Crain's New York Business

Suburbs still ready to pitch in on housing

MT. VERNON and other suburbs already have been constructing developments near transit, which had been a key plank of the governor’s housing plan.

BY EDDIE SMALL

When Gov. Kathy Hochul announced the details of her plan to build 800,000 new homes in New York over the next decade, the crux of which would have been state requirements for the suburbs to increase production, pro-development groups in the area were thrilled to see the housing shortage nally get the attention they thought it deserved.

“We’ve had 50 years now of leaving it to local communities to try and nd ways of solving the problem with various levels of state help, and it hasn’t worked,” said Westchester County Association President Michael Romita. “ e goal is simply to get local communities to take some action, to do something, and if they can’t, to justify the reason why.”

However, Hochul soon found the plan under attack from all sides of the political spectrum, including from some suburban lawmakers concerned about the changes it would mandate in their towns. Housing proposals were ultimately left out of New York’s budget almost entirely, although some advocates still saw bene ts to the newfound

See HOUSING on page 19

POLITICS

City could t rat-proof trash bins on nearly all streets

Getting garbage off sidewalks would require removing 150,000 parking spots, an eagerly awaited study says

BY NICK GARBER

Rather than dumping smelly bags of garbage on its sidewalks, the city could install trash containers on nearly all of its streets, according to an eagerly awaited report released last week by the Department of Sanitation.

About 89% of streets could accommodate

containerized trash bins, covering more than three-quarters of the city’s residential waste—although a citywide program would require a new eet of trucks and more frequent pickups in some places, the study concluded.

e report, written with the help of the consulting rm McKinsey, had been commissioned in the fall of 2022 as the Adams

administration sought to bring New York in line with the dozens of other global cities that containerize their waste in some form. e city ultimately paid McKinsey $1.6 million for the study, down from the $4 million it initially estimated, a Sanitation Department representative said.

Implementing containerization citywide would require replacing about 150,000 park-

RESTAURANTS

The iconic Kellogg’s Diner in Williamsburg is now on the market

ing spaces—10% of the city’s residential total—with new bins shared by multiple buildings. But about half of the city’s streets, especially in low-density neighborhoods in the outer boroughs, could accommodate smaller bins serving individual addresses, the report said.

See TRASH on page 22

WHO OWNS THE BLOCK

The sale of a failed hotel on East 46th ends a messy development tale

The governor’s housing compact may be dead, but some areas of Westchester and Long Island are taking action on their own

PICINICH

Of ce landlord Paramount Group braces to lose top tenant First Republic Bank in wake of failure

BY AARON ELSTEIN

Paramount Group is an o ce landlord with the misfortune to have its entire portfolio in Manhattan and San Francisco, two of the nation’s most challenged markets. Compounding the pain, its single-largest tenant is the failed First Republic Bank. With its big rolls of the dice producing snake eyes, Chief Executive Albert Behler tried last week to assure that the rm’s luck will turn eventually.

prospect looms that nearly 500,000 square feet leased by First Republic will be abandoned by the bank’s new owner, JPMorgan Chase.

Behler said little except that JPMorgan has 60 days to decide.

“It’s too early to speculate,” he said.

e wave of bank failures is a fresh source of headaches for Manhattan

o ce landlords. Signature Bank and Credit Suisse were big tenants for Empire State Realty Trust and SL Green, respectively, but Paramount may have the most at stake.

“I would call this stay alive till ’25,” he said on a conference call with analysts. “You have to be a little patient.”

Patience is thin, however, with Paramount’s stock trading at less than $5 a share. While the rm’s topshelf o ce buildings remain alluring, new tenants are renting less space than previous ones. Now the

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San Francisco-based First Republic paid $42 million in rent last year, the most of any Paramount tenant and accounting for more than 6% of its total rent collections.

Paramount also leased about 140,000 square feet in Midtown to an investment banking rm owned by the failed Silicon Valley Bank.

e rm’s second-biggest tenant, Credit Agricole, left its Midtown tower in a planned February exit.

e loss of the French bank was partially o set by signing on the law

SMALL BUSINESS

rm O’Melveny & Myers, which leased 160,000 square feet, or about half as much as Credit Agricole. e leased rate for Paramount’s New York portfolio edged down to 90.2% last quarter from 92.1% at the end of 2022. Four years ago the rate was 96.0%.

Quarterly funds from operations

were 26 cents a share, a penny ahead of the year-earlier period and better than Wall Street expectations. e rm didn’t repurchase any shares last quarter, and management indicated the dividend would be cut to conserve cash.

In a sign of the bleak times, management said they might hand

over buildings to lenders if negotiations to restructure loans aren’t successful. e landlord has $3.7 billion in debt obligations at an average interest rate of 3.6%, up from 3.3% a year ago.

“We are evaluating each case on a case-by-case basis,” Behler said. “Lenders have to face reality.”■

City program helps 2,200 small businesses avoid over $22 million in nes and violations

BY OLIVIA BENSIMON

An initiative aimed at assisting the city’s small businesses cut through bureaucratic red tape has helped 2,200 small businesses save more than $22 million in nes and violations, city ocials announced at a news conference.

Since its launch by the city’s Department of Small Business Services in the fall of 2022, the NYC Business Express Service Team has provided one-on-one support to small businesses citywide on issues relating to proper licensing and permitting, along with other potential hurdles small-business owners might face as they open up shop.

“Working New Yorkers deserve their fair share, and we are lifting burdens o hardworking New Yorkers so they can get their businesses up and running, while simultaneously putting money back into their pockets,” Mayor Eric Adams said in a statement.

e city has regained almost 98% of its prepandemic private-sector jobs and is 11,000 jobs away from a full recovery, according to data from the state Department of Labor

and the New York City Economic Development Corp.’s April economic snapshot. Food services and accommodation, one of the industries hardest hit by the onset of the pandemic, has recovered 91% of its jobs, the Labor Department said.

“One thing that unites all of our small businesses is frustrations over being nickel-and-dimed with nes and violations that could have easily been resolved with the systems, and saving more than $22 million is nothing to sneeze at,” said Queens Borough President Dono-

van Richards alongside Adams and Commissioner Kevin Kim of the Small Business Service Department. “We all have a role to play in boosting our economy, and supporting our small businesses is something we can and all must do.”

Small Business Month

As the city continues on the road to recovery, it is launching NYC Small Business Month, which builds on the national weeklong celebration, Kim announced.

“ is is New York City, and ve

days is just not enough to highlight our small businesses,” Kim said. In the next month, he said, SBS sta will bring events and services such as a nancing fair and a workforce development fair to communities across the ve boroughs to support the city’s small-business owners.

e recent announcement celebrated the opening of a new bakery on Queens Boulevard in Forest Hills: Leidylicious Cakes. Owner Leidy Cordera was able to open it with the support of the Business Express Service Team, which facilitated and expedited relevant documents.

is month the City Council will vote on a bill introduced by City Council member Julie Menin, who chairs the council’s small business committee, that would codify the mayor’s executive order to lower nes in 40 categories. In October the mayor signed a bill to create an online portal that would provide small businesses with applications, permits, licenses, and related documentation and paperwork in one place.

“People say, ‘ e city’s coming back.’ And I say over and over again, ‘ e city is not coming back; the city is back,’ ” Adams said. ■

THE WAVE OF BANK FAILURES IS A FRESH SOURCE OF HEADACHES FOR MANHATTAN OFFICE LANDLORDS.

PARAMOUNT GROUP CEO Albert Behler urged investors to be patient on an earnings call last Thursday.

ED REED/MAYORAL PHOTOGRAPHY OFFICE

ADAMS announces the launch of Small Business Month at Leidylicious Cakes, a new bakery in Queens.

TO RESCUE THE DINER, the owner experimented with comedy shows and online sales.

Williamsburg’s iconic Kellogg’s Diner is up for sale for $2.5 million

BY OLIVIA BENSIMON

Kellogg’s Diner, a historic restaurant at Metropolitan and Union avenues in Williamsburg, is for sale after ling for bankruptcy protection.

e diner, which rst opened in 1928 and was known for its 24/7 service, was listed on a commercial real estate website last month with an asking price of $2.5 million. New owners would take over the 30-year lease starting June 1 along with a liquor license.

