Crain's New York Business

WAITING FOR THE SMOKE TO CLEAR

Smoke shops pop up like weeds in the city as some owners anticipate licenses to legally sell cannabis

BY NATALIE SACHMECHI

Running a local smoke shop is a good business, said Adeeb AlSaeidi, a partner at a family-run chain of about 25 in the city.

“If we buy a bong for $10, we sell it for $60 or $70. Some bongs can sell for as much as $200,” said Al-Saeidi, whose stores sell e-cigarettes, smoking accessories and convenience items. “We started seeing money in it. It’s really good.”

All around the city, smoke shops have been popping up like weeds, but not always

just to sell tobacco, bongs and other paraphernalia. Some retailers, unlike Al-Saeidi, hope to procure a coveted retail license to sell cannabis legally once they become widely available. For now, the rst round of licenses will be awarded only to those who were previously convicted of marijuana-related crimes. e application window for those licenses closed last month, but the broader applicant pool hasn’t opened yet.

Hochul has signed just 57% of bills passed this year

BY BRIAN PASCUS

With three months remaining until the end-of-theyear deadline, just under 440 bills are awaiting the governor’s signature.

is year the state Senate and Assembly passed 1,007 bills, and the 2022 legislative session was among the most productive in recent memory. Both chambers set a modern-day record that exceeded the 984 they passed last year.

Gov. Kathy Hochul has signed 569 bills this year. But still awaiting her signature as of press time was legislation touching on child care bene ts, general contractor subsidies, pet-store sales and a temporary ban on cryptomining.

“I don’t jump to conclusions. I do it based on data,” Hochul said when asked about unsigned bills during a July 12 news conference. “We are focused on the ones that had to be dealt with immediately, and we’ve segregated out the ones that we have conversations about to get to the right decision that everybody’s going to be satis ed with.”

Hochul notably signed legislation that creates the New York City Housing Authority Public Housing Preservation Trust and a bill to ease the conversion of city hotels into affordable housing units.

From a percentage standpoint of bills signed, the governor is

BILLS SIGNED by Hochul so far this year in one of the most

City sells $400M in debt to finance construction of 3,000 affordable apartments in four boroughs

BY BRIAN PASCUS

New York City sold $400 million worth of bonds at a rate of 5.26% last Tues day with the express pur pose of financing the construction of 3,000 affordable housing units across four boroughs.

The strong demand for the city’s debt, at a time when the housing market is broadly weakening, is a sign that investors have more confi dence in public housing than they do in the private market.

The office of city Comptroller Brad Lander said Tuesday’s event was the city’s first-ever sale of social bonds, a group of taxable fixed-in come securities used to support projects with positive environmen tal or social goals. Social bonds are part of an emerging class of munici pal environmental, social and gov ernance, or ESG, bonds, which have been issued to the tune of $36 bil lion nationwide since 2018.

Marjorie Henning, deputy comp troller for public finance, told Crain’s Tuesday, prior to the sale, that the city had a wide range of in terested buyers. A Kuwait sovereign wealth fund and Nuveen had ex pressed a desire to purchase, ac cording to Lander’s office.

“ESG investors are our first target.

We’ve received indications of interest from over $300 mil lion in bonds from ESG inves tors, but we had over $1.8 bil lion in indications of interest from taxable buyers,” Hen ning said. “It’s a really broad range, including overseas.”

She noted that the city was looking at a spread of 155 to 165 basis points (1.65%) over 30-year treasuries. The city said it expected a yield of about 5% over 30 years. She conceded that interest rates are higher than they were a year ago, and the city likely will be paying more for its debt this month than last October.

“The city has a large capital pro gram. All of the payments are paid from the general fund,” Henning said. “We don’t have the luxury of timing the market. We have to get into the market on a periodic basis to reimburse general fund spend ing.”

Municipal bond experts includ ing Matt Fabian, a partner at Munic ipal Market Analytics, said the city is likely to generate continued interest in the coming weeks due to market conditions.

Fabian said state and local gov ernments typically prompt more re sponses in municipal bond pur

CHANGE

chases for affordable housing when interest rates are high, or rising, be cause they are more competitive compared to debt issued by private lenders.

“New York state has a huge pro gram that provides affordable hous ing loans; these compete with pri vate-sector loans,” he said. “When interest rates are higher, credit con ditions are higher on the private side, and the private side becomes less competitive and has less inter est in financing affordable loans.”

Housing has been weakening across the board in recent months. The demand for mortgages has fall en 29% in the past year. New-hous ing sales are at their lowest level since 1952.

“The public option becomes

more competitive,” Fabian said.

Affordable focus

All told, the city sold $1.35 billion in general-obligation bonds on the open market Tuesday: $950 million worth of tax-exempt, fixed-rate bonds and $400 million in taxable fixed-rate social bonds, which the city plans to use to finance the construc tion of 16 affordable housing projects, in every borough ex cept Staten Island, according to Lander’s office.

The $400 million social bond sale will largely go toward financing the city Department of Housing Preser vation and Development’s extreme ly low- and low-income affordabili ty program, as well as the agency’s supportive housing loan program for those who need in-house men tal health and counseling, and se nior affordable rental apartments program, officials said.

“Our loans are subordinate to the other loans that are made through NYCHPD loan programs,” Henning said. “Loans have been made from the general fund, and now we’re is suing bonds to reimburse the gen eral-fund spending.”

She said the idea to issue social

bonds to pay for affordable housing came out of former Comptroller Scott Stringer’s push to use ESG bonds to fund green energy invest ments.

The Mayor’s Office of Manage ment didn’t support Stringer’s push, but the office was more receptive to Lander’s arguments because the capital projects the social bonds will finance have already been identi fied, observers said, and the pro ceeds are to be used strictly for re imbursement.

“We kind of proposed this to our partners in OMB, in the mayor’s of fice, because we saw that we have accumulated spending on afford able housing in the general fund that hadn’t been financed,” Hen ning explained. “We said, ‘This is the perfect opportunity to finance affordable housing projects.’ ”

The taxable fixed-rate social bonds were underwritten by Citi group, Morgan Stanley and others.

Henning said the city plans to make its issuance of social bonds an annual program.

“We hope to broaden our investor base, because we do issue a lot of debt,” she said. “This isn’t just a oneoff.”

Aaron Elstein contributed reporting to this article.

Hurricanes threaten hospital access, study finds

BY MAYA KAUFMAN

Hurricane-related flooding poses a greater threat to hospital capacity in the New York metropolitan region than in any other metro area along the At lantic and Gulf coasts, except for Miami, according to a new study.

than just looking at the number or percentage of hospitals that would be affected.

POWER BREAKFAST

Mark your calendar to hear Andrew Kimball, president and CEO of the New York City Economic Development Corp., interviewed live onstage by Crain’s New York Business Editor-in-Chief Cory Schouten. Find out how the agency plans to drive the next round of corporate investment in New York, which industries it is prioritizing, where the economy is heading and how the EDC envisions the future of public-private partnerships.

DETAILS

A relatively weak hurricane could inundate roughly 20% of hospitals and 19% of hospital beds if it makes landfall in the New York metropoli tan area, the study found. The re sulting flooding could cut off pa tients’ access to about 25 hospitals and 9,300 beds.

The findings were published last week in a peer-reviewed journal by researchers with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the Boston University School of Medi cine Department of Family Medi cine and nonprofit research insti tute PSE Healthy Energy.

Senior author Dr. Aaron Bern stein, the interim director of Har vard Chan’s Center for Climate, Health and the Global Environ ment, said modeling the effects of a Category 2 hurricane on the avail ability of hospital beds for the num ber of people in a given region showed a more complete picture

Bernstein said the findings un derscore the value of southern states’ hurricane-preparedness learnings for New York and other at-risk metro areas that ranked high in the study but have less experi ence with tropical storms.

Local hospitals that have the money have invested in capital projects to protect themselves, but Bernstein said the city needs to fo cus on equitable resiliency initia tives at hospitals in its poorest com munities to properly prepare.

“In Manhattan, the big, rich hos pitals build immensely expensive, protective buildings,” Bernstein said, “but what’s going on in the Bronx or Queens, and how resilient are those systems?”

Limited funds

Susan Waltman, executive vice president of legal, regulatory and professional affairs for the Greater New York Hospital Association, a trade group that represents hospi tals, acknowledged that some facil ities have greater means than oth ers to undertake resiliency efforts.

NYU Langone Health imple

mented a robust system of flood barriers at its 11-acre Manhattan campus, a system to provide heat and power simultaneously, and standby emergency generators.

“The multilayered approach en compasses resilience in the design of all new construction and retrofit ting of existing structures, to ensure continuity of essential operations,” said Paul Schwabacher, senior vice president of facilities management.

In contrast, safety-net hospitals are relying on substantial state funding to perform renovations that account for the effects of cli mate change, Waltman said.

The city is tackling that disparity with the rebuilding of its Coney Is land hospital campus, thanks to money that NYC Health + Hospitals received from the Federal Emer gency Management Agency to de molish, replace and repair build ings damaged during Superstorm Sandy.

The $922.7 million project, which is slated to open this fall, includes a 4-foot concrete flood wall sur rounding the perimeter and flood-resilient infrastructure for power, heating, cooling and water systems. Critical services will be lo cated above the 500-year flood

plain.

The reliance on government funding shows the importance of the city and the state devoting even more capital funding to safety-net hospitals for projects that boost re siliency, Waltman said.

She also suggested that a city law to cap greenhouse gas emissions from large buildings—Local Law 97—be accompanied by funding for less-resourced hospitals that will be privy to it. She said the law could cause hospitals to be penal ized for co-generation systems, which simultaneously produce electricity and heat; co-generation is a standard resiliency effort but can rely on fossil fuels.

Andrew Dahl, the Greater New York Hospital Association’s vice president of emergency prepared ness and response, said financial support should encompass capital and operating costs to make sure hospitals’ resiliency infrastructure remains up to the challenge.

“It’s not a one and done,” he said. “You need to test these things year in, year out.”

However, Dahl and Waltman said, the association does not have any estimates for how much gov ernment funding that would take. ■

ENNIS

Talent marketplace SellX touts a growth hack for startups

The platform offers on-demand sales reps to save companies time and money

The upstart: SellX

Agreat sales team is the lifeblood of many companies—and assembling one is ridiculously hard. At least that’s what Dean Glas heard from his friends who were managing sales teams for Uber and Yelp along with smaller startups. It takes months to build a good team, they told him, and your hires seldom stick around. e average entry-level sales hire, who can cost $20,000 to recruit, stays less than a year.

at was back in 2019. Glas had just sold his startup GeoGif—a video personalization service—to TikTok, and was considering his next move. He wanted to start a business that solved a problem and made money from the start. Addressing the sales-team situation for his friends sounded like a great challenge.

