Crain's New York Business

FINANCE

Will more units actually reduce housing costs?

The basic premise behind the ambitious housing plans from Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul is simple: New York’s population growth has far outstripped its housing stock in recent years, driving up prices and making its real estate market insanely competitive for people looking to rent an apartment or buy a home. Increasing the housing supply, therefore, would restore some much-needed balance to this environment, ideally making the process less stressful and costly.

800K

AMOUNT the city’s population grew by in the past decade, but only 200,000 homes were added

Although the idea makes sense, experts say there is little indication that solely increasing the area’s general housing supply will lead to a signi cant decrease in the sky-high rents and home prices that New York has become known for, similar to how adding lanes to a highway does not lead to the end of tra c jams. For that to happen, developers will need to expand the types of homes they

See HOUSING on page 19

Facing crisis, crypto turns to old guard

Veterans of past nancial crises cash in on collapse of digital currencies

BY AARON ELSTEIN

Elliot Lutzker is a walking encyclopedia of white-collar woe. During his 50 years as a securities lawyer, his clients have been accused of some of the most colorful infractions imaginable.

at makes Lutzker a person of particular interest to leaders of stricken cryptocurrency out ts seeking an experienced hand to help guide them through hard times. Bitcoin evangelists half his age are regularly phoning him

or trekking to his classic Midtown law o ce, which features soundproofed conference rooms, tasteful photos of Manhattan landmarks and unobstructed downtown views.

“Yeah, I’ve been through a lot of different crises,” Lutzker said, a little irritated. “You got any more-pleasant questions?”

When Jamie Dimon’s daughter once asked what a nancial crisis is, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase explained, “ is type of thing happens every ve to

seven years.” His math checks out. e collapse of crypto joins a 30-year-long parade, from the failure of savings and loans, the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management, the popping of the dot-com bubble to the implosion of the housing market—which brought the global banking system to its knees and revealed the epic Bernie Mado Ponzi scheme.

e sheer frequency of nancial

See CRYPTO on page 22

BOTH THE mayor and the governor have pledged to increase the housing supply.

Expanding the types of homes developed and the areas they’re built in might have a larger impact on affordability, experts say

BY EDDIE SMALL

LUTZKER of Davidoff Hutcher & Citron

Hochul unveils proposal for record-high budget with focus on housing, health care and transit

NICK GARBER

Gov. Kathy Hochul last Wednesday unveiled her plan for a record-high $227 billion state budget that would extend a corporate tax increase, delay the demise of a key tax break for a ordable housing construction, spend record amounts on Medicaid coverage and raise money to avoid subway-service cutbacks.

Covering the 2024 scal year, which lasts through next spring, the budget proposal also adds meat to proposals that Hochul hinted at last month in her State of the State address, including spending $1 billion to bolster mental health care, incentivizing local governments to build more housing, linking the minimum wage to in ation and revising the state’s bail-reform law.

e plan leaves unresolved major issues including a potential replacement for the 421-a tax break that incentivizes developers to build affordable housing. A replacement program could arise during talks with state legislators—which are expected to last until the April 1 deadline to nalize the annual budget.

e budget proposal arrives as the state’s nances are torn between immediate stability and longer-term uncertainty. In the near term, New

York is ush with cash. Figures released Wednesday showed the state is enjoying an $8.7 billion surplus, fueled by a “remarkable surge” in tax revenue that has exceeded expectations for months, according to Hochul’s o ce.

But a mild recession expected to hit the U.S. this year, combined with dwindling federal pandemic aid, could curtail growth across the state and put a strain on agencies such as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, whose leaders have warned of drastic service cuts if the state does not step in to supplant its disappearing federal dollars.

at tension has given rise to conicting demands directed at the governor and the state Legislature.

Progressives, citing the state’s surplus, have called on Hochul to spend heavily on child care, schools and aid for undocumented immigrants—calls that Hochul partly met in her proposal, with $9 billion in education spending and a $1 billion plan to aid asylum-seekers.

Some lawmakers had pushed the governor to reconsider her opposition to raising income taxes, and the left-leaning Fiscal Policy Institute warned against allowing a two-yearold corporate tax hike to expire as

scheduled this year, saying it would cost New York $1.5 billion by the end of scal year 2025.

Meanwhile, the Citizens Budget Commission and other budget watchdogs have argued against income tax hikes. ey have encouraged the Legislature to use surplus money to bolster the state’s rainyday reserve fund and close out-year budget gaps—which would stand at $22.2 billion through scal year 2027 absent any balancing.

“ e gaps that we’re looking at now could, in fact, get worse if there is some downturn that impacts tax receipts,” said Patrick Orecki, director of state studies at the CBC.

Ultimately, Hochul heeded calls to keep the corporate tax increase alive past this year, proposing to extend through 2026 a Cuomo-era policy that raised rates for businesses making at least $5 million per year. But Hochul reiterated Wednesday that she would not move to raise income taxes.

Housing targets and a 421-a extension, but no replacement

Hochul’s budget plan includes some relief for housing projects already in the now-lapsed 421-a program, but it o ered few speci cs about what a comparable new program might look like.

Projects vested under the a ordable housing tax break currently need to be built by June 15, 2026, to receive the bene t, but the governor’s budget would extend the deadline by four years.

e budget cites the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on construction schedules as the reason for the change. Some 33,000 housing units around the city were jeopardized by the 2026 deadline, according to the Real Estate Board of New York.

e now-expired program gave developers a tax break for making 30% of the units in their buildings a ordable, but it expired in June.

Last year Hochul included a pro-

cord. e funds would go toward a 5% reimbursement rate for hospitals ( outing providers’ ask for an increase as high as 20%).

Hochul’s proposal includes expanding primary care and preventive Medicaid services through increased reimbursement rates, expanding the Medicaid buy-in program for New Yorkers with disabilities. It would widen Medicaid coverage for primary and urgent care within the shelter system, and it would put $72 million toward three SUNY disproportionate-share hospitals that care for a high percentage of Medicaid patients.

gram to replace 421-a in her budget proposal, but the plan ultimately died in the Legislature.

A budget brie ng book does outline multiple new tax incentives, including an exemption meant to encourage multifamily a ordable housing development, but representatives for Hochul’s o ce did not immediately respond to a question about whether the exemption was meant to serve as a 421-a replacement.

e budget proposal pushes forward on multiple components of Hochul’s New York Housing Compact plan to construct 800,000 homes in the state. It would require all municipalities to hit new targets for building homes on a three-year cycle, and it includes legislation to require neighborhoods to rezone areas within half a mile of a MetroNorth station to allow for denser development.

Casinos, payroll taxes fund

an MTA rescue

A scal rescue package for the cash-strapped MTA makes up a key component of Hochul’s budget, including at least $1.3 billion in new annual revenue through an increase in payroll taxes and earnings from in-the-works casinos.

Hochul proposed $800 million in new annual funding from the Payroll Mobility Tax on downstate businesses for the MTA, along with a share of the $1.5 billion in licensing fees for up to three planned downstate casinos.

According to the budget book, those proposals would largely cover impending budget shortfalls. e infusion of cash could prevent service cuts, but it would not stop a fare increase of 5.5% planned for this year.

MTA o cials had warned that the agency requires $600 million this year to balance its operating budget and avoid drastic service cuts.

Medicaid and mental health investments

e governor proposed almost $35 billion for state-funded support for Medicaid alone—which is a re-

suading them to pursue further changes.

Heeding a call from Adams, Hochul’s plan also includes a $1 billion “framework” to provide services for the more than 41,000 asylum-seekers who have entered the city in recent months.

e cost would be split evenly between the city, state and federal governments, with the state reimbursing some expenses for opening emergency shelters and providing health care.

e budget also puts speci c dollar amounts on portions of the governor’s $1 billion plan to address mental health—which she announced last year. Advocates had mixed reactions.

e plan would reserve $890 million to build 3,500 units of supportive housing for New Yorkers with mental illness, $60 million for 12 new comprehensive psychiatric emergency programs and $18 million for 150 state-operated inpatient psychiatric beds.

Total mental hygiene spending is proposed to be about $10.5 billion for scal 2024.

Hochul proposed measures to protect New Yorkers’ reproductive care access by increasing reimbursement rates. She also wants to reform the managed-care system and build a comprehensive, statewide health care strategy.

She proposed a $1 billion capital investment in health care facility transformation: $500 million fornancing capital improvements for eligible providers, improving health care delivery, and another $500 million for nance information tech improvement.

In the life sciences realm, the budget proposes a $1.7 billion investment in the Wadsworth Center Laboratories, a research-intensive public health center.

Bail reform and $1 billion for migrants

As promised during her Jan. 10 State of the State speech, Hochul said she will seek to alter New York’s 2019 bail reforms by removing a requirement that judges use the “least restrictive” means of ensuring that defendants return to court.

e change e ectively would give judges more leeway in their ability to set bail—a frequent request by Mayor Eric Adams and many law enforcement o cials.

If enacted, it would be the third change to the 2019 law, following similar revisions in 2020 and last year. But Democratic state lawmakers who passed the original reforms have defended the law against what they view as baseless attempts to tie it to pandemic-era crime increases. Hochul could have a tough time per-

It is unclear whether that commitment would satisfy Adams, who has said the migrant crisis could cost the city as much as $2 billion.

Minimum-wage increases

Hochul followed up on her State of the State proposal to tie the minimum wage to in ation by linking it to the Consumer Price Index for urban wage-earners and clerical workers in the Northeast. e policy would cap annual increases at an unspeci ed gure to prevent a single-year increase that could “threaten employment,” according to her budget book—and would allow increases to be paused during “certain economic conditions.”

New York would be the 14th state to link the minimum wage to in ation, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Only California and the District of Columbia have a higher minimum wage. Massachusetts also requires employers to pay at least $15 per hour. ■

Jacqueline Neber, Eddie Small and Caroline Spivack contributed.