Eater rst reported the listing. Victor Moneypenny, a broker with the Staten Island–based MYC & Associates real estate agency in charge of the sale, did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

For years the diner had been struggling

nancially, according to court records. Irene Siderakis was the diner’s most recent owner. She took over from her husband, Chris Siderakis, following his unexpected death in 2018, then led for Chapter 11 bankruptcy

Chris Siderakis originally purchased the diner in 2013 from brothers Anthony, Frank and Fotis Fiotodimitrakis, who had been running it since the 1970s, according to the website Bedford + Bowery.

Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to Chapter 7. e diner’s day-to-day operations are now overseen by a bankruptcy trustee. at will continue until it is sold.

protection in August 2021. By then the restaurant owed more than $750,000 in unpaid expenses, including $285,000 in rent and utilities, such as real estate taxes, gas and electric services, and legal fees stemming from a 2019 federal wage theft lawsuit.

Following her husband’s death, Siderakis tried to maintain the diner’s legacy and business. But the additional burden of the pandemic dealt another blow. Amid nancial problems, she tried to rescue the diner by hosting comedy shows and poetry readings and selling breakfast staples online, according to Eater. e listing reports $3.5 million in gross annual revenue, and an employee at the diner told Crain’s that its sales had stabilized recently.

In January the case was converted from

Rowdy customers and late-night ghts on weekends at the diner have resulted in Kellogg’s scaling back its 24-hour service on Fridays and Saturdays, said Yosuel Rosado, the diner’s manager who has worked there for four years and was once the overnight manager. “ ree, four in the morning, people are a little drunk and they want to have st ghts— and like, no, we can’t have that,” Rosado said. He added ghts had been happening consistently every weekend for a few months, and he wanted to keep the sta safe.

“We want to go back to 24 hours on the weekends,” he said. “You still need food when you go out until 3 a.m.” ■

The move follows a Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection ling

FOR YEARS THE DINER HAD BEEN STRUGGLING FINANCIALLY, ACCORDING TO COURT RECORDS

WHO OWNS THE BLOCK

Sale of a failed hotel on East 46th Street ends a messy development tale

Developers had hoped to sell condos there, then rent them for owners

BY C. J. HUGHES

The April 25 sale of a failed conversion project in Turtle Bay was yet another reminder of the spectacular stumbles of a development arrangement that sought to create luxury long-term-stay hotels on the backs of small-scale investors.

The site at 234 E. 46th St., near Third Avenue, was snapped up about a decade ago by Prodigy Network, a developer that had a mission to crowdfund projects for as little as $10,000 a pop. The firm proved deft at doing that. Crowdfunders kicked in $12 million for No. 234, which Prodigy purchased for $69 million in 2014, records show.

e following year the state’s attorney general approved an o ering plan that would turn the 20-story former rental building into a 95-unit condo, a plan that was to rake in $138 million. en, after the condo units were sold, Prodigy’s partner, the developer Korman Communities, would rent out the units on behalf of their owners as hotel rooms, which would presumably earn big fees for both the owners and Korman.

But the complicated plan never really got o the ground. Prodigy and Korman never even sold the bare minimum number of apartments to make the condo plan “e ective,” or o cial, which could have occurred by unloading 14 units.

Afterward, investors of all stripes, including banks such as the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, which provided $81 million in conventional nancing for the project, started clamoring to be reimbursed. Multiple lawsuits followed. Complicating matters was the 2020 death of Rodrigo Nino, Prodigy’s founder and CEO, after which his company led for bankruptcy.

Ultimately, the Canadian bank foreclosed on No. 234, which led to April’s sale for $13.2 million, far less than what the buildings went for the last time around. e buyer, a Delaware-based shell company called 46 Turtle Bay, was represented by a Jeffrey Fields, according to the signature on the deed.

With the deal, three Prodigy-owned, AKA-branded projects in New York have now met their ends. e two others, in the Financial District, were 84 William St., which was acquired as part of a foreclosure sale by the Vanbarton Group in a 2020 deal valued at $74 million, and 17 John St., which is also now in Vanbarton’s hands following an $83 million deal, according to public records. e 84 William St. property has since been reborn as the Howell, a rental building.

But four AKA properties do survive in New York, including in Times Square and Sutton Place. A message left for Larry Korman, co-CEO of the Pennsylvania-based Korman Communities, was not returned by press time. ■

This 34-story residential high-rise, which extends through the block—a driveway runs to East 47th Street—is called the L’Ecole. When built in 1979, L’Ecole, developed by Goodstein Construction Company and designed by proli c architect Philip Birnbaum, offered rental units. But the partnership of Cammeby’s International Realty bought the site for $143 million in 2006 to undertake a condo conversion with $214 million in sales. Of the L’Ecole’s tenants, 10 seem to have chosen not to buy in or even to relocate. Indeed, the offering plan called for converting 261 units but leaving 10 alone. One retail space in the building features Barnea Bistro, a kosher French restaurant. Also at the site is a New York outpost of Lebanese American University.

The Durst Organization built this 23-story, 445,000-squarefoot of ce building in 1960. Durst remodeled the building to attain a gold ranking under LEED, a green rating standard that stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. Tenants today include Rosenberg and Estis, a real estate-focused law rm. Perhaps the building’s most infamous incident involved longtime retail tenant Sparks Steak House, whose entrance is at 210 E. 46th St. About 5:30 p.m. Dec. 16, 1985, four men wearing fur hats fatally shot mobster Paul Castellano as he emerged from a limo to enter the restaurant. Rival gangster John Gotti, who ordered the attack, apparently watched from a nearby car. In 1992 a court convicted Gotti of Castellano’s murder and other crimes. Gotti died in prison in 2002.

Edward Kimmel developed this 13-story apartment building in the 1950s with an apparent interest in attracting in the business leaders who were starting to populate Third Avenue. Indeed, Kimmel gave his project the name Executive House. In 1986 Kimmel, who also developed shopping malls under the name Kimco Realty, partnered with family members to turn the apartment house into a condo. A $35 million sellout was planned for the 129-unit project, according to the offering plan from the time. In 2002 Kimmel died at the age of 90. Four units, all studios, were for sale at the condo in late April, at prices ranging from $469,000 to $650,000. Investors seem to like the building, which does a brisk business in rentals. But some apartments have struggled recently to nd buyers, a situation likely made worse by Midtown’s decline as Manhattan’s main business district. One of the studios, No. 12G, has been on and off the market since 2017, dropping from $720,000 to $650,000 in those six years.

The charter that created the United Nations in the 1940s allowed countries to establish “permanent missions” in New York. The missions, tax-free holdings that function like embassies, largely speckle East 30th and East 40th streets. This squat 5-story structure, dating to the 1930s but with a much newer facade, was owned in the mid-20th century by the Gemological Society of America before being sold to the Republic of Venezuela in 1968. A few years later a burglar stole a typewriter, camera and $100 in postage stamps, according to a report in The New York Times. In 1990 the Commonwealth of the Bahamas picked up the 8,100-square-foot property, which city appraisers say has a market value of $3.1 million, and that country remains its owner today.

What looks like three tenements painted cheery shades of cerulean is in fact one property called the Blue Building. The site, once a stable and later an electrical supply store, is owned by the Dupler Group, which appears to have controlled the address for a long time. Indeed, online property records, which go back as far as the 1960s, indicate no change in ownership in that period. Today the Blue Building hosts weddings, fundraisers and recitals in gutted, industrial-looking spaces that feature tall ceilings and exposed-brick walls. There’s also a 1927 Steinway piano. In March the 19,000-square-foot site staged an opera, “Salvation,” the story of what happens when “a young woman with no memory of her past meets a stranger with the key to the riddle of her identity,” according to its ad.

This 20-story, 1986 residential building was a rental for years before the development team of Prodigy Network and Korman Communities snapped it up in 2014 in hopes of converting it into condos and, down the road, a long-term-stay hotel called AKA United Nations, a plan that never came to fruition. No apartments have turned over in the building since 2020, based on StreetEasy listings. The tower has a market value of $14.3 million, according to city tax of cials, which is about what a buyer paid for it in April. There are only one-bedrooms units in the building, which is one of several rentals on the block to have been considered for condo makeovers through the years.

From the late 1980s until the pandemic hit, this 5-story re-escape-laced structure housed an Italian restaurant called Grifone. But in 2022 the retail space in the prewar building started serving similar cuisine again, courtesy of Il Tinello, a restaurant that is an offshoot of one with the same name on West 56th Street.

The Viarengo family, which owned the building for decades, sold the 9,100-square-foot structure to Slate Property Group, an upstart developer, for $7.3 million in 2016. Upstairs are 15 apartments, from studios to four-bedroom units. A renovated two-bedroom unit with one bath and a dishwasher leased for $3,600 this month, based on its marketed rent on StreetEasy. Slate owns several rental buildings in the area, including 340 E. 52nd St., a 65-unit property near First Avenue that it purchased a year ago.