His idea, freelance talent markeplace SellX, launched in April after a yearlong beta test. SellX is similar to Fiverr and Upwork but is focused exclusively on sales reps. It o ers cloud-based customer relationship management software similar to what you’d nd on Salesforce, according to Glas.

security contract could cost more than $1,000. SellX takes a 20% to 30% cut of the performance fees.

SellX, which operates with a fully remote team lead by its three co-founders in New York City, is backed by $4 million in seed funding. e company says it has about 300 salespeople on the platform serving more than 100 clients.

The reigning Goliath: Salesforce

San Francisco–based Salesforce, which o ers cloud-based software to help businesses nd prospects, close deals and service accounts, is the largest platform of its kind, serving more than 150,000 companies. As of January, it employed more than 73,500 people and reported $26.5 billion in annual revenue.

How to slay the giant

ANNE KADET

Unlike all-purpose talent platforms that let anyone join, SellX puts sales reps through a weeklong screening process and accepts fewer than 10% of applicants.

Clients pay a monthly subscription fee starting at $3,360 to access the platform’s talent pool and software, plus performance fees. Sales reps are paid on performance—they earn based on the number of leads and meetings they generate. e fees vary widely, depending on how hard it is generate a lead and how much revenue a sale could generate.

A meeting booked with a bar owner to pitch a cable TV subscription might cost a company a few hundred dollars, for example. A meeting with a bank vice president to pitch a cyber-

With his last two startups, Glas paired with a co-founder who shared his sales prowess. is time around, he recruited two partners with skills he lacks. Matthew Angelini, who has developed software for both startups and companies such as Bank of America, is the chief technology o cer. Matt Lippl, a veteran user-experience and product designer, serves as the chief experience o cer.

SellX stayed tiny through its rst year. While other tech companies hired fast and spent heavily on marketing through the early years of the Covid-19 pandemic in pursuit of quick growth, the three co-founders kept things lean by hiring just a couple of engineers—both senior folks with the chops to develop a complicated platform.

“ ey did it with a very small team, and super fast,” says Yuval Baharav, founder and general partner at State of Mind Ventures, which invested in the company’s seed round.

“ at’s a very hard thing to do. But they said, ‘We’re going for

a small team of very good people that will be able to comprehend everything.’”

Launching a marketplace without spending much on marketing was another big challenge. Freelancers won’t join a platform if no one’s there to hire them, and companies won’t join if there’s no talent to hire. Glas says he recruited salespeople one by one by messaging them on LinkedIn to arrange meetings.

“I was, like, ‘OK, what if I build a platform like this? Would this be something you’re interested in?’” he recalled. “Everyone just lit up when I explained it to them.”

He had a similar experience cold-messaging sales VPs at companies. Some wanted to join even before the platform was built.

“Once you solve a really big pain point,” he says, “they naturally are going to jump on board.”

SellX is starting by addressing the sales needs of tech companies, which are typically more open to adopting new strategies. e company plans to serve every industry that needs sales teams, including real estate companies and pharmaceutical rms, Glas says.

The next challenge

SellX says it will continue its strategy of steady growth rather than move quickly for the sake of speed. e approach is more vital today, as many tech startups that grew quickly during the pandemic are now turning to layo s as funding dries up.

“We’ve worked for startups way too long to see the pitfalls of just moving fast,” Angelini says. ■

Anne Kadet is the creator of Café Anne, a weekly newsletter with a New York City focus. She was previously a city business and trends columnist for e Wall Street Journal

SELLX’s Glas, Lippl and Angelini at the Williamsburg Hotel

A reclusive Lower Manhattan landlord emerges to dust the cobwebs off long-vacant buildings

BY C. J. HUGHES

As the lights come back on in a Greenwich Village building, a reclusive owner may be step ping out of the shadows. A bit.

On Sept. 29 God’s Love We Deliver, a charity that provides meals for the bed-ridden, opened a new office at 165 Waverly Place, a triangular building called the Northern Dispensary Insti tute. Like many buildings owned by William Gottlieb Real Estate, No. 165 had been vacant for decades. But that era may be ending, as the landlord makes moves across its 100-building portfolio after re solving a turf war in the family.

Maintaining his low-profile, Neil Bender, the company’s presi dent and the nephew of its late founder, did not respond to an interview request. But Bender did make some remarks at the God’s Love ribbon-cutting event.

“For those who don’t realize it, ‘Gottlieb,’ from the German lan guage, translates as ‘God’s love,’ ” Bender said. “Heal the sick.”

Built in 1831 as a health clinic and functioning as one through the 1980s, No. 165 has a restric tion on its deed stipulating that it must serve the poor, which likely made it hard to lease in recent years. Doing nothing with high-pro file buildings is in the DNA of Wil liam Gottlieb Real Estate, which bought the 4-story, 4,800-squarefoot building for $760,000 in 1998, according to a deed, and then let it sit. Similarly, residential and com mercial buildings on West, Bank and Gansevoort streets owned by the firm seem to have had minimal habitation over the decades, if they were occupied at all.

But a decade ago, things began to change, though controversially. In 2007 Mollie Bender, the sister of firm founder William Gottlieb and then the head of the firm, died. Af terward a fight broke out between her kids over who should inherit the estate. On one side was Mollie’s son Neil, and on the other, her daughter Cheryl Dier, who accused her brother of being unfit to run the com pany because there were so many tax liens against him. Yet after years of ugly court battles, Neil Bender won out.

It may be notable that Bender paid for the renovations of 165 Waverly by way of “city lien generosity,” according to a press release, which suggests offi cials forgave some of his firm’s debts.

Elsewhere in the area, Bender has teamed up with developer Aurora Cap ital Partners to renovate other desolate properties. One effort is focused on 150 Barrow St., at West Street, the former Keller Hotel. In 2019 he sold a minority position in the property to Aurora for an undisclosed amount, records show. A 24-unit condo is planned there, accord ing to paperwork filed in July, and Bank OZK has chipped in $37 million for the project. But 150 Barrow’s offering plan has not yet been approved.

45 CHRISTOPHER ST.

In the 1930s Bing and Bing, an early luxury develop er, put up this 17-story tower as a rental. In the mid1980s investors including Francis Greenburger, chief executive of the firm Time Equities, turned it into a condo, a process through which tenants could pur chase their flat at a discounted rate, or $59,000 per room. Around the same time, Bing and Bing heirs sold off their more than two dozen city hotels and apart ment towers for $250 million, or about $700 million today. Bing and Bing buildings have become a coveted Village brand because they usually have elevators and doormen in a neighborhood where full-service build ings are rare. (Another is at 302 W. 12th St.) In late September a one-bedroom at 45 Christopher with a sunken living room and a working fireplace was for sale for $2.3 million.

27 CHRISTOPHER ST.

Combining side-by-side townhouses into pala tial single-family spreads is a trend that’s swept across Greenwich Village in the past decade. The zeal for huge homes also claimed this 4-story, 19,000-square-foot structure, which was built in 1911 as a school. Later it became a training center for nurses at the defunct St. Vincent’s and then home base for the children-focused New York Foundling Hospital. In 2014 the brick-andlimestone building was bought for $45 million by VillageFH, a shell company. A residential conver sion followed; the Buildings Department certified it as a home in 2019, records show. The Foundling Hospital, which began in 1869 to serve orphans, is now in a new headquarters at 590 Sixth Ave.

30 CHRISTOPHER ST.

Though perhaps at odds with its current genteel ness, this corner of the Village was actually once industrial, including the 7-story former manufac turing building here. The Mandel family, which also developed the Parc Vendome on West 57th Street, converted 30 Christopher into rental units in the mid-1970s. More recently the building, which offers 69 studios to two-bedrooms, was owned by the Kalimian family, though in 2020 the family sold a majority stake to the Ohebsha loms of Long Island for $28 million, tax records show. The last apartment to rent there, in July, was a studio. It leased for $3,700 a month.

113 SEVENTH AVE. SOUTH

The seven-building cluster at this corner—bars, storefronts and 23 apartments—is actually a single tax lot. It’s owned by a shell company connected to Alan Wasserman’s SW Management Ac quisitions, which bought the sprawling site from the Duell family for $57 million in 2015. The real estate is best known for being home to the Stonewall Inn, where riots against the police ha rassment of gay customers in June 1969 galvanized the gay-lib eration movement. Stonewall used to be larger, occupying Nos. 51 and 53 Christopher St. But in recent years, No. 51 was home to a nail salon. However, No. 51 is to soon transform into a visi tor’s center for a new national park commemorating the historic Stonewall protests. Designated by President Barack Obama in 2016, the Stonewall National Monument officially spans nearly 8 acres across several blocks. But a map indicates that the federal government technically owns only Christopher Park, the triangular green space dotted with statues across the street.

96 GROVE ST.

This angular and modest 4-story, walk-up rental building with seven apartments is owned by the Duell family, which had a large Manhattan portfolio but began carving it up a few years ago. In 2015 Extell Development Co. snapped up a nearby Duell property, 27 Washington Square North, a 7-story rental building, for $20 million, according to news reports, before flipping it to New York University three years later for $45 million, records show. But the Duells have hung on to 5 E. 57th St., a Midtown office building. Since 2010 the tiny retail berth at 96 Grove has been home to Joseph Leonard, an eat ery whose entrees include pork chops and trout. The restau rant, along with Jeffrey’s Grocery across the street, is part of a restaurant cluster known as Little Wisco. Their owner, Gabriel Stulman, graduated from the University of Wisconsin and em ploys its grads in his dining rooms.

156 WAVERLY PLACE

165 WAVERLY PLACE

In 1831, when Greenwich Village was considered the upper reaches of Manhattan, the Northern Dispensary Institute opened here as a free clinic for the poor. In 1837 Edgar Allan Poe reportedly went there to treat a cold. In 1854 the building, which is unusually triangu lar, added a fourth floor. The red-brick landmark shut tered as a clinic in 1989 but in the 1990s was revived as a hostel for the disabled. In 1998 it was purchased from the Catholic church by Willliam Gottlieb, an ec centric landlord who drove a car whose doors were tied on with ropes. He died in 1999. God’s Love We Deliver, which serves 2.8 million meals to more than 9,000 people a year, came knocking after outgrowing its first home at Spring Street and Sixth Avenue in SoHo, though it is not abandoning that location.

During the Great Depression some owners of mid-1800s row houses that once housed ship captains sliced up the build ings into apartments to make ends meet. Although many have been restored to their single-family glory in recent de cades, properties serving as rentals still exist, like this 4-story, six-unit walk-up whose front door is missing part of its Greek Revival–style frame. In 1937 the building sold for $13,000, according to news clips. A more recent sale occurred in 1987, when Fay Robison purchased the midblock structure from Mary Finley Farkas, according to records; the price is unclear. Robison transferred the property to a limited liability compa ny in 2008. Development of these kinds of sites is tough; the neighborhood is in a huge historic district, the city’s second, created in 1969. The first was in Brooklyn Heights.

