Crain's New York Business

ASKED & ANSWERED Creating paths for New Yorkers to launch tech startups PAGE 10

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FEBRUARY 28, 2022

WHO OWNS THE BLOCK A luxury housing frenzy takes hold in Gowanus PAGE 4

HEALTH EQUITY

AFTER THE HOSPITAL LEAVES TOWN

Marginalized communities lose health care access as state moves to close facilities, cut costs

BY MAYA KAUFMAN

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KAREN FLEMING with a photo of her mother, Lithia Panton-Moore, who was a longtime patient at Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center

BUCK ENNIS

n the weeks before Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center in Brooklyn closed as a full-service hospital, in the summer of 2021, the ceiling sprung leaks that sent water trickling into the lobby. Patients and health care workers had to navigate around garbage cans set out to catch the drips.

“They had stopped fixing things. They had stopped replacing broken equipment,” said Julie Keefe, a nurse who worked with respiratory patients. “We were trying our best, but it just felt like total disinvestment.”

Kingsbrook served a largely Caribbean American community on the border of Crown Heights and Flatbush, where the majority of residents are people of color. Its patients were largely uninsured or relied on Medicare or Medicaid. That typically spells financial trouble for hospitals, which depend on relatively higher private insurance payments to stay afloat. A 2016 analysis of five struggling Brooklyn hospitals by Northwell Health, the state’s largest health care provider, projected that Kingsbrook would need $50 million in state funding that fiscal year just to stay open.

The study yielded no miracles for the facility. The state, which regulates and helps fund private hospitals, directed Kingsbrook See EQUITY on page 16

INTERNATIONAL

New Yorkers find small ways to support Ukraine

BY BRIAN PASCUS

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feeling of disbelief and sadness pervaded key institutions in the East Village’s Ukrainian American community following Russia’s full-scale invasion of their home country.

“Americans told us it would happen, but it

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was so ridiculous that we didn’t want to believe it. Now it’s become a reality,” said Nataliya Turchak, a teller at the Ukrainian National Federal Credit Union. “We’re in disbelief.”

Hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 200,000-soldier military commenced a multiprong attack on Ukraine, the historical

© 2022 CRAIN COMMUNICATIONS INC.

community of Little Ukraine, tucked along Second and Third avenues in the East Village, became the local nexus for understanding the conflict and learning what Americans could do to help. Ukrainian restaurants and butcher shops were filled with TV news camera crews, and banks and credit unions fielded dozens of calls each hour from local resi-

dents worried about their relatives and seeking to send funds.

“We have many members concerned about the situation in general, their family, the safety of their money and how they can send money,” said Bohdan Kurczak, president and See SUPPORT on page 3

BUSINESS SPOTLIGHT

THE LIST

CANDLE COMPANY’S SLOW-BURN EXPANSION

Manhattan’s largest office leases

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HOSPITALITY

Hotels raise hopes with highest occupancy of the year LEISURE AND BUSINESS TRAVEL SHOW SIGNS OF RECOVERY

BY CARA EISENPRESS

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wo weeks ago the city’s hotels hosted the highest number of visitors since the start of the year, perhaps evidence that 2022 will shepherd in a tourism recovery.

January and February are typically the city’s slowest months for hotel stays, according to STR, which tracks the industry.

During the week that ended Feb. 19—before the long holiday weekend—occupancy averaged 56.5%, and it hit 69.7% for the weekend of Feb. 12, STR said. That full-week occupancy rate was up 40% from early January, when staff shortages and event cancellations amid a surge of Covid-19 cases pushed occupancy down to 40.3%.

Before worries about the omicron Covid-19 wave upset the fledgling recovery, city hotels had reached their post–March 2020 peak of 81.5% occupancy for the week that ended Dec. 11.

The city’s accommodation sector has been among the slowest industries to rebound, as cautious hospitality operators waited until demand steadied to rehire workers.

Employment at accommodation and food services companies was still 33% lower in December than it was in February 2020, according to a new analysis by economist James Parrott of the New School. That is

Impressive bookings ahead

GETTY IMAGES

Revenue per room still down

ed in the fall that there would be 57.8 million visitors this year, down from 66.6 million in 2019. It now expects 56.5 million tourists this year.

In January 2019 and January 2020, by comparison, occupancy was 71% before jumping 5 or 6 percentage points in February. Last year the highest monthly occupancy for the year was 72.4%.

THE CROWNE PLAZA HY36 in Midtown triple the size of the 11% loss nationally, he wrote.

The dragging jobs recovery points to the reality that even this 2022 occupancy high point is a measured victory, according to Vijay Dandapani, Hotel Association of New York president and chief executive officer.

That is visible in a different metric Dandapani follows—revenue per available room, known as revPAR. For the week ending Feb. 19, revPAR was $105, up from $102 the previous week; in February of 2019 and 2020, it was nearly $150.

“Before the omicron variant delayed a comeback, conservative es-

timates projected a full recovery for the hotel industry in 2025,” said Dandapani, “and now it could be even longer. Make no mistake: Hotels are struggling.”

The slow start caused NYC & Company, the city’s official travel agency, to revise its projection for the year downward. It had predict-

There is impressive demand looking forward, according to hotel general manager John Beck of the Crowne Plaza HY36. He said 17 days in April are already fully booked, and he projected that the hotel will be above 90% occupancy for that month, driven by group bookings for both leisure and business travel.

In November Gov. Kathy Hochul allocated $250 million to tourism recovery, including marketing the city to potential visitors, supporting business-focused travel and granting $5,000 per additional employee to companies that brought back laid-off workers or hired others. ■

TRANSPORTATION

MTA to test subway platform doors at three stations in the wake of a deadly push CONFERENCE CALLOUT

APRIL 27 COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE NETWORKING EVENT New York City Comptroller Brad Lander joins Ron Moelis of L+M Development Partners and Brenda Rosen of nonprofit developer Breaking Ground for a discussion on affordable housing policy and its implications for developers. The April 27 event will cover what’s next for New York’s 421-a program.

NEW YORK ATHLETIC CLUB Time: 5 to 7 p.m.

180 Central Park South, ninth floor CrainsNewYork.com/affordablehousing

T

he Metropolitan Transportation Authority will install barriers that block access to the subway tracks at three stations, the agency’s leader said in a TV interview Wednesday.

The MTA will pilot the doors at the Times Square station, in Queens at the Sutphin Boulevard–Archer Avenue–JFK Airport station and at the Third Avenue station in Manhattan, according to Janno Lieber, the MTA's chief executive. He did not offer a timeline for when the barriers would be in place.

“It’s going to take a while,” Lieber told NY1. “We’re going to put the money together, which is a little complicated. But our goal is to try out these technologies at different

places in the system.”

The MTA has long resisted calls to block access to the tracks—citing costs and the need to focus resources on other improvements. But calls for adding protective barriers intensified last month after Michelle Alyssa Go was pushed onto the tracks at Times Square and killed.

Could work in some stations An MTA-commissioned report released in 2020 concluded that only 27% of the 472 subway stations could be outfitted with platform barrier doors, at an estimated cost of $7 billion. Lieber acknowledged the barricades will not work in many places and said that a working group within the MTA is considering other technologies to prevent people from entering the tracks.

CORRECTIONS ■ The God’s Honest Truth is a late-night TV show hosted by Lenard “Charlamagne tha God” McKelvey. The show’s format was incorrect in Notable Black Leaders, published Feb. 21.

■ The unit price for No. 4D at the Northern Lights condo under the original offering plan for buyers who came from outside the building was $406,235. The figure was incorrect in Who Owns the Block, published Feb. 14.

BLOOMBERG

BY RYAN DEFFENBAUGH

“We’re also going to be piloting new technologies to detect track incursion using thermal technology, using laser technology,” he added, “so we can know quicker when people get on the tracks and hopefully interdict that kind of behavior.”

Mayor Eric Adams offered support for the state-controlled MTA's plan. “Installing subway platform

doors where possible is a common-sense step we can take towards making the subways safer,” Adams said in a press statement Wednesday. “I applaud the MTA for testing this idea, and my administration will work in partnership with them to evaluate their effectiveness and expand where appropriate.” ■

Vol. 38, No. 8, February 28, 2022—Crain’s New York Business (ISSN 8756-789X) is published weekly, except for no issue on 1/3/22, 7/4/22, 7/18/22, 8/1/22, 8/15/22, 8/29/22, 11/28/22 and the last issue in December. Crain Communications Inc., 685 Third Ave., New York, NY 10017. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to: Crain’s New York Business, Circulation Department, PO Box 433279, Palm Coast, FL 32143-9681.

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2 | CRAIN’S NEW YORK BUSINESS | FEBRUARY 28, 2022

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REAL ESTATE

Sanctions could affect Russia’s local real estate dealings

PROTESTERS in Times Square show support for Ukraine.

BY EDDIE SMALL AND BETH TREFFEISEN

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he sanctions against Russia that President Joe Biden announced last Thursday in response to the country’s invasion of Ukraine could make it significantly harder for Russia’s citizens to invest in New York real estate, even as it remains extremely unclear and difficult to tell how much of that Russians have been doing in recent years.

The new sanctions will target more than $1 trillion in assets in Russia by blocking four major banks from accessing their assets in America, Biden said.

The sanctioned institutions include VTB, the AMOUNT in second-largest Russian American assets bank, which has more held by four than $250 billion in asmajor Russian sets, he said. banks “We will limit Russia’s ability to do business in dollars, euros, pounds and yen to be part of the global economy. It will limit their ability to do that,” Biden said.

The Russian government is also blocked from raising money from U.S. and European investors, and the new sanctions will apply the same restrictions to Russia's largest state-owned enterprises that have assets exceeding $1.4 trillion, Biden said.

The U.S. government is not imposing restrictions on Swift transactions, which allows international banks to transfer assets.

However, “the sanctions we impose exceed Swift,” Biden said. “They are profound sanctions.”

BUCK ENNIS

$1T

SUPPORT FROM PAGE 1

CEO of Self Reliance Federal Credit Union.

“People are opening their hearts and wallets.

They want to help.”

Kurczak said the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America recently opened an account for people to donate funds to the country for humanitarian reasons. He said the credit union has been able to send money to Ukraine, but the country’s banking system is so unstable that there’s no guarantee the money can be taken out.

Turchak echoed that assessment of the system and said it’s unclear if Ukraine’s financial institutions will remain up and running.

“Ukraine is still a cash society. There’s not a lot of trust in the banking system,” Kurczak said, adding that multiple banks in cities across the country are now closed. “One of the biggest banks in the country is people’s mattresses.”

Community investment Self Reliance, founded in 1951, says it is the oldest branch of the 12 Ukrainian American credit unions in the United States, which collectively serve 100,000 members. With more than $1.5 billion in assets and 15,000 members, Self Reliance uses some of its annual profits to invest $800,000 to $1.3 million in

the Little Ukraine community each year, Kurczak said. The money has funded local Ukrainian Saturday schools, churches, museums and youth groups.

The Ukrainian American credit unions use bilingual employees, who help bridge the divide between the U.S. banking system and the primarily immigrant client base, which has increased since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. New York City is now home to an estimated 150,000 Ukrainians.

Many Ukrainians new to the city have used Self Reliance and the Ukrainian National Federal Credit Union to set up checking, savings and retirement accounts; open debit cards; and take out mortgages and car loans.

“Right now it’s hard to come to work and concentrate because of the fear of what’s going to happen to our world and families,” Kurczak said. “This is the 21st century, and to allow a sovereign country to be taken over like this is catastrophic.”

Neighborly support Other parts of Little Ukraine are experiencing a similar mix of sadness and disbelief, along with efforts toward generosity and neighborly support.

At famous Ukrainian restaurant Veselka, at Second Avenue and East Ninth Street, customers lined up in the cold, waiting to enter the crowded dining room. Owner Jason

Birchard said people have been sliding supportive messages under his door, including anti-Putin platitudes.

“We’ve had a full house early on. People are very supportive and sympathetic, and the staff are very concerned about their family members,” Birchard said. “But I’ve broken down. This is unbelievable.”

Inside the Ukrainian Museum on East Sixth Street, gloomy faces mixed with the silent stares of security guards and employees.

Their expressions communicated a feeling of helplessness fed by smartphone news reports. Maria Shust, director of the museum, spoke from her second-floor office with tears in her eyes and a voice that barely reached above a whisper.

Shust noted that the museum had held several exhibitions recently to educate visitors about Ukraine’s independence from Russia, which was first gained in 1918. She spoke about the tragedy of “what one person can start,” and compared Putin’s invasion to earlier acts of aggression by Hitler, Mussolini and Napoleon.

“Somehow each century has a tyrant that moves history forward where millions of people die,” she said, “and they have no remorse or feeling of what they’re doing to other people.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen next,” Shust added. “It may not stop in Ukraine.” ■

Declining interest?

A few high-profile Russians were among the buyers of luxury real estate properties in the city in the 2010s. The Observer reported in 2011 that fertilizer magnate Dmitry Rybolovlev purchased an $88 million condo at 15 Central Park West, and the New York Post reported that composer Igor Krutoy bought a $48 million condo at the Plaza that same year.

Russian activity in New York real estate appeared to decline following the 2014 vote in Crimea to join Russia, which also led to a round of sanctions against the country from the U.S. But concrete data on how many properties in the city Russians have continued to purchase is hard to come by.

The country was not listed among the top five foreign buyers in the National Association of Realtors’ 2021 international transactions report, nor was it in the top 20 international markets for New York tourists in 2018, according to the Travel & Tourism trend report for that year from NYC & Company.

Both of these would indicate a waning interest in and/or ability to buy properties in the city.