“THE GAPS THAT WE’RE LOOKING AT NOW COULD GET WORSE IF THERE IS SOME DOWNTURN”

CO-FOUNDERS

Fearless+ highlights interests and hobbies over work experience to help students

Its co-founders describe the jobs platform as LinkedIn meets TikTok meets MasterClass

The upstart: Fearless+

In her decades working as an executive recruiter and leadership coach, Deepali Vyas was struck by how terrible most young folks are when it came to soft skills such as communication, business etiquette, personal branding and leadership. Tech executive Mike Grushin spotted the same problem in the IT world. When the two paired to address the issue with an online education platform, they tried to gure out a way to make the content scalable and appealing to students.

e resulting platform, Fearless+, launched last summer. e founders describe it as LinkedIn meets TikTok meets MasterClass.

High school and college students can search for jobs and internships, create professional pro les featuring their own videos and attend the platform’s webinars on topics such as the art of choosing a career path. e service is free.

So far several hundred students have joined the platform.

vider for the sports industry, says he likes how the Fearless+ pro les display students’ passions and interests in a well-rounded way.

Clark recently hired a Fearless+ user for an internship.

“His pro le jumped out to us, as his video gave us such great perspective about his interest and experience in the industry,” Clark says. “We felt that we knew all about [him] before even meeting him.”

e Midtown-based company employs a fulltime sta of three and contracts with a team of developers. Its recent preseed round raised $1 million. e company plans to charge employers for job and internship listings and host ads for services such as youth coding boot camps. It also plans to charge users who want upgraded proles.

The reigning Goliath: LinkedIn

describes as “your narrative to the world.”

e platform is tailored to address the students’ lifestyles. Users can search for jobs that o er after-school hours. Pro le pages focus on interests and hobbies rather than work experience.

When the platform rst launched, the co-founders were surprised to nd that less than 10% of users were creating video elevator pitches on the website. Why? In interviews, the students acknowledged, “We’re shy! We don’t know what to say!” When Fearless+ launched a module with prompts to help students create a script, the number of videos tripled.

“You are able to read your answer so you’re not fumbling and bumbling. You are con dent, you’re succinct, and we package that up for you,” Vyas says.

ANNE KADET

Luca Spadinger, a freshman who is studying humanities at SUNY Purchase and has a job at e Gap, says he would love to land an internship in nance or media. To that end, he created a Fearless+ pro le in which he describes himself as “intellectual, outgoing and hardworking.” His page also displays his Myers-Briggs personality type (ENTP—the debater) and includes a clip of him reading his poetry at an open mike. ere is also a charming video in which he describes how, against all odds, he took rst place in the 400-meter hurdles at a track meet: “I’ll never run again because I will never, ever top that moment!”

Spadinger says he’s not on LinkedIn because it’s too accomplishment-based, “which is good for some aspects of things, but I don’t think people get to see who you actually are—your interests and your passions.”

Employers appreciate the colorful pro les as well.

Michael Clark, director of strategy and analytics at Next League, a Brooklyn-based digital technology solutions pro-

LinkedIn, owned by Microsoft, has more than 875 million members around the world, including 194 million in the U.S. and roughly 9% of the nation’s high school students. It lists 58 million companies and 129,000 schools. Its 2021 revenue topped $10 billion.

How to slay the giant

Early on the co-founders focused on content creation. But speaking with students, they realized that their company’s primary focus—career readiness education and coaching— wasn’t so exciting for young people.

“Teenagers will not do things unless there is incentive for them,” Grushin says, “and the incentives are things like internships or a part-time job.”

Potential investors, meanwhile, said they’d be more interested in a scalable platform than funding another content business.

To lure students, the pair decided to focus on building a platform that would allow young people to create what Vyas

Some students balked at the prospect of writing a personal statement. To save users from the drudgery of writing actual sentences, Fearless+ has them select from a menu of adjectives such as “generous,” “resourceful” and “innovative.” An AI-bot uses the words to generate a statement for the pro le.

Soon to come: pro le badges awarded to users who have completed online training to master common workplace tools such as Slack.

The next challenge

To get the word out and attract more users, the startup will need to experiment to see what works best, says orn, who has been advising the co-founders..

e company recently partnered with six charter schools in California that will incorporate Fearless+ into their guidance counseling e orts. e startup is also working with the local chapter of a large youth leadership group to introduce the platform to its 2,000 members. And it is advertising on TikTok and Instagram to reach students directly.

“We would love to capture those 24 million high school students across the U.S.,” Vyas says. ■

Anne Kadet is the creator of Café Anne, a weekly newsletter with a New York City focus.

Grushin and Vyas

WHO OWNS THE BLOCK

Landlord concerns over federal marijuana ban ease as another pot shop opens up in the city

New York has continued its legal weed rollout with the opening of a second cannabis dispensary on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village

BY C. J. HUGHES

Because marijuana is still illegal at the federal level, landlords who have mortgages with federally chartered banks would seem potentially at risk by having pot stores as tenants, as doing business with a drug dealer, essentially, runs afoul of the law.

But even though federal officials haven't said outright that they won't enforce the law, some landlords seem unfazed, as in Greenwich Village, where the city's second legal dispensary opened Jan. 24.

"My only concern is: Is marijuana legal? And is the state of New York behind it? And the answer to both of those questions is yes," said Herman Gans, an owner of 144 Bleecker St., which is home to the new cannabis shop, Smacked Village.

In 2011 Gans and his co-investors borrowed $6.8 million against the 4-story mixed-use building, which cost $4.2 million in 2001, records show. The lender was New York Community Bank, which is based on Long Island and holds $66 billion in loans for properties across the country.

A message left with the bank asking for an explanation of its position on working with landlords with cannabis-selling tenants was not returned by press time.

Cooper Katz, a broker with ABS Partners Real Estate who handled the Smacked Village deal, said it's his understanding some financial institutions are advising landlords to tread carefully.

"Some of the banks are saying, 'We're OK with it,' and others are not," said Katz, who was the fifth agent to market 144 Bleecker, a 5,600-square-foot two-level space that had been empty since a Duane Reade closed in 2019. "But it's definitely a conversation we're having."

184

THOMPSON ST.

In 2005 Broad Street Development purchased this 1970 red-brick rental building for $54.5 million, records show, before converting it into a condominium. Today the 9-story building with a doorman and elevator has 144 apartments, some of which sport small, angular terraces. Broad Street, which is headed by Raymond Chalme, has been active in the area. Its most recent project was at 40 Bleecker, a groundup luxury development that has 61 apartments. No. 184 hugs what was once a musical intersection; one of No. 184’s tenants in the 1980s was Lush Life, a popular jazz club. In later years, a Capital One branch was in the spot, though the Covid-19 pandemic seems to have done it in. Another retail space once housed Surya, a “colonial Indian” restaurant that recently gave way to Madam Ji, which serves similar dishes.

In 1896, after this corner of the Village had transitioned from an affluent to a middle-class area, philanthropist Darius Ogden Mills developed this 11-story structure, Mills House, as a sort of dormitory for single men, with 1,554 rooms, according to the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Today the upstairs portion, now a condo-op, has 190 apartments. One, a studio, was for sale late last month for $455,000, though many of the units appear to be functioning as rentals, including some as extended-stay hotel rooms, based on ads. No. 160’s downstairs floors had brushes with history, too. In 1958

Art D’Lugoff opened the Village Gate jazz club in one section; John Coltrane performed regularly. After the club closed in 1994, a CVS pharmacy took its place. Le Poisson Rouge, a 700-person music venue, also has a Village Gate piece. In 2015 another retail berth welcomed an outpost of Li-Lac Chocolates, a 100-year-old company that began at 120 Christopher St.

510 LAGUARDIA PLACE

If there were an award for most name changes, this street might win. Once Laurens Street, then South Fifth Avenue (1870) and then West Broadway (1899), it took on its current moniker in 1967 in honor of former Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. A statue of the well-liked politician is down the block. A 5-story commercial condominium from 1872 that was home to the Gemstone, an experimental theater, in the 1970s, it today offers GMT Tavern downstairs. A second retail space, once home to Le Souk restaurant, is empty. The three towers across the street are University Village: Two are for NYU faculty housing, and the third is a limited-equity cooperative. Built as part of a 1960s “slum clearance” project, all are protected landmarks today.

If some federal lawmakers have their way, those conversations won't be necessary for much longer. In 2020 the House of Representatives approved the More Act, which would decriminalize cannabis on a national level. And Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York has said he expects his chamber to take up the bill soon.

"I never thought I would see the day," Gans said. ■

In 2014 the City Council approved this block for inclusion in the South Village Historic District, a 13-block, 250-building area that was one of the city’s “most important and famous centers of artistic, social and cultural movements,” the council said. It’s still lively: The Red Lion bar at the base of this 6-story 1903 building boasts live music every night of the week. Above are 40 apartments. Owner Shellville Realty, a shell company, bought the 27,000-square-foot structure in 1995 from Salvatore and Mary Longo for about $3 million, records show.

149

In the 1830s this block was called Carroll Place. Like nearby St. Mark’s Place, it was developed as an exclusive neighborhood-within-a-neighborhood for the well-to-do. Carroll featured 15 elegant, Federal-style row houses on both sides of the street. This building has hung on since the 19th century, although there have been changes along the way. By the 1960s, it was sliced up with a pair of retail spaces on its lower floors. Village Oldies, a record store from Robert “Bleecker Bob” Plotnik, occupied one in the 1960s. Another ‘60s retail tenant was the Crazy Horse, a drag bar that officials once targeted for being too rowdy. “The only instruments that can be played are the piano, organ, accordion, guitar or any other stringed instrument,” a 1964 New York Times story said, but “bongo drums and other noisy instruments are used.” Today the second-floor space has Terra Blues, a 32-year-old music club; traditional watering hole Wicked Willy’s is below it.

144 BLEECKER ST.

THE CORNER OF W. HOUSTON AND LAGUARDIA

This green strip and similar ones to the north are remnants of an extra-wide continuation of Fifth Avenue through Washington Square Park that was proposed by planner Robert Moses but never completed. The idea was to give drivers on the avenue a direct route to a new cross-Manhattan freeway. In 1978 environmental artist Alan Sonfist turned the 1,000-square-foot parcel into the site-specific piece “Time Landscape,” a re-creation of the woodsy landscape that graced Manhattan before Dutch colonists arrived. “The existing trees were struggling with the environment, so my plantings included more species that were better adapted to warmer climates but were still indigenous to the site,” Sonfist wrote on his website of the fenced-off installation, which the city’s Department of Transportation still owns.