New deals come as a turf war in the family-run business is resolved

Renovated David Geffen Hall is rolling out the welcome mat for a broader Lincoln Center crowd

At 2 p.m. Oct. 8, members of the public were expected to le into a speedily redone David Ge en Hall at Lincoln Center for the rst time in more than two years. Some of the ticket-holders paid as little as $5 to be in the space, which cost $550 million to update.

e rst show was the New York Philharmonic and Lincoln Center’s presentation of “San Juan Hill,” an immersive multimedia concert honoring the former neighborhood in the West 60s where Lincoln Center now stands.

e exible pricing strategy is just one element of the new space. It seeks to extend a Lincoln Center–wide approach that has kept the vast majority of programming free or at a “choose what you pay” rate since mid-2020.

BY CARA EISENPRESS MICHAEL MORAN

e challenge was to “serve more people in more ways,” said Lincoln Center’s president and CEO, Henry Timms. “We serve very well with ambition and quality but not as well with the breadth of our invitation. at’s the community project.”

In addition to some inexpensive tickets, the renovation prioritized opening the hall’s doors to all comers. e main entranceway now opens like a garage door, extending the transition between the building and the plaza. ere are two hospitality spaces o ering food and drinks as well as children’s and family programming. A new Sidewalk Studio, visible from Broadway, is a exible space for talks, lectures and small shows. Performances in the auditorium will be streamed on a 50-foot digital wall so that pass-

ersby can duck in and watch, Lincoln Center said.

“ e idea is for the activity on the plaza to ow in to the lobby, and the lobby to ow out,” Lincoln Center Chairwoman Katherine Farley said.

Farley was instrumental in pushing for the renovation—and all the community-minded updates that came with it—to be available to the city now instead of years down the road. e stage in the new auditorium is named for Farley and her husband, Jerry Speyer, co-founder and chairman of Tishman Speyer.

How David Geffen Hall reopened on time

For decades there was a consensus in the music world that David Ge en Hall, formerly known as Avery Fisher Hall, needed better acoustics. In 2015 lm executive David Ge en donated $100 million, giving momentum to the renovation. In 2019 the Philharmonic announced its plan, which required temporary closures and time in other performance venues.

en, during the summer of 2020, Farley said, Turner Construction, which was managing the reno-

City to convert vacant newsstands into hubs for food delivery workers

BY CAROLINE SPIVACK

The city plans to convert vacant newsstands and other underutilized infrastructure into rest areas for the city’s 65,000 delivery workers, Mayor Eric Adams and Sen. Chuck Schumer announced last Monday.

ey said the so-called Street Deliveristas Hubs will provide appbased food-delivery workers with shelter from the elements, resources to repair their vehicle and battery-charging stations for e-bicycles. Financing for the pilot program comes from a $1 million federal grant secured by Schumer, following through on a pledge he made last year.

“Deliveristas have to do this job without this necessary and important infrastructure,” Schumer said during a news conference outside a vacant newsstand near City Hall.

“During Covid we learned that these are the folks who brought everybody food when they couldn’t get it anywhere else. And they didn’t quit. ey didn’t complain. ey didn’t stop.” e mayor praised the city’s food-delivery workforce, declaring that “essential workers deserve essential services.” e hubs, he said, will be prioritized in high-demand neighborhoods and designed with input from delivery workers and neighbors. Eventually, the hubs also will o er industry training and informational sessions, he said.

It’s unclear how many hubs the city aims to erect. Adams described the $1 million in grant money as “a start.” City o cials “will see how [far] that takes us based on the build-out,” he said. If the program is deemed successful, he added, an expanded version could be covered in future city budgets.

It will take at least a few months to get the spaces operational, Parks Commissioner Sue Donoghue said. e time frame is likely to stretch longer, though, as the federal funds Schumer allocated for the project are pending approval as part of the omnibus spending package in the Senate, which is projected to pass it in December.

Bathroom break?

Hildalyn Colón Hernández, director of policy and strategic partnerships at the Workers Justice Project/Los Deliveristas, said in an interview that it’s vital the hubs be located near high-frequency work areas where delivery workers already tend to rest or wait for orders. Some of the program’s funds are slated to go toward renovating the WJP headquarters in Williamsburg.

Noticeably absent from the

vation project, mentioned that there could be an opportunity to build straight through, eliminating the chaos of a phased renovation.

“It sort of dawned on us all that [the pandemic] wasn’t just a twoweek problem,” Farley recalled.

Still, it was a challenging ask for the Lincoln Center and Philharmonic boards, especially because the fundraising wasn’t complete, nor had bridge nancing been secured, though the design was more or less done. Farley said she could not resist making the most of a tiny pandemic silver lining.

In November 2020 Clara Wu Tsai and Joseph Tsai, co-founder of Alibaba, gave $50 million.

“[ e] gift was con dence that we could get there,” Farley said. e performance space is now named the Wu Tsai eater.

Still, the construction process was high-pressure, and the schedule was rapid.

A splashy return

Lincoln Center has spent the past three years fortifying its commitment to accessibility and hashing out both audience-facing and internal programs to draw out inclusivity goals, Timms said. But there’s nothing like shiny new construction to reintroduce a cultural institution, he said.

e building is lled with custom, colorful materials, many made by artisans in the New York area. Lobby walls are decorated with a motif of falling ower petals made of felt—a pattern repeated inside the auditorium, on the seats.

Inside the theater, a twofold goal of making the space feel welcoming and creating state-of-the-art acoustics yielded a 2,200-seat auditorium with wraparound seating and improved sight lines. e beechwood walls feature waves and grooves that focus attention back to the stage.

Hopefully, Timms said, the architecture, the improved acoustics and the commitment to value will encourage both faithful and new fans to attend performances—or at least drop by to see what the new space is about.

“One of the jobs of Lincoln Center is to encourage people back into the city,” he said. “People don’t just commute to the o ce.” ■

planned hubs are promised restrooms.

New city laws took e ect in January entitling food-delivery workers to use most restaurant bathrooms, along with greater transparency on wages and tips. e rules were part of a landmark package of bills approved by the City Council in September 2021 to improve conditions for app-based delivery workers.

Expanding access to restrooms remains a pressing need, Colón Hernández said, adding that work-

ers and advocates are generally pleased with the pilot program and that there is room to ne-tune it.

“ e rst thing we want with the project is for workers to have a more structured space in the city’s streets,” Colón Hernández said.

“ is started with: ‘How can we create a place that we can congregate safely? at we can have charging?’ We know we can’t get everything on our wish list. is is an alternative that we’re going to try out and see how it works.”

THE WU TSAI THEATER at David Geffen Hall

Litigators Balance Competing Needs in Dispute Resolution

CRAIN’S: What are some of the key priorities that litigation practitioners have focused on this year?

NICHOLAS CUTAIA: Complex business litigation is becoming increasingly expensive. A key priority for sophisticated litigators continues to be managing cases with precision. An ef cient lawyer is aggressive, yet tactical, using technology and staf ng decisions to ensure that litigation costs are aligned with clients’ goals. At Goulston & Storrs, we spend a lot of time tailoring staf ng on high stakes matters. We avoid overloading a case with lawyers. A shareholder leads the case, usually paired with

some believe too much. Notably, the Southern District of New York (SDNY) appears to be taking this concern seriously. Our research shows a trend that’s been occurring in the SDNY, toward imposing a “rocket docket”— which means discovery must be completed in only four months absent exceptional circumstances. More than 50% of SDNY judges now have a rocket docket, in fact. While exceptions exist, this trend bodes well for quicker resolutions for clients. At the same time, it means litigators need to be very proactive regarding fact investigation and strategy development, and clients need to prepare for active litigation immediately.

CRAIN’S: Which challenges have litigation professionals overcome this year, and how exactly have they overcome them?

NICHOLAS CUTAIA:

It’s amazing how quickly COVID-19 upended the traditional way we litigate. After courts shut down in 2020, everything (depositions, hearings, conferences, trials, etc.) was

opportunity to bring greater ef ciencies for clients.

CRAIN’S: How will the prospect of a recession in uence the eld of litigation, its professionals and clients in the coming months?

NICHOLAS CUTAIA:

Financial losses often lead to litigation. When you add COVID-19-related issues, nger-pointing escalates. With a potential recession, along with continuous supply chain disruptions occurring in the future, we expect litigation to pick up. For instance, we have seen an increase in lender disputes, related to real estate projects that are under water. Firms

are preparing for this reality by bolstering capabilities in core areas. At Goulston & Storrs, this includes complex business disputes and highstakes legal malpractice defense. We get hired to defend elite lawyers and law rms themselves, and a recession is likely to lead to an uptick in these claims too.

CRAIN’S: How exactly is the eld of litigation preparing for its up-and-coming professionals and their longterm success?

NICHOLAS CUTAIA: Firms need strong associate attorneys to achieve successful outcomes. At Goulston & Storrs, associate development is foundational.

Unlike many other rms, we strive to ensure associates receive on-their-feet training early in their careers. If associates haven’t argued a motion or taken a deposition within the rst couple of years, we make sure they have those opportunities (subject to shareholder supervision). Early skillbuilding is important because we believe every associate can be tomorrow’s shareholder. And by developing strong lawyers who have a broad-based skill set, we provide clients with legal teams who can manage disputes in a well-planned and ef cient manner.

one or two associates. With this targeted litigation team, case knowledge is centralized, and client outcomes and communication are improved.

CRAIN’S: How has the eld of litigation, as a whole, evolved in recent years? Which changes have been especially noticeable?

NICHOLAS CUTAIA: Litigation takes time, and

conducted remotely, using tools like Zoom. We learned a lot about ef ciencies, and we still handle some functions virtually for a host of reasons. With courts reopened, litigators and judges have spent the last year guring out a balance between inperson and remote formats for litigation, weighing the bene ts and detriments to everyone involved. Ultimately, this process is an

City’s moves to recognize the delivery economy are steps in the right direction

There’s a lot of movement lately around how to manage the delivery economy that has blossomed during Covid lockdowns. One initiative is described in this week’s Crain’s story about a city pilot to convert vacant newsstands and other underused infrastructure into rest areas for food delivery workers (see page 6). ey will be able to shelter from bad weather, repair their vehicles and charge the batteries of their e-bikes—everything but use the bathroom, which is a whole other story.

Last week Crain’s published an article about last-mile trucking. at story detailed bills before the City Council aimed at managing

populate the outer boroughs, and elected o cials are expressing concern about pedestrian safety, air pollution, and wear and tear on roads and bridges.

e City Council bills seek to regulate trucking routes, truck sizes and the use of clean fuels.