“I haven’t had a Russian buyer in the last, probably, eight years,” said Victoria Shtainer, a broker at Compass who works with domestic and international buyers. “They haven’t been here in New York or in Miami in a very long time.” ■

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WHO OWNS THE BLOCK

Developers are off to the races to replace Gowanus Canal warehouses with luxe housing

318 NEVINS ST.

Several big residential projects will be jockeying for tenants in 2024

BY C.J. HUGHES 480 UNION ST. The building that stretches the length of this block in many ways epitomizes the area’s changes. An 1889 brick section that was once a brass foundry is now the Green Building, a wedding venue with a 4,000-square-foot main room that can fit a 160-person dinner party. Also on site is the headquarters of ExpertTech USA, a TV and stereo installer. And the bit of the property that grazes the canal is an outpost of Pig Beach Barbecue, a bare-bones seasonal restaurant that opened in 2015. A local limited-liability company whose managers include Long Island developer Barry Leon sold the site in 2014 for $12.3 million. The buyers included Leon Goldenberg, a real estate executive who hosts a popular WSNR radio show on Saturdays aimed at the Orthodox Jewish community.

months.

In November the city rezoned 82 blocks around it to open the door to more apartments in the heavily industrial area—which came as a relief to housing developers who had amassed land in the neighborhood for years.

At the same time, the $1.5 billion cleanup of the waterway that was triggered by the canal’s designation as a Superfund site in 2010 is finally kicking into high gear. And along with improved water quality have come repairs to bridges over the 100-foot-wide canal.

365 BOND ST. Now, as if a starter Among the first to see the potential of the area for large new apartment has fired a gun, develbuildings was luxury home–builder Toll Brothers, which went into contract opers in the neighon this site and others in the mid-2000s and successfully pushed to get borhood seem off to a strip along the canal rezoned to allow residences in 2009. But the next the races. year, after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency declared the canal “Normally you a Superfund site because of its levels of mercury, lead and copper, Toll might see developbacked out of the deal, worried that a cleanup would take too long. In a ment spread out over sense, the company was right. After years of prep work, the cleanup began time, but you are seein earnest in 2020. The site, which once stored gas products, proved irreing it compressed sistible for the Lightstone Group, which snapped it up in an estate sale in here, at least in the first wave,” said Brian 2013 for $19 million. Today it’s home to a 12-story, 429-unit rental buildEzra, a founding parting with a roof deck, a children’s playroom and a waterfront esplanade. A ner of Avery Hall, a studio in mid-February was listed at $3,179 per month; the building was developer with three offering a concession of a free month of rent on a 12-month lease.

Gowanus projects underway. “It’s a unique set of circumstances.”

And it’s a potentially competitive one. Because construction timelines are somewhat fixed—about two years for a large rental project—many developments will be jockeying for tenants at the same time in 2024.

Along with Avery Hall, a contender in Gowanus is the CARROLL STREET BRIDGE team of Charney Cos. and This 26-foot-wide span, which was completTavros Capital. The team also ed in 1889, according to the Department of has three projects planned, Transportation, is among the oldest bridges and one is a relatively recent in the city. It’s also retractable, meaning it undertaking, suggesting can extend and compress like a telescope. there’s more upside to come.

In 1987 the city declared the span—one In December, the partners, who previously developed of five over the 1.8-mile-long canal—to be the Dime rental in Williamsa landmark. Therefore, whatever developburg, spent $102 million for ment revamps the industrial area, the bridge 318 Nevins St., a full-block should retain its old-fashioned look. But it canal-side warehouse where could be a while before residents can cross food trucks once were stored. the blue bridge again. As part of the process A 660-unit apartment buildto mop up and cap the canal’s pollutants, ing tentatively called Nevins the bridge’s below-water supports are being Wharf is set to go there. repaired. Cleanup crews also are warning But those firms are hardly residents that nearby Union Street Bridge, alone. Other developers exa 29-foot-wide span that dates to 1905, pected to ride the wave becould be stuck in the open position for long cause they have long owned periods to make way for cleanup boats. parcels in Gowanus include Crown Acquisitions, Domain Cos. and Property Markets Group.

“We are extraordinarily excited,” said Sam Charney, principal of Charney Cos. Charney, who said his company expects to start working on Nevins Wharf by April, said the neighborhood has “a lot of industrial and artistic character.” ■

318 NEVINS ST. A full-block site with a low-slung warehouse ringed by parking lots, this property on the canal was purchased in December by the team of Charney Cos. and Tavros Capital for $102 million from Property Markets Group, which owns several nearby parcels. A 660unit, two-towered project is planned at 318 Nevins, and about 165 of the apartments are to be offered at below-market rents. Property Markets bought the 102,000-square-foot site in 2012 for $14 million from Joyce Kjellgren. Overall, the neighborhood’s rezoning is expected to create 8,500 apartments, 3,000 of them affordable.

514 UNION ST. An apartment complex is planned for this halfblock-long low-slung industrial site that once contained a grocery warehouse and a storage facility for cast-off computers. The project, from Avery Hall, a Brooklyn-focused developer, and Gemdale USA, a California firm, is aiming for a 300-unit rental building with 40,000 square feet of stores on a portion of the site. Demolitions have begun. A popular tenant, Royal Palms Shuffleboard, a 10-court attraction that charges $50 per hour, will stay on, the developers say, as will a branch of ice-cream chain Ample Hills Creamery. Avery and Gemdale acquired the site in two transactions before the rezoning. In 2019 they bought the bulk of it, a 36,000-square-foot berth, for $44.1 million from Francois Barthelemy, records show. He paid $17 million in 2014.

The smaller piece was snapped up last year for $3.2 million.

204 FOURTH AVE.

420 CARROLL ST. A 39,513-square-foot canal-side site once home to a company handling water mains and sewers, according to an old sign, this trapezoid of a property is now owned by the Domain Cos., a developer with presences in New Orleans and New York. Domain bought it in 2018 for $47.5 million from Property Markets, which grabbed it for $9 million in 2012. But the property, which is next to the Carroll Street Bridge, has generated interest from many developers in the past two decades, based on the number of transactions in public records. Previously, Domain was the sponsor of Eleven33, a rental in Greenpoint with 210 market-rate and affordable units built at a cost of $68 million in 2014. At No. 420, Domain is planning a two-towered complex with 360 apartments that should begin construction this summer, a company spokeswoman said.

Holding properties for years can be expensive, but betting big on the Gowanus rezoning seems poised to pay off. Avery Hall, one of the more aggressive firms in the area, is planning a 193-unit rental building here in partnership with Gindi Capital. The site’s former gas station is now gone.

A similar Avery project is planned for 272 Fourth Ave., at Carroll Street. It is slated to get a 125-unit apartment building in conjunction with Declaration Partners, a firm with connections to the Carlyle Group.

BUCK ENNIS, GOOGLE MAPS

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he Gowanus Canal—once a lifeline for industry, later a punchline because of its foul smells—has had a big few

4 | CRAIN’S NEW YORK BUSINESS | FEBRUARY 28, 2022

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2/25/22 5:20 PM

OK, who celebrates fifth?

Bank of America does.

For the fifth year in a row, Bank of America has shared the success of our company with our employees with a valuable Sharing Success compensation award.

To recognize the team’s hard work, this award is over and above regular compensation. And this year, we’re proud to commemorate a first — nearly all these awards are in Bank of America stock.

That means 97% of our employees shared $1 billion worth of Bank of America stock this year, above regular compensation.

“I want to thank my teammates here in New York City for their continued hard work and dedication.

While other banks might make awards like ours every once in a while, I’m proud to work for an organization that has rewarded our employees for five years in a row.

Because success is better when it’s shared.”

José Tavarez President, Bank of America New York City

What would you like the power to do?® Learn more about how we’re investing in our local communities at bankofamerica.com/metroNY

Bank of America, N.A. Member FDIC. Equal Credit Opportunity Lender © 2022 Bank of America Corporation. All rights reserved.

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ON POLITICS

City shouldn’t count on office workers returning changed—likely forever.

No amount of complaining will change that. What Adams should do is propose a reimagining of Manhattan’s commercial corridors, focusing more aggressively on tourism and housing. Getting out-ofstate and international travelers back here is paramount.

There are no shortage of attractions in Midtown, and the Adams administration should think creatively about other ways to lure visitors. Another world-class or offbeat museum? Indoor theme parks? Vacant space presents opportunities.

The recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic is likely to be more daunting than the struggle back from 9/11, but there are clear lessons to borrow from the revival of the Financial District.

The aftermath of the terrorist attacks accelerated the conversion of commercial office space into residential buildings. Free art exhibitions and public concerts followed, as Lower Manhattan became a place where people could both work and live. The sheer number of residents who now live around Wall Street and Tribeca has made the area more resilient to the pandemic downturn.

Last year the state Legislature passed a bill, now signed into law, that created a government-financed program to convert distressed hotels and offices into af-

ADAMS

AP PHOTO

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wo weeks ago, as Mayor of the foot traffic they used to enjoy.

Eric Adams was presenting The crowds, on a given weekday, his first preliminary bud- are missing.

Some of that will change when get, he made yet another plea to city business leaders: Force tourism returns in full—which no your workers to return to their doubt will be buoyed when Adams decides, as Boston’s mayor did, to Manhattan offices. phase out the city vaccine “Now is the time for us requirement for indoor to get back,” Adams said activities. On remote at City Hall. “I’m hoping work, though, Adams can within the next few weeks do nothing but continue the CEOs map out a real to wield his bully pulpit— plan of ‘This is when you and here, he will be batneed to come back.’ tling against trends that “Let’s start out with a are inevitable. three-day workweek, to Instead of bemoaning a let people see how safe it reality that won’t be alis to come back to work.

ROSS BARKAN tered anytime soon, AdThen we cycle back into a ams should offer a serious five-day week.”

It’s a message Adams has been vision for a post-pandemic Manrepeating since he took office, join- hattan. ing with Gov. Kathy Hochul, who has already urged the end of remote A hybrid future work. In January Adams argued Large corporations like remote that “low skill” workers needed work because they’ve learned effiwhite-collar professionals to return ciency doesn’t suffer and profits to Midtown and downtown to save don’t dip if some of the workforce local economies. At the state Dem- stays home. Long commutes can be ocratic Convention, he railed mentally and physically taxing, and against workers willing to go to a giving more workers time with their nightclub on Sunday but not show friends and families is a goal all up at the office Monday. moral employers should pursue.

Adams isn’t wrong: The ManhatAt the same time, as commercial tan of old is not back, and part of leases expire, companies will realthe challenge is the lack of office ize they can save many hundreds of workers making daily commutes. thousands, if not millions, of dolRestaurants have gone out of busi- lars downsizing their office space or ness, shoeshine stands sit empty, forgoing it altogether. Workers’ and food carts hustle for a fraction commuting patterns have

fordable housing. The Housing Our Neighbors With Dignity Act, or HONDA, was a vital step toward the goal of saving the commercial strips pummeled by the pandemic. Yet Adams, a HONDA supporter, has said almost nothing about the law since becoming mayor.

No major conversion projects have been announced. No shovels appear to be in the ground.

Adams has the power to deliver and has chosen, for reasons unclear, to ignore work the Legislature has already done.

The mayor has time to recalibrate, but he shouldn’t hesitate much longer. The frail local economy can’t afford more months of stubbornly high unemployment and desolate street corners.

Manhattan can be reinvented if

Adams cares enough to dream.

Short takes ● This fall pay attention to Long Island. Three redrawn House seats will be open, and state Senate seats might be deceptively competitive, with Republicans poised to perform well in the midterms. ● Why is Adams so intent on giving anti-LGBTQ bigot Fernando Cabrera a job in government? It's an odd use of political capital. ● With Philadelphia, Washington and Boston readying to end their vaccine passports for indoor activities, New York City will soon stand alone, defending a policy outliving its usefulness. ■

Ross Barkan is an author and journalist from New York City.

TRANSPORTATION

Revel, operator of Tesla taxis and shared e-mopeds, raises $126 million to power electric-vehicle charging

R

evel—known for its light-blue shared electric mopeds and ride-hail Teslas—has raised $126 million in new investment from a group of backers that includes BlackRock and Toyota.

The Brooklyn company hopes to use the funding to tackle what co-founder and CEO Frank Reig called the chicken-and-egg problem of shifting the world away from gasoline-powered cars to electric vehicles: “There is no EV infrastructure because there are no EVs.

would serve the taxi and moped services the company operates.

Revel last summer opened its first fast-charging “superhub” in Bedford-Stuyvesant. The hub features 25 charging ports, where owners of any type of electric vehicle can pay to power up their car, typically within 20 minutes for a 100-mile range.

REIG SAYS Revel’s e-mopeds are safer to use in car traffic than bicycles.

‘Light-bulb moment’

Transit deserts Revel burst on the city’s startup and transportation scene in 2018 with its network of shared e-mopeds, which started with a pilot of about 70 vehicles in Queens. The mopeds provided a new transportation option, often in transit deserts, and grew quickly in popularity. A series of three fatal crashes in July 2020, however, prompted Revel to pause its operations for about a month to work with city officials on safety changes. One of the new rules requires riders to take a selfie proving they are wearing a helmet before starting their trip.

“THERE ARE NO EVS BECAUSE THERE IS NO EV INFRASTRUCTURE” There are no EVs because there is no EV infrastructure.”

With the new funding, Revel’s Series B, the company hopes to solve that problem by expanding EV charging infrastructure in New York and other large cities—which also

said. The company also operates in Miami, San Francisco and Washington.

Revel also rents electric-assist bicycles, which it delivers to customers’ doors in New York.