Two retail spaces line this 4-story, 10-apartment walk-up. One contains New University Pen and Stationery, a 15-year tenant that just renewed its lease for a decade, landlord Herman Gans said. As of Jan. 24, the other space offers Smacked Village, a cannabis dispensary owned by Roland Conner, 50, who spent time behind bars in 1991 for a weed offense. The state has prioritized awarding cannabis licenses to people who have been incarcerated on marijuana charges. The store, in a bare-bones space, is scheduled to operate until Feb. 20, then close for a renovation that could cost $1 million, according to news reports. In 1831 the structure was actually two sideby-side townhouses. The owner of Mori’s, an Italian restaurant, combined them in 1920. An avant-garde movie house, Bleecker Street Cinema, showed flicks from 1962 to 1990, and a Duane Reade came later. Four brokers marketed the Smacked space, including to comedy clubs, before ABS Partners found a taker.

BLEECKER ST.

151 BLEECKER ST.

160 BLEECKER ST.

James Dolan no longer has as many friends at the top

James Dolan believes he is invincible—and why wouldn’t he? The owner of Madison Square Garden, the Knicks, the Rangers and the corporate entity that operates Radio City Musical Hall and the Beacon Theatre, he is long accustomed to having his way in New York. The son of the man who founded Cablevision, Dolan has always behaved like someone who has no regard for consequence.

Now, for the first time, Dolan might have met his match. His obsession with using facial-recognition technology to ban anyone from his properties who has, in some way, run afoul of him has brought scrutiny from the state attorney general’s office and the Democratic legislators who represent Midtown. Dogged reporting on Dolan’s practices, which first showed up in the excellent Substack House of Strauss, has now crossed over from the sports universe to the city’s mainstream news media, where Dolan is no longer merely a cantankerous heir ruining the Knicks yet again.

With his company’s share price plummeting, Dolan is now a mogul

ranting on Fox 5 about how he’ll happily welcome the state yanking his liquor license over the use of facial recognition. (“What we’re gonna do, right, [is] we’re going to pick a night, maybe a Rangers game, and we’re gonna shut down all the liquor and alcohol in the building.”)

Dolan said he can put up photos of Sharif Kabir, the chief executive of the State Liquor Authority, and tell fans to call him

“People say, ‘You’re so sensitive; you shouldn’t defend yourself.’ It’s like something out of The Godfather—like, ‘It’s only business,’ ” Dolan said. But “the Garden has to defend itself.”

Dolan has used facial recognition to bar lawyers from Madison Square Garden and Radio City because they work for firms engaged in litigation against his company, whether or not they are personally involved. A lawyer was thrown out of Radio City in December while awaiting a Rockettes performance with her daughter’s Girl Scout troop.

Dolan apparently believes he can win a public relations war against politicians, including Rep. Jerry Na-

dler and state Sen. Brad HoylmanSigal, who are pressuring him to end his use of facial recognition to capriciously punish paying customers. In his Fox 5 interview, Dolan lashed out at the Democratic politicians for supporting bail reform, which many moderates and conservatives have blamed for a crime spike. His hope, plainly, is that the public will side with him over the meddling liberals.

Not the sympathetic party

If Dolan believes it will be easy— that disgruntled Knicks fans will flock to his side and New Yorkers in general will view him as the sympathetic party—he is mistaken. In part, that is because his tantrums are wearying. And he has never been popular in the first place. What matters more, though, is the political reality, one Dolan fails to ascertain. Since 1982 Madison Square Garden has received a full tax break, worth $43 million per year, that can be repealed if muscled through the state Legislature.

When Republicans controlled the state Senate and Sheldon Silver, an avid Rangers fan and Dolan ally, was Assembly speaker, a bill repealing the tax abatement was dead on arrival. Dolan always had the ear of Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Cuomo and Silver are both gone, and progressive Democrats are ascendant in the state Senate. Carl Heastie, the speaker who replaced Silver, has no special relationship with Dolan.

Dolan and his family spent more than $200,000 to help elect Kathy Hochul. Is Hochul Dolan’s trump card? The governor has said little about the controversy so far.

But it’s no longer impossible that the Democrats in the Legislature would advance an abatement-re-

peal bill and dare Hochul to veto it.

There are other matters for Dolan to consider. Madison Square Garden’s local special permit is set to expire this year and will need approval from the overwhelmingly Democratic City Council. Hochul has continued to push a $7 billion redevelopment of Penn Station that taps funds from real estate development in the area, though opponents are growing more restive.

The next time Dolan opens his mouth, he should remember all the ways that city and state government make his business possible. His friends in politics are fast disappearing.

Quick takes

● This will be a crucial second year for Mayor Eric Adams, who must prove to his critics he can somehow lower the city’s overall crime rate.

● The Hector LaSalle standoff continues. If Hochul doesn’t send a new nominee to the state Senate— and she never pursues, or wins, legal action—the Court of Appeals will have six, not seven, judges indefinitely. ■

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

ROSS BARKAN

BUCK ENNIS

Tech:NYC brings back Julie Samuels as executive director

BY CARA EISENPRESS

The head of Tech:NYC is stepping down and will hand the reins back to the business group’s founder, Julie Samuels.

Jason Myles Clark, who took over last year, plans to move into a new position, which he did not disclose.

“As a lifelong public servant,” Clark said in a statement, “I am very excited to share what’s next for me as soon as I am permitted.”

Samuels was the founding leader

EDUCATION

of the organization, which acts as a booster for local tech firms and outof-town giants that have substantial office footprints in the city. The organization has grown from five members when it was founded in 2016, to 800 companies today.

In January 2022 Clark became the head of the organization. His term included a crash in the cryptocurrency subsector, a valuation haircut for firms that had gone public in 2021 and a near standstill for initial public offerings.

But during that time it also be-

came clear how central technology had become to the city’s economy, with reports emerging that companies in the sector now employ about 200,000 people.

Tech:NYC has an annual budget of about $1.5 million, which it generates from membership dues. It produces research and lobbies on behalf of the industry.

Samuels stayed on the board of Tech:NYC after stepping down as executive director last year. She became a partner at Hangar, an investment firm seeking to produce innovations needed by government agencies. She also joined the 60-person “New” New York Panel, a public-private partnership that released the “Making New York Work for Every-

one” report in December. The report recommended areas for growth.

Technology-related suggestions include integrating tech solutions into civic problems such as bus-route improvements and curb management, making libraries more technologically advanced hubs for remote work and adding matching funds for small-business-innovation research.

The latter seemed to gain traction in Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposed budget, which would put $6 million toward the project. ■

BY JACK GRIEVE

Colleges in New York are among the most expensive in the country.

Columbia University, with its annual undergraduate tuition listed at $65,524, is the second-most-expensive U.S. school, according to data compiled by The College Investor. It sits just behind Franklin & Marshall College of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which charges $65,652.

Vassar College is the next New York school on the list, with its $64,450 tuition making it the fourth most expensive. Reed College of Portland, Oregon, and Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, flank it in the top five.

Sarah Lawrence College and the University of Rochester sit at the 15th and 17th slots, with tuitions of $60,700 and $60,550, respectively.

The rankings are based on the schools’ listed tuition prices. Few students pay the list price after scholarships and other financial aid are factored in.

NYU’s tuition is listed at $60,438. It fell just beyond the 20 most expensive schools on the College Investor list. Also not included was Cornell University. Standard tuition at Cornell is $62,456, but the school has a number of departments that get funding from the state, bringing the price for New York residents down to $41,958.

That compares to other New York schools’ tuition listings: $58,600 at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, $58,440 at Syracuse University, $56,920 at Fordham University and $45,200 at Yeshiva University.

Costs at SUNY and CUNY campuses are significantly lower. Annual tuition for New York residents is $7,070 at SUNY’s four-year colleges and $5,130 at its community colleges. Annual CUNY in-state tuition is $6,930 at senior colleges and $4,800 at community colleges. ■

SAMUELSCLARK PHOTOS, BUCK ENNIS

Hochul’s 421-a extension is a good step but doesn’t replace the need for a new plan

In her budget proposal, which she submitted last week, Gov. Kathy Hochul set forth a plan to extend the completion deadline for properties in the a ordable housing tax-abatement pipeline by four years. Companies working on projects under the controversial 421-a program, which o ered a tax break if developers made 30% of the units in their buildings a ordable, would now have until June 15, 2030, to nish them.

e Real Estate Board of New York had estimated that the original 2026 deadline put developers at risk of not creating roughly 33,000 housing units across 72 projects in the city. e governor’s budget proposal cited construction delays spurred by the pandemic as a reason for the extension.

creation in the state. However, the extension does not make any new projects eligible for the 421-a tax abatement, which expired in June, and her proposal does not include details on a replacement for the program.

Developers have long said that an incentive program is key to making the economics of constructing an a ordable project in New York City work.

Some stakeholders have theorized that the governor is waiting for the Legislature to advance its own replacement plan in the nal budget, especially after she proposed a replacement in her last budget, which the Legislature did not act on. Perhaps if the Legislature has to come up with its own plan, it will be more willing to get something passed—although there have been few signs so far that legislators feel particularly motivated to do this.

AN INCENTIVE PROGRAM IS KEY TO MAKING THE ECONOMICS WORK

With a ordability weighing heavily on the minds of most New Yorkers, the governor’s extension of the deadline is a welcome sign that she prioritizes housing

OP-ED

But if Hochul is serious about having 800,000 new homes built in the state in the next 10 years, coming up with a replacement is something that must happen now, not a can that is kicked down the road. And it will

require an “all hands on deck” approach. If she wants legislators to reconsider her 485-w replacement legislation, now is not the time for hints. She should say so and make sure legislators join her at the negotiating table. Her new budget proposal does detail facets of her plan to build those 800,000 homes, known as the New York Housing Compact. And it does outline new tax incentives, including an exemp-

Let’s install traf c controls that account for bike lanes

BY RICHARD KHUZAMI

New York City continues to come up way short in providing a safe environment on our streets. We cannot accept tragedies anymore like the recent truck-bicyclist fatality on 24th Avenue in Astoria. ere is no excuse.