211 E. 46TH ST.

234 E. 46TH ST.

231 E. 46TH ST.

222 E. 46TH ST.

225 E. 46TH ST.

733 THIRD AVE.

244 E. 46TH ST.

Report: Poor New Yorkers more likely to have delayed or skipped care during the pandemic

BY AMANDA D’AMBROSIO

The majority of New Yorkers living in poverty who have high health needs faced significant barriers to accessing medical care during the pandemic, a challenge that has the potential to widen disparities even as the city exits the public health emergency, a report by the nonprofit organization Robin Hood and Columbia University says.

Robin Hood, based in Union Square, conducted the survey between October 2020 and May 2021 as a part of the Poverty Tracker, a longitudinal study that assesses poverty and well-being among New Yorkers. The study captures quarterly survey responses from the same households over time, including a sample of 3,000 people at any given time that is representative of the city.

City residents who lived in poverty were more likely to delay or entirely skip care than those who did not. Nearly 50% of people in poverty delayed or skipped care for their physical health, compared with 32% of people without hardship,

the report found.

People with economic disadvantages more commonly missed out on care for mental health, the survey said. Approximately 59% of people who experienced financial hardship said they delayed or skipped behavioral health care, the report found.

The recent report, released in April, is the second in a series of three studies that will focus on poverty and health care utilization. This research was funded by the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust.

“When you’re trying to manage health conditions and high health needs in the city, and you’re also coping with economic disadvantage, that leads to a lot of challenges in accessing high-quality and appropriate care,” said Christopher Wimer, principal investigator for the Poverty Tracker and director of the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University’s School of Social Work.

Around 2 million New Yorkers have high health care needs, which are defined as multiple chronic conditions, a work-limiting illness, se-

vere psychological distress or a combination, according to a report released by Robin Hood last year. Nearly 70% of this group reported material hardships such as poverty, food insecurity or housing instability.

Costs of care and transportation were common reasons why people passed on medical care, Wimer noted. About 1 in 5 people reported that they experienced discrimination in accessing health care, most commonly because of their race or ethnicity.

New Yorkers who live in poverty were more likely to have high health care needs, the survey found. Nearly 50% of people with financial hardships had high health care needs compared with 31% without such hardship.

People who lived in poverty were more than three times as likely to have serious psychological distress and 1.6 times as likely to have a work-limiting health condition.

Wimer said that data around health outcomes among low-income populations allows leaders to be more cognizant of how economic hardships can have serious implications on peoples’ lives, includ-

ing how housing instability or transportation barriers can translate to poor health outcomes.

More than 70% of survey respondents reported housing hardships, which included living with pests, using alternative sources of heat such as a kitchen stove or portable space heaters in the winter months, and living in overcrowded households.

Housing issues were more prevalent among people with psychological distress, affecting nearly 90%. This finding outlined the prevalence of housing issues and how they intersect with poverty and health, said Sarah Oltmans, chief of grant strategy at Robin Hood.

Although people in poverty were only slightly less likely to report having health insurance, they more frequently reported going to places like emergency rooms or urgent care settings to get care. Of people facing financial difficulty, 30% said they visited the emergency room in the past six months, compared with 19% of people who did not live in poverty.

“It just speaks to the instability in health care access that so many people faced,” Oltmans said. “Even when they have health insurance,

the health insurance may not be adequate. This may be the only option they have.”

Although this data covers the pandemic, Oltmans said that exiting the public health emergency— and specifically re-enrolling millions of New Yorkers on Medicaid—could add to the disruption in care that many have already experienced.

“These numbers were, you know, with relative continuity on health insurance that’s very likely to be disrupted over the coming year,” Oltmans said, noting that it should be a priority to ensure people who are eligible do not experience gaps in coverage.

As state and federal officials halt Covid-19 public health emergencies, data on poverty and health care utilization can inform how to further support people in accessing care, said Tracy Perrizo, program officer at the Helmsley Charitable Trust.

“It’s going to be interesting to see where the shocks are,” Perrizo said. “And as we are emerging from the public health emergency, did they change from before?” ■

hundreds of stable workers at Belmont Park lacked access to primary care, we created an on - site care center — helping meet the needs of this devoted workforce.

NO ONE SHOULD HAVE TO BET ON BETTER HEALTH BECAUSE WELL CAN’T WAIT

Revlon emerges from Chapter 11 without longtime owner Ron Perelman; his daughter’s at the helm

Revlon emerged from bankruptcy protection last week with a more attractive balance sheet but minus its owner of nearly 40 years, Ron Perelman.

Perelman’s 85% ownership stake was wiped out in Revlon’s court-supervised reorganization. However, his daughter, Debra, remains chief executive.

“We are emerging today as a stronger company,” Debra Perelman said in a statement. “With a simpli ed capital structure, signi cantly reduced debt and a new, highly experienced and committed board of directors, we look forward to unlocking the full potential of our globally recognized brands.”

million in losses over the previous two years and while amassing about $4 billion in liabilities.

Revlon emerged from Chapter 11 with $2.7 billion in debt eliminated from its balance sheet, leaving it with $1.5 billion in debt outstanding. It has $236 million in liquidity.

Executive Chairman

Liz Smith said: “While honoring the company’s legacy, I look forward to working alongside the management team and my director colleagues to usher in a new era.”

Financial numbers are only part of the story with Revlon, whose paid endorsers have included Cindy Crawford and Gal Gadot.

Revlon’s new shareholders are hedge funds that had loaned money that wasn’t repaid. e company led for bankruptcy protection last June after piling up more than $800

e Manhattan-based company was acquired by Perelman in 1985 via a $2.7 billion hostile takeover funded with junk bonds. e deal marked Perelman’s entry into New York society. He collected art, invested in restaurants including Graydon Carter’s Monkey Bar and Marcus Samuelsson’s Red Rooster, and brie y served as chairman of Carnegie Hall. Perel-

man, 80, over the years bought and sold dozens of companies, went through numerous marriages and feuded in court with his business partners, but through it all, he kept control of Revlon.

“I love the business. I love the industry,” Perelman told e Wall Street Journal in 2006. “For good or

bad, I’m most de ned by Revlon.”

Landmark ruling

e Revlon takeover remains signi cant because it unleashed a legal battle that led to a landmark Delaware court ruling. e ruling said that when a company is about to be sold, the board’s foremost

duty is to get the best price possible rather than ght the transaction.

e 1986 decision paved the way for a wave of corporate takeovers that have consolidated virtually every economic sector, from food and transportation to banking and technology. ■

New York Democrats are leveling up, by necessity ON POLITICS

New York Democrats, at last, seem to understand the urgency of their situation.

Recently Hu Post reported that Hakeem Je ries, the House minority leader, was spearheading a coordinated e ort within the state Democratic Party to ensure Republicans don’t run roughshod over Democrats again in the state. In part the move is a concession that the statewide party itself isn’t up to the task, but it’s also good for Democrats that the state party, led by Jay Jacobs, is even engaging at all.

is move comes in addition to a $45 million super political action committee run by House Democrats that was set up solely to aid congressional Democrats in New York. A few years ago all of this would have seemed strange. New York is a deep-blue state, and the idea that a congressional majority could hinge on what happens here (and not, necessarily, in Ohio, Michigan or Wisconsin) is a testament to how far local Democrats have fallen—at least in the suburbs beyond the city.

gled to return as governor against Republican Lee Zeldin, Democrats lost every House election on Long Island and dropped two seats north of the city.

Sean Patrick Maloney, the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, lost a redrawn district in Westchester and Rockland counties, and the seat Antonio Delgado vacated in the Hudson Valley fell to Republican Marc Molinaro, the former Duchess County executive.

ROSS BARKAN

No answer on crime Democrats—Hochul in particular, who picked Delgado to be her running mate—were wholly unready to counter Republican narratives on crime, particularly the idea that changes to the state’s bail laws have fed an uptick in the city. ough the evidence linking the crime spike to a reduction in cash bail is weak (shootings and murders, although elevated from 2019 levels, have tailed o in the past year in the ve boroughs), Republicans were able to convince enough voters that Democrats didn’t have an answer on crime.

have for these suburban voters next year. What can they promise? What can they deliver? e good news is that national trends should be in their favor.