BUCK ENNIS

BY RYAN DEFFENBAUGH

Last year Revel launched a ride-hailing service with 50 Tesla taxis. It has provided about 100,000 rides since its August launch, Reig said. Revel had to earn approval from the city Taxi and Limousine Commission to launch the service,

as the city has capped for-hire vehicles. Revel is exploring its options for expansion, Reig said The overall Revel vision is to grow its taxi and moped services across several cities while also building charging-station infrastructure, he

Reig said the need to improve electric charging infrastructure became clear when Revel first launched its mopeds. Finding a place to charge them was a headache.

“That was the light-bulb moment: I can’t even find the power and infrastructure to charge twowheel mopeds,” Reig said. “How are we going to have this revolution everyone is talking about in the fourwheel sector?”

Based in Gowanus, Revel has about 400 employees including 130 drivers for its ride-hailing service.

The company last raised funding in 2019, through a $34 million Series A. Along with BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, and Toyota Ventures, Revel’s latest round included investment from Goodyear Ventures, an investment fund managed by the tire company. ■

6 | CRAIN’S NEW YORK BUSINESS | FEBRUARY 28, 2022

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In recognition of Letitia James, Kathy Hochul, Kathryn Wylde, Melva Miller and all the Most Powerful Women of 2021.

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chief executive officer K.C. Crain senior executive vice president Chris Crain group publisher Jim Kirk

EDITORIAL

publisher/executive editor

Investment in medical services key to keeping outer-borough residents healthy investments in medical access, along with access to nutritious food, employment and health insurance—will be vital for making neighborhoods of underserved populations resilient, health care reporter Shuan Sim writes in his story on page 18, as part of our Crain’s Forum package on health equity.

Vaccination sites all over the city that were open at late and early hours and located at key commuter sites to accommodate New Yorkers unable to take time off from work shrunk the gulf between Manhattan and outer-borough vaccination rates. Access to testing has improved too.

Those are good signs, but sustained progress will require additional investment in new clinics and other access points,

SUSTAINED PROGRESS WILL REQUIRE ENHANCED OUTREACH AND EDUCATION patched some disparities, but long-term fixes—including

EDITORIAL editor-in-chief Cory Schouten,

cory.schouten@crainsnewyork.com managing editor Telisha Bryan assistant managing editor Anne Michaud data editor Amanda Glodowski digital editor Taylor Nakagawa deputy digital editor, audience & analytics

Jennifer Samuels art director Carolyn McClain photographer Buck Ennis senior reporters Cara Eisenpress,

Aaron Elstein, Eddie Small reporters Ryan Deffenbaugh, Maya Kaufman,

Brian Pascus, Natalie Sachmechi, Shuan Sim op-ed editor Jan Parr,

opinion@crainsnewyork.com executive assistant Brittany Brown to contact the newsroom:

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www.crainsnewyork.com/advertise sales manager Courtney McCombs ISTOCK

T

he pandemic has laid bare the city’s health equity divide, overwhelming hospitals that serve vulnerable communities.

A disproportionate number of Covid-19 deaths can be attributed in part to comparatively scarce hospitals and primary care doctors in such areas: Manhattan recently boasted 21 primary care doctors per 10,000 people, whereas Brooklyn had 5.7; Queens, 5.4; the Bronx, 9; and Staten Island 5.6.

The pandemic also showed that better outcomes are possible with the right levels of attention and investment. The government’s well-funded and multidimensional response to the pandemic flooded outer-borough communities of color with a lifeline of new medical facilities offering tests and administering vaccines.

Such short-term initiatives

Frederick P. Gabriel Jr.

along with enhanced outreach and education. Few hospitals serve outer-borough communities of color, doctors’ offices are more scarce, and telehealth is no solution for the 3.4 million New Yorkers who don’t have broadband internet at home.

“Even now, I never fail to be shocked at how often when we help working-class folk with

account executives Kelly Maier, Marc Rebucci,

Laura Warren people on the move manager Debora Stein,

dstein@crain.com

obtaining health insurance, they’d ask us, ‘Do you also know how I can get food stamps or food assistance?’” said Elisabeth Benjamin, vice president of health initiatives at Community Service Society of New York, which serves about 100,000 low-income New Yorkers with social services.

Covid-19 showed us we can do better, and we must. ■

CUSTOM CONTENT associate director, custom content

Sophia Juarez, sophia.juarez@crainsnewyork.com custom content coordinator Ashley Maahs,

ashley.maahs@crain.com EVENTS

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jessica.botos@crainsnewyork.com manager of conferences & events

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Ana Jimenez, ajimenez@crainsnewyork.com senior manager of events Michelle Cast,

Supporting nonprofit workers, food as national security

michelle.cast@crainsnewyork.com REPRINTS director, reprints & licensing Lauren Melesio,

The new city administration’s efforts to fix the nonprofit contracting system and avoid costly delays is an essential step strengthening the city’s enormous, and essential, human services sector. But it’s just a first step.

New York’s nonprofit sector employs 662,000 people, the majority of whom are women and people of color. In order to truly address the issues of equity among human services organizations, the administration must confront the issue of pay through city contracts. Although the timeliness of contract reimbursement is critically important to nonprofits’ bottom lines, the larger systemic issues are that contract rates do not cover the full cost of direct program expenses and that salary floors are set very low. The responsibility lies with the city for the fact that nonprofit workers have higher rates of using SNAP than private-sector workers, and nonprofit employees with degrees generally make $20,000

less than comparable public-sector workers.

The essential workforce that has carried our city through the Covid-19 pandemic deserves more than a system that perpetuates pay disparities. At Encore Community Services, our team members showed up every day to cook and deliver nutritious meals to homebound senior citizens, and they provided a wide array of social services, which undoubtedly saved many lives. Yet some of their city-contracted wages make food insecurity a personal issue. It can be interpreted as government-sanctioned poverty.

That’s why human services providers including Encore are calling on the new administration to take action and fix the exploitative dynamic that has gone on too long. We believe the city should establish and fund an automatic annual cost-of-living adjustment on all human services contracts, set a wage floor of no less than $21 per hour for all city-contracted human services workers, and create a comprehen-

sive wage and benefit schedule.

The administration’s willingness to right some of the wrongs with the city’s nonprofit contracting process is an encouraging sign.

Our essential workforce is watching and waiting to see if city leaders will come through to improve their economic well-being and truly improve equity in our community.

JEREMY KAPLAN Executive Director, Encore Community Services

Meat and national security I want to echo comments by Matt Spence, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Middle East policy, who recently made the case for increased federal funding of cultivated-meat research on national-security grounds.

For those who haven’t heard the term before, cultivated meat is grown from animal cells without slaughter.

“Food security is national security,” Spence wrote in Slate.

“Alternative proteins are a far

212.210.0707, lmelesio@crain.com PRODUCTION production and pre-press director

Simone Pryce GETTY IMAGES

More ways to fix the city’s nonprofit contracting system

media services manager Nicole Spell SUBSCRIPTION CUSTOMER SERVICE

www.crainsnewyork.com/subscribe customerservice@crainsnewyork.com

more resource-efficient way to fuel our rising global demand for meat. Global warming only exacerbates the problem, with global crop yields expected to fall by 3% to 6% each decade. Where these dynamics lead and converge, war and conflict follow.”

Security-conscious legislators should push for greater public investment in cellular-agriculture research. Among other things, it would help cultivated meat reach price parity with slaughtered meat and accelerate development of whole-cut products including cultivated steaks and fillets.

Achieving those objectives is vital for the success of cellular agriculture.

JON HOCHSCHARTNER Granby, Conn.

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CRAIN COMMUNICATIONS INC. chairman Keith E. Crain vice chairman Mary Kay Crain chief executive officer K.C. Crain senior executive vice president Chris Crain editor-in-chief emeritus Rance Crain chief financial officer Robert Recchia founder G.D. Crain Jr. [1885-1973] chairman Mrs. G.D. Crain Jr. [1911-1996]

8 | CRAIN’S NEW YORK BUSINESS | FEBRUARY 28, 2022

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OP-ED

BY LEONARD ACHAN

N

YPD Detective Wilbert Mora’s final selfless act of donating his organs to save the lives of five people is inspiring New Yorkers to become organ donors. Following his tragic death in the line of duty last month, Mora’s gift of life has raised awareness and appreciation for the miracles that organ donation can achieve. The heightened interest in donation presents an opportunity

tions in the metropolitan area take that simple step, we could dramatically increase the number of people on the registry—which, over time, would lead to more organ donations and life-saving transplants in our region.

Leadership and advocacy Help from the private and notfor-profit sectors is desperately needed because almost 9,000 New Yorkers, statewide, are on a waiting list for a heart, kidney, pancreas or liver, or lungs or intestines. Nearly every day a New Yorker dies because a matching organ could not be procured.

That does not have to be the case. New York’s benevolent companies can change the equation with their leadership and advocacy.

After two years of tragic losses during the Covid-19 pandemic, New Yorkers are sensitized to the fragility of life, and they’re more appreciative than ever of our health care heroes for their lifesaving efforts. Corporations can be lifesavers as well by tapping into the goodwill of their employees to grow

NEARLY EVERY DAY A NEW YORKER DIES WAITING FOR A MATCHING ORGAN for our city’s businesses to play a leading role in saving thousands of lives—and at virtually no cost to them.

New York’s corporate and nonprofit leaders can catalyze a new movement to give people a second chance at life by promoting organizational drives that encourage employees and their family members to join the New York state Donate Life Registry.

If hundreds of major organiza-

the Donate Life Registry.

An organ and tissue AFTER MORA DIED, donor can save as many as five people received eight lives and change as life-saving organs many as 50 with tissue that he’d donated. can help cancer survivors, burn victims, heart patients and even people in need of dental or corneal implants.

Today companies are concerned with promoting their environmental, social and governance credentials. Perhaps nothing would say more about a company’s social responsibility and its commitment to being a good corporate citizen than its willingness to help those whose lives depend upon an organ transplant. Indeed, any employees, committed investors company that wishes to proclaim and long-term clients. itself socially responsible should be engaged in promoting organ Turning the tide donation.

The vast majority of New Yorkers As an added benefit, a corporate- support the concept of organ donasponsored campaign to grow the tion. More than 6 million have Donate Life Registry is a great way already signed up, but that is less to build esprit de corps. Employees than half of the New Yorkers who feel good about working at an orga- are eligible to register. We can dranization that cares about its com- matically expand the registry, and munity’s health, and gaining that our city’s companies can play a key recognition helps attract talented role in making it happen.

GETTYIMAGES

City businesses can play a leading role in saving thousands of lives through organ-donation drives

LiveOnNY, the federally designated organ procurement organization for the New York metropolitan area, has everything companies need to get started, including a digital tool kit.

Business leaders of New York: Partner with LiveOnNY in our campaign to save lives by growing New York’s Donate Life Registry. ■ Leonard Achan is chief executive of LiveOnNY.

OP-ED

BY BEN GUTTMANN

T

he Adams administration recently issued an executive order designed to improve transparency and accountability across city agencies. The emphasis on improving how our city works and serves the public is overdue, but it’s also just one step in what we need to build New York’s future.

If we are going to fully recover— as a home to 8.5 million people, as an economic capital for the region and our country, and as a bucketlist destination for 66 million tour-

What does that mean? On the big issues, we must lean toward decisions that lower stress and improve health and safety: reduce traffic congestion, improve walkability and repair crumbling infrastructure and housing. It’s hard to move up the emotional ladder to happiness when you don’t have your basic human needs met.

Beyond those structural challenges, we have an incredible opportunity as we build back from the pandemic to inject a sense of joy into everyday experiences.

It all starts with asking a simple question in each policy and planning decision: “How can we use this as an opportunity to make New York a happier place?”

That can mean bringing in artwork, color and whimsical flourishes; making processes easier and more userfriendly; and making our city friendlier to all five senses.

Beginning on the ground itself, we can take inspiration from Japan’s quirky, colorful manhole art. Most Japanese municipalities

WE HAVE AN OPPORTUNITY TO INJECT A SENSE OF JOY INTO EVERYDAY EXPERIENCES ists each year—we need to bring the same operational focus to another area: joy.

After two years of darkness under Covid-19, and a previous mayor who sometimes projected his own dour cloud over the work of the city, we are long overdue for a dose of civic happiness.

have customized, artistic manholecover designs—many of which have become “drainspotting” tourist attractions in their own right.

Closer to home, Philadelphia has embraced transformative public art through its mural project, employing more than 300 artists each year to beautify walls.

Opportunities for joy We can look at our persistent challenges as opportunities for joy.

The weekly “trash mountain” that rises on sidewalks on pickup days can be solved with containerized bins that not only hide the sight and stench but also can anchor greenery and more art.

And while we’re reconsidering our street furniture, let’s install some public bathrooms. Let’s also give people a place to sit by replacing the spikes and railings of hostile architecture with benches and pocket parks.

Shifting from the physical to the virtual, we should invest in our city’s uneven digital services, taking lessons from our Silicon Alley usability experts to create easy and delightful digital experiences— world-class apps and websites for a

world-class city.

SOME OF Even the munJAPAN’S quirky dane can be joymanhole art ful. When the federal government’s website covidtests.org recently went live, Twitter was flooded by people who were pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to use the simple, decidedly unflashy site. The bar for government services is often so low that even just working reliably without unnecessary complexity is cause for smiles.

Despite New York’s rough, rugged brand, the city is no stranger to whimsy. Right before the pandemic, in early 2020, the Department of Environmental Protection launched a pun-driven campaign against automotive idling with ’80s pop icon Billy Idol under the banner Billy Never Idles.