Too much rhetoric on this issue focuses on blame: Who causes what? But an accident causing serious injury or death is life-changing to all involved. Even if someone did not cause the accident, they are still scarred for life.

We should stop worrying about blame and instead create common-sense solutions that make the streets safer for all.

e Old Astoria Neighborhood Association’s position is twopronged: No block should have a bike lane installed without the appropriate tra c controls. And all blocks currently with bike lanes should have the appropriate tra c controls.

As the city’s transportation network evolves, many changes are happening. Nontraditional forms of travel such as bicycles, electric scooters, skateboards, in-line skates, one-wheel scooters and other innovative vehicles are gaining in popularity.

It would be irresponsible to create bike lanes without instituting the proper tra c controls.

Installing dedicated stop signs and tra c and turning lights on the bike lanes is just as important as any concrete barrier. Perhaps more so.

Following traf c controls

Many people complain that cyclists and users of other nontraditional transit do not follow tra c laws, but without tra c controls people often have no choice.

As Transportation Alternatives member Steve Sco eld says, “For cyclists, often obeying tra c signals designed for cars is less safe than doing something technically

illegal. Having a green light that both allows cyclists to proceed straight and cars to turn across the bike lane is a recipe for disaster, as we’ve seen all too frequently. For example, cyclists often go through a red signal if there's no cross trafc, to get a jump on cars lined up behind the red. is is because these cars will often turn into a cyclist’s path once the light is green. Also, it’s frequently safer for a cyclist to make a left from the left lane on a red light if there’s no cross tra c than it is waiting for the green and having cars whizzing by him on both sides while waiting for an opening to turn.”

(Sco eld was not speaking for TA.)

Turning automobiles and trucks have blind spots. eir drivers often cannot see someone passing on their right or left.

Examples of what works are the bike-turning lights on Second Avenue, where several intersections have timed signals dedicated to bike lanes.

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tion meant to encourage multifamily a ordable housing development.

But New Yorkers do not have the luxury to wait and see who will come up with a viable 421-a replacement. All elected o cials must submit solutions that can be molded into a workable program, and the governor missed an opportunity to model the urgency of this need by not including it in her budget proposal. ■

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If that technology had been installed on 24th Avenue, perhaps the recent fatality could have been avoided.

Automobile usage in the city probably will be declining, while the number of people using alternative forms of transit will increase. An investment in common-sense tra c controls could pay dividends for years to come.

Although some people might say the proposal is too expensive, how does it compare to the value of just one life?

Everyone must remember that, whatever vehicle or apparatus they are driving or riding, tra c conicts can turn it into a lethal weapon. ■

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Help those who help us with a cost-of-living raise for grossly underpaid human-services employees

BY MICHAELLE SOLAGES

Last year Gov. Kathy Hochul did what her predecessor refused to do: She approved a cost-ofliving adjustment for the humanser vices sector, which spans many industries including foster care agencies, food pantries and domestic violence shelters.

Those are workers who keep New York moving every day, who work on the issues our state needs help with the most, such as homelessness and the mental health crisis. They are heroes, yet they are being grossly underpaid for their life-saving work as the cost of living in New York continues to rise.

cover the costs associated with the services they provide, let alone provide workers with a living wage.

Twelve consecutive years of denying the sector a cost-of-living adjustment has left it in shambles. Although we finally funded a COLA last year, it was not enough to make up for the harm that has been done. Human-services workers are still making poverty wages in an increasingly expensive state.

do not qualify for public assistance—but not enough to pay their bills. They are left foundering by a system that works against them, all while they work for us.

THE MaJOrITy OF EMPLOYEES IN THE SECTOR ARE PeOPLe OF COLOr

Most human services nonprofits are paid for their important work through government contracts, which determine how much their workers make. The less we pay the nonprofits, the less they can pay their workers.

Many of the contracts barely

Human-services workers make about $20,000 a year less than public-sector workers with similar levels of education, and many are unable to make ends meet. Many work long hours and are forced to rely on assistance themselves, even though they spend each day providing help to others.

In fact, 15% of workers in the sector qualified for food stamps between 2016 and 2018.

That is unconscionable.

Other human-services workers make just enough money that they

Members of the New York State Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic and Asian Legislative Caucus, which I chair, are particularly concerned about the issue because people of color constitute the majority of employees in the human-services sector. About 66% of human-services workers are women, and 68% are people of color. There is no equitable recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic without an investment in the vital human-services workforce. We cannot allow the underfunding of this essential sector to continue.

#JustPay campaign

That is why we in the caucus are announcing our support for the Human Services Council’s #JustPay campaign, which calls for an annual, automatic COLA and a living-wage floor of $21 per hour for all government-funded workers in the industry.

Racial equity is key to an equitable pandemic recovery, and the council’s campaign is an important step toward the goal.

The beginning of the current legislative session is a great time to move forward on this important issue. We are calling on our col-

leagues in the state Legislature to join us in supporting the #JustPay campaign. ■

The state’s cannabis industry needs greater regulatory oversight to combat testing fraud

BY BRADLEY TUSK

Although it took a decade longer than in Colorado, Washington and other states, New York late last year permitted retail sales of cannabis. Finally—and for now at just a couple of locations in Manhattan—we New Yorkers can buy recreational cannabis at licensed dispensaries.

But New Yorkers can confirm that, for many months now, cannabis has been openly sold at storefronts that do not have a dispensary

products.

Right now cannabis testing fraud is a widespread problem.

Of the 21 states that have legalized recreational cannabis, laboratory fraud has been found in at least 10 of them. In Massachusetts, THC levels were found to be regularly inflated by as much as 33%. Hundreds of thousands of tests performed in labs across Nevada, Oregon and Washington found that THC counts were off by more than 20%.

license. And what’s been sold at the illegal storefronts hasn’t been good.

I’ve spent decades working at the crux of the public and private sectors. Usually, I’m helping companies navigate, or fight back against, regulations and politics that hinder their growth. But in this case, I believe the industry still needs greater regulatory oversight. As more dispensaries become legal, consumers should be guaranteed access to safe, high-quality

Public lab data in Washington state found clear, systematic differences in results obtained by different testing facilities—results that could not be explained by variations in the strains or samples received. In other words, the results were made up. We have two problems: Scores of illegal stores are allowed to operate without any of their products undergoing testing, and the testing utilized by legal producers is rife with fraud.

Addressing the problems requires a coordinated effort. Here’s what needs to happen.

● Cities and states must crack down on illegal dispensaries, and

they need to institute much higher standards for labs that test cannabis, regularly holding the labs accountable.

● We need new laws and regulations that ensure truth and transparency in testing.

● Labs need to know that if they deliberately inflate or misrepresent ingredients and potency, they will be held accountable. That includes facing fines, license revocation and criminal charges.

● Cannabis companies need to know that they will be held accountable for fraud. No lab chooses to doctor the results without first being asked to do so by the company. When people on both sides of the equation start facing real consequences, that’s when behavior will change.

● Cannabis investors need to be a lot more careful than they’ve been so far. Much better diligence has to start taking place, and harder ques-

tions have to be asked. Does the company you’re looking at have a history of compliance issues? Who does their cannabis testing, and do they conduct audits for their labs? Can this company still succeed if it’s not misstating potency?

Any major cultural shift, such as legalizing retail cannabis, is going to come with a lot of challenges. But the only way to make the underlying change worthwhile is to address and attack the challenges proactively. Our failure to do so would harm consumers, time after time, city after city, state after state.

In the United States, licensed cannabis retail has been around for more than 10 years. It shouldn’t take another decade to get testing right. ■

Bradley Tusk is chief executive of Tusk Holdings, whose Tusk Strategies has cannabis clients. He is also an investor in Vice Ventures, an early-stage venture capital fund.

Michaelle Solages, an Assembly member from Long Island, chairs the New York State Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic and Asian Caucus.

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Long Island contractor used Sandy relief funds to buy Lamborghini, Porsche, Jaguar, feds say

BY CAROLINE SPIVACK

ALong Island contractor scammed Superstorm Sandy victims out of $2.5 million and spent the disaster-relief dollars on lavish personal expenses, including buying a Lamborghini, a Porsche and a Jaguar, according to a 20-count indictment released by the U.S. Attorney’s O ce in Brooklyn.

Alexander Almaraz, 55, who owns Design Concepts Group in Freeport, Nassau County, was arraigned in federal court on charges of wire fraud conspiracy, wire fraud and attempted wire fraud. Prosecutors said the charges are connected to a scheme wherein Almaraz took advantage of at least 20 clients seeking to repair their homes after Superstorm Sandy devastated New York in October 2012.

“In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, the defendant took advantage of distressed homeowners who were desperate to rebuild their homes and their lives,” U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said in a statement.

Almaraz’s attorney did not immediately return a request for comment.

As the owner of DCG, Almaraz entered into contracts with people who quali ed to receive funds from the state’s New York Rising Fund, which was launched in the wake of Sandy to help New Yorkers rebuild their storm-decimated homes. Almaraz agreed to lift his client’s homes—which entailed disconnecting appliances and some demolition— and set them down on temporary support structures while he demolished and replaced damaged foundations, the indictment says.

Between October 2015 and June 2019, he promised to raise at least 20 homes of clients, who had received federal relief dollars through

the state, for a combined $2.5 million, according to the indictment. But rather than complete the promised work, prosecutors said, Almaraz spent the money on personal matters, paying his credit card bills and buying luxury cars as well as land in Kansas City, Missouri.

For most of the contracts, Almaraz listed DCG as the company of record, but for certain contracts he fraudulently recorded the name

of a di erent company, according to the indictment.

Almaraz persuaded some homeowners to rent out properties he owned during construction, the ling says. In one instance, court records show, he told a client that he was willing to rent the person a trailer for $2,700 per month while work on the client’s home was in progress; the client related that Almaraz said $1,200 of the monthly

rent would be applied to the lifting costs, according to the indictment.

After a two-year backand-forth, and additional payments made to Almaraz, the client had the home lifted, but new foundation work and a lowering of the house were never completed, prosecutors said, adding that a similar pattern of construction neglect emerged on other projects.

Facing prison

If convicted, Almaraz faces up to 30 years in prison for each count of the indictment.