A 2021 report from the city Department of Transportation noted the “transformative shift in commercial and consumer freight deliveries.” DOT recommended making sure there are established routes so that neighborhoods aren’t disrupted by noise and pedestrian danger, and that there are limits on truck sizes to prolong the life of roadways.

THE PANDEMIC HIGHLIGHTED THAT DELIVERY PERSONNEL ARE ESSENTIALWORKERS

the proliferation of warehouses and ful llment centers that private companies such as Amazon and FedEx have built in acknowledgment of the way Americans are buying now, which is online and fast. e warehouses

In a city as dynamic and forward-facing as New York, public legislation seems to always be catching up to private innovation. However, it is the right move now to mitigate truck tra c harms and to create rest-station infrastructure for the roughly 65,000 delivery workers buzzing around our city.

One could argue that facilitating this fundamental conversion in commerce is a bene t to neigh-

borhoods and delivery workers.

But well-thought-out truck routes and rest stops also make for better customer relations for businesses, especially for those that o er delivery service, because they show that companies are taking into account the wellbeing of everyone in the communities they serve. e pandemic highlighted

that delivery personnel are essential workers. Giving them a place to recharge is key for the city to recognize the important role they play in the local economy.

is forward thinking will help ensure that the “new” way of delivery is not getting in the way of quality of life and doing business in New York City. ■

Nurse practitioners critical to meeting growing care needs

TO THE EDITOR:

It is incumbent to push back on the comments that Dr. Parag Mehta of the Medical Society of New York made in his letter to the editor in Crain’s (“Patients prefer—and deserve—to be treated by the best and most highly trained physicians”).

Our nation’s health care system has moved past the ideals discussed by Dr. Mehta. We must look to all providers from across the health care spectrum to provide care to the top of their education and clinical training. It is only when we leverage all our valuable resources that the health care system will work for patients and providers alike.

Decades of independent evidence has shown that nurse practitioners are critical to improving access to high-quality care.

Dr. Mehta’s view is in direct con ict with the National Academy of Medicine’s “ e Future of Nursing, 2020–2030: Charting a Path to Achieve Health Equity” report. It recommended

that “all relevant state, federal and private organizations enable nurses to practice to the full extent of their education and training by removing practice barriers that prevent them from more fully addressing social needs and social determinants of health and improve health care access, quality and value.”

Additionally, stakeholders including the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institution and the Bipartisan Policy Center have been supportive of removing barriers to practice for nurse practitioners.

e reality is that highly quali ed clinicians such as nurse practitioners are providing quality care in nearly every health care setting. e excellence of these providers is proven in their commitment to access, early detection, disease prevention and the management of chronic conditions.

e evidence is clear. Patients deserve better than the system proposed in the Crain’s article. We must seek to move our health care

system forward, recognizing the essential role all providers have in care delivery and not focus on a system that will limit patient access.

A recent Morning Consult poll, in fact, found that 82% of patients support allowing nurse practitioners to provide care to the full extent of their training.

e critical factor to ensuring patients access to high-quality and equitable care, in New York and across the nation, is to fully embrace the expertise of today’s

health care workforce. Nurse practitioners and other clinicians are prepared to manage our nation’s growing health care needs. ey have a keen understanding of the steps needed to reshape the system so that it works for all patients.

To capture the workers’ potential, we must move beyond an outdated view of the health care workforce and the antiquated regulatory system espoused by Dr. Mehta—which would trap patients in a mid-20th-century health care system when we are nearly a quarter of a century into the new millennium.

Without a doubt, patients deserve the best care, and nurse practitioners are among the health care professionals who are prepared to deliver it.

We are moving forward on behalf of patients; we invite all health care providers to join us.

STEPHEN FERRARA President-elect, American Association of Nurse Practitioners, and associate dean for clinical affairs, Columbia University

president & ceo K.C. Crain group publisher Jim Kirk publisher/executive editor Frederick P. Gabriel Jr.

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chairman Keith E. Crain vice chairman Mary Kay Crain president & ceo K.C. Crain senior executive vice president Chris Crain editor-in-chief emeritus Rance Crain chief nancial of cer Robert Recchia founder G.D. Crain Jr. [1885-1973] chairman Mrs. G.D. Crain Jr. [1911-1996]

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MAYOR ERIC ADAMS helped announce the rst-in-the-nation hubs for food delivery workers.

NYCMAYORSOFFICE/FLICKR

How to address city’s affordable housing crisis

BY JAMIE SMARR

Urban tech can help manage some major local challenges

BY MICHAEL SAMUELIAN AND ANTHONY TOWNSEND

Abright light is shining in New York City’s economy: tech nology.

That’s the finding of a recent study by Tech:NYC, an industry group, and the Center for an Urban Future think tank.

The beating high-tech heart has added more than 114,000 jobs to city tax rolls since 2010.

According to a recent analysis from our Urban Tech Hub at Cor nell Tech, there is a proliferation of home-grown companies that showcases the power and impact of urban technology in New York City.

ery from challenging times and disasters such as the pandemic.

Today’s urban tech companies are building on that legacy as well as the city’s traditional economic strengths. Given the city’s strong real estate sector, our leadership in building systems—known as prop tech—is unsurprising. A surge in food-delivery and logistics startups is exploiting market opportunities created by the pandemic.

Zoom calls cannot take the place of in-person interactions. In part nership with the city’s Economic Development Corp., the new Cor nell Tech campus has devoted one of its three hubs solely to urban tech. But we need to do more.

We need to train and retain tal ent. Urban tech should be taught in grades K–12.

Urban tech requires a hands-on approach. We can’t solve chal lenges without actually experienc ing them.

Entrepreneurs thrive on seeing opportunities firsthand. And to scale ideas, innovators need to work closely with city residents and government personnel.

R

ecent news of an astounding 45% drop in affordable hous ing production compared with prior years should spur imme diate action to reverse the trend.

The median rent for New York apartments, after plummeting during the Covid-19 pandemic, has risen to the highest level ever: $4,000. It’s a market signal that sup ply is being choked off while rental demand remains high. Such skyhigh rents are affordable for the rich but remain out of reach for reg ular New Yorkers, who deserve safe, decent places to live.

We are in a housing affordability crisis that requires an immediate, coordinated public policy response.

Failure to take serious action on housing would cripple New York’s pandemic recovery efforts and threaten the sustainability of its economic base. New York must cre ate crucially needed housing.

Here are four steps to do it.

● Renew critical housing programs. This year the Legislature inexplica bly allowed New York’s 421-a and J-51 programs to expire—incentives that created and preserved more than 1 million apartments since their inception. Gov. Kathy Hochul and the Legislature reportedly are studying how to replace or renew the programs, but without progress since the summer.

The two programs were proven housing incentives that worked well together to encourage new construction and the preservation of existing affordable housing. I know because I ran New York’s tax and zoning incentive programs for years. They enabled the private market to partner with the govern ment to create and preserve afford able housing, stimulating middle-class job growth.

● Create even more market incen tives. Beyond 421-a and J-51, New York needs targeted incentives to encourage increased transforma tion of moribund office space, hotels and industrial sites into more affordable housing opportunities.

The private market must lead the way in finding innovative solutions to New York’s housing crisis.

● Streamline city reviews. Mayor Eric Adams’ administration should create a “one-stop shop” that streamlines all city administrative functions to speed housing produc tion: permitting, urban design/zon ing and incentives. When I ran the city’s tax incentive programs, for example, there were two agencies responsible for reviewing and approving affordable housing incentives: the departments of Finance and Housing Preservation and Development. Since then, a third agency, the Office of Manage ment and Budget, has been added to the process. Do we really need three agencies reviewing the same application?

● Trim time-consuming zoning pro cesses. It is well past the time to cor rect serious problems with New York City’s land-use reviews. Far from the ostensible goal of creating “comprehensive, community-in volved” housing development, the uniform land-use review proce dure, or ULURP, is instead used by NIMBY-driven, self-interested activists—without real constituen cies or concern about societal needs—to kill housing production.

Most New Yorkers once reveled in our inclusive beliefs and progres sive policies, but now we are con fronted with unrepresentative interests that unashamedly seek to maintain the status quo at the expense of New Yorkers who need affordable homes. ULURP and related administrative reviews now stretch for years, resulting in afford able housing proposals once regarded as desirable now being sabotaged by interminable rezon ing processes. Our elected officials and agency heads must figure out how to complete the reviews in a year or less.

In addition, New York should consider providing affordable housing projects with zoning exemptions, like the law that allows the city School Construction Authority to exempt its projects from some reviews. New Yorkers can’t wait years for more affordable housing opportunities.

■

Jamie Smarr is chief executive of the New York City Housing Partnership.

Urban tech can focus the power of the digital revolution on some of the city’s biggest problems: clean energy, healthy food, affordable housing and safe streets.

Citywide, more than 510 compa nies, nongovernmental organiza tion and government agencies are working on urban tech. They’ve raised more than $17 billion in investment and created as many as one-third of the city’s new tech jobs during the past decade.

Technology has always been the key to unlocking New York’s poten tial, particularly around our recov

A new wave of federal spending on infrastructure and climatechange measures will create new market opportunities at home. The companies that rebuild New York City are well positioned to turn around and export their innova tions to the world.

Strong headwinds

But New York City’s urban tech industry will face strong head winds. The Big Apple is far behind Paris, Barcelona, Singapore and other cities in rolling out waste management and energy technolo gies. Red tape makes it hard to move fast and take risks.

The biggest challenge, however, is people. Creative people have always been the root of New York City’s vitality. Creativity was born from its streets, not its screens.

New York is at risk of falling behind in critical urban technolo gies for waste management, renewable energy and micromo bility. We need to redouble our efforts.

Urban tech can power the next New York only if we get back to our streets, subways and skyscrapers. ■

Michael Samuelian is founding director of the Cornell Tech Urban Tech Hub. Anthony Townsend is urbanist in residence at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech.

Write us: Crain’s welcomes submissions to its opinion pages. Send letters to letters@CrainsNewYork. com. Send op-eds of 500 words or fewer to opinion@CrainsNewYork.com. Please include the writer’s name, company, address and telephone number. Crain’s reserves the right to edit submissions for clarity.

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PEOPLE

KeyBank

KeyBank adds commercial banking resources in Metro NY and NJ with the hiring of Laura Conte and Rick Plattner as Sr.

Middle Market

Relationship Managers. Laura Conte has 20 years of commercial banking experience from senior positions at Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley and The Bank of New York. She has a BA from Marymount College of Fordham University and is on the Board of Access Supports for Living Foundation and Hudson Valley Economic Development Corp. She is located in Manhattan. Rick Plattner has over 20 years of experience in commercial banking through senior positions with PNC’s Corporate & Institutional team and JPMorgan Chase in Southern CA. He has a BS from the University of California Riverside and is located in Northern NJ.

