

BUSINESS / TECHNOLOGY

CONSTRUCTION

TRANSPORTATION

West Monroe Partners

Turtle & Hughes

Vantage Airport Group

West Monroe Partners announces the appointment of John Vance to Director in the Operations Excellence practice. He has more than 35 years of experience applying information systems implementation expertise to address business needs, including implementing business and customer transformation initiatives across multiple industries and involving multiple enabling technologies.

Visionary, strategist and retired senior Johnson & Johnson supplier diversity/ inclusion executive Beverly (Bev) Jennings has joined Turtle & Hughes’ Board of Directors. Over a 30-year career, she focused on supply chain endto-end, process excellence and driving growth. She also serves on the Billion Dollar Roundtable board as Vice Chair. Turtle & Hughes, one of the country’s largest independent electrical/industrial distributors, is a diversity business. Jennings brings parity to its Board.

Matthew Handford, Vantage Airport Group Chief People Officer Matthew Handford, an experienced leader with a background in aviation and both private and public organizations, comes to Vantage from Hootsuite, where he was responsible for all aspects of HR and talent management at the high growth technology company. Mr. Handford has 20 years of experience pioneering people strategies at companies recognized for their cultures, including WestJet and the Forzani Group.

NEW HIRE? PROMOTION? BOARD APPOINTMENT?

Showcase industry achievers and their companies to the New York business community. For information: Debora Stein at dstein@crain.com or submit directly to CrainsNewYork.com/people-on-the-move

ANNOUNCE YOUR

BIG NEWS IN CRAIN’S!

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PUBLIC & LEGAL NOTICES Notice of Formation of DONATELLO NA LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 02/28/20. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Tarter Krinsky & Drogin LLP, Attn: Gina Piazza, Esq., 1350 Broadway, 11th Fl., NY, NY 10018. Purpose: Any lawful activity. Transcendent Solutions LLC. Art. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 1/ 21/2020. Office: New York County. SSNY designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to the LLC, 280 Riverside Dr. Apt 5F, New York, NY 10025. Purpose: Any lawful purpose.

Notice of Qualification of MSGS PUBLISHING, LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 02/10/20. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 02/05/20. Princ. office of LLC: Two Pennsylvania Plaza, 19th Fl., NY, NY 10121. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 122072543. DE addr. of LLC: 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with DE Secy. of State, John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity. Notice of Qualification of &VEST FUND GP LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 01/28/20. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 01/09/20. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC, 3 Minetta St., NY, NY 10012. DE addr. of LLC: c/o Corporation Service Co., 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State of the State of DE, John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Ste. 3, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of ROSEMARY HALLGARTEN NEW YORK, LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 01/29/20. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC, 116 Sherman St., Fairfield, CT 06824. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of MJU HUNTSVILLE MANAGER LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 02/12/20. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Boro Real Estate Partners, 1 Rockefeller Plaza, Ste. 1006, NY, NY 10020. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Qualification of SOLOW BUILDING COMPANY III, L.L.C. Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 01/29/20. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 01/22/20. Princ. office of LLC: 9 W. 57th St., NY, NY 10019. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC at the princ. office of the LLC. DE addr. of LLC: Corporation Service Co., 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with DE Secy. of State, Div. of Corps., John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Qualification of MSG SPHERE STUDIOS, LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 11/07/19. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 10/30/19. Princ. office of LLC: Two Pennsylvania Plaza, NY, NY 10121. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Corporation Service Co. (CSC), 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. DE addr. of LLC: c/ o CSC, 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with DE Secy. of State, Div. of Corps., John D. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Entertainment.

Notice of Formation of HANDSTANDS, LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 01/30/20. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 160 W 66th St., Apt. 22D, NY, NY 10036. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 122072543. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

19 ROBERTSON DRIVE LLC, Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 01/ 28/2020. Office loc: NY County. SSNY has been designated as agent upon whom process against the LLC may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: The LLC, 1185 Park Avenue, Apt. 16F, NY, NY 10128. Purpose: Any Lawful Purpose.

NOTICE OF FORMATION of Logic Pallet, LLC. Arts of Org filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 2/13/2020. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent upon whom process may be served and shall mail copy of process against LLC to 80 Maiden Ln, Ste 1004, New York, NY 10038.

Notice of Formation of General Delivery Consulting LLC. Arts or Org filed with Secy. of State (SSNY) ON 12/ 16/19. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated agent upon whom process may be served and shall mail copy of process against LLC to 2082 8th Ave, #4C, New York, NY 10026. Purpose: any lawful act.