Anybody crisscrossing the city has seen charismatic Department of Transportation signage greeting them with slogans including “Fuhgeddaboudit” and “Oy vey!”

GETTYIMAGES

We are long overdue for a dose of civic happiness.

Here’s what that means and how to go about it

And across city government, we have at least 13 costumed mascots—including a googly-eyed hunk of asphalt named Warmy and a whole squad of Sanitation Department anthropomorphic waste bins.

New York is known to countless millions around the world as having the first name “I Love.” To bring back businesses and tourists, and to bring light to the life of our neighbors, the next policy priority should be to give us all more things to love. ■ Marketing executive Ben Guttmann is a member of Queens Community Board 2, the host of Queens Tech Night and an adjunct lecturer at Baruch College.

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.

FEBRUARY 28, 2022 | CRAIN’S NEW YORK BUSINESS | 9

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ASKED & ANSWERED WHO HE IS Executive director, Tech:NYC

INTERVIEW BY RYAN DEFFENBAUGH

L

AGE 40

ocal industry advocacy group Tech:NYC launched with five corporate members in 2016 and now has more than 800—a testament to the explosive growth of the local tech industry. Jason Myles Clark, who took over as its second-ever director in January, sees room to keep adding members and expand the group’s reach. A lawyer who formerly oversaw litigation from the state attorney general’s Harlem office, Clark hopes to create more pathways for New Yorkers to launch a business or find a career in the tech industry, where people of color and women are historically underrepresented.

You've been on the job about a month now. What are your main takeaways so far?

I’ve been floored by the interest in building pipelines for individuals to get into tech, regardless of their stage in life. Making sure that folks have the opportunity to work at these tech companies is extremely important.

And how can Tech:NYC help with that?

We’ve been speaking with member companies about a project we are calling Tech Year NYC. Especially on the heels of Mayor Eric Adams’ expansion of the summer youth education program to 100,000 students, we want to make sure we are doing our part. That means ensuring students can have a summer experience at our tech companies but also can have job opportunities

GREW UP Southeast Queens RESIDES Jamaica, Queens EDUCATION Bachelor’s in American history, Princeton University; juris doctor, University of Michigan Law School EQUAL CHANCE Clark founded a nonprofit to help Black and Latino students gain admission to the city’s specialized schools after seeing the lack of diversity at his alma mater, the Bronx High School of Science. “It’s not that Black and Latinx folks can’t do the work,” he said. “It’s about making sure you have the opportunity to succeed.”

OUT OF OFFICE Clark is a long-suffering Knicks fan, a jogger through Queens and a regular at Benny’s Pizza in Jamaica, especially for the chipotle pie.

throughout the year. They could then be in a position to apprentice at these companies.

Speaking of the mayor, he has been especially interested in cryptocurrency. What is crypto’s role in the city’s tech scene?

One way or another, cryptocurrency is here to stay. So I think we need to make sure we are incorporating it into our schools so people can learn about it as financial literacy. There is still a lot that needs to be fleshed

out. It is important to make sure there is regulation in place that protects people but is thoughtful and does not stymie the growth of an industry.

Crain’s recently reported that only 1.7% of tech startup funding goes to Black founders, and the numbers are not much higher for Latino founders and for women generally. What role can Tech:NYC have in creating more opportunity for underrepresented groups?

We’re going to organize an event where we speak with underrepresented founders and figure out what are some of the ways that Tech:NYC can be helpful in increasing the access to capital. Because, yes, it looks like things have moved in the right direction, but the percentages [of overall investment] are not where they need to be.

How has technology influenced your life?

I remember, as a very young kid, going from using the Dewey decimal system to take out a book and then all of a sudden being able to find the answers to all types of questions at the tip of my fingers. Today, as we are talking about broadband access, computer science, civic engagement, we really have to start looking at technology not as a privilege but as an essential tool, so that this next generation will have access to information and resources to better themselves.

Tech:NYC has grown like crazy in six years.

How many members could it have in 2028?

Wow, I have no idea! What I do know is that there are over 9,000 tech startups here, so there is room for growth. ■

BUCK ENNIS

JASON MYLES CLARK Tech:NYC

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THE LIST TOP MANHATTAN OFFICES LEASES Largest transactions during the second half of 2021, ranked by square footage BUILDING ADDRESS

SQUARE FEET

QUARTER

AMANDA.GLODOWSKI@CRAINSNEWYORK.COM

TENANT

TENANT REPRESENTATIVE

LANDLORD(S)/ SUBLANDLORD(S)

LANDLORD/SUBLANDLORD REPRESENTATIVE(S)

NEIGHBORHOOD

DEAL TYPE

1 2 3 4 5

100 W. 33rd St.

513,864

3rd

Interpublic Group of Companies

JLL

Vornado Realty Trust

Vornado Realty Trust

Midtown

Renewal

2 Penn Plaza

428,723

4th

MSG Entertainment

Newmark

Vornado Realty Trust

Vornado Realty Trust

Midtown

New lease

1 New York Plaza

399,724

3rd

Fried Frank

CBRE

AEW Capital Management

Brookfield Properties

Financial District

Renewal

1221 Sixth Ave.

342,204

3rd

Comcast/NBC Universal

CBRE

Rockefeller Group

Cushman & Wakefield

Times Square

Renewal

1400 Broadway

280,182

4th

Signature Bank

Colliers

Newmark; Empire State Realty Trust

Midtown

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

3 Times Square

243,305

4th

Touro College

Cushman & Wakefield

Empire State Realty Trust; Qatar Investment Authority Rudin Management

Cushman & Wakefield

Midtown

Renewal and expansion New lease

550 Madison Ave.

241,647

4th

Chubb

CBRE

Olayan America

CBRE

Midtown East

New lease

1095 Sixth Ave.

241,328

4th

Dechert

Cushman & Wakefield

Ivanhoé Cambridge

CBRE

Midtown

Renewal

5 Times Square

237,333

4th

Roku

CBRE

RXR Realty; David Werner Real Estate

CBRE

Times Square

New lease

403 E. 79th St.

200,000

4th

Hospital for Special Surgery

Avison Young

Extell Development

Extell Development; Avison Young

Upper East Side

New lease

55 E. 52nd St.

194,466

4th

Morgan Stanley

JLL

Fisher Brothers Management

Fisher Brothers Management; CBRE

Midtown East

New lease

919 Third Ave.

191,207

4th

Bloomberg

CBRE

SL Green Realty

SL Green Realty; CBRE

Midtown East

New lease

140 Broadway

188,059

4th

Brown Brothers Harriman

Newmark

Union Investment Real Estate

Cushman & Wakefield

Financial District

Renewal

1301–1315 Sixth Ave.

167,000

3rd

Credit Agricole

Cushman & Wakefield

Paramount Group

JLL

Columbus Circle

New lease

151 W. 42nd St.

167,000

4th

Venable

Newmark

The Durst Organization

The Durst Organization

Midtown

New lease

122 Fifth Ave.

148,681

4th

Microsoft

JLL

The Bromley Cos.

Newmark

Chelsea

New lease

155 Delancey St.

142,938

4th

Verizon

Cushman & Wakefield

Taconic Partners

Cushman & Wakefield

SoHo

New lease

200 Park Ave.

137,736

3rd

BDO USA

Avison Young

Tishman Speyer

Tishman Speyer

Midtown East

New lease

55 Water St.

137,274

3rd

DailyPay

Retirement Systems of Alabama

CBRE

Financial District

New lease

20 21

1251 Sixth Ave.

125,700

3rd

Lowenstein Sandler

Wharton Property Advisors Attentiv RE Partners

Mitsui Fudosan America

Newmark

Times Square

Renewal

85 10th Ave.

119,226

4th

Clear Secure

Newmark

New lease

11 W. 42nd St.

115,785

3rd

Newmark

Midtown

Renewal

23

1301-1315 Sixth Ave.

112,000

3rd

NYU School of Professional Studies SVB Leerink

Vornado Realty Trust; The Related Cos. Tishman Speyer

Chelsea

22

Vornado Realty Trust; The Related Cos. Tishman Speyer

Savills

Paramount Group

JLL

Columbus Circle

24

7 Times Square

108,400

4th

Savills

Midtown

195 Broadway

107,443

4th

L&L Holding Co.

Financial District

New lease

26 27 28 29

919 Third Ave.

101,394

3rd

Mintz Levin

Newmark

Boston Properties; Norges Bank Investment Management L&L Holding Co.; Samsung Group; Korea Investment and Securities SL Green Realty

CBRE/FD Stonewater

25

Office of the Comptroller of the Currency Orchard Technologies

Renewal and expansion New lease

SL Green Realty

Plaza District

New lease

300 Madison Ave.

100,636

4th

CIBC

CBRE

Brookfield Properties

CBRE

Midtown East

New lease

2 Park Ave.

96,234

4th

MassMutual

CBRE

Morgan Stanley

Cushman & Wakefield

Murray Hill

New lease

55 E. 52nd St.

93,590

4th

Morgan Stanley

JLL

Fisher Brothers Management

Fisher Brothers Management; CBRE

Midtown East

30 31

525 W. 57th St.

92,879

4th

NYPD Strategic Response Group CBRE

Himmel & Meringoff Properties

CBRE

Columbus Circle

Renewal and expansion New lease

601 Lexington Ave.

89,967

4th

Citibank NA/Citigroup

CBRE

Boston Properties

Midtown East

Renewal

32 33

462 Broadway

87,500

4th

DoubleVerify

Cushman & Wakefield

Boston Properties; Norges Bank Investment Management Himmel & Meringoff Properties

Himmel & Meringoff Properties

SoHo

New lease

1185 Sixth Ave.

81,693

4th

Lockton

JLL

SL Green Realty

SL Green Realty; CBRE

Midtown

34

1166 Sixth Ave.

80,480

4th

William Blair and Co.

CBRE

Edward J. Minskoff Equities

JLL

Midtown

35

114–116 Fifth Ave.

77,680

4th

Chainalysis

Savills

L&L Holding Co.

Chelsea

36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

770 Broadway

76,079

4th

Oath

JLL

Pacific Investment Management; Allianz Real Estate; L&L Holding Co. Vornado Realty Trust

Vornado Realty Trust

Greenwich Village

Renewal and expansion Renewal and expansion Renewal and expansion Renewal

95 Morton St.

75,485

4th

Fanatics

Cushman & Wakefield

RFR Realty

Avison Young; Savills

Greenwich Village

New lease

3 World Trade Center

75,207

4th

Hudson River Trading

CBRE

Silverstein Properties

Silverstein Properties; CBRE

Financial District

New lease

66 Hudson Blvd.

75,104

4th

Turner Construction

CBRE

Tishman Speyer

Tishman Speyer

Hudson Yards

New lease

5 Bryant Park

74,547

3rd

The TJX Cos.

CBRE

Savanna Real Estate Fund

CBRE

Midtown

Renewal

86 Chambers St

72,258

4th

US Attorney’s Office

CBRE

Nuveen

Cushman & Wakefield

Financial District

Renewal

151 W. 42nd St.

68,370

3rd

Mitsubishi International

Newmark

The Durst Organization

The Durst Organization

Midtown

New lease

32 Sixth Ave.

66,753

3rd

Cedar Cares

Avison Young

Rudin Management

Rudin Management

Tribeca

New lease

60 E. 42nd St.

64,675

3rd

iCapital Network

CBRE

Newmark

Midtown East

45

575 Broadway

64,122

3rd

Estée Lauder

CBRE

Empire State Realty Trust; Qatar Investment Authority ARI Investors

ARI Investors

SoHo

46 47 48 49

401 Park Ave. South

63,300

3rd

Spaces

Direct Deal

Himmel & Meringoff Properties

Himmel & Meringoff Properties

Gramercy Park

Renewal and expansion Renewal and expansion New lease

620 Eighth Ave.

63,000

3rd

Goodwin Proctor

CBRE

Brookfield Properties

JLL

Midtown

New lease

1114 Sixth Ave.

60,194

3rd

Brunswick Group

Newmark

Brookfield Properties

CBRE

Midtown

New lease

85 10th Ave.

59,355

3rd

Google

CBRE

New lease

250 Park Ave.

58,352

3rd

Regus

Cushman & Wakefield

Vornado Realty Trust; The Related Cos. Cushman & Wakefield

Chelsea

50

Vornado Realty Trust; The Related Cos. AEW Capital Management

Midtown East

Renewal and expansion

Cushman & Wakefield

SOURCE: CoStar Group, with additional research by Amanda Glodowski. This list includes leases with terms of at least two years. For quality-control purposes, CoStar includes only deals in which representatives for both the tenant and landlord are known.

CoStar conducts research to maintain a database of commercial real estate information. For more information, visit costar.com or call 800-204-5960.

FEBRUARY 28, 2022 | CRAIN’S NEW YORK BUSINESS | 11

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PEOPLE ON THE MOVE

Advertising Section To place your listing, visit www.crainsnewyork.com/people-on-the-move or, for more information, contact Debora Stein at 917.226.5470 / dstein@crain. com

ACCOUNTING

ENGINEERING

INSURANCE

LAW

UHY LLP

Infrastructure Engineering Inc.

McGriff

Latham & Watkins LLP

UHY Advisors, Inc. (“UHY”) announced the promotion of Amy Bloom to managing director and Tina Steinbeck to Bloom principal.

Bloom is an active member of the leadership of the New York City Tax Department. She has extensive experience providing tax planning Steinbeck and compliance services for business entities. She also advises on state nexus, foreign structuring in the US, and tax due diligence for mergers and acquisitions.