LAW

Hodgson Russ LLP

Hodgson Russ

LLP Partner and Chairman of the Firm Mark S. Klein has been named to the 2022 Edition of New York Metro Super Lawyers for his work in Tax Law. Super Lawyers annually compiles state- and region-speci c top lawyers lists based on the results of a comprehensive, multistage selection process that includes peer nominations and evaluations, and independent research.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Smartling

Olga Beregovaya has joined Smartling, a Translation Management Platform, as VP of Machine Translation and AI, where she brings 25+ years of experience in the translation industry to further elevate Smartling’s position as the top provider of AI-enabled translation software and services. Previously, Olga was the VP of AI Innovation at Welocalize, where she drove the company’s AI strategy from technology research and development through deployment and execution.

PROFESSIONAL SERVICES

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Invest Northern Ireland

FINANCIAL SERVICES

TIAA

TIAA announced Surya Kolluri as the new Head of the TIAA Institute.

In this role, Kolluri will amplify the TIAA Institute’s insights to better reach TIAA’s clients, consultants, regulators and lawmakers to drive them to action, and to offer consulting services for institutions. Surya joins TIAA from Bank of America, where he was most recently the Managing Director for Retirement Research and Insights. He will report to TIAA Chief Marketing Of cer & Communications Of cer Micky Onvural.

Partner Michael J. Hecker has been named to the 2022 Edition of New York Metro Super Lawyers for his work in Environmental Law. This is his rst year earning the recognition. Super Lawyers annually compiles state- and region-speci c top lawyers lists based on the results of a comprehensive, multistage selection process that includes peer nominations and evaluations, and independent research.

Invest Northern Ireland has appointed Andrea Haughian Executive VP, Head of Americas. She will lead the agency’s foreign direct investment and trade initiatives across the Americas. Since 2007, Haughian has served Invest NI with distinction as VP of Business Development and has played an integral role in helping a record number of U.S. businesses expand to Northern Ireland while also supporting innovative Northern Irish businesses successfully enter, scale and thrive in the U.S. market.

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Conte

Plattner

As Sept. 11 victims face compensation delays, a new state law offers limited relief

BY JACQUELINE NEBER

Gov. Kathy Hochul recently signed a bill that aims to reduce the delays 9/11 victims face when trying to get monetary awards from the federal September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, but its scope is limited.

On Sept. 9, Hochul signed five bills into law, one of which aims to remove “certain restrictions that caused delays for many filers and their families.” Lawyers and other New Yorkers familiar with the VCF have expressed confusion over the law because the U.S. Department of Justice administers money through the fund, not the state.

“I admire the governor for signing legislation. But the truth is, the VCF is administered by the Department of Justice. The World Trade Center Health Program is administered by the [National Institute for Occupa tional Safety and Health]. And they really aren’t going to do anything other than say, ‘We understand your frustration waiting to be certi fied,’” said Michael Barasch, a part ner at Barasch & McGarry, which handles compensation cases.

Barasch added: “The delays in getting an appointment with the health program are so long, it is so frustrating, you want to pull your hair out.”

The signed bills also allow fami lies to recover money for noneco

debris-exposure zones between Sept. 11, 2001, and May 30, 2002, who have been diagnosed with 9/11-related illnesses such as cer tain cancers and respiratory issues. Families or representatives of de ceased victims can apply for com pensation as well. To file a claim, an individual has to be certified as having a requisite illness by the World Trade Center Health Pro gram and provide supporting docu mentation.

cancer in 2015, has helped more than 50 colleagues and others get into the World Trade Center Health Program and get VCF awards.

It took about two years for Muller to be compensated by the VCF, he said. Certifying his illness took 18

months. He said the process is “not intended to be adversarial,” but he emphasized that people can literal ly die while waiting for their mone tary award.

“One of my friends had breast cancer, and insurance companies

at that time weren’t paying for men to get chemotherapy for breast cancer,” he said. “He was going to go broke to be able to pay for che motherapy. After 9/11 he was [in the city] 80 hours per week sup porting companies trying to get up and running. Years later when he developed cancer, there was no body to help him get into the WTC Health Program. He had friends to help him cut through delays. It’s critical people get the help that they need after they’ve been ex posed.”

A far reach

The VCF has received more than 50,000 claims from New Yorkers, and it reported that last year it re duced its claim-processing time to the shortest it has ever been.

The fund awarded nearly $1.5 bil lion last year and has given more than $10 billion to 45,000 individu als since its founding.

Awards for noneconomic losses that result from cancer are capped at $250,000; awards for noneco nomic losses that aren’t caused by cancer are capped at $90,000. ■

LUXURY HOME OF THE WEEK

nomic losses they’ve experienced; expand the eligibility of people able to file claims; and allow 9/11 ill nesses to automatically qualify first responders who are trying to claim money from the state Workers’ Compensation Board.

Making progress

State Sen. Andrew Gounardes of Brooklyn, who sponsored the bill that seeks to eliminate delays, clari fied how the law could help New Yorkers. Prior to the new law, if 9/11 victims’ families or representatives wanted to access a VCF award, they had to apply through state Surro gate’s Court to collect and distrib ute money for the decedent.

The new legislation, Gounardes said, allows people who are family members or representatives of decedents to apply for VCF awards directly. Eliminating the Surro gate’s Court step should shorten the time frame for getting awards, he said.

“Anyone who doesn’t have to go into court and spend more money to prove they’re entitled to an award is a victory,” he said. “The horrors of 9/11 still linger.”

The fund pays first responders and people who lived or worked in

The original VCF, which Congress created just for victims of the at tacks and their families, closed in 2004. The current program was creat ed through the Za droga Act in 2011 and reauthorized in 2015. In 2019 the fund’s special mas ter determined that the money remain ing would not be enough to pay all pending and projected claims. In 2020 federal government funding increased to nearly $7.5 billion.

The federal government still needs to come up with $3 billion to be able to fund the health program through 2025. The lack of funding has led to a shortage of medical professionals working to certify peoples’ illnesses, leading to delays in certification, treatment and compensation, Barasch said.

Richard Alles, a retired city Fire Department deputy chief, said he knows New Yorkers who got sick af ter 9/11 who have waited up to two years to get their illness certified. Getting their awards has taken lon ger.

“Waiting on financial compensa tion is a stressor when people are already dealing with anxiety and PTSD from the event itself,” Alles said.

More than 300 FDNY personnel have suffered a 9/11-related death in the past 20 years, he said. The number is expected to soon surpass the number of firefighters who died in 2001.

Ken Muller, who worked at Gold man Sachs downtown during 9/11 and was diagnosed with kidney

BRENDA ROSEN Breaking Ground

BY MAYA KAUFMAN

Brenda Rosen has been thinking about homelessness since she was 9 years old, when a re ravaged her family’s apartment. Thankfully neighbors lobbied the landlord to place Rosen’s family in an empty unit. She has since devoted her career to the issue. After graduating from Cardozo School of Law with her J.D., she became an attorney for the city Department of Homeless Services. In 1999 she joined Breaking Ground, a nonpro t that develops supportive and affordable housing for homeless New Yorkers, runs street outreach programs, and provides health care and social services. In 2011 she became its president and CEO. Recently more than 60 companies pledged $8 million to help Breaking Ground expand its homeless outreach efforts in business districts.

What’s the biggest misconception about the city’s homelessness crisis?

That people choose to be homeless. People don't choose to be homeless. The people that we work with are really vulnerable, and they’ve had traumas in their past.

How can businesses help address homelessness?

Money that was raised through the Partnership for New York City is coming to Breaking Ground to do expanded street outreach work in high-density areas of Manhattan

DOSSIER

WHO SHE IS President and CEO, Breaking Ground

GREW UP Roosevelt Island

RESIDES Astoria, Queens

AGE 55

EDUCATION Bachelor’s in sociology and urban studies, Hunter College; J.D., Cardozo School of Law

FULL CIRCLE Rosen’s parents met in 1958 at the Times Square Hotel, which would much later become Breaking Ground’s agship supportive housing residence.

STOMPING GROUNDS Rosen said her favorite neighborhood spot is Socrates Sculpture Park along the East River.

and Brooklyn. It allows us to be more nimble and respond quicker. We wouldn’t be able to go into a bank vestibule, and this allows us to do so.

What are the bureaucratic hurdles to developing more supportive housing units?

The biggest hurdles are the price of land and construction. Many, many years ago, we could purchase and develop land near public transportation. We developed in Midtown Manhattan. We can’t do that anymore. Then the construction costs ballooned. And we have to work within the constraints of city and state funding streams. Those are the

biggest, along with zoning issues, where we’re trying to push a deal and you have opposition from NIMBYs.

How can those be alleviated?

The city and the state have land parcels, and they bid them out. The land is free. We and other nonpro ts compete for those properties to develop affordable and supportive housing. On the corporate side, I don’t know if I’ve met a big developer that doesn’t have access to land, that couldn’t—if they wanted to—partner with nonpro ts to develop mixed-income housing that has supportive units or sell land at a reduced cost to a not-for-pro t. More developers are stepping up to the plate, but to truly make the difference that we need to make right now, it has to be the city, the state, private developers all coming together.

Some New Yorkers are rejected for supportive housing because they are deemed as needing a higher level of services. Is there another model that would be even more supportive?

There are providers that do not believe that supportive housing can meet every single person’s needs. Housing First, which is a model that we subscribe to, says that as long as you have a stable home as your base, then you can start on the path to stability through wraparound services. Having said that, there is a small percentage of individuals who truly have needs that exceed what supportive housing can do for them. That’s where it becomes really challenging, because right now there is no higher level of care. There is no place in between supportive housing and being in a psych hospital, because the funding isn’t there. What’s really important is that the city and the state continue to increase, year over year, the funding to operate supportive housing because costs go up. ■

BUCK ENNIS

How bureaucratic all-star Kathryn Garcia manages New York’s affairs

INTERVIEW BY BRIAN PASCUS

Last year Kathryn Garcia almost became the mayor of New York City. The former head of the Department of Sanitation and the New York City Housing Authority had never run for public office before the Democratic primary in 2021. Her reputation for managerial excellence nearly carried her to an upset victory over Eric Adams. She lost by less than 1 percentage point.

Garcia was scooped up by Gov. Kathy Hochul in September 2021 to serve as director of state operations. Garcia is now the governor’s point per son on everything from emergency response procedures and Covid-19 policy to economic recovery packages and infrastructure projects.

The governor’s right-hand woman sat down with Crain’s to discuss her long career in city government, lessons from a close mayor’s race and what she’s learned about power from managing affairs at the state level.

During your time in city government, you were a food czar, a Covid-relief czar and interim chair of the New York City Hous ing Authority. How did you come to your current position of power?

Notice how those czar titles came with no jewels and no castles, just additional work.