“Dozens of New Yorkers—in their hour of need—were left homeless and with their homes in ruin, due to the alleged actions of Alexander Almaraz,” Nassau District Attorney Anne Donnelly said in a statement. “For nearly four years, this contractor allegedly promised families that he’d repair their homes, but instead he used disaster-relief money to buy exotic sports cars and property in another state.” ■

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Midtown staple Ruth’s Chris Steak House closing after 30 years, as office workers are slow to return

BY OLIVIA BENSIMON

Ruth’s Chris Steak House will close its West 51st Street location in April, the company recently announced. A spokesperson for the company said the lease was expiring and they decided not to renew after 30 years.

Almost three years since the onset of Covid-19 ravaged the hospitality industry, no restaurants and bars have been spared, and rising costs, inflation and slow returns for tourism and office work have presented further challenges.

“When you add the kind of double whammy of less à la carte, less private dining, less people, higher prices, inflationary times, recessionary times—there’s a lot of winds that are in the face of owners of restaurants like steakhouses,” said restaurant consultant Steve

Zagor.

As workers maintain their hybrid schedules, weekday office occupancy has stalled at around 48% of prepandemic levels, according to data from the city comptroller’s office.

“Over the past years, we’ve seen countless restaurants close as casualties of the pandemic, as additional economic troubles continue to complicate business in New York City,” said Andrew Rigie, executive director of the New York City Hospitality Alliance.

In a post-holiday survey by the alliance of around

300 restaurant and bar owners and operators, a third said their overall revenue was lower than anticipated during the holiday season.

“While the situation is much better than it was over the last few years, our survey results show that for many restaurants, business is lagging, not back to where it should be, and many restaurants and businesses are concerned about the uncertainty that 2023 may bring,” Rigie said.

Restaurant sales at Ruth’s Hospitality Restaurant Group, which is based in Florida, have shown the steakhouse has been able to bounce back from the early days of the pandemic. The company reported an increase in restaurant revenue between 2019 and 2022, according to its latest quarterly filings, to $105.8 million in restaurant sales in the 13 weeks ending in September 2022, compared with $97 million in the same time period in 2019. At the same time, their food and beverage costs increased over three years, from $28.8 million in 2019 to $33.5 million in 2022. Yet company executives were already aware of the challenges facing the Midtown location.

“Our Manhattan restaurant continues to be challenged, albeit it had some green shoots, but it continues to be challenged over the long haul,” said Kristy Chipman, Ruth’s Chris CFO and CEO, during

the company’s third-quarter earnings call in November. She said that, along with a Boston location, the 51st Street steakhouse’s challenges are “much more tied to the return of work.”

‘Doing better’

In December Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul presented a “New” New York action plan to revitalize the city. The plan included proposals to turn the city’s central

business districts—like Midtown— into “24/7 destinations,” increase the city’s housing stock by converting offices to apartments, and improve public transit.

“There’s no secret that the office workers have not returned at the same frequency,” said Tom Harris, president of the Times Square Alliance. “But depending on the restaurant, depending on the offerings … some of our restaurants are doing better than they did in 2019.” ■

END OF AN ERA: The Ruth’s Chris on West 51st Street is set to close for good in April.

“THERE ARE A LOT OF WINDS IN THE FACE OF RESTAURANTS”

Everything to know about Grand Central Madison

BY CAROLINE SPIVACK

THE ISSUE 1

After nearly six decades of planning and construction, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has opened a new Long Island Rail Road connection to Grand Central Terminal. The project, known as East Side Access, is infamous for its years of delays and ballooning costs. Now projected to cost $11.1 billion, it is one of the most expensive mass transit undertakings in the world.

All that effort has linked every LIRR stop with the new Grand Central Madison station and is expected to shave as much as 40 minutes off the commute of thousands who work on Manhattan’s East Side. It also creates connections to parts of Queens and Metro-North stations. Transit officials say the project is poised to boost train capacity to and from Manhattan by 50%, with an estimated 45% of LIRR commuters diverting to Grand Central Madison—which could help alleviate crowding at Penn Station.

The launch, however, was only a partial opening. For up to four weeks, the new rail link to Grand Central Madison will run with limited service. A shuttle, which the MTA has dubbed Grand Central Direct, is shepherding riders between the Jamaica station and Grand Central. The staggered start, transit officials said, will give travelers a chance to familiarize themselves with the station ahead of new train schedules, which will allow passengers on 10 of the 11 LIRR branches to transfer at Grand Central Madison.

The gleaming, new station was built 17 stories below Vanderbilt Avenue. It features the longest escalators in the city: 180 feet. From the mezzanine, travelers can depart from Grand Central Madison’s main entrance at the southeast corner of Madison Avenue and East 47th Street or four other street-level points.

WHAT’S NEXT 5

The Grand Central Direct shuttle is scheduled to run for up to four weeks. Then the MTA plans to publish new LIRR schedules and commence full operations to and from Grand Central Madison. Currently, only one to two trains are running per hour in the station, when full service kicks in, that figure will spike to 24 per hour.

THE PLAYERS

2MTA officials have long spoken about East Side Access as a critical expansion for Long Island and Queens residents that can serve as an economic driver. MTA Chairman and CEO Janno Lieber, after riding the inaugural shuttle into Grand Central Madison with Gov. Kathy Hochul, emphasized that the rail link has benefits beyond saving time for Long Island commuters. It also makes it easier for workers to reverse-commute to the island, he said.

“[The project is] going to benefit Long Islanders with shorter commutes. But you can’t forget about the Long Island businesses that, for the first time, are going to be able to recruit from the entire region,” Lieber said.

Since taking over as governor in 2021, Hochul has been a vocal cheerleader for the project. The completion of East Side Access under her leadership might curry favor with Long Island voters—a majority of whom supported her Republican challenger, former Rep. Lee Zeldin of Long Island.

“For those who have to backtrack [from] Penn Station to the East Side, those days are over,” Hochul said. “And for the businesses that are struggling after the pandemic, trying to get workers back, they have one more reason to say, ‘Come on back.’”

YEAH, BUT … 3

The project was stunningly expensive. East Side Access, for many years, was a bureaucratic boondoggle and will be a reminder of how not to build a megaproject.

Grand Central Madison’s opening also comes as commuting patterns are in flux due to remote and hybrid work. Weekday ridership on the LIRR is hovering around 65% of prepandemic levels. That’s roughly the same as the subway, but the city’s trains and buses carry 24 times as many riders each day, causing some transportation advocates to question the project.

“The MTA has backed into a massive new subsidy for Long Island, and the city is left out,” said Danny Pearlstein, policy director for the Riders Alliance. The MTA has pushed back on that argument, pointing to the more than 20 LIRR stops in Queens, parts of which have a dearth of mass transit options.

“Overwhelmingly, this is giving more options to some of the most exclusive communities in the U.S.,” Pearlstein said. There are also equipment challenges. The LIRR currently lacks the diesel locomotive necessary to tow disabled trains out of the tunnels if there is, say, a power outage. The MTA is exploring alternatives to a lengthy bid for the equipment.

SOME BACKGROUND

The concept for East Side Access dates back to the 1960s, but the project didn’t secure federal funds until the late 1990s due to former Sen. Alfonse D’Amato, a Long Island Republican. The complex undertaking has persisted through nine gubernatorial administrations, with a long list of delays, construction challenges and billions of dollars in cost overruns, obliterating an early 2009 deadline and a $4.3 billion budget. Lieber acknowledged that the project was “a hot mess” when he took over as president of MTA construction and development in 2017. But despite the setbacks, he has argued, it was a worthy investment for riders and the economy.

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build and the places where they build them.

“I agree we have to build a lot more homes,” said Miller Samuel CEO Jonathan Miller. “It matters that it’s the right kind of home.”

e high prices have not stopped people from wanting to move to the area. e city’s population was about 8.5 million people as of July 1, 2021, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. It grew by around 800,000 in the past decade, but just 200,000 new homes were added to the market during that time, according to the mayor’s o ce.

And the homes haven’t been cheap. Manhattan condos and coops both ended 2022 with a median price of more than $1 million. Brooklyn homes were not far behind, at $950,000. And the median rent in December remained above $4,000 in Manhattan and above $3,000 in Brooklyn, according to recent data from Douglas Elliman.

But with sellers and landlords still able to nd buyers and renters, it stands to reason that prices will remain high in the area, even if they don’t continue to soar. If Adams’ plan to build 500,000 homes in the

than the product entering the market by far, so I think the best we can hope for is moderate price growth as opposed to a surge in a ordability. I think that’s a bridge too far.”

Suburbs are calling

Prospective renters and buyers shouldn’t despair entirely, though, especially those hoping to eventually nd something in areas currently dominated by single-family homes, such as the suburbs of Westchester County and Long Island. Although a six-bedroom house in Westchester is expensive now and almost certain to remain expensive 10 years from now, a general push to build more types of homes could result in a wider scale of prices in that county, noted Rachel Fee, the New York Housing Conference’s executive director.

“If we can add to our housing supply, then we’re also going to have housing at price points we don’t have currently,” she said. “If we can really add some density— add more townhouses, add more multifamily units with apartments—we’re going to have a greater variety of entry points for both homeownership and rentals.”

city and Hochul’s plan to build 800,000 homes across the state over the next decade are implemented exactly as envisioned, the best-case scenario is that prices still increase but at a slower rate—ideally lower than the rate of in ation. It will probably take at least ve years before even this type of impact is felt, according to Miller.

“Who knows what the market will be like at that point? I suspect rents won’t be cheaper,” he said. “ e population is still growing faster

But the push to build more housing in the suburbs is also likely to be one of the aspects of the plan that faces the most pushback, especially if recent history is any indication. Hochul has called for all downstate counties to grow their housing stock by 3% every three years, and there should be a mix of towns that are happy to comply and towns that wait out the three years and only cooperate as a last resort, Fee said.

Hochul made a similar play to add housing to the city’s suburbs in 2022 that ultimately failed in the face of sti community opposition, and there is little reason to think that this opposition has lessened after just one year.