Joe Biden recently announced his re-election bid, and his presence at the top of the ticket should drive Democratic turnout, especially if his opponent is Donald Trump. Republicans such as Molinaro and Mike Lawler, the former assemblyman who defeated Maloney, should be especially worried. Westchester and the Hudson Valley are home to many liberal voters who will show up to vote against Trump and safeguard abortion rights.

Long Island, as always, is the wild card. e House super PAC and coordinated campaign through the state party may be enough to at least win back the Nassau County seats that were traditionally in Democratic hands. Su olk County has proved daunting for Democrats in the past decade.

they don’t want to keep losing it in subsequent years, they’ll need to learn the virtues of party building.

In 2022, as Kathy Hochul strug-

What’s not yet clear is what overriding message Democrats will

In the longer term, Democrats will have to aggressively invest in building a large and functioning state party, which barely exists in its current form. If Democrats want to control the House in 2025, they’ll have to get New York right. And if

Quick takes

● Legislative leaders and Hochul have reached an agreement to raise the minimum wage to $17 an hour. Given the cost-of-living challenges in the city, few are likely to celebrate such a minuscule bump in pay.

● e new state budget does appear to provide funding for a pilot program that would make ve Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus routes free. e program is intriguing and could help many working-class New Yorkers travel around the city far more easily. ■

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

BLOOMBERG

PERELMAN

AARON ELSTEIN

JEFFRIES SPEAKS during a news conference in Washington. BLOOMBERG

“FOR GOOD OR BAD, I’M MOST DEFINED BY REVLON.”

KATE WITTELS HR&A Advisors

INTERVIEW BY CARA EISENPRESS

Technology has altered the fabric of New York City through on-demand taxis (Uber), decentralized apartment-booking platforms (Airbnb) and never-ending e-commerce deliveries (Amazon). Kate Wittels has been working behind the scenes to get the city and the tech industry on the same page. From her post as head of the urban tech practice at HR&A Advisors, she has thought about how the city can attract more tech companies—and how they can engage with the public and provide economic opportunity to residents. She has also worked with both the government and the private sector to galvanize the city’s own tech adoption to improve municipal services and make sure that advancements reach all New Yorkers. And she says it’s important to see how those advancements play out before we over-regulate them.

Is New York ahead of the curve in terms of being a tech-forward city?

I know it’s a priority of the mayor. The MyCity app has been a big effort going back to Bill de Blasio and Michael Bloomberg—getting something out there to help the city transform. There are other cities that are willing to deploy tech in the public sector more easily, like San Jose, Houston and Nashville. I think we will get there.

What can technology do to benefit New York?

First, there’s government and city services. How do you improve the delivery of the service so residents benefit? Each time you have new technology, you have new ways of deploying it that can improve upon the service. Then you have the city’s big goals around climate, and we’ll need new tech to rapidly change how we approach building and installing EV chargers and putting in other infrastructure that’s needed. And then, it is a driver of

DOSSIER

WHO SHE IS: Head of the urban tech practice, HR&A Advisors

AGE: 43

RESIDES: Prospect Heights, Brooklyn

TECH ON THE GO: Wittel’s personal tech stack includes her favorite tools for getting around the city: Omny and Apple Pay. “I use them constantly,” she said.

MIDDLE GROUND: What drives Wittels is mediating between city officials and technology CEOs, two sides that often come at tech problems from totally different worlds. “It’s demystifying the process of finding the middle ground.”

A.I. MENU: The latest rage—generative A.I.—has not yet carved out a central place in Wittel’s work or life. She has found one decent use for ChatGPT. “I ask it for recipes for making dinner from what’s in my fridge.”

our economy, accounting for a big share of city jobs.

Still, it wasn’t that long ago that New York drove away Amazon’s proposed HQ2. Were there any lessons from that episode?

I hear from companies now that as-ofright incentives are the third rail. The companies aren’t chasing it as much. They’re afraid to use it. There was a lot of momentum that had been building in Queens, but after we said no [to Amazon], companies left, including Citi. We did invest in Brooklyn, and that’s why it grew.

Will the promise of tech jobs wane as hiring weakens?

In the technology report we have worked on for over 10 years, we note that there are tech workers at tech companies and in the rest of the

economy. It’s about one-third of all tech jobs that are at non-tech firms. They have had a hard time competing with the tech firms for talent. Now there is an opportunity to spread the talent through the rest of the economy, with non-brandname companies and smaller businesses. It’s also a great opportunity because a lot of our startups and newer companies are desperate for tech talent, so having talent be unlocked a little more lets it spread across all the companies in New York

Not everyone is gung ho about tech. There are calls to slow down on artificial intelligence and prohibit TikTok. New York state is regulating cryptocurrency, and City Council members have conveyed wariness about facial recognition and the centralized benefits app at recent hearings. How do you balance the worries and calls for regulation with the promise of

Anytime innovation is created, going back to the printing press, people are fearful that it’ll change our morals. But we do have to let tech breathe. We don’t want to have our most vulnerable be manipulated and abused and harmed, and we don’t want tech that goes against our basic commitments in the constitution. Worrying about monopolies of the bigger tech companies is fair too—it’s harder for startups to get started because of the

But we do need to let a lot of it play out. We can see how it’s adapted. For example, there was a lot of worry about the 15-minute grocery model. But then it fizzled. We have to let the market manage certain things. ■

MTA pays Extell $82M for Harlem site to extend subway

Apparently, it can sometimes pay to hold out against the MTA.

The Extell Development Co. has sold a large site in Harlem to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for $82 million, a more than 80% premium over what the agency believed the property was worth, internal MTA documents show.

The agency had considered using eminent domain to get its hands on the site, which is at 160 E. 125th St and is critical for the next leg of the Second Avenue subway. But dragging Extell into court to try to seize the site would have been a risky strategy and possibly jeopardized federal funding for the $7.7 billion project, according to the documents.

“Acquiring these interests via negotiated acquisition will avoid a condemnation process that would likely have been significantly more expensive,” reads a summary of an April meeting of the MTA’s finance committee.

And that drawn-out process could have delayed “arguably the most critical improvement to public transportation for the residents

of East Harlem in over 100 years.”

Initially, the MTA appraised the 1.6-acre site at Lexington Avenue, which for decades had a massive

lion, the luxury builder finished ab out 30% below its target, suggesting it gave way less ground than the M TA.

For about two years the two sides haggled over the site, which will have an entrance to one of three new stations for the updated Q line, which will extend from East 96th Street. On April 26 the MTA’s board voted to approve Extell’s offer, the summary shows.

The transaction closed two days later, according to a deed.

green-lighted the residential project, which will someday have a new subway by its front door. An Extell spokeswoman had no comment by press time.

PathMark supermarket, at $45.4 million, the documents show.

But Extell, whose president is prolific developer Gary Barnett, pushed back on that estimate and instead claimed it was worth

much more, $114 million, MTA records show.

In 2014 Extell paid $39 million for the property, and then two years later spent $21 million to buy out PathMark’s lease, meaning the firm had invested $60 million to acquire the site. But the PathMark store actually extended into a next-door lot on the block that Extell still controls, so the $21 million lease payment wasn’t for 160 E. 125th St. alone.

Because Extell sought $114 mil

lion and ended up with $82 mil

Extell’s site has unique characteristics, the MTA says. It sits next to the 4,5 and 6 subway lines that run under Lexington. And the MTA plans to construct underground connections between thos e lines and the East 125th Street station.

As part of the deal, Extell also agreed to allow the MTA to construct ventilation shafts on the next-door parcel it still owns, 167 E. 124th St., which Extell acquired in 2014 for $10 million. The site, which is at Third Avenue and once contained a post office in addition to the PathMark, is slated for a 15-story, 543-unit residential tower, plans show. Last month the cit y’s Planning Commission

Last month MTA officials began eminent domain proceedings against landlords who own a cluster of buildings at Second Avenue and East 120th Street, several of which are controlled by the Pecora family, a local developer. Once condemne d and razed, those sites would become a staging area for tunnel-boring machines and then folded into the new East 116th Street station, plans show. The third station is planned for East 106th Street.

In March, in his new budget, President Joe Biden earmarked $497 million for the new subway project, which currently has a $7.7 billion price tag, a hefty $800 million increase from earlier estimates. The balance of the $3.4 billion for the subway is expected to come from grants from the Federal Transit Authority. But the M TA still needs to sign a formal agreement with the agency before it can access the funds, an action that the Extell deal will make easier, transit officials say. ■

GOOGLE STREET VIEW

THE SALE PRICE IS 80% MORE THaN WHAT THE AGENCY BELIEVED THE PROPERTY WAS WORTH

Of cials should keep conversation on increased housing production going

The state budget passed last Tuesday, and most of the governor’s major plans for boosting housing production were left on the cutting room oor, a disappointment for all who recognize the severity of New York’s housing crisis.