I’ve had a long career in public service, starting back in 2006, in positions of serving people. I’ve never thought of it as positions of power, just a position of extra responsibility. I’ve had roles in New York City’s water and wastewater system, and of course at the Department of Sanitation, and then the mayoral run and finally here at the state, which is bigger.

What was the biggest chal lenge you faced during your time in city government?

takeaway for business professionals

As director of state operations, Kathryn Garcia has her hand in numerous infrastructure projects and coordinates the state’s environmental policies to ensure New York meets its carbon-neutrality goals of the 2030s. She also manages the state’s infectious disease response for Covid-19 and monkeypox and oversees technology innovations to keep New York an attractive state for businesses.

Oh, it was definitely work-life balance. My children were still pretty young when I started in DEP [the Department of Environmental Protection], and before that I had been in consulting. My boss at the time said, “I completely understand you have little kids. You can definitely be home for dinner, and you can work 8 to 4.” That literally never happened. Trying to be there for the public at the same time that you’re there for your family is a constant balance. It’s much easier now since they’re grownups, but that was definitely the most difficult thing. I really want to meet those civil servants who only work 9 to 5, because I have yet to meet them.

Do you think public service is particu larly difficult for mothers?

I think it’s particularly difficult for parents, if they intend to be around. It’s hard to do these jobs because things break in the night. Snowstorms don’t care that you should be sleeping. You could have a thunderstorm tonight that will take power down in a large portion of the state and that has to get managed.

Where did you experience the most frus tration working in city government?

I hope it’s the same frustration of anyone who really cares about getting stuff done: How do you get buy-in, and how do you hire anyone in less than 8,000 years? Because the people on the front line are really the ones who make things happen. If you don’t have sewage treatment workers, if you don’t have a police officer to do the frontline work, then you’re not successful. But getting those people

through and hired can take a long time. The frustration to me was always the bureaucracy, but I think anyone who works in government should always be frustrated by the bureaucracy and push against it.

What did the mayor’s race teach you about power?

There are many people who think they are power brokers in New York, but at the end of the day, your base of power is really, what do the people want? If you put forward a vision and they want to support you, then that’s your base of power.

Do you have any regrets from the campaign?

I don’t live in a world of regret. One door closes, another door opens. There were times when I wished I didn’t have to put on makeup every day. Some of my fellow candidates didn’t have to do that.

Other than that, I loved the team we put together, I loved what we got to talk

about, and it was really exciting to meet people across the entire city.

How does holding power at the state level differ from the city level?

It’s what your tools are. At the city level, it’s far more operational. There are pieces of state government that are very operational; state police is very operational. But DEP at the city level provides your water and your sewer [service]. At the state level, we regulate your water and your sewer or we fund it. And so your tools are your ability to regulate and your ability to fund things, more than your ability to go out and do that particular role. As you go up the stream, the federal government is even more of a regulator and funder.

Why do you think people keep put ting you in positions of power and responsibility?

I really don’t think of it as power and responsibility. It’s like, can you actually

DOSSIER

NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES More than 106,000 state employees

ON HER RÉSUMÉ City Department of Finance (1993–95), Department of Environmental Protection (2006–14), Department of Sanitation (2014–20), mayoral candidate (2020–21), director of state operations (2021–present)

BORN Manhattan, but grew up in Brooklyn

RESIDES Park Slope, Brooklyn

EDUCATION Stuyvesant High School; Bachelor’s in economics, University of Wisconsin-Madison

BREAKING THE MOLD Garcia has helped push through long-overdue infrastruc ture projects, such as the Gateway tunnel and a new Penn Station.

achieve something, and are you consistently just going out there, getting the job done, over and over again? And it’s creating teams. What I actually think that I’m strongest at is creating and empowering the team to do it, because in many of those cases, when I moved to a different role, it did not fall apart.

How do you define power?

It really is about how you serve people. It is responsibility.

What do you think the benefits are to holding power in your line of work?

It’s about being able to get things done. I get to make the phone call and say, “No, you actually have to do this. You are holding it up. You’ve been holding it up. You have to get out of the way. This is the direction we’re going in. We’ve articulated it. Tell me what you need to get it done.”

What is the most unsung agency of state government?

The Office of People with Developmental Disabilities. They are often doing unseen, incredible work that gets very little recognition. They’re doing incredible things for people in the state, and they are enormously large, equivalent to the size of the New York Police Department.

Your race for mayor was your first time running for office, right?

I had never even run for student body president.

Do you think you ever want to run again for any position?

I’m doing this job, and that is what I intend to do, definitely for a long while.

ASHLEY HOLT

Meet the broker who helped bring Industry City, Chelsea Market to life

Jim Somoza has made his mark by building out some of the city’s most iconic indoor markets, including Industry City and Chelsea Market.

He has had exposure to real estate all his life, he said, thanks to his father’s close working relationship with the family behind Rudin Management. His grandfather worked in real estate development and built shopping centers in Westchester County. Somoza was born in Westchester but spent most of his life on the Upper West Side living in Rudin-owned buildings.

He began his career as a real estate lawyer and was hired by the legal department at Cushman & Wake eld during a recession in 1992.

He left law to work as a broker at Cushman and was walking in the Meatpacking District in 1997 with the woman he later would marry when he noticed the building that would become Chelsea Market.

said, ‘I know what I want to do when I grow up,’ ” Somoza said.

What’s your secret sauce for getting tenants?

I think I’m a good conversationalist. I think people like to have a beer with me. I’m genuinely interested in them. I’ll show up at their restaurant, and I will buy things from their store, follow them on Instagram.

I try not to sound broker-y, because I’m not.

grocery store.

We called various places, like Tony Yashida’s Sunrise Mart, who we ended up doing the deal with. e complication of the project was putting all these businesses together in a cohesive way. It needed to feel like you were in Japan.

came back several times over that period.

NATALIE SACHMECHI

e building was originally the site of a Nabisco factory where the Oreo was invented. It was purchased in the 1990s by Irwin Cohen, who planned to turn it into a food market.

“ at was the moment where I

In 2002 he represented a partnership that acquired 85 10th Ave., which is now part of Chelsea Market. Cohen, the mastermind behind the concept, then asked him to join his Chelsea Market team.

“Irwin taught me everything I know,” Somoza said. “He was the godfather of a lot of this stu .”

Several years ago, real estate investment rms Belvedere Capital and Jamestown were looking at Industry City and asked Somoza to get on board with them to create the city’s next large-scale indoor market.

How did you celebrate your rst big deal?

e closing of a deal is pretty anticlimactic. I enjoy the process, the struggle and getting it done. I always felt like, afterward, I’m on to the next thing. I’ve had a million steak dinners, and they all kind of meld together.

What’s the most complicated deal you’ve worked on?

Japan Village at Industry City. I used to travel to Japan a lot with Youngwoo & Associates on business, and I’ve always been into Japanese food. When I got involved in Industry City, I got to my rst meeting with a list of things I wanted, which included a Japanese

at deal [with Yashida] is what really brought Industry City into its own, because it was immediately the largest tra c-driver for us. e entrance to Japan Village is the most tra cked entrance at Industry City.

It now has various components, like a grocery store, a section of food stalls of ramen, udon, sushi and soba that look very much like they’re in Tokyo. Next to that is an izakaya, a bar and a Japanese liquor store. On the second oor are all hard goods, like pottery, and anime and cosmetics from Japan.

We took about a year to do the lease, two and a half years to get it built and open. ere were times when Tony and I were almost thinking it was too risky. It died and

Why did you choose to join Industry City?

In a way, it chose me. I’d been working with a lot of the partners, and this is what I do: adapt old and historic buildings past their prime. Re-creating places is just super fun.

Looking at it the rst time, it was a big challenge. I love the buildings; I’d driven by them for years as a kid and always wondered what was going on with them.

ere will always be something to look at next.

ese projects do have an arc to them. When it gets more stabilized and runs itself, it’s less interesting and fun to me. I’m not interested in being a caretaker of a project. I want to develop. ■

CRAIN’S NEW YORK

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Con Edison sells its wind and solar farms for a lot of green as it looks to eventually get clean

The first weekend of Octo ber, Consolidated Edison sold its clean-energy assets to a German firm for $6.8 billion.

Wait a second—isn’t that exactly the sort of stuff utilities are sup posed to be building up?

Three years ago Con Ed was the second-largest owner of solar capacity in North America. Shouldn’t it be at least holding onto its solar and wind farms, if not buying more?

Con Ed says it isn’t stepping back from its commitment to clean en ergy.

able generation for the benefit of our customers and all New York ers.”

So if Con Ed wants to own re newable generation, why sell some?

Truth be told, they got an old-fashioned offer that was too good to refuse.

Selling high

AARON ELSTEIN

“We remain confident in New York and in our ability to meet the needs of the clean-energy future,” Chief Executive Timothy Cawley said in a statement. “We will continue to advocate for state approval of utility-owned renew

RWE, a German energy firm, paid 38% more on a per-kilowatt basis than when Con Ed bought some of the assets three years ago from Sempra Energy of San Diego, ac cording to debt-research firm CreditSights. That jump in value is thanks to the Biden administration and Congress ex tending tax breaks for green-energy assets in the Infla tion Reduction Act.

Further evidence that Con Ed sold high comes from an RWE shareholder, who complained to Reuters it was “in comprehensible” that the company could spend so much in the U.S. “amidst the biggest energy crisis

Germany has ever seen.”

The chief executive of RWE de scribed the deal as a “major boost” for his firm’s green expansion in the U.S.—which he called “one of the most attractive and fastest-growing markets for renewable energy.”

Selling the assets makes it easier for Con Ed to raise the $15.7 billion needed for capital projects between

now and 2024. It has asked the state to raise electricity rates by 11% and natural gas rates by 18%, in part to help pay for a renewable portfolio focused on solar and battery stor age. In announcing the sale of clean-energy assets, which are lo cated mainly in the Great Plains, Texas and California, Con Ed also canceled plans to raise up to $850

million by selling shares. Presum ably the asset-sale proceeds mean it can borrow less too.

Every dollar paid out in divi dends or debt service is one fewer dollar Con Ed has to meet its goal of delivering 100% green energy by 2040.

That’s why Con Ed sold green as sets for a lot of green. ■

Public transit system is coming to a crossroads

The public transit networks of New York are headed for a fiscal crisis. Ridership has rebounded from the depths of the pandemic but won’t match 2019 highs. In 2025, with federal money drying up, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is facing a $2.5 billion budget deficit, which is 12% of its operat ing budget.

Once again, the gover nor and state lawmakers who determine the MTA’s future will have to act. Gov. Kathy Hochul, run ning for election, has been relatively mum so far on what should be done to fill the looming budget gap. Democrats in the Legisla ture haven’t offered notable solu tions, either.

What makes this moment espe cially challenging is that it will take many years for ridership on the subway and commuter rails to reach prepandemic levels—if it ever gets there.