“It was not long at all before she had to pull back on that because there was such an uproar around

COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE

local municipalities who had called legislators and said, ‘Over our dead body will this go through,’ ” said Elise Wagner, co-chair of the landuse practice at the law rm Kramer Levin. “I think it’s going to be challenging, and I would think it’s likely there would be litigation.”

However, elected o cials are already moving forward with plans to better connect the suburbs and the city via commuter rail lines. After years of delays, the East Side Access project just launched, connecting Long Island Rail Road trains to Grand Central Terminal. And one of the mayor’s rst major rezoning plans is to add housing around four new Metro-North stations planned for the northeastern Bronx, where single-family homes exist alongside apartment buildings. Hochul’s housing plan also calls for communities with Metro-North stops to rezone the areas within a half-mile of the train stations for more housing within three years.

Fee described the recent investments in city transportation as “historic” and stressed how important it is to complement them with an equally historic housing policy.

“ at would be, I think, a strategy that would unlock signi cant housing potential,” she said, “and it would also be a growth strategy for New York.”

Affordability aims

In both the city and the suburbs, a focus on building a ordable housing speci cally will be key to the success of the mayor’s and the governor’s plans, especially given the limited impact adding more housing in general is likely to have on overall prices, experts said.

“You can’t just rely on pouring more to the top of the market and waiting for it to lter down,” said Howard Slatkin, executive director of the Citizens Housing & Planning Council. “ ere are no solutions to a ordability that do not involve supply.”

New Yorkers who already have a ordable or rent-regulated units tend to be ercely protective of retaining them, which is directly related to their low numbers. Lotteries for existing a ordable housing projects typically get applicants at rates that far surpass the number of units. ough protecting tenants

who are already in these apartments is important, building more a ordable apartments is the only way to actually improve this imbalance, Fee said.

“If we expand tenant rights [to hold on to units], that’s not going to expand any housing opportunity,” she said. “It will bring some housing stability to existing renters, but it’s not creating more housing opportunities.”

Arguments about the number of a ordable homes these plans should include and how a ordable they will actually be are almost certain to come up frequently as ocials begin the messy work of trying to implement them. ese are good arguments to have, but they should not distract from the fact that building more homes in general is the most important thing New York can do right now, said Slatkin.

“ is is the right conversation to be having right now, and that is beyond dispute,” he said. “If people want to talk about the details, that’s great, but there’s no question that this is the conversation that needs to happen in the city, state and region.” ■

Vornado writes down Midtown portfolio by $500 million

BY AARON ELSTEIN

Vornado Realty Trust said it will write down the value of its real estate portfolio by $600 million, most of it in Midtown, underscoring the continued challenges for retail and o ce properties.

seven Midtown buildings housed in the venture has declined to $4 billion from $5.6 billion, a nearly 30% drop, after Vornado disclosed the latest write-down late Tuesday.

Piper Sandler analyst Alexander Goldfarb said the news “doesn’t surprise, given the change in valuation fortunes for this former high- ying asset class.”

489,000 square feet of retail, approximately 327,000 square feet of ofce space, signage at 1540 and 1535 Broadway, the parking garage at 1540 Broadway and the theater at 1535 Broadway housed in the Marriott Marquis hotel.

e bulk of the reduction—$480 million—re ects the declining fortunes of Fifth Avenue and Times Square properties that Vornado contributed to a joint venture four years ago with unidenti ed institutional investors. e value of the

Evercore ISI analyst Steve Sakwa estimated the buildings collectively generate $200 million to $225 million in net operating income, down from $250 million in 2019.

e a ected properties are located at 640, 655, 666, 689 and 697–703 Fifth Ave., plus 1535 and 1540 Broadway, Vornado said in 2019.

ey include approximately

Vornado described the properties as “among the scarcest and most valuable in the world” when it unveiled the joint venture 11 months before the Covid-19 pandemic hit.

e good news now, Sakwa said in a client report, is that investors value Vornado’s retail portfolio for less than the developer does, so the write-down shouldn’t a ect the stock price much. e source of the remaining $120 mil-

“THERE ARE NO SOLUTIONS TO AFFORDABILITY THAT DO NOT INVOLVE SUPPLY”

FEE says recent investments in the transportation system will unlock more places where people can live.

VORNADO DESCRIBED THE PROPERTIES AS “AMONG THE SCARCEST AND MOST VALUABLE IN THE WORLD”

CLASSIFIEDS

POSITIONS AVAILABLE

Business Intelligence Analyst (Citadel Enterprise Americas Services LLC –New York, NY); Mult pos avail. Offer’ng salary of $150,000 - $200,000 per year. Conduct adv data analytics in order to drive & inform bus critical decisions. F/T.

Reqs a Bachelor’s degree (or foreign equiv) in Econ, Math, CS, Stats or a rel field & 3 yrs of exp in the job offered or in analytics. Edu, train’g, or exp must include the follow’g: data visualization tools, such as Tableau or similar; SQL script’g; programm’g in Python or R; build’g data products by integrat’g datasets from complex data environments; &, creat’g KPI reports to analyze key performance indicators. Exp may be gained concurrently.

Resumes: citadelrecruitment@citadel.com. JobID: 7028767.

Quantitative Developer (Citadel Americas Services LLC – New York, NY); Mult pos avail. Offer’ng salary of $160,000 - $200,000 per year. Collab with rsrch teams to dsgn & implement quant tools & strat for trad’g innovations across asset classes. F/T. Reqs a Bach degree (or foreign equiv) in CS, Stat, Engin, Math, Physics, or rel quant field. Edu, train, or exp must include the follow’g: work’g in SW dev; stat model’g techniques includ’g time-series analysis, Stat Machine Learn’g, Natural Language Process’g, pattern recognition, or sim; data collection, cleans’g, & process’g; big data analytics; programm’g with C, C++, Java, Python, SQL, R, or Kdb+/q; object-oriented analysis & design; & data structures, algorithms, & comp arch paradigms. Resumes: citadelrecruitment@citadel.com. JobID: 7028758.

Quantitative Developer (Citadel Securities Americas Services LLC – New York, NY); Mult pos avail. Offer’ng salary of $160,000 - $200,000 per year. Dvlp & deploy internal apps & software solut for quant rsrch platforms. F/T. Reqs a Bach degree (or foreign equiv) in CS, Engin, or rel field. Edu, train, or exp must include the follow’g: C++ programming on a Unix platform; multithreaded app programm’g & network programm’g; script’g languages includ’g Python, Perl, Unix, Linux shell script’g, or sim; analytical packages includ’g R, Matlab, or similar; Unix Inter-Process Communication (IPC) mechanisms includ’g sockets & semaphores; data structures, algorithms, & computer architecture; &, Machine Learning techniques. Resumes: citadelrecruitment@citadel.com. JobID: 7028774.

Quantitative Research Engineer (Citadel Americas Services LLC – New York, NY); Mult pos avail. Offer’ng salary of $150,000 - $225,000 per year. Collab with rsrch teams to dsgn & implement quant tools & strategies for trad’g innovations across asset classes. F/T. Reqs a Bachelor’s degree (or foreign equiv) in CS, Stat, Engin, Math, Physics or a rel field. Edu, train’g or exp must include the follow’g: endto-end sftwre dvlpmnt; Distributed Comput’g, Machine Learn’g, Platform Dvlpmnt, Network’g or System Design; big data analytics; programm’g with C, C++, C#, Java, Python, Perl, SQL or Kdb+/q; stat packages includ’g R, S-PLUS, Matlab, SAS, Pandas, NumPy, SciPy, SciKit-Learn, statsmodels, or sim; object-oriented programm’g; &, work’g with data structures, algorithms & comp arch paradigms. Resumes: citadelrecruitment@citadel.com. JobID: 7028762.

Quantitative Researcher (Citadel Securities Americas Services LLC – New York, NY) Mult. Pos. avail. Offer’ng salary of $175,000 - $225,000 per year. Formulate mathematical & simulation models of complex mrkt problems, relating constants & variables, restrictions, alternatives, conflicting objectives, & their numerical parameters using technology, mathematical & statistical model’g, & computer systems. F/T. Reqs a Ph.D. (or foreign equiv) in Stat, Math, Physics, Comp Sci, Eng, or a rel quant field. In lieu of a Ph.D. (or foreign equiv) in stated field, will accept a Bach degree (or foreign equiv) in stated field plus 5 yrs of quant research exp, or a Master’s degree (or foreign equiv) in stated field plus 3 yrs of quant research exp. Edu, train’g, or exp must incl the follow’g: utiliz’g time-series or cross-sectional analysis; solv’g complex data intensive problems utiliz’g adv mathematical & statistical model’g techniques incl Robust Regression, Statistical Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, or similar; C++ or OOD programm’g; high-level interpreted languages incl R, Matlab, Python, or similar; & analyz’g gigabyte or terabyte sized large datasets. Resumes: citadelrecruitment@citadel.com. JobID: 7028780.

Quantitative Research Analyst (Citadel Americas Services LLC – New York, NY); Mult. pos. avail. Offer’ng salary of $150,000 - $190,000 per year. Analyze & solve complex market probs through the use of tech, math and stat model’g, & comp systems. F/T. Reqs a Bach degree (or foreign equiv) in Stat, CS, Engin, Math, Physics, Ops Res, or a rel quant field. Edu, train, or exp must include the follow’g: conduct’g data-intensive investment-rel rsrch & analysis; adv math & stat model’g includ’g time-series analysis, cross-sectional analysis, Statistical Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, pattern recognition, or similar; & performing computations & rsrch with programm’g languages includ’g Python, R, C++, Matlab, Julia, or similar. Resumes: citadelrecruitment@citadel.com. JobID: 7028760.

Quantitative Researcher (Citadel Americas Services LLC – New York, NY) Mult.