Although a number of suburban legislators are no doubt relieved that mandates that would have dictated how much housing must be built throughout the state will not go into e ect, as senior reporter Eddie Small found in this week’s cover story, not everyone in the suburbs was against Gov. Kathy Hochul’s so-called housing compact. In fact, o cials in Westchester towns including Mt. Kisco, Mt. Vernon and New Rochelle as well as Patchogue on Long Island have been advocating for increased housing production. It’s just that they would rather create the game plan on their own instead of waiting for the state to move forward with rules.

For example, also in Westches-

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

ter, Ardsley and Tarrytown have recently passed ordinances allowing for accessory dwelling units, or apartments in a home’s basement, attic or garage.

“ ey’d much rather pass it in a way that they think strikes a balance for their community and say, ‘Look, we already have it’ than to have it foisted upon them,” Tim Foley, CEO of Westchester’s Builders Institute, told Crain’s And some members of pro-housing groups say local legislators might not be hearing the whole story from their constituents. e NIMBY faction might be the loudest voices because they are the best organized, not because they outnumber the residents who would welcome new development and new neighbors to their towns.

Pro-housing group Open New York, for example, has expanded its focus and recently launched chapters on Long Island and in Westchester. is, said policy director Andrew Fine, could start to change what politicians in those areas hear from their constituents about new developments.

“Our goal is to organize those people and to make those voices heard and keep on getting individual projects o the ground to show that this is good for communities, is not scary, creates a lot of bene ts and brings in great new neighbors,” he said.

All in all, the idea that ramping up housing production in areas just outside the city to take some

of the burden o the ve boroughs was discussed so fervently in the rst place is a good start. Even though the housing compact ultimately did not cross the nish line, it was a necessary conversation starter about the needs of the entire region. It’s a welcome sign that many in the suburbs are willing to keep the conversation going. ■

We don’t need to remake Penn Station. We do need it to work

WHILE LIVING in Manhattan, I was heavily involved in transit issues, part of that time as a member of Community Board 8. I’ve stayed involved since then, mostly in Long Island Rail Road issues. I’ve used LIRR for commuting and personal visits since 1992.

I like:

● at the Penn Station LIRR concourses are getting better and hope that, when nished, they will have what commuters need, including quick and easy food choices and newsstands.

● e new exit to Seventh Avenue.

I don’t like:

● e crazy plans to “remake” Penn aboveground.

● at not a single plan I’ve heard does anything to x the tracks, platforms and either broken or slow escalators or both, and add capacity within the same footprint.

● Elevators that frequently don’t work and double as cesspools.

● e extremely narrow

platform for Track 17.

● e waste from some superwide platforms.

● at on the platforms, there is no way to gure out where an escalator or elevator might be.

● at there’s nothing to tell people where to be on a platform for an easy transfer to the JFK train at Jamaica.

● e di culty of getting up to the former Amtrak level.

● at on the East End, there are three frequently broken and always slow escalators, and no elevators.

● at on the West end, there are just stairs.

● e lack of properly cleaned and maintained bathrooms that

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don’t double as homeless bathhouses.

● e lack of decent lounges with enough space for the frequently long waits for trains.

Please tell real estate developers and politicians:

● We don’t need to demolish several blocks, including a historic church and the Penn Station Power Building.

● We don’t need more o ce buildings or luxury hotels. We do need a ordable hotels, stores, eateries and residential capacity.

● We don’t need our commuter station to become a Taj Mahal. We need it to work.

● We do need the tracks and platforms realigned, and, if possible, one added.

● We need the Gimbels passageway reopened and rebuilt to allow people to connect to trains at the Sixth Avenue stations underground. at will help in bad weather and reduce congestion in crosswalks and sidewalks.

RON TROY East Northport

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chairman Keith E. Crain

vice chairman Mary Kay Crain president & ceo K.C. Crain

senior executive vice president Chris Crain editor-in-chief emeritus Rance Crain chief nancial of cer Robert Recchia

founder G.D. Crain Jr. [1885-1973] chairman Mrs. G.D. Crain Jr. [1911-1996]

“OUR GOAL IS TO ORGANIZE THOSE PEOPLE AND TO MAKE THOSE VOICES HEARD.”

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Food deserts need healthy restaurants too

BY SAM ESHAGHOFF

The worst part of developing workforce housing is the days spent in the eld. Whether monitoring construction projects or checking out new opportunities, I often nd myself in lower-income neighborhoods such as East Flatbush, Corona, Bed-Stuy and sometimes the Bronx. In these neighborhoods I can’t nd healthy food for the life of me.

Many neighborhoods in the city are classi ed as “food deserts,” meaning that you cannot nd healthy food within a reasonable cost and distance. If I’m in one of these food deserts and I want a

prevalence of fast-casual dining, coupled with the boom in delivery services, has made it so easy for Manhattanites to access a variety of salads, bowls and other healthy food choices.

Workforce shift

Many people who live in food deserts work in Manhattan, so on weekdays they have access to the nutritious food options near their o ces. With much of the workforce shifting at least partially to remote work, however, a lot of these folks are stuck spending their entire day back in their food deserts, where they have to decide if they’ll get more nutrition from french fries or a chopped cheese.

GIVE DEVELOPERS INCENTIVES NOT JUST FOR SUPERMARKETS BUT ALSO FAST-CASUAL EATERIES

healthy lunch, the best I can do is the Filet-O-Fish at McDonald’s. If I’m lucky, I’ll nd a bodega that sells bananas, which will usually hold me over until I can get to a neighborhood with more options.

On the other hand, if you walk two blocks in Midtown Manhattan, you can’t miss the overwhelming o ering of healthy food options— from Pret A Manger and Cava to poke spots and vegan cafes. e

Fellow developers may be familiar with the city’s Food Retail Expansion to Support Health program, which in theory has been a promising mechanism to deliver healthy and affordable food options to select areas. Essentially, if a property is in a qualifying zone, developers may bene t from free additional oor area rights for building food stores that sell healthy foods, along with an increase in maximum building heights and potential tax incentives for the business. Developers should have no problem leasing some of these spaces to strong supermarket tenants who would love the opportunity to operate in areas with little

competition.

ese incentives are formidable boons to developers and food desert communities alike. Policymakers seem serious about creating this change: Over the years, the FRESH program has been loosening requirements and getting even more aggressive in qualifying properties. So where are all the supermarkets? It seems as if developers are either unaware of the evolution of the FRESH program or they’re not taking the bene ts seriously. And

Small businesses need accessible nancial literacy education

BY PRASHANT GANDHI

Despite a fragile economy and the risk of a recession, entrepreneurship has soared in New York state in the past three years. In fact, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce reported nearly 30% more new business applications led in 2022 than in 2019. A sobering reality exists, however.

labor shortages and record-high in ation.

While current economic headwinds are challenging enough to navigate, one thing business owners can control is their  nancial literacy, which can play a crucial role in their business’s health. It is time that the private and public sector come together to ensure the longterm success of New York’s small businesses by makingnancial literacy education more accessible.

while the zoning bene ts appear great on paper, building large retail spaces subject to city agency approval is likely more risk than many are willing to take on. A positive step would be to give developers incentives not just for supermarket-type operations, but also for healthy fast-casual eateries as well. After all, the way the world is trending, people nowadays are getting their share of nutritious lunches and dinners from the Sweetgreens and Dig Inns of the

world.

Food deserts would bene t tremendously from a spur of healthy and convenient restaurants, and if they could be considered for an even-further-upgraded version of the FRESH program, then a greater pool of prospective tenants would render more developers likely to take advantage of it. ■

Sam Eshagho is founder and managing principal of West Egg Development.

Despite a thriving entrepreneurial spirit in the Empire State, many businesses are set to fail. Approximately 20% of small businesses shut down within the rst year— and by the fth year 50% are no longer in business, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. is failure rate has only been compounded recently by supply-chain issues,

Financial literacy is critical to the sustainability of small businesses, as it helps owners understand how money moves through their business, meet nancial commitments to both suppliers and employees and make prudent choices for their business backed by nancial knowledge. Often when small businesses experience nancial hardship, it is because they are not keeping track of their nancial statements and have a limited understanding of what they mean for

their business as a whole.