Steinbeck has more than 30 years of diversified accounting experience in tax research, planning and compliance. She is well-versed in providing tax services for high-networth individuals, trusts, and partnerships. Steinbeck also advises with not-for-profit organizations and closely held businesses on their tax planning and compliance.

Infrastructure Engineering Inc. (IEI) is pleased to announce the appointment of Dustin Quincy, P.E. Quincy as Vice President of Engineering, and Maike Rodriguez, P.E. as Vice President of Operations, New York and New Jersey.

As the engineering Rodriguez leader of the firm, Dustin Quincy will be responsible for not only establishing the guidelines but also promoting a culture of consistent excellence, quality control and best practices in the technical delivery of projects and services to the firm’s clients.

In his role as Vice President, Maike Rodriguez will oversee implementation of strategic growth, staff development and engagement, client relations, contract management and oversight of day-to-day activities for both New York and New Jersey offices.

Jim O’Neill, a licensed property and casualty broker with a strong background in dealing with large and complex risks, joins McGriff’s Executive Risk Advisors group in New York. He has nearly 40 years of experience as an underwriter and broker working with large multinational companies and investment banks. His expertise ranges from standalone single-coverage risk transfer programs to fully integrated and blended deals.

O’Neill also has experience in wholesale distribution and product development.

Jason Webber has joined the New York office of Latham & Watkins as a partner in the M&A and Private Equity Practices. He represents private equity firms and other investors in the development or acquisition and divestiture of infrastructure and energy businesses. His practice spans traditional and emerging infrastructure sectors including energy, energy transition, telecommunications, circular economy, and transportation, and he has experience in natural gas liquefaction and LNG export projects.

ENGINEERING

FINANCIAL SERVICES

LAW

AECOM

Provident Bank

Farrell Fritz

Bill Abolt has been named lead of the U.S. Energy practice at AECOM. In this role, Mr. Abolt will spearhead efforts to broaden AECOM’s next-generation energy initiatives and further develop a national network to manage grid modernization, vehicle electrification, energy efficiency, and renewable energy. Mr. Abolt brings more than 35 years of experience managing complex environmental, energy, and sustainability programs for utility, government, and private clients.

Provident Bank is pleased to announce the appointment of Anthony Labozzetta as President & CEO. Mr. Labozzetta is responsible for the overall management of the organization’s operations, including directing the Executive Leadership Team, driving profitability, managing organizational structure, strategy, and communicating with the Board. Mr. Labozzetta previously served as President & COO of Provident Bank. Prior to coming to Provident Bank in 2020, he was President & CEO of SB One Bank.

Daniel S. Rubin, a nationally recognized Trust & Estates Lawyer and ACTEC Fellow, has joined Farrell Fritz as a Partner in its Trusts & Estates Group. The seventh ACTEC Fellow at the firm, Rubin brings his accomplished estate planning practice to the firm. His practice focuses on asset protection planning, international estate planning, domestic estate planning, and estate and trust administration.

Prior to joining Farrell Fritz, he was a partner at Moses & Singer LLP in New York City.

NONPROFIT

ANNOUNCE

YOUR BIG NEWS IN CRAIN’S!

RECOGNIZE INDUSTRY ACHIEVERS IN CRAIN’S

For listing opportunities, contact Debora Stein at dstein@crain.com or submit directly to

CRAINSNEWYORK.COM/PEOPLEMOVES

Police Athletic League Carlos Velazquez joins the Police Athletic League (PAL) in New York City as its new Executive Director.

Throughout his 20-year career in public service, he has been dedicated to addressing the needs of underserved youth and cultivating strategic relationships with community partners and government agencies. Prior to joining PAL, he was the Chief Program Officer for the Boys’ Club of New York. Founded in 1914, PAL, a nonprofit organization, operating 27 youth centers and sites throughout New York.

TECHNOLOGY

Talent Inc. Christian Dwyer has joined Talent Inc., the leading digital resource and trusted advisor for all careerdriven professionals, as its new Chief Product Officer.

In this role, Dwyer will leverage his extensive experience in online product management, coupled with his passion for building products that solve real user problems, to lead the organization’s global product strategy and deliver value to both its customers and the overall business.

COMPANIES ON THE MOVE To place your listing, visit www.newyorkbusiness.com/ companymoves or contact Debora Stein at 917.266.5470 / dstein@crain.com MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS

CreativeOfficeResources New York, NY 646-590-1700 www.creativeofficepavilion.com Creative Office Pavilion (“COP”), a leading Herman Miller dealer based in Boston and New York City and Office Resources (“OR”), a leading Knoll dealer also based in Boston and New York City announced their merger January 24th, 2022. COP and OR have combined 60+ years of experience representing Herman Miller and Knoll and will now be operating as one company – Creative Office Resources (COR).

The management teams of both companies will remain in place, including Denise Horn (CEO), Paul Fraser (COO) and Kevin Barbary (CMO).

Creative Office Resources combined workforce exceeds 440 employees, 12 locations, 2 warehouses with offices in 8 states.

Learn more at www.ori.com www.creativeofficepavilion.com

MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS

Nova Group, GBC St Louis Park, MN 952-448-9393 www.novagroupgbc.com MINNEAPOLIS, MN – February 2, 2022 – Nova Group, GBC (“Nova”), an industry-leading commercial real estate due diligence advisory firm, announces their December 30, 2021 acquisition of Peak Environmental (“Peak”) in East Brunswick, New Jersey.

Nova’s acquisition of Peak significantly strengthens their presence in New Jersey, New York, and surrounding areas, ultimately expanding upon the availability of quality turnkey services to Nova’s Commercial Real Estate client base in these critical markets. This acquisition comes on the heels of Nova’s October acquisition of Chicago-based Carlson Environmental, making it their second strategic acquisition of Q4 2021.

12 | CRAIN’S NEW YORK BUSINESS | FEBRUARY 28, 2022

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REAL ESTATE

Former Economic Development Corp. executive gets nod to take helm of Brooklyn Navy Yard

BY EDDIE SMALL

L

indsay Greene, who has worked in city government since 2015, will serve as the new leader of the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corp., Mayor Eric Adams announced Wednesday.

Greene previously worked as chief strategy officer at the New York City Economic Development Corp. and will be the first Black woman and openly LGBTQ+ person to serve as CEO of the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corp., according to the Adams administration. She will replace outgoing CEO

through its next phase,” Greene said in a statement, “with a focus on building local businesses, creating pathways for worker advancement and ensuring that the people shaping the inven- GREENE tions, tools and companies of the future are as diverse as our great city.”

Résumé Greene worked as chief strategy officer for economic development and housing in the mayor’s office before joining the EDC, and she spent four years in senior management at food startups and six years at Goldman Sachs before coming to work for the city. She has an MBA from Yale and lives with her wife and two daughters in Brooklyn.

Ehrenberg had served as CEO of the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corp. since 2013 and is stepping down after the yard completed

David Ehrenberg, who announced earlier in February that he would be leaving his longtime post effective March 14.

“I am grateful to Mayor Adams for the opportunity to lead the yard

BUCK ENNIS

GREENE IS THE FIRST BLACK WOMAN AND LGBTQ+ PERSON TO SERVE AS THE YARD’S CEO

a rezoning process for its development master plan, which envisions 5 million square feet of new manufacturing buildings.

“I’ve worked with Lindsay for many years and am thrilled that she’ll bring her vision, energy and

leadership to the Navy Yard as it enters its next phase of growth,” Ehrenberg said in a statement.

The Adams administration also confirmed the rumored appointment of Industry City leader Andrew Kimball as president and CEO

of the EDC and announced that Anne del Castillo would continue to serve as commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment. Clare Newman will continue serving as president and CEO of the Trust for Governors Island. ■

Submit your company to be profiled in Crain’s New York Business’s Fast 50 list. This list highlights cuttingedge companies making innovative discoveries and transforming the way we do business.

SUBMIT BY MARCH 18 TO BE CONSIDERED.

Submit your company today: Crainsnewyork.com/Fast50noms

Questions?

jessica.botos@crainsnewyork.com

FEBRUARY 28, 2022 | CRAIN’S NEW YORK BUSINESS | 13

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UPCOMING EVENTS

May 5: Join the Crain's Forum healthcare equity discussion in-person as we bring together hospital and community health clinic leaders and public policy experts. Speakers will be announced soon.

REGISTER NOW: crainsnewyork.com/MayForum CRAIN’S NEW YORK BUSINESS

B R E A KFAST Breaking news live on stage with the city’s most powerful people.

CRAIN’S NEW YORK BUSINESS

B R E A KFAST Gregory Russ, Chair & CEO NYCHA April 6

Janno Lieber, Chair & CEO MTA May 11

REGISTER NOW: crainsnewyork.com/PowerBreakfast

Commercial Real Estate Networking Event

The Race to Build Affordable Housing April 27: Panel discussion on New York’s 421-a program.

Brad Lander, Comptroller NYC

Ron Moelis, Chair & Co-founder L+M Development Partners

Brenda Rosen, President & CEO Breaking Ground

REGISTER NOW: crainsnewyork.com/AffordableHousing

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A stark divide

H

ELLEN WEINSTEIN

HEALTH EQUITY

Residents of the Rockaways face higher cancer rates, few treatment options

M

odern medicine means a cancer diagnosis is no certain death sentence, but to residents of the Rockaways, there is one certain side effect: an hours-long commute to get treatment.

The 130,000 residents of the Rockaways, most of whom are Black or brown, face higher rates than the rest of the city for more than a dozen cancers. But there are no treatment options other than a small infusion center at St. John’s Episcopal Hospital in Far Rockaway, the only hospital on the geographically isolated peninsula. The facility has just four chairs to administer chemotherapy and treatments for other diseases that require an IV. “We are losing lives out there unnecessarily because of decades of disinvestment in the health care system,” said Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, who represented the Rockaways on the City Council.

The situation has been especially bleak since 2012, when financially distressed Peninsula Hospital closed in Far Rockaway, creating a void in access to radiation therapy, which St. John’s does not offer. That means the vast majority of Rockaway’s cancer patients have to travel at least two hours round trip to get treatment—if they have a way to get there. The Rockaways’ public transit options are limited to the A train and a few bus lines.

Between 2014 and 2017, more can-

BUCK ENNIS

BY MAYA KAUFMAN

PENINSULA HOSPITAL closed in 2012. It was the only hospital in Far Rockaway that offered radiation therapy. cer patients from the Rockaways went to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center for care than to any other hospital, according to state data compiled by St. John’s. The Upper East Side hospital provided about a quarter of the more than 4,000 cancer-related medical visits logged during that time. Long Island Jewish Medical Center’s cancer center in New Hyde Park handled the next largest number of visits, nearly 800. Just 400 happened locally at St. John’s.

The commute poses a financial hurdle for the community, where 18% of residents live in poverty and more than half are rent-burdened, meaning they pay more than 30% of their income for housing. For severely sick cancer patients, who require multiple treatments, the cost of the commuting might be prohibitive.

“A lot of medications can have effects on patients that they need medical care for,” said Dr. Jeff Vacirca, managing partner and CEO of New York Cancer & Blood Specialists. “If

they have to go two hours away when they don’t feel well, that’s not a good way to take care of patients.”

Thanks to a $4 million state grant, St. John’s plans to partner with NYCBS to launch a cancer program on the peninsula this year to offer residents services like chemotherapy, immunotherapy and radiation treatment close to home.

Dr. Miriam Vega, chief executive of the Joseph P. Addabbo Family Health Center, a network of clinics that has two locations on the peninsula, is expanding preventive screenings, especially among patients who face higher cancer risks due to genetic or lifestyle factors. Colonoscopies, mammograms and other screenings can catch cancer early, when it is easier to treat.

Hesitancy, distrust of the medical system and lack of access has kept screening rates low in the Rockaways, Vega said. Last year the center’s cervical cancer screening rate was a little less than 50%, its colon cancer screening rate was about 24% and its breast cancer screening rate was 19%—all below national averages.

Vega said providers encounter resistance to colonoscopies among Black men and to pap smears, which screen for cervical cancer, among Black and Hispanic women due to stigmas around modesty.

Richards said access issues underscore the need for more health care providers in the Rockaways: “There’s no one institution out there that can do it alone.”■

OW HEALTH CARE PLAYS OUT across the city can spell the difference between life and death.

In the second installment of our Crain’s Forum series, we take a look at health equity.

For our cover story, reporter Maya Kaufman delves into the thorny issue of hospital consolidation. As hospitals strive to provide care and make ends meet, tradeoffs are inevitable. A Crain’s data analysis of hospital closures in the past 25 years shows that communities of color are the ones paying the highest price.

The practice has given rise to megasystems, which wield their bargaining power to secure higher rates. A similar tale of haves and have-nots is playing out in the Rockaways, where there are just four chairs on the peninsula to administer chemotherapy. Cancer patients are faced with an hours-long commute to receive proper treatment.

We could not thoroughly explore this issue without taking stock of where our city stands with Covid-19. Reporter Shuan Sim provides analysis of how short-term emergency measures to serve marginalized communities have held up five waves later.

Few lasting changes have been made to address the trends that enabled Covid to take the worst toll on communities of color.

As always, we welcome your thoughts and feedback on the issues raised in this latest Crain’s Forum and on what to tackle next.

— Amanda Glodowski, Data Editor

JOIN THE CONVERSATION We invite you to join us on May 5 for a discussion on how to make the health care system more equitable and ensure New Yorkers get the care they need. You can register at CrainsNewYork.com/mayforum.

INSIDE BRETT R. FRIEDMAN It’s time to create a more equitable Medicaid program.

PAGE 19

WENDY STARKE Collective health can’t be achieved without culturally affirming care.