Pos. avail. Offer’ng salary of $175,000 to $225,000 per year. Formulate mathematical & simulation models of complex mrkt problems, relating constants & variables, restrictions, alternatives, conflicting objectives, & their numerical parameters using technology, mathematical & statistical model’g, & computer systems. F/T. Reqs a Ph.D. (or foreign equiv) in Stat, Math, Physics, Comp Sci, Eng, Finan, or a rel quant field. In lieu of a Ph.D. (or foreign equiv) in stated field, will accept a Bach degree (or foreign equiv) in stated field plus 5 yrs of quant research exp, or a Master’s degree (or foreign equiv) in stated field plus 3 yrs of quant research exp. Edu, train’g, or exp must incl the follow’g: apply’g adv statistical & mathematical model’g techniques including time-series analysis, cross-sectional analysis, Statistical Machine Learning, Natural Language Process’g, or similar; C++ or OOD programm’g; statistical packages incl R, Matlab, PyTorch, or similar; script’g languages incl bash, PERL, Python, or similar; & analyz’g gigabyte or terabyte sized large datasets. Resumes: citadelrecruitment@citadel.com. JobID: 7028764.

Site Reliability Engineer (Citadel Enterprise Americas Services LLC – New York, NY); Mult pos avail. Offer’ng salary of $175,000 to $250,000 per year. Collab with cross-functional teams, includ’g trad’g, quant, & SW engin teams, to support & enhance Citadel's core suite of trad’g apps with the latest, most cutting edge tech in order to proactively diagnose & resolve production issues. F/T. Reqs a Bach degree (or foreign equiv) in CS, Comp Engin, Electrical Engin, Math or a rel tech field. Edu, train’g, or exp must include: Unix/Linux based systems; shell script’g; SDLC workflows; programm’g with SQL; & support’g large-scale distribut’g apps. Resumes: citadelrecruitment@citadel.com. JobID: 7028769.

Site Reliability Engineer (Citadel Securities Americas Services LLC – New York, NY); Mult pos avail. Offer’ng salary of $175,000 - $250,000 per year. Collab with cross-functional teams, includ’g trad’g, quant, & SW engin teams, to support & enhance Citadel's core suite of trad’g apps with the latest, most cutting edge tech in order to proactively diagnose & resolve production issues. F/T. Reqs a Bach degree (or foreign equiv) in CS, Comp Engin, Electrical Engin, Math or a rel tech field. Edu, train’g, or exp must include: Unix/Linux based systems; shell script’g; SDLC workflows; programm’g with SQL; & support’g large-scale distribut’g apps. Resumes: citadelrecruitment@citadel.com. JobID: 7028782.

Software Engineer (Citadel Securities Americas Services LLC – New York, NY) Mult. pos. avail. Offer’ng salary of $150,000 - $225,000 per year. Design & build SW components that are foundational to research & trad’g activities. F/T. Reqs a Bach degree (or foreign equiv) in Comp Sci, Engineer’g, or a rel field. Edu, train’g, or exp must incl the follow’g: object-oriented programm’g & design; end-to-end SW dvlpmnt; C, C++, C#, Java, Python, or Perl; statistical analysis; R, Matlab, SAS, or S-Plus; data structures, algorithms, & comp architecture; & Machine Learn’g techniques. Resumes: citadelrecruitment@citadel.com. JobID: 7028785.

Software Engineer (Citadel Americas Services LLC – New York, NY) Mult. pos. avail. Offer’ng salary of $150,000 – 225,000 per year. Design, develop, test & deploy next gen SW solutions for rsrch, trading & business operations activities across the firm. F/T. Reqs a Bach degree (or foreign equiv) in Comp Sci, Engineer’g, or a rel field. Edu, train’g, or exp must incl the follow’g: end-to-end software dev; objectoriented programm’g & design; C, C++, Python, C#, or JavaScript; data structures & algorithms; & Distributed Comput’g, Natural Language Process’g, Machine Learn’g, Platform Dev, Network’g, Systems Design, or Web Dev techniques. Resumes: citadelrecruitment@citadel.com. JobID: 7028766.

PUBLIC & LEGAL NOTICES

Notice of Formation of 24 DEGREES LLC

Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 12/29/22. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Bruce Blank, 867 Broadway, NY, NY 10003

Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Qualification of UNISON RENEWABLES US, LLC

Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 01/12/23. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 11/16/21. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. DE addr. of LLC: 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State, John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901.

Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of Limited Liability Company (LLC). NAME: HUX FOUNDATION LLC -Articles of Organization filed with the Secretary of State of New York (SSNY) on 04/12/2022. Office location: NEW YORK County. SSNY shall mail a copy of process to: The LLC, 135 W 36TH ST FL 19, NEW YORK NY 10018.

Purpose: Any lawful purpose.

1330 CONSULTING LLC.

Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 01/04/23. Office: New York County. SSNY designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to the LLC, 77 7th Avenue, Apartment 4, New York, NY 10011. Purpose: Any lawful purpose.

Notice of Formation of TRELAWNY 201 LLC

Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 12/23/22. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 184 Woodland Ave., River Edge, NJ 07661. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207.

Purpose: Any lawful activity.

BRAVE TOTS LLC.Filed with SSNY on 09/28/22. Office: Bronx County. SSNY designated as agent for process & shall mail copy to: 2881 E 197th Street, 3rd Floor, Bronx, NY 10461.

Purpose: Any lawful.

Quantitative Research Analyst (Citadel Securities Americas Services LLC –New York, NY); Mult pos avail. Offer’ng salary of $150,000 - $190,000 per year. Analyze & solve complex market probs through the use of tech, math and stat model’g, & comp systems. F/T. Reqs a Bach degree (or foreign equiv) in Stat, CS, Engin, Math, Physics, Ops Rsrch, or a rel quant field. Edu, train, or exp must include the follow’g: conduct’g data-intensive investment-rel rsrch & analysis; adv math & stat model’g includ’g time-series analysis, cross-sectional analysis, Statistical Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, pattern recognition, or similar; & performing computations & rsrch with programm’g languages includ’g Python, R, C++, Matlab, Julia, or similar.

Resumes: citadelrecruitment@citadel.com. JobID: 7028777.

Software Engineer (Citadel Enterprise Americas Services LLC – New York, NY) Mult. Pos. avail. Offer’ng a salary of $150,000 – 225,000 per year. Design, develop, test & deploy next gen SW solutions for various bus ops activities across the firm. F/T. Reqs a Bach degree (or foreign equiv) in Comp Sci, Engineer’g, or a rel field. Edu, train’g, or exp must incl the follow’g: end-to-end software dev; object-oriented programm’g & design; C, C++, Python, C#, or JavaScript; data structures & algorithms; & Distributed Comput’g, Natural Language Process’g, Machine Learn’g, Platform Dev, Network’g, Systems Design, or Web Dev techniques. Resumes: citadelrecruitment@citadel.com. JobID: 7028772.

Notice of Formation of Limited Liability Company (LLC). NAME: SIX SIGMA CAPITAL LLC - Articles of Organization filed with the Secretary of State of New York (SSNY) on 05/27/2022. Office location: NEW YORK County. SSNY shall mail a copy of process to: The LLC, 135 W 36TH ST FL 19, NEW YORK NY 10018.

Purpose: Any lawful purpose.

POSITION AVAILABLE

Business Analyst (Citadel Enterprise Americas Services LLC – New York, NY); Mult. Pos. Avail. Offered salary $160,000 - $230,000. Evaluate current tactical issues, lead small/mid-size initiatives, & contribute to the design and solution of enterprise-wide strategic initiatives. F/T. Reqs a Bachelor’s degree (or foreign equiv) in Info Sys Mngmnt, Info Sec, CS, or a rel tech field & 5 yrs of exp in the job offered or with business analysis or project mngmnt in the fin services industry. Edu, train or exp must include the following: serv’g as a Scrum Master & facilitat’g organizat’l adopt’n of Scrum & Agile software development methodologies; programming in Python or SQL; scaling Agile and utiliz’g Agile tools includ’g JIRA, Confluence & Atlassian; & work’g on custom software development projects related to the trad’g lifecycle, investm’t managem’t, fin mrkts & complex asset classes includ’g fixed income & derivatives. Resumes: citadelrecruitment@citadel.com. JobID: 6261655.

PUBLIC & LEGAL NOTICES

Notice of formation of Limited Liability Company. Name: EC Lower Hudson 2 LLC (“LLC”). Articles of Organization filed with the Secretary of State of the State of New York (“SSNY”) on December 23, 2022. NY office location: New York County. The SSNY has been designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served. The SSNY shall mail a copy of any process to EC Lower Hudson 2 LLC, c/o Exact Capital Group LLC, 150 East 52nd St., 14th Floor, New York, NY 10022.

Purpose/character of LLC is to engage in any lawful act or activity.

Notice of Qualification of FERRADO HOTELS, LLC

Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 01/04/23. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 03/17/06. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC, 20411 SW Birch St., Ste. 360, Newport Beach, CA 92660. DE addr. of LLC: 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State, 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901.

Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Qualification of COLBECK STRATEGIC LENDING III CARRY VEHICLE, LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 01/04/23. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 11/09/22. Princ. office of LLC: 888 Seventh Ave., 29th Fl., NY, NY 10106. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC at the princ. office of the LLC. DE addr. of LLC: c/o Corporation Service Co., 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State of DE, Dept. of State, Div. of Corps., John G. Townsend Bldg., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Qualification of HAZA PROPS LLC

Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 01/05/23. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 08/12/22. Princ. office of LLC: 4415 Hwy. 6, Sugar Land, TX 77478. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. DE addr. of LLC: 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with DE Secy. of State, Div. of Corps., John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Real lease property management.

Notice of Formation of Limited Liability Company (LLC). NAME: FISCAL CAPITAL LLC

- Articles of Organization filed with the Secretary of State of New York (SSNY) on 6/02/2022. Office location: NEW YORK County. SSNY shall mail a copy of process to: The LLC, 135 W 36TH ST FL 19, NEW YORK NY 10018.

Purpose: Any lawful purpose.

Notice of Qualification of VOTORANTIM LLC

Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 12/22/22. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 03/18/22. Princ. office of LLC: 1330 Avenue of the Americas, 30th fl., NY, NY 10019. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC at the princ. office of the LLC. DE addr. of LLC: 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State, Div. of Corps., John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Fl., Philadelphia, PA 19102. Purpose: Own and operate restaurant.

crises has spawned a vast ecosystem of lawyers, restructuring advisers and bankruptcy experts who specialize in cleaning up messes. After the collapse of FTX and other crypto institutions, companies that loved to defy the old nancial system are trying to salvage what’s left of their business by paying oldguard players $2,000 per hour or more.