While many small-business owners are not nance experts or accountants, there are some existing programs and resources to help New York small-business owners manage their nances. ey include the New York State Small Business Guide, the New York Small Business Development Center, the SCORE’s mentoring program and the Small Business Administration’s Financial Management for Small Businesses Workbook. But there is still a great need for public and private investment in accessible nancial literacy education.

Quality is as important as accessibility when it comes to these resources. Financial literacy education should follow the “3-5-7” imperative to ensure that business owners have a broad understanding of their pro ts, debts and cash ow. All programming should teach entrepreneurs to master three basic nancial statements: pro t and loss statements, cash ow statements and balance sheets.

It should also teach them how to calculate and use ve basic nancial ratios: gross pro t ratio, current ratio, days in accounts receivable, days in accounts payable and net pro t margins.

Finally, entrepreneurs could bene t from education on how to improve their cash ow by following seven core habits: using cash discounts with suppliers and vendors, minimizing discrepancies within expenses, setting in place review and approval processes for invoices, adopting payment ows that are easy and frictionless, digitizing order processes, ensuring that payments from customers match invoices and building automated collection routines.

Comprehensive nancial literacy education can level the playing

eld for New York small businesses and help them compete against larger companies in the marketplace. Resources and a ordable programs that teach the fundamentals of nancial literacy, including how to manage everyday nances, mitigate potential risks and optimize for the future, have never been more important.

To defy the concerning failure rates of new businesses and strengthen New York’s economy, the state’s small-business owners need better nancial literacy education. ■

Prashant Gandhi is chief business o cer of Melio, a business-tobusiness payments company for small businesses headquartered in New York.

APPROXIMATELY 20% OF SMALL BUSINESSES SHUT DOWN WITHIN THE FIRST YEAR

MANY LOWER-INCOME neighborhoods can’t nd healthy food options at a reasonable price.

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LARGEST REAL ESTATE FINANCINGS

New York is closer than ever to beating the Bay Area on tech

BY CARA EISENPRESS

The tech ecosystem in the city has for years been second to the Bay Area, where a larger and richer world of technology companies, investors and engineers has been flourishing for decades longer. The odds were long that New York could catch up.

Now, the two cities are running closer to neck and neck than ever before, according to several recent data points and the anecdotes of insiders from both places. They point to New York’s mix of industries and quality of life as reasons for its clear momentum in the rankings.

The newest evidence: There were roughly 50,000 jobs at venturebacked tech companies advertised in each region in the 14 months from January 2022 to March of this year. That’s according to an analysis by Palo Alto, California–based venture capital firm NGP Capital, which manages investments for Finnish telecommunications company Nokia.

The next four U.S. cities—Los Angeles; Boston; Austin, Texas; and Chicago—each had around 30,000 fewer listings than either of the two

front-runners. Together, the Bay Area and New York City accounted for half of all listings during the study’s period.

“The fact that New York is on parity with the West Coast is something where I definitely did a double take,” said Upal Basu, partner at NGP Capital, who created the report as a way for the firm to identify promising sectors and geographies for its investments.

NGP’s work on job openings is far from the only recent data point reflecting New York’s strength going into the next several years.

Last year 20.6% of all U.S. venture capital deals occurred in the Bay Area, according to Pitchbook’s most recent Venture Monitor, while 14.7% were in New York. That is the closest the two lines have come since at least 2012, although the Big Apple’s share of the total did drop from an all-time high of 15% in 2021.

Salaries for those working in the industry are also close. In the Bay Area, the average local salary for 2022 was $174,063, according to a report from hired.com; in New York, it was $161,128. The gap between the two narrowed from 2021, as New York salaries increased slightly

more quickly than those in California.

During the 14 months measured by NGP, of course, tech hiring has slowed and layoffs have increased. But health care has been the most resilient of the subsectors, with current job openings about 65% of their March 2022 level.

“Health care is very stable,” Basu said. “It doesn’t wax and wane like in other parts of tech. You have hospitals, venture-backed medical devices, and they aren’t as prone to the hype of digital tech.”

In the city, biohealth startups typically raise about 25% of all funding, according to New York City Health Business Leaders.

Big Apple benefits

The other part of the draw to New York, Basu said, is New York itself.

“San Francisco is over-indexed on tech,” Basu said. “New York City has [other sectors such as] government, media and culture, which has balanced it. It’s made New York a more attractive city where venture capitalists and young people want to be.”

Basu said he has heard from job seekers that it’s now harder to get hired at distributed companies Meta Platforms and Uber if the candidate’s preference is to be in New York rather than in the Bay Area.

Longtime city founder and investor Kevin Ryan of AlleyCorp has said for years that New York’s challenge to the Bay Area is material.

In AlleyCorp’s most recent quarterly newsletter, he underlined the vision: “New York is poised to become the premier technology ecosystem and the ideal place to launch the defining companies of the next decade,” it reads. “The city’s vibrant culture, diverse industries and top talent are fueling its growth. With the tech scene’s impressive progress over the past 20

years, we at AlleyCorp believe that New York will play a crucial role in fostering the transformative companies that will drive significant advancements in the coming years.”

The idea behind studying job openings is to get a sense of the direction of each city, Basu said. Still, the gap between them continues to loom by some metrics. The Bay Area has about 25% more companies, 7% more workers and more than double the investment dollars, according to a report on tech talent by CBRE.

The current focus on generative artificial intelligence could slow the city’s gains. Of the largest 20 generative AI startups at both early and later stages of growth, just two are in New York; 11 are in the Bay Area. ■

NEW YORK IS gaining momentum on the Bay Area thanks in part to its mix of industries.

Layoffs gut two firms with real estate ties

The ongoing struggles of the commercial real estate industry may be starting to doom companies with close ties to the sector.

Hudson Square-based Lev, a tech firm that offers a commercial-lending platform, recently laid off 34 employees, a few months after it made a cut of a similar size. And Henegan Construction Co., an interiors firm that has created Manhattan offices for major banks, is letting 55 workers go as it prepares to permanently close later this year.

Legally-required notices about the layoffs at both companies appeared recently in a state Department of Labor public database.

Founded by Yaakov Zar and Sammy Greenwall in 2019, Lev uses artificial-intelligence technology to match borrowers looking to purchase commercial buildings with thousands of lenders. The firm reportedly helped originate about $1 billion in mortgages in 2021. Lev makes its money by charging fees for transactions on its platform.

BY C.J. HUGHES BUCK

Along the way, the company, which is based on Spring Street, also seemed to become a darling of venture capitalists. A Series A round in 2021 hauled in $30 million, and a Series B round last year nabbed $70 million, according to startup-charting website Crunchbase. Lev’s in-

RETAIL

vestors have included Cross River Digital Ventures, Parker89 and Canaan Partners. An email and phone message left with the company went unreturned. But last spring Zar told the

website AlleyWatch he was expecting to expand. “Our volume is quickly increasing, and I know that we can be doing more to help our clients close even faster with a higher certainty of execution on

REAL ESTATE

It’s official: Century 21 sets reopening date

BY EDDIE SMALL

The grand reopening of Century 21’s flagship store in the Financial District will be May 16, according to a spokeswoman for the company.

The department store was previously expected to reopen as soon as April 25, but it remained closed through the end of the month. A source then told Crain’s that it could reopen during the first week of May.

The revamped store should

span 100,000 square feet across four floors.

The Gindi family owns the company, which had filed for bankruptcy protection and shuttered all of its 13 locations throughout New York, New Jersey, Florida and Pennsylvania in 2020 as the pandemic upended the retail industry.

The family then had a winning bid of $9 million for the brand’s intellectual property at an auction. They announced plans to reopen the Financial District’s flagship store at 22 Cortlandt St. last May. ■

more optimized terms,” he said then.

The company had about 100 employees in December before it laid off about 30 workers, according to news reports.

Henegan, meanwhile, is laying off its entire staff as it prepares to cease operations in August, according to its state filing. Founded in 1959 and based on West 30th Street near Penn Station, the family-owned firm is in its second generation of leadership. Its chief executive is Maureen Henegan, who took over in 1991 from her father, company founder Paul Henegan.

Clients have included Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and UBS, and projects have involved office towers in both Manhattan and New Jersey, according to Henegan’s website.

Another client was cloud-computing giant Salesforce, for which Henegan constructed a full-floor office at the high-rise 3 Bryant Park, which is at 1095 Sixth Ave. in Midtown.

Henegan had no comment.