ELIZABETH ADLER TRTO NUTRITION, LLC, Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 02/20/2020. Office loc: NY County. SSNY has been designated as agent upon whom process against the LLC may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: Elizabeth Adler, 325 North End Avenue, Apt. 16C, NY, NY 10282. Purpose: Any Lawful Purpose.

NOTICE OF FORMATION OF 62 Lawlor Street LLC. Articles of Organization filed with the Secretary of State of NY (SSNY) on 02/11/2020. Office location: NEW YORK County. SSNY has been designated as agent upon whom process against it may be served. The Post Office address to which the SSNY shall mail a copy of any process against the LLC served upon him/her is: 46 North Clover Drive, Great Neck, NY 11021. R/A: Zachary Goldman, 46 North Clover Drive, Great Neck, NY 11021. The principal business address of the LLC is: 46 North Clover Drive, Great Neck, NY 11021. Purpose: any lawful act or activity.

Notice of Qualification of MATERIAL LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 02/28/20. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 12/18/18. Princ. office of LLC: 54 W. 21st St., #607, NY, NY 10010. NYS fictitious name: MATERIAL VENTURES LLC. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC at the princ. office of the LLC. DE addr. of LLC: Corporation Service Co., 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808-1674. Cert. of Form. filed with DE Secy. of State, Div. of Corps., 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Qualification of Caithness LI Energy Storage LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 01/27/20. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 01/16/20. Princ. office of LLC: c/o Caithness Services LLC, 565 Fifth Ave., 29th Fl., NY, NY 10017. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Corporation Service Co. (CSC), 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. DE addr. of LLC: c/o CSC, 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with DE Secy. of State, Attn: Authorized Officer, 401 Federal St., Ste. 2, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Investments in energy projects. Notice of Qualification of VESTA ASSET MANAGEMENT LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 03/02/20. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 10/16/19. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c /o Corporation Service Co. (CSC), 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. DE addr. of LLC: c/o CSC, 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State, Div. of Corps., 401 Federal St., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of formation of Data Veritas LLC: Art. of Org. filled 11/18/2019 with SSNY. Office: New York County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: Data Veritas, 133 2nd ave. #4, New York, NY, 10003. Purpose: any lawful activity. Notice of Qualification of STREET SPOT ME, LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 0 3/02/20. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 02/12/20. Princ. office of LLC: 333 Seventh Ave., NY, NY 10001. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Corporation Service Co. (CSC), 80 State St., Albany, NY 122072543. DE addr. of LLC: CSC, 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Jeffrey W. Bullock, Secy. of State, 401 Federal St., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Software application development. Notice of formation of RENHUB GROUP, LLC. Arts of Org filed with Secy of State of NY (SSNY) on 2/ 26/20. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent upon whom process may be served and shall mail copy of process against LLC to: 260 W. 54th St., NY, NY 10019 Purpose: any lawful act.

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Advertising Section

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NOTICE OF FORMATION OF D.D. Encore Laundromat LLC. Articles of Org. filed with Sec. of State of N.Y. on 2/ 12/2020. Office location: New York County. SSNY desig. as agent for service of process. SSNY shall mail process to: 324 East 73rd Street New York, NY 10021. Purpose: any lawful act or activity. NOTICE OF FORMATION of limited liability company (LLC). Name: BOOKED BY EJ, LLC. Articles of Organization filed with Secretary of State of New York (SSNY) on 01/10/2020. Office location: New York County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to: ERIC DE’MON JONES 115 W. 128th ST., APT. 4A, NEW YORK, NY 10027. Purpose: consulting services.

360 BRANCH RESTORATION SERVICES LLC, Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 02/05/2020. Office loc: NY County. SSNY has been designated as agent upon whom process against the LLC may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: The LLC, 299 Hackensack Street, East Rutherford, NJ 07073. Purpose: Any Lawful Purpose.

STANDARD OIL CAPITAL GROUP LLC, Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 01/29/2020. Office loc: NY County. SSNY has been designated as agent upon whom process against the LLC may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: The LLC, 352 Seventh Ave., Ste 303, NY, NY 10001. Purpose: Any Lawful Purpose.

Notice of Formation of Wrublin Holdings LLC. Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 02/12/20. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: the Company, 134 West 25th St., 5th Fl., NY, NY 10001. Purpose: any lawful activities.