Commuting patterns might have permanently changed. More sub urban and outer-borough workers are choosing to perform their job fully remotely or on a hybrid sched ule. Private-sector employers are

accommodating them. That is the future the MTA must gird for.

To truly fix the MTA, Hochul—as suming she wins in November, as is forecast—must do what Gov. An drew Cuomo never did: overhaul both how the transportation au thority is funded and how it spends money.

The MTA has always been overwhelmingly re liant on revenue from subway, bus and com muter rail fares—which leaves the authority vul nerable to economic downturns. With reduced subway and rail ridership in the 2020s, the reliance on fare-box revenue might prove disastrous.

The gut reaction to a ridership de cline is to make service cuts, which is what the MTA did in the wake of the 2008 economic crash. But any cuts now would trigger a transit death spiral, with even more riders abandoning public transportation because of slow, unreliable train service. The working class and the poor would be left to a diminished transit system, suffering through cuts that make their commutes all but unbearable.

Happily, the MTA is not yet travel

ing down that road. MTA officials have resisted following the post2008 playbook. They are hoping, rather, that the state delivers more funding and creates a new revenue stream for the authority. Conges tion pricing won’t help here: Funds generated from Manhattan tolls are supposed to be used for much-need ed infrastructure upgrades, not op erating expenses.

Instead, Hochul and state law makers must look to the creation of a new tax or a revival of an old one—the commuter tax, killed in 1999—to ensure budget cuts are off the table.

The future of public transporta tion in New York should not de pend on riders. Rather, the state should step up with tax revenue and increased funding to protect what is a public good, like the po lice and sanitation.

Raising cash probably would be easier than assuring the second re form: fixing the MTA’s spending problem.

It should not be an ideological battle. Cities across the world with stronger labor unions and more generous social safety nets spend far less on transportation and infra structure upgrades than New York City does. It’s not uncommon in cit

ies such as London and Rome to build out entire new train lines on a reasonable time frame and budget.

In New York, it can take decades to complete minor expansions such as the Second Avenue subway, which resulted in three Upper East Side stops on the Q line.

The MTA, meanwhile, spends many billions of dollars on track upgrades and infrastructure fixes, including new elevators.

That is due in part to a broken, noncompetitive bidding process for contracts and outdated work rules. Assuming Hochul is governor next year, she should prioritize hir ing outside experts who have suc cessfully overseen transit projects in Europe or Asia. Their best prac

tices can be imported here.

The MTA can be a world-class transportation agency if politicians care enough.

Quick takes

● To alleviate the housing crisis in the long term, Mayor Eric Ad ams should seek to build as many affordable housing units and sin gle-room-occupancy buildings as possible on city-owned land. It’s time for SROs to make a comeback.

● It’s nice the city is finally mak ing containerized trash a reality and getting garbage bags off the street. The process must be sped up. ■

Ross Barkan is a journalist and author in New York City.

BUCK ENNIS

BUCK ENNIS

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Crain’s is bringing together leaders in transportation to go inside what’s next for getting around in NYC. In this conversation we’ll talk to policymakers and transportation experts about the future of planes, trains, automobiles, as well as innovation in public transportation.

RICK

RUTH FASOLDT

Across the boroughs, there are 1,458 businesses registered as con venience stores that sell tobacco products or are tobacco retailers, according to data from the state’s Department of Health. Of those, 341 are located in Manhattan, Queens has 371, Brooklyn has 431, the Bronx has 216, and Staten Island has 99. These are separate from bo degas, which are registered as gro cery stores.

And with the legalized recre ational marijuana market expected to get off the ground in the state in the coming months, business is bound to start booming for those that choose to add the drug to their inventory.

Kassin-Sabbagh Realty broker Al bert Manopla has a client on Third Avenue on the Upper East Side that is leasing space with a growth plan in mind.

“They are opening it as a smoke shop, and the idea is, if they get their [marijuana] license, then they’ll roll it into what they’re doing,” he said. “I’ve seen people take multiple stores and operate them as smoke shops for now.”

A budding business

Even before the Marijuana Regu lation and Taxation Act was signed into law on March 31, 2021, legaliz ing adult recreational marijuana use, the number of smoke shops in the city was growing rapidly.

An application for a license to run a conditional adult-use retail dis pensary for the formerly incarcerat

permit is $4,000. Those licenses are overseen by the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protec tion and the state Liquor Authority, respectively.

In 2016 there were 1,710 applica tions for cigarette dealer licenses in the city and 1,505 in 2017. By 2018, when the electronic cigarette craze was in full swing, businesses filed 3,357 applications to sell the devices alone, according to data from the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection.

In response to the surge in interest and with the intention of curbing tobacco use, the City Council vot ed in 2018 to cap the number of licenses that would be avail able at 50% of the number already is sued across all com munity districts.

least 500 feet from a school or 200 feet from a house of worship.

During the pandemic, landlords started offering up their spaces at steep discounts. Al-Saeidi’s family began picking up cheap retail sites, mostly in Manhattan, to open new smoke shops.

Between 2020 and 2021, the family expanded its portfolio by 12.

“Places you wished you could have rented before Covid-19 for $20,000 [per month], you got after Covid-19 for $10,000,” he said. “Before you had to beg the land lord. Today the landlord begs you.”

are some neighbors. In September the co-op board at 200 Central Park South sued Ben Ashkenazy, who owns the retail berth at the base of the building, for allegedly allowing a smoke shop to sign a lease there.

1,458

NUMBER of businesses in the five boroughs registered as convenience stores that can sell tobacco

The case has since been discontinued, court re cords show.

At the moment, the state’s Dormitory Author ity is scouting appropriate retail spaces to lease for the first round of weed dispensary licensees.

and Nature

Total No. Copies (Net Press Run) Legitimate Paid and/or Requested Distribution (By Mail and Outside the Mail)

(1) Outside-County Paid/Requested Mail Subscriptions Stated on PS Form 3541.

(Include direct written request from recipient, telemarketing, and Internet requests from recipient, paid subscriptions including nominal rate subscriptions, employer requests, advertiser’s proof copies, and exchange copies.)

(2) In-County Paid/Requested Mail Subscriptions Stated on PS Form 3541.

(Include direct written request from recipient, telemarketing, and Internet requests from recipient, paid subscriptions including nominal rate subscriptions, employer requests, advertiser’s proof copies, and exchange copies.)

(3) Sales Through Dealers and Carriers, Street Vendors, Counter Sales, and Other Paid Distribution Outside USPS®

or

ed, who get to apply first because of equity regulations overseen by the state’s Office of Cannabis Manage ment, which the law created, is $2,000, according to the office. The yearly cost of maintaining the li cense has not been decided yet. The office says it received 903 applica tions for a social equity license.

The Office of Cannabis Manage ment said it also hasn’t decided when to open the application pro cess for others seeking to sell adultuse marijuana, but it will be some time next year. It still has not decided how much those licenses and their maintenance fees will be.

These days a permit to operate a tobacco or cigarette dealership goes for $150 to $200, while a liquor store

Today the number of applications has dropped significant ly. Since 2019 the city has reported an average of 351 ap plications per year for tobacco dealer licenses, 73% of which were for changes in owner ship rather than for new smoke shop businesses.

Shops that sell only accessories and paraphernalia like bongs and not tobacco products, however, don’t need a license to do so, said Department of Consumer and Worker Protection spokesman Mi chael Lanza, so that data is not tracked. Those businesses can apply for a separate marijuana dealer li cense when they become available.

Before they can apply, though, they must show that they’ve either purchased or leased real estate that is eligible for use as a recreation al-use dispensary. That means the financing on the property has no le gal objections to marijuana sales in the building, because the drug is still banned federally, and that it’s at

“A lot of them are really making money on the va por [e-cigarette] prod ucts. It’s a very high-mar gin business that lets them take small spaces at high rents and outcom pete traditional retailers,” Manopla said.

$2K

COST of an application for an adult-use cannabis retail license for a social-equity candidate

Some stores can be as small as 200 square feet, or the size of a college dorm room in Manhattan.

“That’s how they’re ending up in all these spots where you say, ‘How the hell did this even come here?’ ” he said.

Seeds of crime

According to Manopla, some smoke shops, tired of waiting for the cannabis market to officially roll out, have begun selling the product illegally.

In some cases, the stores can be hotspots for crime.

Last month a Lower East Side ca shier was shot while defending a smoke shop from thieves. A similar incident occurred in a shop on the Upper West Side.

Since the pandemic began, crime has picked up in Al-Saeidi’s shops, he said, mostly with people running out with merchandise, but his em ployees also have been robbed at gunpoint.

As such, some commercial land lords are wary of the businesses—as

The state will lease up to 150 spaces, then sub lease them to the dispen sary owners, with the ex pectation of the first marijuana sales taking place by the end of the year, though real estate experts have been skepti cal of that timeline.

No leases have been signed yet, but the state is working with a team at CBRE to get contracts out.

The Dormitory Author ity is “currently in active discussions with well over 50 prop erty owners,” said spokesman Jef frey Gordon, and firms have been selected to perform the construc tion and build-outs.

Passing on puff

Al-Saeidi’s father and uncle, im migrants from Yemen, started the business after they grew tired of running delis. “It’s much easier to run a smoke shop than a deli,” Al-Saeidi said. “You just need one or two employees, and everything is on the shelf. You just have to sell.”

Depending on the store, each one makes between $100,000 and $400,000 per year, he added.

Although vapor products, bongs and instruments to grind up mari juana are the best-selling items in his stores, selling cannabis is off the table for him.

“Weed, at the end of the day, is a drug to us. We’re from the Middle East,” Al-Saeidi said. “The last thing I want my father to find out is that I’m selling weed.”

(4) Requested Copies Distributed by Other Classes of Mail Through the USPS (e.g., First-Class Mail®)

Total Paid and/or Requested Circulation [Sum of 15b. (1), (2), (3), and (4)] Non-requested Distribution (By Mail and Outside the Mail)

(1) Outside County Nonrequested Copies Stated on PS Form 3541 (include sample copies, requests over 3 years old, requests induced by a premium, bulk sales and requests including association requests, names obtained from business directories, lists, and other sources)

(2) Outside County Non-requested Copies Stated on PS Form 3541 (include sample copies, requests over 3 years old, requests induced by a premium, bulk sales and requests including association requests, names obtained from business directories, lists, and other sources)

(3) Non-requested Copies Distributed Through the USPS by Other Classes of Mail (e.g., First-Class Mail®, non requestor copies mailed in excess of 10% limit mailed at Standard Mail® or Package Service rates)

Non-requested Copies

Total

[Sum

15d

Notice of Formation of JPSF Ventures LLC.

Arts. of Org. filed with NY Dept. of State on 8/2/22. Office location: New York County. NY Sec. of State designated agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served, and shall mail process to The LLC, c/o The Clark Estates Inc, One Rockefeller Plaza, 31st Fl, New York, NY 10020.