Tech companies and banks have both downsized their office footprints in recent years. JPMorgan Chase, for instance, shrank by 400,000 square feet in 2022 and 300,000 square feet in 2020. And San Francisco-based Salesforce has announced that it will cut 8,000 workers in 2023 and get rid of some office space.

In the first quarter of this year, Manhattan’s office availability rate climbed to 17.1%, up from 16.9% in the fourth quarter, and among its highest level in decades, according to the brokerage Colliers. ■

Manhattan has almost 94 million square feet of available office space

BY EDDIE SMALL

Spring has not given Manhattan’s office landlords much to cheer about so far, with the available supply in the borough reaching a record high of almost 94 million square feet in April, according to the latest report from Colliers.

Firms leased just 1.5 million square feet of space last month, far below even the monthly average during the pandemic years of 2020, 2021 and 2022, while the availability rate reached 17.4% to match its record from February 2022, the report says. The amount of available office space has shot up by 74.5% since March 2020, when Covid first upended life in the city.

Midtown was the borough’s busiest neighborhood, with about 891,000 square feet of leases, followed by Midtown South at 420,000 and downtown at 184,000, the report says. Activity in all three neighborhoods was down sharply year over year, although leasing in Midtown did increase compared to March.

Manhattan had just two leases for more than 100,000 square feet last month and only one lease between 50,000 and 99,999 square feet, all of which were in Midtown.

HPS renewed and expanded to 160,000 square feet at 40 W. 57th St.; Sheppard Mullin renewed and expanded to 108,000 square feet at 30 Rockefeller Plaza; and ExodusPoint Capital Management renewed and expanded to 75,000 square feet at 65 E. 55th St. The neighborhood’s availability rate was 15.6%, and its average asking rent was $78.74 per square foot.

Midtown South had its slowest month since March 2021. The largest deal in the neighborhood was Claims Conference renewing its 34,000-square-foot lease at 1359 Broadway. Midtown South’s availability rate climbed to a new record of 17.9%, according to the report,

sparked by about 1.1 million square feet of available space coming on the market at 261 11th Ave. and 125,000 square feet arriving at Penn 2. The average asking rent actually rose to $81.77 per square foot, also likely due to the space at Penn 2 and 261 11th Ave.

Downtown had its slowest month of the year, and the neighborhood’s average asking rent dropped by 10.8% from March 2020 to hit $58.69 per square foot, the sharpest drop in the three markets. Its largest lease in April was the Brennan Center for Justice renewing 50,000 square feet of space at 120 Broadway. and its availability rate held steady at 20.5%, the report says. ■

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Vornado looks to sell office buildings at depressed prices

BY AARON ELSTEIN

Vornado Realty Trust is looking to sell office buildings at depressed prices in an effort to raise cash and prop up its faltering stock price.

“We are not a distressed seller,” Chief Executive Steven Roth insisted on a conference call that he attended remotely. “We are not a weak seller.”

But circumstances are forcing the developer’s hand.

Occupancy rates and cash flows are falling, while borrowing costs march higher along with interest rates. Recently Vornado suspended its dividend payout to conserve cash. Its stock price, at $13.93 a share, is the lowest since 1996 and fell by another 5% last week as executives acknowledged they may have to part with properties at prices they wouldn’t have considered before.

“You have to be realistic,” Vornado’s president and chief financial officer, Michael Franco, said on the call. “We may not love the price of some assets today relative to where they were a few years ago, but relative to our stock price, we do like that pricing.”

Officials didn’t identify which buildings are for sale.

Vornado’s 20 million-squarefoot portfolio includes several large Midtown office towers, especially in the area around Penn Station, including the Farley Building, Penn Plaza and 1290 Sixth Ave., which it co-owns with

the Trump Organization. Although management said demand for space in the newly renovated 1 Penn Plaza is strong, total o ccupancy for Vornado’s New York properties eroded to 89.9% last quarter from 91.2% a year ago.

Four years ago the rate was 97%.

Roth said asset sales could help the firm pay for buying back up to $200 million worth of stock, a pledge made when Vornado halted the dividend that paid out more than $400 million in cash to share-

holders last year. Depending on how the rest of the year shakes out, and how much debt needs repaying, dividend payments for 2023 could be made entirely in Vornado shares.

“I’m not calling a bottom,” Roth said on the call.

Some analysts questioned the wisdom of using Vornado resources to support its stock price.

“Is there a worry this could be akin to catching a falling knife?” one analyst asked.

Funds from operations, a proxy for cash flow, fell to $128 million in the first quarter, or 60 cents a share, compared to 79 cents in the prioryear period. Weighted average interest rates on the firm’s $10 billion in debt rose to 4.2% from 2.6% a year ago.

Roth did his best to assure that Vornado will emerge from the difficulties in commercial real estate better than before. He said it would help if a “certain demographic” that prefers working from home returned to the office. Franco added that sentiment about the sector could improve if grim news abated and offices were no longer “the whipping boy for today.”

“Every day there’s negativity about office in the media, and, you know, some of that’s warranted,” he said. “It’s gotten a bit extreme.” ■

What the MTA budget bailout means for New Yorkers

BY CAROLINE SPIVACK

THE ISSUE

A STATE BUDGET AGREEMENT has pulled the Metropolitan Transportation Authority back from the edge of its fiscal cliff, providing the mass transit agency with the cash it needs to avoid a potentially devastating budget deficit largely caused by the pandemic. Gov. Kathy Hochul unveiled a budget deal on April 27 that would secure new, recurring revenues for the MTA. Crucially, the bailout will stave off service and job cuts officials had anticipated without aid.

The tentative rescue package includes an increase to the payroll mobility tax paid by businesses that benefit from the MTA’s services. But instead of the original proposal—that companies across 10 counties would pay higher rates—the increase from 0.34% to 0.6% will fall exclusively on companies in the five boroughs following a suburban outcry. The tax increase is expected to raise $1.1 billion for the MTA annually, Hochul said.

Other budget wins for the MTA include the state kicking in a one-time payment of $300 million, along with an extra $65 million that would allow the MTA to reduce a planned fare increase. Hochul had originally asked the city to contribute an additional $500 million annually to the authority, but instead the five boroughs will chip in $165 million. The steeply reduced figure is a win for Mayor Eric Adams, who fiercely resisted the idea that the city could afford $500 million a year. In addition, a large chunk of tax revenue generated by three planned downstate casinos will also go toward the MTA.

Somewhat controversially, free buses are on the horizon for parts of the city. A new pilot program will explore the impact of providing free bus service through one route in each borough. Lawmakers had initially pitched two free routes per borough.

WHAT’S NEXT

HOCHUL AND THE LEGISLATURE have yet to formally pass a budget. What has been revealed to date is a “conceptual agreement” of a $229 billion deal, Hochul said April 27. The state Senate and Assembly will still need to hash out the final details and pass the budget as a series of bills, which is expected to happen in the coming days. The tentative agreement for over a monthlate state budget signals an end to a fraught waiting game for the MTA, allowing the agency to plan its future and riders’ commutes with surer financial footing.

THE PLAYERS

TRANSIT OFFICIALS had been eagerly awaiting the state’s budget outcome and can at last breathe a sigh of relief. MTA Chief Executive Janno Lieber said the bailout would “assure the MTA’s longterm financial stability” and address its expected budget deficits for four years.

Historically, funding for the MTA involves an annual budget-season fight involving city and state officials. This plan is different in that, once the state budget is approved, it will give the authority greater stability with more permanent sources of revenue. Gov. Kathy Hochul said in her April 27 remarks that the budget represented an intentional departure in its approach to the MTA. “The choice was just wait and see what happens, kick the can down the road, or launch a bold strategy of sustainability to shore up and ensure the viability of the MTA for years to come,” Hochul said.

YEAH, BUT …

CUSTOMERS CAN STILL EXPECT a fare increase later this year. The MTA typically raises fares every couple of years by roughly 4%, but transit officials have not raised rates since the pandemic began. A fare increase planned for 2021 was put off to encourage riders to return. This year the agency said it planned to raise fares by 5.5%—to $2.90 for the subway and buses. The MTA expected the bump to bring in about $50 million in additional revenue for this year and $100 million for 2024.

Now that the state has said it will provide an additional $65 million, New Yorkers could pay slightly less than expected or $2.86 per ride. The timing is not yet known. A fare increase won’t happen without a series of public hearings and a final vote by the MTA’s board. Jai Patel, the MTA’s deputy chief financial officer, said that the authority was originally shooting for a June fare increase but that July or August was now more likely.