Bitcoin miner Bit Digital, whose stock has lost 95% of its value, is thrilled to have battle-tested veteran Lutzker on its side, Chief Strategy O cer Sam Tabar said.

“Elliot has seen everything before,” Tabar said. “He’s unfazed by it all.”

Fraud everlasting

Lutzker’s credentials date back to the 1980s, when he represented investment bank D.H. Blair, a kissing-cousin of FTX. Before shutting down in 1998, Blair—which touted stinky stocks—amassed an extensive record of cheating customers. In 2000 the Manhattan district attorney’s o ce charged the bank with 173 counts of racketeering and market manipulation. Lutzker got called in as Blair was tangled in the city’s biggest political scandal since the Great Depression.

In 1986 U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani accused four city o cials of

turning the Parking Violations Bureau into a racket to enrich themselves. A Queens borough president killed himself after he was linked to a bribe of $1 million paid in shares of a handheld parking-ticket computer maker. e shares were underwritten by Blair, which, under Lutzker’s counsel, paid a ne to regulators.

Crypto clients now call on Lutzker, who works at Davido Hutcher

& Citron, because he tells them what they need—but don’t necessarily want—to hear.

A few years ago he advised a blockchain enthusiast not to launch an initial coin o ering when those fantastical deals were all the rage. He thought ICOs were illegal, he said. Soon regulators agreed, and the market shut down.

“Fraud is fraud, and the basic securities laws don’t change,” he said. “Nothing is new.”

Lutzker worked for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission or represented clients before the agency for half its existence, which

BY THE NUMBERS

$2,165

HOURLY RATE some Sullivan & Cromwell attorneys are earning to shepherd FTX through bankruptcy

$10M

in the BlockFi Chapter 11 and $8 million in fees should it restructure or sell the business. It would get $10 million if it can get Voyager safely to shore. Potential fees in the Genesis bankruptcy haven’t been disclosed.

Connecting Talent with Opportunity.

began in 1934. Besides dealing with regulators, he aims to solve practical problems for clients, such as when he lined up contracts with upstate hydroelectricity providers and landlords so Bit Digital could relocate its 39,000 mining machines just before Bitcoin mining was banned by Beijing.

“No other company has ever moved like that,” Tabar said.

Overlords and viceroys

Even though crypto clients have a lot less money than they did a year ago, in hopes of ensuring survival, they are spending whatever it takes to hire top names in nancial crisis management.

Lawyers at Sullivan & Cromwell are being paid up to $2,165 per hour to help shepherd FTX through Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, according to court documents. For that price, you get a Financial District–based law rm that dates back to 1879 and is so connected, its senior chairman was described as “the overlord and viceroy of Western capitalism.”

FTX was a Sullivan client before its collapse, and a U.S. Justice Department trustee complained the rm didn’t disclose the relationship in court, as required by bankruptcy law. But a judge ruled Sullivan can continue to work with FTX.

Another FTX adviser is Perella Weinberg Partners, which is named for Joe Perella, a renowned 1980s takeover banker, and Peter Weinberg, the grandson of a former Goldman Sachs leader known as Mr. Wall Street. Court documents show Perella Weinberg is paid $450,000 each month to nd buyers for assets acquired by Sam Bankman-Fried. It could collect a 2.5% commission for selling up to $250 million in assets and a 1% cut of any sale greater than $2 billion.

Also helping mop up the crypto mess is Moelis & Co., founded by Ken Moelis, a former colleague of Michael Milken at Drexel Burnham Lambert. e rm is steering crypto exchanges BlockFi, Genesis Global and Voyager Digital through bankruptcy.

Moelis seeks a $500,000 retainer

Helping oversee it all is Moelis’ co-head of capital structure advisory, Bill Derrough. He started working at Salomon Bros. around the time Michael Lewis wrote his classic book about the rm and 1980s Wall Street, Liar’s Poker. Roughly 30 years ago Derrough got in trouble at Harry’s of Hanover Square—or maybe it was the Fraunces Tavern—for playing liar’s poker, which involves betting which serial numbers are on a dollar bill.

WHAT Moelis & Co. will earn if Voyager is able to restructure or complete a sale

Derrough helped American Airlines y through bankruptcy protection a decade ago and merge with US Airways. With a helping hand from meme-stock investors, he drove Hertz through its successful Chapter 11 reorganization.

Based on his lengthy experience, he said, he isn’t con dent a happy ending awaits the customers of failed crypto exchanges. “It took years for Lehman Bros. customers to get their money,” he recalled. “Accounts were trapped.”

A shoulder to cry on

Another veteran of the 2008nancial crisis, Rich Rosenblum, president of crypto investment and trading rm GSR Markets, said he’s imparting to shaken customers lessons he learned as a Goldman commodities trader: Disconnect from work at night, pay attention to your health, and don’t confuse condence with insight. Sometimes, he said, you have con dence because you haven’t talked to everyone you need to.

“No one is the Oracle of Omaha at age 27,” Rosenblum said. “Everyone was commending BankmanFried for sleeping at the o ce and taking amphetamines to keep working. It’s clear he wasn’t as successful as he thought he was.”

Lutzker advises crypto enthusiasts that, based on his experience, court-appointed bankruptcy trustees will try to recover customer losses any way they can. Crypto investors, their attorneys and nancial advisers all could face lawsuits.

Before long, however, a new day will dawn, he said. Maybe it has already started, considering Bitcoin has bounced o its lows. Although client Bit Digital’s stock has fallen to about $1.50 per share, that’s better than that of competitors that amed out completely. And the rm holds $34 million in at currency and no debt, so it’s positioned to buy distressed competitors.

Lutzker reckons the genuinely bad actors of the crypto world will wash out or end up behind bars.

“ ey can go visit BankmanFried,” he said. ■

BUCK ENNIS

“FRAUD IS FRAUD, AND THE BASIC SECURITIES LAWS DON’T CHANGE. NOTHING IS NEW”

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TABAR and Bit Digital have Lutzker on their side.

DAVE HOLOWKA

BORN Rochester, Monroe County

RESIDES Chelsea

EDUCATION Bachelor’s in English literature, University of Rochester; M. Arch., University of Buffalo

ON HIS RÉSUMÉ Holowka retired in 2018. During his career, he worked for such rms as Gerald Allen & Associates as well as the New York Public Library.

DIFFERENT HOODS Holowka has lived in Brooklyn Heights and on the Upper West Side and now in Chelsea since 1999. He recalled that the High Line, before it was repurposed, was once a symbol of blight. “But the same thing could be done for the buildings around Penn Station.”

NEXT CHALLENGE He’s noticed that at the empty Bayview Correctional Facility, a longago lodging for sailors at West 20th Street, workers have been removing terracotta panels depicting ships without notifying state preservation of cials, he said. “It doesn’t pass the common-sense test.”

New kind of neighborhood watch

Chelsea resident with passion for preservation takes on Penn redevelopment plan

BY C. J. HUGHES

Dave Holowka didn’t set out to be an activist. In fact, for decades the architect had somewhat of a low-key career, working on school and library projects on behalf of city agencies.

But about a decade ago, Holowka found himself thrust into the limelight after a ght with his Chelsea neighbor Michael Bolla over a renovation project. Bolla, who owned a townhouse on West 20th Street, had apparently gone against the orders of the Landmarks Preservation Commission and altered his roof in a way that was not consistent with the historic enclave.

On Holowka’s then-anonymous blog, ArchiTakes, he posted a series of photos of Bella’s rooftop rule-breaking and was so methodical in his critique that Landmarks took the unusual step of forcing Bolla to remove the o ending extra feet. But the battle got nasty, with Bolla using the courts to unmask Holowka as the blogger to target

him in a lawsuit. (Bolla, a Sotheby’s agent, had no comment.)

Building tours

Embracing his new role as a ghter for vulnerable buildings, Holowka joined Save Chelsea, a grassroots group that had worked to spare row houses. But when o cials announced plans to develop 10 towers and 18 million square feet of mostly commercial space in the area around Penn Station, Save Chelsea took aim at a much bigger target.

Holowka is emphasizing the risk posed to prewar buildings without landmark protections if entire blocks in the Penn District are bulldozed. To sound the alarm last summer, he began leading twohour tours of endangered sites, even if they’re not the kind of places that typically make guidebooks.

“If they’re torn down and replaced, this would become just another anonymous city neighborhood like Hudson Yards,” said Holowka, 68. “But when you see a building being demolished, it’s usually too late.”

e tours, which each attract a mix of about 50 concerned locals and curiosity-seekers shelling out up to $20 a piece, stop at 1311 Broadway, the site of a former Gimbels department store. Straddling West 32nd Street is a copper-clad sky bridge that once allowed people to stroll from building to building without ever stepping foot outside.

A wrecking ball could also swing at the Stewart Hotel at 371 Seventh Ave., whose opening party in 1929 was attended by Gov. Franklin Roosevelt but which has grown dingy.

A stone power station built in 1908 by architect Charles McKim, meanwhile, is a midblock monolith with bar-covered windows on West 31st Street that could be mistaken for a parking garage. But it played a key role at the old Penn Station. It’s also one of the most-intact remnants of the original Penn, which the city demolished in 1963 to make way for the current version and Madison Square Garden.

Smaller structures make the tour, too, including 402 Eighth Ave., home to the Molly Wee Pub and

Restaurant, a rare vestige of the neighborhood’s 19th-century turn as a rowdy, saloon-drenched district called the Tenderloin. “It would be ridiculous to knock it down,” he said.

Opponents are attacking the plan on other fronts. In the fall four groups sued the Empire State Development Corp. for favoring Vornado, the developer set to handle most of the redevelopment of the area; one of the groups, Re ink NYC, has members in common with the project-opposing Empire Station Coalition, of which Save Chelsea is also a part. But the suit can in some ways seem super uous. In November Vornado CEO Steven Roth pumped the brakes when he said development is not possible right now because of “headwinds.” As the year dawned, Manhattan’s o ce vacancy rate was a historic 22%, according to Cushman and Wake eld.

“What’s needed is a comprehensive plan that preserves historical resources,” Holowka said, “but we are completely lacking in that resourcefulness.” ■

HOLOWKA is trying to save the former Penn power plant on West 31st Street.

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