Purpose: any lawful activity

Notice of Formation of LONDON OAKS

ACQUISITION, LLC

Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 09/20/22.

Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 30 Hudson Yards, 72nd Fl., NY, NY 10001. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207.

Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of CHARTER VILLAGE PRESERVATION GP, LLC

Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 09/20/22.

Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 30 Hudson Yards, 72nd Fl., NY, NY 10001. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207.

Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Formation of EP Pilates LLC

filed with SSNY on 07/13/22.

Office: NY County. Business address: 245 E 93rd St. #14F, NY, NY 10128. SSNY designated as agent upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail a copy of any process against the LLC to registered agent: United States Corporation Agents, Inc. at 7014 13th Ave. Suite 202, Brooklyn, NY, 11228.

Purpose: Any lawful purpose.

Notice of Formation of Construction Bae LLC.

Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 06/28/2022. Office: Brooklyn County. United States Corporation Agents, Inc. designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to United States Corporation Agents, Inc. at 7014 13TH Avenue, Suite 202, Brooklyn, NY 11228. The principal address of the LLC is 557 Grand Concourse, Suite 6046, Bronx, NY 10451. Purpose: Any lawful purpose.

Notice of Formation of TOMPKINS TERRACE HOUSING

CLASS B, LLC

Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 10/03/22. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 30 Hudson Yards, 72nd Fl., NY, NY 10001. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207.

Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Contact Suzanne Janik

PUBLIC & LEGAL NOTICES

Notice of Formation of 3923 CARPENTER AVE II LLC

Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 06/30/22. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: Zachary Hering, 10 Cuttermill Rd., Ste. 400, Great Neck, NY 11021. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC at the addr. of its princ. office. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of CANOPY STAFFING LLC

Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 08/08/22.

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, 307 5th Ave., 12th Fl., NY, NY 10016. Purpose: Staffing services business.

Notice of Formation of TOMPKINS TERRACE

DEVELOPER, LLC

Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 10/03/22. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 30 Hudson Yards, 72nd Fl., NY, NY 10001. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207.

Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of 3923 CARPENTER AVE I LLC

Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 06/30/22.

Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: Zachary Hering, 10 Cuttermill Rd., Ste. 400, Great Neck, NY 11021. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC at the addr. of its princ. office. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of HER INCLUDING THEM LLC

Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 02/11/22.

Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543.

Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of CHARTER VILLAGE DEVELOPER, LLC

Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 09/20/22.

Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 30 Hudson Yards, 72nd Fl., NY, NY 10001. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207.

Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Qualification of BEDFORD BRIDGE LLC

Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 08/26/22.

Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 08/22/22. Princ. office of LLC: c/o Bridge Funding Inc., 641 Lexington Ave., 20th Fl., NY, NY 10022. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. DE addr. of LLC: 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808-1674. Cert. of Form. filed with DE Secy. of State, 401 Federal St., #4, Dover, DE 19901.

Purpose: Any lawful activity.

MCGOMER REALTY LLC.

Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 08/25/22. 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, 139 Centre Street, Unit 818, New York, NY 10013.

Purpose: Any lawful purpose.

Notice of Formation of TOMPKINS TERRACE

HOUSING GP, LLC

Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 10/03/22.

Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 30 Hudson Yards, 72nd Fl., NY, NY 10001. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207.

Purpose: Any lawful activity.

BILLS

technically ahead of where Albany usually is at this point of the year, having signed about 56.5%, said Mike Murphy, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Andrea StewartCousins.

Murphy said that due to the huge volume of bills passed this year, the 438 outstanding bills are compara-

● And the extension of the eligibility period for child care bene ts S9029A/A10209.

Some stakeholders are growing impatient.

into law.”

“THE BILL SIGNING IS WHERE PUBLIC POLICY AND POLITICS MEET”

Yvonne Taylor, vice president of the not-for-pro t Seneca Lake Guardian corporation, supports the passage of the cryptomining moratorium due to the limits it places on the amount of greenhouse-gas emissions set o by cryptomining power plants. e bill has generated its fair share of opposition—notably from Mayor Eric Adams, who told Crain’s in June that he hoped Hochul would veto the moratorium.

Avi Small, a spokesman for the governor, said Hochul is reviewing the legislation for each of the bills listed here.

Rules and regulations

Assemblyman Harvey Epstein of Manhattan blamed any delay on the complications involved with the chaptering process for legislation.

ble to the number that remained unsigned at this stage last year.

Hochul has signed a total of 1,036 bills since taking o ce in August 2021, according to her team.

On the agenda

High-pro le legislation that either has not yet been sent to the governor or has not been requested includes:

● Contractors’ bailout (S8844/ A10109)

● Upstate cryptomining moratorium (S6486/A7389C)

● Salary-range disclosures for businesses with four or more employees (S9427/A101477)

● A statewide ban on animal sales in pet stores (S1130/A4283)

“ e moratorium isn’t anti-crypto; it’s pro-planet, and the industry will clearly survive,” Taylor said. “Gov. Hochul needs to look at the facts, ignore the lies and sign the bill now.”

Michael Gianaris of Queens, the deputy Senate majority leader, offered a more measured response when asked about the status of his legislation that would outlaw the sale of puppies in pet stores across the state.

“With so many good animals in need of rescue, there is no need for abusive puppy mills to supply pet stores,” Gianaris said. “I am proud to have authored this important bill and am hopeful Gov. Hochul will join the strong bipartisan supporters in the Legislature by signing it

After the session ends each June, the governor’s team groups di erent bills into topics or issues to take on separately; easier bills are signed rst, while more complex ones are held until the end of the year, Epstein said.

HOCHUL has signed a total of 1,036 bills since taking of ce.

“Sometimes the governor requests a bill. Sometimes it is being sent. If she requests a bill, that means the conversations are likely to have already happened,” he said.

Hochul has 10 days to either sign or veto a bill from the time it is sent to her desk. It is usually up to leadership in the chamber that rst passes the bill to decide when it heads to the governor’s desk.

“When bills are controversial, behind the scenes they’re negotiating chapter amendments,” said Bruce Gyory, a longtime Albany analyst.

“It’s ‘I’m not going to veto these bills if you make these changes.’ And it’s direct negotiations with

legislators and indirect negotiations with groups who are for or against a bill.”

ere are political considerations involved with any bill signing.

Hochul is currently locked in a gubernatorial race with Rep. Lee Zeldin of Long Island. Although recent polls show her comfortably ahead of the Long Island congressman, Hochul could be waiting until after the election to sign bills that involve pay transparency, state contracting and puppy mills—measures that have numerous interested parties and regions involved in their success or failure.

“ e bill signing is where public

policy and politics meet,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic political consultant. “At a time when you’re several weeks away from the election, you don’t want that meeting to be a collision.”

Gyory said the Legislature tends to cut the governor some slack in an election year, recognizing that most of the bill signings will happen between Election Day in November and the December holidays.

“You don’t want to jam them up and have them and their sta go through the painstaking analysis,” he said. “It’s a little slower whenever it’s a gubernatorial election year. It’s about institutional respect.” ■

Join us to hear from Andrew Kimball, President & CEO of the New York City Economic Development Corp., interviewed live on stage by Crain’s New York Business Editor-in-Chief Cory Schouten. Find out how the agency plans to drive the next round of corporate investment in New York, which industries it is prioritizing, where the city economy is heading, and how the EDC envisions the future for public-private partnerships.

Andrew Kimball President & CEO

New York City Economic Development Corporation

COHEN says she helped start her co-op’s garden in the 1980s.

JUDY

COHEN

BORN Milwaukee RESIDES Chelsea

EDUCATION Master’s in teaching English as a second language, Hunter College

GROUND FLOOR Cohen used to be education director at local 89-22-1 of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, which funded Penn South.

GOOD SIGN As a labor organizer, she met deaf members at factories who said the union wasn’t doing anything for them. She noti ed her manager, who said the local had no deaf members. Cohen found 35, and the union started providing a sign-language interpreter at events. Soon other unions across the city followed.

GOING POSTAL Cohen now serves as a workplace mediator to resolve con icts between employees and supervisors. She often handles disputes involving postal workers.

Making the grass greener for all

Penn South resident seeks to mend fences over an exclusive co-op garden

BY AARON ELSTEIN

One late-summer afternoon, Penn South resident Judy Cohen decided to visit her co-op’s garden.

“Hi!” she said to two neighbors leaving the place. “Can I come in?”

“Sorry,” one hissed as she locked the gate. “It’s a private garden.”

Cohen knew that. When she helped start the garden in the 1980s, patches were rotated every two years so all 2,800 households at the Chelsea apartment complex would get an opportunity to till the soil. But somewhere along the line, patches stopped turning over and became their current holders’ permanent possession.

Today, only about 100 households have access to Penn South’s 5,000-square-foot garden on West 25th Street, Cohen said. Tomatoes and sun owers grow, plus there’s a grill, benches and two picnic tables under a cherry tree. Over time keys

to the garden became scarcer than those for Gramercy Park, where entry is restricted to holders of the 383 keys.

“ e garden was never meant to be a private club,” Cohen, 70, said.

Affordable oasis

At its dedication in 1962, President John F. Kennedy called Penn South, which sits between West 23rd and West 26th streets and between Eighth and Ninth avenues, an “oasis of a ordable, not-for-pro t housing in the middle of a real estate boom in Manhattan.” e complex provides “limited equity” housing, meaning apartments can’t be sold at a pro t. Residents, called cooperators, tend to stay until they die, and the place is a naturally occurring retirement community, or NORC. A sign on the garden gate calls it an “intergenerational garden” because it was envisioned that younger residents would share the labor with senior citizens.

Cohen mobilized 50 neighbors this year who petitioned the Penn South board to make the garden more accessible by restoring the rotation system. She said 250 families seek a patch, and the wait is 10 years long.

e board seemed to wish Cohen would just go away.

“As the issue has been addressed on many occasions,” it told her in a January letter, “we consider the matter closed.”

But Cohen’s activism seems to be paying o . Ambur Nicosia, who grew up in Penn South, became board president two years ago and wants to x the garden problem.

“It’s an issue, absolutely,” Nicosia said.

Penn South has designated space across the street for a second garden. e footprint is 20% smaller, based on calculations by a Crain’s reporter with a tape measure, who estimates the space would t up to 75 garden plots. It’s a promising site,

“GARDENS ARE WHERE NEIGHBORS BECOME FRIENDS. THAT SHOULD NOT BE A PRIVILEGE ENJOYED BY THE FEW”

but so far the only new thing that’s gone up is a padlocked wire fence. Nicosia said there were Covid-related delays but it should open next spring on the rotation system, and there could even be a third garden.

“Gardens are where neighbors become friends,” Cohen summed up. “ at should not be a privilege enjoyed by the few.”

BUCK ENNIS