PAGE 19

ERROL PIERRE New York needs more Black doctors and clinicians.

PAGE 20

CHAU TRINHSHEVRIN Community engagement is key to reducing health disparities. PAGE 20 FEBRUARY 28, 2022 | CRAIN’S NEW YORK BUSINESS | 15

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EQUITY FROM PAGE 1

to close its hospital beds and transfer patients to nearby Interfaith and Brookdale medical centers. The trio would then unite under a new system, One Brooklyn Health.

Kingsbrook would become a shell of its former self, whittled down to an emergency room and a few other services, while the rest of its land would give rise to affordable housing and a “medical village” for nonhospital services.

Lawmakers and hospital executives for decades have touted consolidation as a solution to cut costs and increase the quality of care. Their allies argue that cutting unnecessary beds will reduce health care spending by redirecting patients from hospitals to doctors’ offices, where care is less expensive, more consistent and more focused on prevention.

Instead, the consolidation strategy has given rise to increasingly flush megasystems of hospitals concentrated in whiter, wealthier areas of the city. During the past 25 years, 20 hospitals have closed across the city, amounting to a loss of about 5,800 beds, a Crain’s analysis found. Twelve were in communities that tend to bear the highest burdens of disease: poorer neighborhoods where the majority of residents are people of color. Six districts, including four where the majority of residents are nonwhite, now have no hospital at all.

The city’s legacy of hospital consolidation risks widening longstanding health disparities by forcing already underserved residents to travel farther for care and spend more to get it. Others will never go elsewhere, instead entirely falling off the map of the city’s lopsided health care system.

Meanwhile, wealthy hospital systems build expansive care networks and amass hundreds of millions of dollars in profits.

‘A bed built is a bed filled’ The modern orthodoxy of hospital consolidation traces back to health care scholar Dr. Milton Roemer, who in 1959 argued that supply induces demand when someone else will shoulder the cost—whether the government, employers or an insurance company. Eliminating beds, his logic followed, would therefore reduce demand and the commensurate expenses.

In the next couple of decades, New York Mayors John Lindsay, Abe Beame and Ed Koch all turned to hospital consolidation to try to slash the government’s portion of health care spending. Across the city, roughly 20,000 hospital beds disappeared.

Early on doubts about the strategy

emerged. Walter McClure, a health-policy researcher who had been a hospital-consolidation proselytizer, analyzed several of the city’s hospital closures in 1979 and concluded that bed numbers were in fact a “poor proxy” for spending. He found that the closures shifted care to hospitals with more costly, intensive services, offsetting savings from the reduction in beds.

Nonetheless, Roemer’s mantra, “a bed built is a bed filled,” became the cornerstone of a sprawling 2006 report that instigated the closure of nine hospitals across the state, including five in New York City.

The Berger Commission report, as it became known, came at the behest of Gov. George Pataki to cut health care spending by “rightsizing” the state’s hospitals. Its chairman, investment banker Stephen Berger, had gained his cost-cutting bona fides as an architect of New York’s response to the 1970s fiscal crisis.

Hospitals rely heavily on the state for funding, whether through capital grants or New York’s Medicaid program, which is the second-largest in the U.S. in terms of spending. That money comes with strings—ones that lawmakers often pull in their ceaseless quest to cut costs and balance budgets. The Berger report claimed its recommended consolidations would cut health care costs by more than $1.5 billion annually, or $15 billion over a decade, all without compromising patients’ access to care.

“The repercussions of hospital closures on public health are nonexistent or minimal,” the report said, arguing that little is lost because hospitals that close “have been in trouble for extended periods of time” and had already “gradually withered away.”

The assumption was that a hospital in financial distress was better closed than rescued, at least from a fiscal standpoint.

But critics argue the Berger Commission did not account for the harm that closures would incur on New York’s most vulnerable residents.

“Health care is not a machine with interchangeable parts,” said Alan Sager, a professor at the Boston University School of Public Health who has studied the causes and effects of hospital closures in American cities. “Health care is a network of relationships that take years to establish, and once they’re uprooted, they die, like a plant.

“You make hospitals better by fixing them, not closing them,” he added.

Deborah Socolar, a health policy researcher who worked with Sager and an activist who protested Kingsbrook’s closure, said research indicates that as many

MANHATTAN HAS AT LEAST TWICE AS MANY BEDS PER 1,000 RESIDENTS AS ANY OTHER BOROUGH Number of hospital beds per 1,000 residents 4.78

2.41

2.05

1.94 1.27

Manhattan

Bronx

Brooklyn

Staten Island

Queens

SOURCE: Crain's analysis of data on licensed beds from Medicare cost reports, which are self-reported by

hospitals and health systems

BUCK ENNIS

HEALTH EQUITY

DR. SUBHASH MALHOTRA, a cardiologist

as a third of patients whose local hospital closes will not reappear at other hospitals for some time—or potentially at all.

That poses a dire risk for the city’s communities of color, which already face higher rates of chronic illness and premature death, according to state data. The Brooklyn neighborhoods served by Kingsbrook are classified as “medically underserved” by the federal government.

One Brooklyn Health downplayed the consequences of Kingsbrook’s closure in an application for state approval of the plan, saying that the hospital was only 52% to 60% full on average. But health care workers said those yearly averages obscured their reality of overcrowding, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic. Even before then, in 2015, Kingsbrook typically had 188 patients in its 198 staffed beds—a 95% occupancy rate—according to internal data cited by Northwell in its study.

In its application, One Brooklyn Health projected that 70% of Kingsbrook patients either would go to hospitals other than Interfaith and Brookdale or “would not materialize” elsewhere.

One Brooklyn Health declined to make the system’s CEO, LaRay Brown, or Kingsbrook executives available for an interview.

More than a bed When a community hospital such as Kingsbrook closes, its neighbors lose more than beds. They lose a hospital that is likelier to understand their racial, ethnic and cultural identities. That kind of personalized care, called cultural competence, has been shown to improve patient outcomes and reduce health disparities by fostering trust and effective communication.

Vivienne Phillips, a registered nurse who started at Kingsbrook in 1991 and now works in its remaining ER, grew to know her patients, who often had multiple chronic conditions and were in and out of the hospital. Over time she has cared for multiple generations.

“They knew when they landed in the emergency room they would be cared for by people who knew them, knew their

family,” Phillips said.

Kingsbrook’s Caribbean patients saw health care workers who looked like them and understood how their values and beliefs shaped their approach to care. Phillips said she and her fellow nurses knew to offer their Caribbean patients something to cover their head. The hospital’s recognition of its patient population even extended to the cafeteria, which served an oxtail stew beloved by both patients and staff.

“It’s never been the biggest hospital or the fanciest, but it was the home hospital for a lot of people,” said Kingsbrook nurse Keefe. “I worry that people fell through the cracks.”

One of its longtime patients was Lithia Panton-Moore, a Crown Heights resident who was in and out of Kingsbrook from the 1990s until her death in 2019 in its hospice unit, at the age of 95.

Her daughter, community activist Karen Fleming, recalled how Kingsbrook helped her mother walk and talk again after a traumatic brain injury. Fleming got to know the hospital’s security guards, who let her in to give her mother a kiss before early-morning shifts as a coach-bus driver.

A cleaning lady at the facility helped Fleming keep calm when her mother was rushed to the ER after a seizure.

After Fleming’s mother was admitted to hospice care in 2019, Fleming decided to sew her a shroud of muslin. When the time came, two nurse aides helped Fleming prepare her mother’s body for burial just as she envisioned. It showed her they cared.

“I’m not saying they were perfect, and I’m not saying they were angels, but there were some angels in there,” Fleming said of Kingsbrook. “You can’t find that everywhere.”

Health care workers told Crain’s longtime Kingsbrook patients have expressed reluctance to seek care elsewhere, at times refusing a transfer to Brookdale or Interfaith. Others find there is no bed for them.

Dr. Subhash Malhotra, a cardiologist, described one patient of his who walked into Kingsbrook’s emergency room in

16 | CRAIN’S NEW YORK BUSINESS | FEBRUARY 28, 2022

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HEALTH EQUITY years to offset the consolidation. It proposed a network of 36 new facilities, at a cost of roughly $226 million, but it noted that those costs would exceed what the state had committed for the consolidation plan. Only a handful has materialized.

Today the city’s 1,300 health centers, including several hundred primary-care offices, are still overwhelmingly concentrated in Manhattan, according to a 2020 analysis by the New York City Economic Development Corp. Manhattan has nearly 1,200 doctors per 100,000 residents, while Brooklyn has 352 per 100,000 residents and the Bronx about 226.

HOSPITAL CLOSURES CLUSTER IN MARGINALIZED COMMUNITIES Closures and current hospitals per community district

mid-January, not knowing the rest of the hospital had closed, then went into respiratory failure. Brookdale and Interfaith had no available ICU beds. After hours of languishing in Kingsbrook’s ER, the patient ended up in the ICU at Maimonides Medical Center in Borough Park. It was there that he died.

Proponents of hospital consolidation prescribe an expansion of primary and preventive care to fill the void, arguing that most medical care should and would happen outside a hospital. In Kingsbrook’s case, a portion is slated to become a “med-

The echoes of a hospital’s closure ripple through the broader health care ecosystem, driving up costs by shifting more care to large academic medical centers that charge higher rates and offer more expensive specialty services.

New York’s hospital pricing has not always worked this way. Between 1983 and 1997, the state used a complicated rate-regulation system to determine the prices that hospitals could charge. The system was meant to control costs and provide safety-net hospitals with adequate financial support. As analysts with the United Hospital Fund, a local health-policy nonprofit, wrote in a 2002 Health Affairs study, it kept the city’s hospitals “financially weak but alive.”

The state abandoned the system under Pataki, the same governor who convened the Berger Commission. The deregulation coincided with falling occupancy rates, as the AIDS and crack cocaine epidemics subsided. Insurers used the old system’s rates as a ceiling and cinched even lower hospital prices. The result was seismic.

“The city’s hospitals grew fiercely competitive and within a mere two years [1997 and 1998] had reorganized themselves into four large networks … in an effort to increase market share, strengthen bargaining leverage over insurers and rein in costs,” the 2002 study said.

Kenneth Raske, president of the Greater New York Hospital Association, a lobbying group that represents 140 hospitals and health systems in the state, said consolidation was necessary to counter monopolization among insurance companies. It also enabled hospitals to invest in long-overdue upgrades to their buildings and technology, he said.

The resulting oligopoly also secured enough bargaining power to send hospital prices skyrocketing. A 2016 New York State Health Foundation report found that the hospitals with the biggest market share, such as New York–Presbyterian and Northwell, tend to charge the most. Across the city, prices for the same services vary by thousands of dollars depending on the hospital and insurance plan, a November Crain’s analysis found.

Raske said New York already has a congested health care marketplace, and, despite evidence to the contrary, competition between the city’s large hospital systems can temper the impact of consolidation on prices.

“We have major systems going at each other on a day-in, day-out basis,” he said.

As Raske put it, hospitals become less important as more procedures can be performed without an overnight stay, so replacing them with new kinds of facilities, as in the case of Kingsbrook’s planned medical village, is only appropriate. Raske envisions a health care environment

“I’M NOT SAYING THEY WERE PERFECT, BUT THERE WERE SOME ANGELS IN THERE” ical village” for primary care, urgent care and other outpatient services.

Socolar said that ignores the symbiotic relationship between hospitals and other medical services, because many doctors have offices in or near the hospital where they work; when hospitals close, doctors go elsewhere to practice.

The trade-off also seems to be reserved for marginalized communities, she added.

“Wealthier communities don’t tend to get confronted with ‘It’s one or the other,’ ” Socolar said.

Many doctors who rented clinical suites at Kingsbrook were forced out when the hospital closed, said Malhotra, who still has a private practice by Kingsbrook.

Elisabeth Benjamin, vice president of health initiatives for the Community Service Society of New York, a Manhattan nonprofit that studies and fights economic inequality, said promised expansions of nonhospital care often do not happen, leaving a health care desert in the wake of a closed hospital.

Northwell’s study found the neighborhoods served by One Brooklyn Health would need 120 more doctors within five

A marker is positioned in the center of each district for visualization purposes. Specialty hospitals are not included.

SOURCE: 2019 U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey

and analysis of licensed bed data from Medicare cost reports, which are self-reported by hospitals and health systems

where all hospitals are part of systems— where independent hospitals use consolidation and government support to get themselves out of the red, then become absorbed by a behemoth like Northwell.

“You have just two choices here: government support or systems,” he said. “Pick one.”

Asked about the disproportionate number of hospital closures in the city’s communities of color, he replied, “I would love to see your data, because I don’t believe it.

We haven’t closed any hospitals in those communities … so, what the hell are you talking about?

“To tie consolidation to the health equity issue, I just don’t see it,” he added.

As large systems siphon away lucrative, privately insured patients with their capital upgrades, community hospitals like Kingsbrook end up hemorrhaging money serving patients who are uninsured or on Medicare or Medicaid, which tend to pay hospitals below cost for care provided. The hospitals end up with little money to invest in quality improvements or service expansions, which further perpetuates the cycle.

Kingsbrook garnered mixed quality ratings over the years leading up to its closure, including a C rating for patient safety in the spring of 2021 from the nonprofit LeapFrog Group. Keefe, the Kingsbrook nurse, acknowledged the hospital was a “little shabby” and needed upgrades. In the weeks before Kingsbrook stopped admitting patients, she said, the hospital had stopped replacing broken equipment. Still, she added, that did not justify its closure.

Northwell’s study said the solution for hospitals such as Kingsbrook is “to catch up with the broader market strategies other providers have been pursuing over the past decade.”