NOTICE OF FORMATION Hometown Equity Mortgage, LLC. Application for Authority filed with the Secretary of State of New York (SSNY) on January 28, 2020. Office location: NEW YORK County. LLC formed in Missouri on September 4, 2001. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against it may be served. The Post Office address to which the SSNY shall mail a copy of any process against the LLC served upon him/her is: 28 Liberty Street, New York, NY 10005. The principal business address of the LLC is: 1 Mid Rivers Mall Drive, Suite 130, St. Peters, MO 63376. Missouri address of LLC is: 1 Mid Rivers Mall Drive, Suite 130, St. Peters, MO 63376. Certificate of LLC filed with Secretary of State of Missouri located at: 600 W. Main Street, Room 322, Jefferson City, MO 65102. Purpose: any lawful act or activity

E Notice of Formation of Limited Liability Company (LLC). NAME: WLC TOP LLC - Articles of Organization filed with the Secretary of State of New York (SSNY) on 10/03/2018. Office location: New York County. SSNY shall mail a copy of process to: The LLC, 98 E BROADWAY STE 309, NEW YORK, NY 10002. Purpose: Any lawful purpose.

SCHACHTER SALES LLC. Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 01/10/20. Latest date to dissolve: 12/ 31/2119. Office: New York County. SSNY designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to the LLC, c/o Russell Schachter, 200 West 54th Street, #6GH, New York, NY 10019. Purpose: Any lawful purpose.

Notice of Qualification of SUPERMASSIVE BEVERAGE COMPANY, LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 02/ 20/20. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 02/ 19/20. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 122072543. DE addr. of LLC: 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State, Div. of Corps., John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal - Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity. NOTICE OF QUALIFICATION of STOCHASTICO LLC. Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 12/9/19. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 1 1/12/19. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o LEGALINC CORPORATE SERVICES INC, 1967 WEHRLE DRIVE SUITE 1-086, BUFFALO, NY 14221. DE addr. of LLC: 651 N BROAD ST SUITE 206, MIDDLETOWN, DE 19709. Cert. of Form. filed with DE Secy. of State, 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Qualification of IEX CLOUD SERVICES LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 0 2/20/20. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 08/ 15/18. Princ. office of LLC: 3 World Trade Center, 58th Fl., NY, NY 10007. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Corporation Service Co. (CSC), 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. DE addr. of LLC: c/o CSC, 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808-1674. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State of the State of DE, John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Operation of a business which provides data products and services, including an API.

Notice of Formation of BALTHAZAR REAL ESTATE, LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 01/13/20. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 366 Madison Ave., 3rd Fl., NY, NY 10017. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Ortoli, Rosenstadt LLP at the princ. office of the LLC. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

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SNAPS Photos from the city’s biggest galas, fundraisers and special events

BY CHERYL S. GRANT

Supporting Lyme awareness Project Lyme held its annual gala Feb. 27. The party raised $1.8 million to help stop the spread of tick-borne diseases through awareness and education as well as to support research. The event, held at the Ziegfeld Ballroom, was attended by 475 guests.

TRAVIS W. KEYES

David A. Roth, partner and head of U.S. real estate equity at Ares Management and president of Ares Commercial Real Estate, with Mitchell Kaneff, chairman and CEO of Arkay Packaging Co-chairs of Project Lyme’s board of directors Jennifer Weis Monsky, senior literary agent with Ross Yoon Agency, and Nan Kurzman

Creating communities

Gliding with the greats Ronald McDonald House New York held its 26th annual Skate With the Greats event Feb. 21, raising more than $800,000. The proceeds will be used to support the organization’s mission to provide temporary housing for pediatric cancer patients and their families. Among the 750 guests were New York Rangers alumnus Stephane Matteau and Bobby Grubert, co-head of Global Equities at RBC Capital Markets.

ROB RICH

Event honorees Hartley Rogers, chairman of the Investment Committee North America at Hamilton Lane, and Amy Falls, chief investment officer at the Rockefeller University, with award presenters Terry Lindsay and her husband, Bob Lindsay, chairman and co-founder of Lindsay Goldberg, during the event at Gotham Hall

GETTY IMAGES

The Citizens Committee for New York City held its 45th annual New Yorker for New York gala on Feb. 24. It raised $1.5 million to help improve the quality of life in low-income neighborhoods through grassroots projects. Among the 400 attendees were Discovery Community Garden 2’s Arvind Sowkey, event honoree Kumare Vulcain-Sowkey and Marie Vulcain.