In the same breath, it acknowledged: “The market and financial forces confronting these hospitals make it virtually impossible for them to succeed on their own.”

Road map for the future Experts point to regional health planning as a way to make New York’s health care delivery system more equitable, both

MAP: DATAWRAPPER

Winners take all

within hospitals and outside them.

“There’s nothing to stop the city Department of Health from building up capacity to essentially assess what’s needed in the health delivery system in the five boroughs and advocate for it,” said Lois Uttley, a public health expert and activist.

City Councilwoman Lynn Schulman, who chairs the council’s health committee, wants to tweak the zoning review process to include assessments of how a proposed development will impact local hospital capacity.

The Coalition for Affordable Hospitals, which was convened by Local 32BJ SEIU, a labor union, is pushing for state legislation to bar hospitals from using certain anticompetitive contract terms when they negotiate prices with insurers, weakening their leverage to set high rates.

Advocates notched a win in December, when Gov. Kathy Hochul signed legislation that requires hospitals to file an independent equity assessment when they propose a major project. For the first time, they will have to detail their plan’s likely impact on medically underserved communities.

Experts nonetheless predict that hospital consolidation will continue. New York’s next fight is unfolding just outside city limits, at Mount Vernon Hospital. Montefiore acquired the Westchester County hospital in 2013, when its previous owner filed for bankruptcy, as part of an aggressive expansion into the Hudson Valley. During the next few years, Montefiore eliminated beds and closed department after department.

Then, in 2019, it announced plans to close the hospital. In an echo of consolidations past, Montefiore said it would replace the hospital with a $41 million emergency and outpatient facility funded by a state grant. The following year, in the face of protests and the pandemic, Montefiore said it would reassess the plan. What happens next is uncertain.

But one data point is clear: In the area surrounding Mount Vernon Hospital, three-fourths of residents are Black or Hispanic. ■ FEBRUARY 28, 2022 | CRAIN’S NEW YORK BUSINESS | 17

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HEALTH EQUITY

City’s crisis response to Covid-19 helped shrink a health equity divide, but progress has proved fleeting Outer-borough communities of color still have fewer hospitals and primary care doctors

BY SHUAN SIM

Shrinking gaps in medical care The lack of health infrastructure initially impeded the abilities of populations in outer boroughs to seek treatment, testing and vaccination for Covid. Through partnerships with safety-net clinics and community-based organizations, Covid public health disparities have since narrowed, said Dr. Bruce Y. Lee, professor of health policy and management at CUNY School of Public Health.

With vaccination sites all over the city, and even in subways stations to accommodate New Yorkers unable to take time off for shots, the difference between Manhattan and outer boroughs’ vaccination rates has shrunk.

As of Feb. 15, Queens led the field with 83% of residents fully vaccinated, followed by Manhattan (81%), Staten Island (73%), the Bronx (72%) and Brooklyn (70%). Manhattan had been the most-vaccinated borough until October, when it was outpaced by Queens, according to city data.

By ethnicity, as of Feb. 15, Asians had the highest fully vaccinated rates (94%), followed by Latino (70%), white (61%) then Black populations (56%). White populations had consistently been the second-most vaccinated after Asians, city data shows, but was surpassed by Latino communities in September.

Along with vaccination access, testing service has improved, too. When the city announced the launch of its Test & Trace Corps initiative in May 2020, there were 13 community testing sites. As of January this year, there are now more than 250 city-run testing sites, including 160 mobile testing units.

Those types of partnerships were important short-

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DOCTORS (from left to right) Allen Toles, Monique Jones, Michael Green and Cindy Prettypaul meet at Northwell Health’s urgent care center in Queens

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ubpar access to medical care in some parts of the city improved when officials rolled out citywide initiatives around Covid-19 testing and vaccination. However, lasting change will require additional investment, outreach and education.

Limited hospital resources and primary care doctors led to a disproportionate number of Covid cases in some outer-borough communities. Manhattan had 21 primary care doctors per 10,000 people, whereas Brooklyn had 5.7, Queens had 5.4, the Bronx had 9 and Staten Island had 5.6, according to data from Financial District-based Primary Care Development Corporation.

Before the pandemic, access to healthcare in marginalized neighborhoods was in a dire state. That shortfall in permanent care infrastructure has not entirely changed, but five waves of Covid did catalyze improvement in medical access, including in Jamaica and southeast Queens, where the population is 32% Black, 27% Hispanic and 27% Asian, according to city data.

“Prior to Covid, there was a lack of clinics. We didn’t have a CityMD or some of the urgent care clinics we have now,” said Phil Craig, pastor of Greater Springfield Community Church in Jamaica, whose congregation is predominantly Black. “When people here get sick, we travel out to Long Island Jewish Medical Center. A lot of people from southeast Queens take their kids there because there’s a sentiment you can’t get a certain level of quality health care in Jamaica.”

Short-term initiatives might have patched some disparities, but long-term fixes—including investments in medical access and social determinants of health—will be vital for making neighborhoods of underserved populations resilient.

“If you asked me what I see as racial inequities that remain still from the pandemic, it’s this: businesses, restaurants and markets in Black and brown neighborhoods in Harlem and the Bronx that closed are still all gone,” said Dr. Lynne Richardson, co-director of the Institute for Health Equity Research at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

If these neighborhoods are unable to rebuild their economic infrastructure, it spells continued vulnerability to future variant waves or even future pandemics.

term fixes. Ultimately investments such as building clinThe city’s messaging about where New Yorkers can obics in underserved neighborhoods will be key for sus- tain health services has been far-reaching, however, tainable solutions, said Dr. Debbie Salas-Lopez, awareness about resources for other pertinent Northwell Health’s senior vice president of community non-health-related worries remain scant, Benjamin and population health. said.

“We looked at where our patients are comIn fact, engaging local community leaders ing in from and where they had been sickest, and peers will likely be key to successful soluand learned we needed to build access points tions to address social determinants of health, there,” Salas-Lopez said. Northwell opened an Benjamin said. Richardson agreed, adding urgent care clinic in Queens’ Springfield Garthat this very strategy helped Covid testing and dens in December. vaccination messaging resonate with commuCOMMUNITY The pandemic also revealed new layers of nities.

TESTING SITES, an increase from inequities. While health systems implementNorthwell, which has an employment initia13 in March ed telehealth tools and remote programs to tive to help people in underserved communi2020 ensure continued access to crucial medical ties get entry-level jobs within health care, has services during the pandemic, according to had to tap community-based organizations to city data there were 3.4 million New Yorkers get the word out. without broadband internet in their homes or As communities continue to pick themvia a mobile connection. selves up from the devastation caused by the NEW YORKERS “Such tools aren’t very useful when there pandemic, ensuring a durable recovery and without are people who still lack access to reliable inresilience against future disasters requires broadband ternet,” Richardson noted. economic investments as well, said Lee. internet The city, however, is trying to address this“We saw many small businesses, grocery connection mand in October last year unveiled a $157 milstores, supermarkets and local clinics close lion infrastructure plan to be rolled out over during the pandemic,” Lee said. These led to three years. “I’m hopeful this infrastructure bill will help loss of income, health insurance, access to nutritious close that digital divide,” Richardson said. food and even primary care—all vital infrastructure for healthy living.

Reestablishing community resources “It falls on the government to seed opportunities to rePandemic-related challenges remain for communities build them,” he said. “They are self-sustaining solutions of color, where food, housing, employment and obtain- but are certainly not going to reappear without help, especially if the profit margins are not there yet.” ing health insurance are still topics of concern.

The health care establishment is working against gen“Even now, I never fail to be shocked at how often when we help working-class folk with obtaining health erational mistrust and current lived experience in cominsurance. They’d ask us, ‘Do you also know how I can munities of color of being dismissed, and that will not go get food stamps or food assistance?’” said Elisabeth Ben- away overnight, Richardson said, but New Yorkers are jamin, vice president of health initiatives at Community ready to work with authorities to rebuild. “People have Service Society of New York, which serves about 100,000 gone from active mistrust to ‘I’ll wait and see.’ That’s a promising start.”■ low-income New Yorkers.

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stat lead in p dete N prog outc by m B the soci Equ com prov inno hist Th serv hea com ade and Th that long prog exp serv S disp add Hou nee F reim beh Ta ens Th step tool

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LET’S INVEST IN HEALTH CARE INFRASTRUCTURE, STARTING WITH COMMUNITY HEALTH

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HERE’S HOW WE CREATE A MORE EQUITABLE MEDICAID PROGRAM THE PANDEMIC HAS BOTH highlighted and exacerbated

longstanding health disparities and structural inequities in the delivery of care to New York’s most vulnerable populations.

This fact is reflected by higher rates of Covid-19 hospitalization and mortality for persons living in poverty, Black and Latino and other underserved communities of color, and the homeless. As New York works to recover, there is an increasingly urgent need for a more holistic, equitable approach to health, not just health care.

BRETT R. New York has long been a national leader in offering FRIEDMAN comprehensive health coverage to its residents, including approximately 7.3 million—more than a third of the state’s total population—in the Medicaid program. Under Gov. Kathy Hochul’s leadership, the state’s Medicaid program will remain a source of innovation in promoting health equity, with a singular focus on working to address social determinants of health and other drivers of disparate health outcomes.

New York’s transformative Delivery System Reform Incentive Payment program invested $8 billion to encourage providers to focus on better health outcomes and reduce preventable hospitalizations and emergency room revisits by more than 25% statewide.

Building on that success, we will submit a first-of-its kind waiver request to the federal government that will allow the state to integrate health care and social care services more fully. If the waiver is granted, we will create Health Equity Regional Organizations—collaborative entities that are composed of community stakeholders—to align the efforts of health and social service providers. These organizations will serve as regional hubs to collect data, drive innovation and identify gaps in service, particularly among populations with historical health disparities.

The waiver will also allow us to work with the state’s supportive housing services infrastructure and prepare our health care infrastructure for future health emergencies by investing in workers such as home care aides and community health workers. That means ensuring these critical roles have adequate staffing from the communities they serve, long-term career pathways and competitive wages.

The Medicaid program will also make a series of investments in areas that enhance care for vulnerable New Yorkers. Specifically, building on its longstanding efforts to improve maternal health outcomes, the Medicaid program is advancing initiatives to increase reimbursement rates for midwives, expand access to prenatal and postnatal care, including coverage for nutrition services and increase access to dyadic therapy to parents and their children.

Similarly, recognizing that there are many factors that contribute to health disparities, New York is expanding its investment in programs aimed at addressing the social determinants of health, such as the innovative Supportive Housing program, which aims to bring 10,000 new units online to serve highneed older adults and those with a variety of other chronic conditions.

Finally, we are improving access to care by working to increase reimbursement rates for critical services, including primary care, children’s behavioral health services and supportive health services in schools.

Taken together, these measures will help mitigate health disparities and ensure every New Yorker can access the high-quality services they require.

Through these initiatives, New York’s health care system will take important steps toward an equitable Covid-19 recovery and, more important, have the tools necessary to continue improving and evolving well into the future. ■

health care sector have long known—that we cannot achieve collective health without universal access to quality, culturally affirming care. To truly recover from the pandemic, we have to work toward ending health disparities, writ large, through effective policy that champions comprehensive primary care.

In 1965 the first community health centers grew out of the civil rights movement, funded through the federal Office of Economic Opportunity as part of the war on WENDY STARK poverty. These health centers were created to improve the health and wellness of people who were systemically excluded from access to health care. The centers sought to do this by reducing economic and social impediments to access.

Today CHCs serve approximately 1 in 11 Americans at more than 1,400 organizations nationwide. In the state, 800 health center locations serve 2.3 million New Yorkers per year. Callen-Lorde is one such community health center; we primarily serve LGBTQ+ communities and people living with HIV in three locations in New York City: Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx. We served more than 17,000 New Yorkers last year.

On average, 15% of the patients served by CHCs in New York are uninsured. At Callen-Lorde, that number doubles to nearly 30%. This mirrors the national statistics that LGBTQ people are more than twice as likely to be uninsured as non-LGBTQ people because of employment discrimination and lower household income, among other factors.

Transgender-gender nonbinary individuals are nearly three times as likely to be uninsured, and this systemic exclusion is more acute for people of color at the intersections of these identities. Recent studies have shown that health and economic disparities have continued to increase alarmingly because of Covid-19’s impact.

In addition to the care that Callen-Lorde and other CHCs provide in exam rooms, counseling rooms and dental chairs, we address housing, food security and access to economic stability. Clinical care alone cannot address the health disparities experienced by our communities.

To improve community health, we need structural protections and proper, sustained funding. As do the people we serve, providers of community health too often have to expend our time and energy fighting to keep the bills paid, and keep what funding we have, rather than focus on doing the best job we can for our patients and staff.

As the long-term financial impacts of Covid-19 continue to crystallize, we need a renewed investment in our health care infrastructure, beginning with investment in community health. By providing an equitable reimbursement structure and protecting programs that generate savings, such as 340B, community-based health organizations are well positioned and well equipped to respond to health crises.

The success—or failure—of the health care system at large can be measured in how well we care for the most vulnerable among us. ■ Wendy Stark is the executive director of the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center.

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HEALTH EQUITY

Brett R. Friedman is New York state’s Medicaid director.

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COMMUNITY HEALTH IS KEY TO REDUCING DISPARITIES WORSENED BY THE PANDEMIC

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HOW CAN WE BUILD a more equitable health care system for Black Americans? The pandemic disproportionately affected communities of color we serve, and the disparities are only a microcosm of the egregious health inequities that continue their stubborn hold on Black Americans.