Jerome Kelton, assistant director of special events and foundation relations at Ronald McDonald House New York, with former Rangers Tom Laidlaw and Colton Orr during the event at the Lighthouse & Sky Rink at Chelsea Piers.

SEE MORE OF THIS WEEK’S SNAPS AT CRAINSNEWYORK.COM/SNAPS. GET YOUR GALA IN SNAPS. EMAIL SNAPS@CRAINSNEWYORK.COM. 22 | CRAIN’S NEW YORK BUSINESS | MARCH 16, 2020

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GOTHAM GIGS

BUCK ENNIS

SMALDONE once hosted the nation’s top-rated music program.

VALERIE SMALDONE GREW UP The Bronx RESIDES Midtown East EDUCATION Bachelor’s in English and Communications, Fordham University ONE-WOMAN SHOW Smaldone edits, produces and mixes all of Bagels and Broadway on a weekly basis. “I do everything because I want to control everything,” she said. “I’d love to have a staff, but they’d have to do it my way.” DAD’S INFLUENCE Smaldone credits her father, who was a photographer, for her career in radio. “He took me to a place in Queens called the Broadcaster’s Inn, and it was a restaurant with a radio station in the middle of it. There was a guy in the middle spinning discs, and my dad said, ‘See, you can do that.’ And I did.”

Finding her voice

A veteran radio personality branches into podcasting BY LIZETH BELTRAN

hen Valerie Smaldone first walked into Fordham University’s radio station at age 17, with little knowledge of how broadcasting worked, she had no idea an audition for a workshop would become the springboard for a lifelong career. “I walked into the radio station, which is a 50-watt station, and I said ‘How does this work?’ ” Smaldone recalled. Acceptance into the university’s broadcaster’s workshop eventually led Smaldone to a job at a Westchester County station and years later to Clear Channel’s 106.7 Lite-FM. “When I was at Lite-FM, we had very short segments where we could speak,” she said. “They didn’t want us to talk very much. They wanted us to get back to the music. I was trained to be brief, piffy, rele-

vant and out.” That job at Lite-FM made Smaldone a well-recognized name in homes and cars across the state. For more than 24 years, she hosted the top-rated music program in the country. But Smaldone wanted to see what else she could offer in her industry. So she decided to train as a talk radio host at 710 WOR. “Talk radio fascinated me because if you hear a talk radio host, that person has to be able to talk for a long period of time, oftentimes without an interaction,” Smaldone said. “Every day it was my boot camp. You have to be opinionated. You have to be willing to [take risks]. Otherwise, why do people care?” Smaldone hosted a show on WOR five days a week for almost two years. Her work at the station prepared her to branch out into voiceover work. On average, Smaldone does be-

tween 10 to 15 voiceover and liveevent hosting gigs per year. She can rake in up to $2,500, per job. In 2018 Smaldone, who has done some acting off-Broadway as well, launched a podcast that marries two of her passions: theater and food. Bagels and Broadway airs on AM 970. The podcast receives 250,000 unique visitors per month on the station’s website. It also gets about 3,000 clicks per month on average on the Omny website, which also hosts the podcast. By launching Bagels and Broadway, Smaldone feels she has found a way to incorporate all the aspects of audio that she loves. “There’s an intimacy in radio that I think is difficult to find in any other medium,” she said. “You’re concentrating on one aspect, which is the voice, and it doesn’t matter what you look like. You just have to sound like you’re talking to someone in their living room.” ■

“YOU HAVE TO BE OPINIONATED AND TAKE RISKS. OTHERWISE, WHY DO PEOPLE CARE?”

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An Open Letter to Our Residents Dear Resident, In crises, New Yorkers pull together. Now is a time for everyone to do their share. No one knows how bad the impact of the COVID-19 virus will be. That’s why New Yorkers are taking extraordinary steps to slow the spread of the virus and protect our most vulnerable people. We want to do our share too. As owners and managers of more than 150,000 rental apartments in the City, we will help our residents weather this crisis safely in their homes. Starting immediately, we are voluntarily pledging that we will not execute any warrant of eviction for the next 90 days unless it is for criminal or negligent behavior that jeopardizes the life, health or safety of other residents. With all the stress, health risk and economic suffering going on now, no one should have to worry about losing their place to live during this crisis. With New York at risk, we must come together and protect our residents. We can’t shake hands or hug each other right now. But we must all turn toward each other and help each other. Together, we will survive this crisis — and so will this wonderful City we all love.

Sincerely, A&E Real Estate, Douglas F. Eisenberg Blackstone, Ken Caplan and Kathleen McCarthy

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