Among the most persistent disparities are maternal health outcomes for Black women. The U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rate of any wealthy nation, with Black women dying at rates 2.5 times higher than ERROL PIERRE the national average.

Research shows the disparities reflect the lack of Black representation on the supply side of health care—specifically physicians and clinicians.

The most recent data from the Association of American Medical Colleges puts the number of active physicians in the United States at 918,547, of which just 45,534 identify as Black or African American.

The good news? More Black women are becoming doctors, and more Black doctors are dedicating their career to primary care and women’s health.

Having a doctor who looks like you or shares common cultural experiences often translates to better health outcomes. Research shows that ethnic concordance — when the ethnicity of patients matches the ethnicity of their physicians—can lead to higher satisfaction rates and healthier births for both mother and child. When ethnic concordance isn’t achievable, delivering culturally competent care can help bridge the gap.

Yet many Black patients are still not given that right, as was outlined in a recent study that revealed doctors use stigmatizing language describing their Black patients.

That is why a physician workforce of greater diversity is urgently needed. The diversity of OB/GYN resident physicians still lags U.S. demographics. But the position in which we find ourselves vis-à-vis Black health care is no accident.

A 1910 report sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation sought to provide a standard set of criteria for medical schools to improve outcomes and reduce the differences in training. It all but recommended the closing of five medical schools for Black students rather than investing and improving them. By 1923, only the Howard University College of Medicine and Meharry Medical College remained open, and Black students’ levels of enrollment in medical schools plummeted. Not until the 1954 Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision would Black medical students be allowed to attend any medical school in America.

So how do we move forward? We must open more opportunities for Black Americans to become doctors by: ● Offering more medical scholarships to students of color. ● Incorporating doulas, midwives and other clinical workers into the maternal health care model. ● Targeting 13% of the physician workforce to be African American and providing incentives for Black doctors to practice in the cities and towns that need them most ● Advocating for tools such as the Irth app, created by Kimberly Seals Allers. The app allows mothers to search for the best clinician to meet their needs.

Structural issues require structural solutions at scale. That’s why our organization, Healthfirst, launched Advance, a website that uses an evidence-based approach expanding health equity. Healthfirst Advance highlights programs proven to reduce disparities, such as the Mount Sinai Hospital postpartum-care pilot. The website also serves as a call to action to all industry stakeholders.

Our work isn’t done until we see real transformation in the quality of health care afforded to Black Americans. ■

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EQUITY IS ALSO A SUPPLY-SIDE ISSUE: WE NEED MORE BLACK DOCTORS AND CLINICIANS

DISPARITIES IN COVID-19 INFECTION, severity and mortality are closely linked to social position, systemic racism and access to health resources.

In 2020 in New York City, cases and death rates were higher in low-income and overcrowded, multigenerational neighborhoods—predominantly communities of color. The emergence of the omicron variant resulted in nearly 55,000 Covid-19 cases in the city on Dec. 26, with high daily counts persisting through January, particularly in lowCHAU income and less-vaccinated neighborhoods.

TRINH-SHEVRIN The bleakness of the omicron-fueled wave, the specter of more transmissible variants and the challenges experienced by many people in historically disinvested neighborhoods are reminders that the pandemic rages on.

Neighborhood vaccination disparities and evidence that unvaccinated individuals are more likely to die from Covid-19 underscore the importance of community engagement in mitigating health inequities.

The National Institutes of Health’s Community Engagement Alliance to End Covid-19 Disparities teams and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention resources for community-engaged dissemination have been essential to increasing vaccine confidence among communities at high risk for poor outcomes. Municipal health agencies in New York have worked tirelessly to staff testing and vaccination sites.

Their reach has been amplified by local organizations and community health workers, who share lived experiences. Culturally responsive strategies and messages are co-created with community partners and delivered in multiple languages. They are delivered to people where they are—in churches, mosques, food pantries, barbershops and other community centers—and often through repeated encounters with trusted messengers.

Through storytelling, social media and virtual workshops in 15 languages, NYCEAL has engaged low-income communities, many of which experience language barriers. It is no small feat that the city’s fully vaccinated rate is currently 85% for adults, compared with 54% in June.

As we shift focus to diagnostic and treatment equity, it is vital that all communities are represented in clinical trials. The pandemic experience reveals that subgroups with language barriers, such as the Asian American, Afro-Caribbean and Latinx populations, are not well reflected in surveillance data. Disparities are latent when diverse groups are lumped together or classified as “other.” Resources for community engagement are needed to understand barriers and facilitators to vaccination, testing, treatment and participation in health research among subgroups.

A study of health care systems across the U.S. revealed lower access to Covid-19 treatment for Blacks, Asians, Hispanics and other individuals.

Equity in vaccine, testing and treatment access must focus on understanding and addressing vulnerability due to social determinants of health and systemic racism. Community engagement must remain at the forefront of public health efforts to reduce Covid-19 disparities. ■ Chau Trinh-Shevrin is a professor of population health and medicine at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine.

Errol Pierre is senior vice president of state programs at Healthfirst, a nonprofit insurer based in New York.

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Raymond Realty Group LLC, Arts of Org filed with SSNY on 07/17/18. Off Loc: New York County, SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail a copy of process to: The LLC, 17 Catherine St, Unit 13, New York, NY 10038. Purpose: to engage in any lawful act.

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The American Thoracic Society, Inc is looking for a Senior Director of Global Health in New York, New York, 10004 to: Coordinate, oversee and evaluate the MECOR programs; recruit and train faculty; implement and evaluate the MECOR 2.0 curriculum; between others. Requirements are: Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration or Management; 24 months of experience as a Manager; at least 12 months of experience in the healthcare industry, medical industry, or medical research industry; at least 3 months of experience in organizing medical education programs and/or medical trainings. Willing and able to travel internationally, occasionally.

Please mail resumes to: Attn: Rhina Guzman, 25 Broadway, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10004.

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TECHNOLOGY

Eliminating the startup funding gap

Fellowship program run by Newlab and the city looks to connect women, people of color to investment opportunities

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espite recent gains, women and people of color still receive just a fraction of the venture capital that powers technology startups.

A new public-private fellowship program hopes to connect underrepresented entrepreneurs to investment opportunities—part of a wider industry effort to address inequities in VC spending. The Founder Fellowship is jointly run by the city Economic Development Corp. and Newlab, a member-

space includes coworking offices and access to 3D NEWLAB printing, an electronics lab and other prototyping equipment.

“This is offering everything that Newlab can do, for a cohort of startups that are still in an early stage,” said Shaina Horowitz, Newlab’s vice president of products and programs.

Horowitz said the startups are ville, Florida. That space was wellmostly pre-seed, which means they equipped, she said, but Newlab ofhave not raised any financing from fers the type of prototyping equipment and mentorship that institutional investors.

One of the start- can help bring the product to marups in the first co- ket by the end of the year. Hydronohort is Hydronomy, my previously had to pay and wait which has devel- for outsourced water-testing reoped a solar-pow- sults, for instance. Now a Newlab ered system for cap- facility will allow the company to turing drinking run tests on its own.

Kendrick said the company’s water from the atmission is to provide an affordable mosphere.

Co-founder Brittany Kendrick source of clean water for governsaid the company started from a ments and individual consumers.

“What bonds all of us in what we project during her master’s study at the NYU Tandon School of Engi- are doing is the understanding that water scarcity and insecurity is beneering.

The company’s latest product ing faced on the brunt end by comwas largely designed and fabricated munities of color,” Kendrick said. in her father’s garage in Jackson- “Because we are a startup that is

PROTOTYPING EQUIPMENT AND MENTORSHIP CAN BRING A PRODUCT TO MARKET ship-based tech workspace at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

The first class of eight fellows, selected from about 70 applicants, will receive a one-year Newlab membership as well as introductions to investors and mentorship programming.

Newlab’s 84,000-square-foot

entirely owned and originated from a group of people of color, and we come from these communities, we understand the importance that this is addressed.”

Also included in the first cohort is The Drivers Cooperative, a ride-hailing challenger to Lyft and Uber that is owned by its drivers. Another company, Farm to Flame Energy, specializes in converting recycled biomass, such as wood chips and sawdust, into electricity.

BUCK ENNIS

BY RYAN DEFFENBAUGH

Focus on founders The partnership with Newlab launched out of the EDC’s Venture Access NYC program, which hopes to foster a more inclusive local startup investment environment.

The EDC also has partnered with Midtown tech investment firm Company Ventures for the City Fellowship, a nine-month program to support women and people of color who have founded startups aimed at improving New Yorkers’ quality of life.

The fellowships are part of a wider focus within the industry on who

has access to funding. The murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020, and the global protest movement against systemic racism that followed, sparked conversations about equality within the technology industry.

Weeks before Eric Adams won New York’s mayoral election in November, he met with startup founders in Chelsea participating in Google’s Black Founders Fund, a startup accelerator program the tech giant launched as part of a series of racial justice commitments following Floyd’s death.

“We wanted to focus on helping founders get past hurdles they face in raising the first chunk of change needed to grow their business,” said Danny Navarro, brand marketing leader at Google for Startups.

The fund has selected 126 founders across two cohorts to receive a $100,000 cash grant as well as mentorship and business services such as Google online advertising. Startups in the first cohort of founders have already raised $50 million in additional funding.

Google announced in the fall that it would launch the same cash grant through a Latino Founders Fund. ■

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BUCK ENNIS

SMALL- BUSINESS SPOTLIGHT

BROOKLYN CANDLE STUDIO began as a hobby.

FOCAL POINTS

Candle company makes expansion a slow burn

COMPANY NAME Brooklyn Candle Studio FOUNDED 2013

Owner of the Brooklyn firm says eschewing outside investment and staying small grant freedom

BY DIANE HESS

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hat began as a do-it-yourself hobby has become a multimillion-dollar business for Tamara Mayne, owner of Industry City– based Brooklyn Candle Studio.

In 2013 Mayne bought a candlemaking kit to craft budget-conscious gifts for family members. Quickly the activity turned into an obsession. After mastering the technique, she used $1,600 in savings to purchase mate-

“WE COULD HAVE GROWN FASTER, BUT I DIDN’T WANT TO OVEREXTEND MYSELF” rials and set up an Etsy shop while still working full time as an art director at the Jones Group. Mayne spent late nights melting wax in her studio apartment in Carroll Gardens.

When a group of orders for 50 candles hit the screen, she felt an entrepreneurial urge.

“Initially, all I wanted was to make a living off candles,” said Mayne, who quit her job in 2014 to build Brooklyn Candle Studio. “It has grown into something I never would have imagined.”

Brooklyn Candle Studio did not achieve success overnight. Mayne expanded incrementally, avoiding debt as much as possible.

Only after she received an order for 1,100 candles from a subscription box service did she rent a 150-square-foot coworking space in Red Hook. When she got a request for 10,000 candles from Urban Outfitters in 2015, she hired three employees and relocated to a 500-square-foot studio in Industry City, which the company outgrew in 2016.

“We could have grown a lot faster, but I didn’t want to overextend myself,” Mayne said.

Today Brooklyn Candle Studio sells scented candles made from domestically grown soy wax, natural oils and vegan ingredients. Its products can be found at large retailers including Nordstrom, Whole Foods, West Elm and Foxtrot as well as through hundreds of smaller boutiques and direct-to-consumer channels. The company has five permanent collections. A signature line of “minimalist” candles reflects Mayne’s no-frills aesthetic.

Although the candles represent 90% of sales, the business is seeing growth in its room mist and reed diffuser products.

Early days In the beginning Mayne mixed the fragrances herself. An early blend, “Brooklyn,”

OWNER AND FOUNDER Tamara Mayne

was based on a cocktail bar in Cobble Hill and featured notes of orange blossom, leather and sage.

These days the company works with perfumers and has 40 different scents.

“I still make the final decisions, but I am more of an evaluator—a nose,” Mayne said.

Wherever possible, the company uses eco-friendly materials in order to support the long-term quality of life of its staff, customers and community.

Though most candle companies outsource production, Brooklyn Candle Studio does everything in-house. A 15-person production team oversees a three-day pouring, wicking, curing and packaging process. To keep up with demand, the company has plans to move from its current 11,000-square-foot space in Industry City to a 19,000-square-foot facility at the complex.

Brooklyn Candle Studio does not work with many distributors, because they charge a markup. Instead, it generates sales through word of mouth and at trade shows. The company also chooses not to work with outside investors, despite interest.

“This has granted us the freedom to come up with our own marketing initiatives without having to worry about meeting sales expectations,” said Mayne.

The company doesn’t intend to become a massive corporation. By staying small, Mayne

EMPLOYEES: 20 full time, 10 part time REVENUE “Sales were in the mid-millions in 2021,” Mayne said.

SALES MIX The company attributes nearly 30% of its sales to nationwide stores. The rest comes from independent boutiques. Wholesale represents 60% of sales, and direct-to-consumer transactions make up the rest.

PRICE POINT All the candles are under $40. Minimalist line candles are $28. The Escapist line, larger candles with double wicks that are inspired by travel, sell for $38.

GOOD INFLUENCE Mayne is proud of her Filipina heritage and often does speaking engagements. “I know my story can be inspiring to a lot of women like me who want to own a business and grow it to be as big as Brooklyn Candle Studio,” she said.

WEBSITE brooklyncandlestudio.com says, the firm can do more for its employees, who receive bonuses and other benefits.

“Eventually we might consider selling the business if it makes sense, but not anytime soon,” she said. “We have received offers, but we plan to grow it ourselves for a while.” ■

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WE BUILD PARTNERSHIPS THAT LAST AN ABS DEAL MEANS EVERYONE WINS Build to Suit Move-In Ready

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