SOME BACKGROUND

THE MTA’S FINANCIAL INSTABILITY revolved around a $600 million operating budget deficit for this year and a potential budget gap of nearly $3 billion by 2025. The financial chasm opened up largely because of the pandemic, when many people stayed home instead of riding subways and buses. But other financial pressures, such as billions of dollars in outstanding debt, have long put the squeeze on the agency’s finances.

HOCHUL

LIEBER

BUCK ENNIS

Etsy powers strong earnings, employee raises by working to improve shopping experience

BY CARA EISENPRESS

Customers are having an easier time searching Etsy for stickers, art prints and vintage jewelry—and employees at the Dumbo-based firm are finding their paychecks fatter as thanks.

Etsy reported $640.9 million in revenue for the first three months of the year, according to its third-quarter earnings results, released Wednesday after the market closed. That is 10.6% higher than the same period last year, even though total sales dropped by 4.6%. The results follow a holiday shopping season that saw slightly lower sales than the previous year—but higher revenue on those sales.

In 2020 and 2021, the pandemic’s stay-at-home culture proved a boon to Etsy as millions of sellers shipped craft supplies, home decor and homemade masks as fast as the company’s 95 million active users could order them.

Demand eventually slowed, and CEO Josh Silverman tasked Etsy employees with holding on to the gains. He said Etsy would fix up the user experience both for sellers and for buyers, a priority he affirmed in a statement released with the first-quarter results.

It appears that employees met their boss’s expectations.

The median annual total compensation for Etsy employees was $248,232 for 2022, according to a regulatory filing by the company, an increase of 30% in two years. Etsy workers are now the highest paid in the city’s tech industry, with median pay nearly $100,000 higher than their equivalent on Wall Street. At Goldman Sachs, median pay sank from $166,000 in 2021 to $150,000 last year.

Workers at other homegrown tech firms with revenue of more than $1 billion, which are required

to report median pay, also did pretty well, although not as well as the Etsy crew. At Datadog, for example, the median pay is $203,000. The out-of-town behemoths with sizable New York offices still pay a little more: Median pay at Google owner Alphabet was $279,000 in 2022, and at Facebook parent Meta Platforms, it was $296,000. Microsoft shelled out a median of $190,302 for its employees. Pay raises at tech companies were hardly the norm. At Alphabet, that high median salary was actually down 5% from 2021. Median pay for Uber workers was down 6%. Like other e-commerce players, Etsy had to deal with slow or falling growth after the two-year online ordering boom ended.

Silverman said on last year’s third-quarter earnings call that the

company needed to “narrow search results and get you to the good stuff fast. … We need world-class search technology married with worldclass personalization.”

In April 2022 Etsy increased its transaction fee from 5% to 6.5%. Increased marketing and efforts to make customer interactions smoother appear to have assuaged sellers. There were 7.9 million of them on the platform in the first quarter of this year, up from 7.7 million in the same quarter last year. The number of active buyers also increased by 1% to 89.9 million— the first time the metric has gone up in two years.

By the personal standards of Fred Wilson, Etsy’s board chair, the changes are working out great.

“Most people don’t go to Etsy and enter ‘pizza oven’ into the search field,” Wilson observed in a recent blog post. “As a result, searching on Etsy can be a bit of a ‘hunt and peck’ experience, even as the search on Etsy has improved enormously in the last few years.”

Wilson went on to describe how a new search feature called Etsy Lens has changed that for him. He now photographs interesting objects—in one case, a typewriter he saw in a coffee shop—and searches for similar Etsy listings.

“I see things that I like when I am out and about, use the Etsy app to photograph them, search Etsy for similar things, favorite and curate them in my profile, and then buy the ones I love,” he said. ■

DA files indictments in alleged construction fraud scheme

BY MARIO MARROQUIN

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg last week filed several indictments charging construction companies and individuals in an alleged fraud and corruption scheme in the city and Westchester County.

The indictments allege that a consortium of general contractors, subcontractors and executives defrauded government agencies and, among other things, conspired with enterprises including minorityand women-owned businesses to obtain contracts for government-subsidized affordable housing developments between 2015 and 2021.

According to the statement of

facts, the New York County District Attorney’s Office in June 2020 opened an investigation into corruption within the city’s drywall industry that resulted in a grand jury returning an indictment against six companies.

The district attorney’s office alleges New Jersey–based JM3 Construction, its executives and five other companies falsified business records to make it appear as if minority- and women-owned businesses were providing goods and ser vices, resulting in contracts being awarded for projects in Harlem, the East Village, East New York, Brownsville, the West Bronx, the South Bronx and New Rochelle.

The main indictment, filed last week, levels 60 charges against

JM3 Construction and company executives Lawrence Wecker, Michael Speier, Joseph Guinta, Lisa Rossi and Marcos Pinheiro. New Jersey–based JACG Construction and MGS Construction, and New York–based LNR Construction, which worked as subcontractors for JM3, are also named in that indictment.

The 60 charges include enterprise corruption, a scheme to defraud, conspiracy, grand larceny, attempted grand larceny, falsifying business records, insurance fraud and money laundering. The executives could each face up to 25 years in prison.

“These defendants, as charged, enriched themselves at the expense of a program intended to assist minority- and women-owned busi-

nesses, by deceiving city and state government entities, part of a series of frauds that shortchanged workers and undermined fair competition,” Jocelyn Strauber, commissioner of the city Department of Investigation, said in a statement.

The DA’s office also filed separate indictments against Urban Strategies of New York, Big Apple Designers and Eco Geek Living for their participation in JM3 Construction’s alleged scheme.

Bragg’s office alleges these companies and several individuals falsified records and committed various types of fraud to help JM3 secure lucrative contracts.

The DA’s office said the parties in the indictments were arraigned Tuesday and are scheduled to appear in court Aug. 1. ■

ETSY’S HEADQUARTERS IN DUMBO. BLOOMBERG PHOTOS

Report: Vacancy rates in the city’s life science sector hit new highs

BY JACQUELINE NEBER

Although the city’s life science companies took a record amount of real estate in 2022, vacancy rates have grown in the first quarter of this year, according to a report from CBRE.

The report shows that national life science vacancy rates have increased to 6.7% for the first quarter of the year. At 39%, New York’s rate is significantly higher than the national average; it’s up about 24% from the first quarter of 2022. In Manhattan alone, the sector’s vacancy rate stands at 34%. For this quarter the vacancy rate for prebuilt laboratory space is 8.2% in the city and 4.8% for space in Manhattan.

There is about 210,000 square feet of available real estate to support the industry in the city, meaning demand for lab space is lower than the supply available.

According to the report, vacancies aren’t the only problem facing the sector. Investors have become more discriminating across the country; life sciences across the U.S. saw the lowest quarterly ab-

sorption rate since at least 2016.

Bill Hartman, vice chairman of the life sciences advisory group at CBRE, said New York might have an even harder time recovering from potential economic headwinds than more established cities because companies based in the city tend to be earlier-stage.

“The tenants that are here are generally startups—you don’t see a lot of New York City companies that raise significant capital, other than maybe Calliope and one or two others,” he said. “The runway that they have is less, which means they’ll take less space or may end up just closing some of the operations.”

The first quarter of this year brought in just under 7,000 square feet of leasing activity compared with more than 170,000 square feet in the first quarter of 2022, CBRE found.

As demand has fallen, prices have gone up. The average asking rent for lab space throughout the city was about $108 per square foot, up from about $90 in the first quarter of last year. In Manhattan, the asking rate averaged $122 per square foot, a nearly $20 jump from last year.

Although leasing activity has dropped off, funding is a silver lining in the first quarter. Life science firms in New York raised about $247 million, a higher amount than what was raised in the second half of 2022, but a 20% drop from the first quarter of last year, when market conditions were more favorable to venture capital investors.

The city’s life sciences sector is bucking the dip in life sciences funding seen throughout the country. Life science companies outside of New York pulled in just under $4 billion in the first quarter, a return to prepandemic levels.

The plethora of academic life science institutions in New York continues to play a role in its success, Hartman said, pointing to New York University and Mount Sinai, which both take up a lot of available space and receive huge amounts of federal money from the National Institutes of Health. Experts say the amount of NIH funding the city receives could be evidence of optimism about the industry.

New York has received $879 million in NIH funding so far this year, with $149 million going to NYU’s Grossman School of Medicine and

$146 million going to health sciences at Columbia University. Mount Sinai got $125 million, the Memorial Sloan Kettering Institute received nearly $75 million, and Cornell got about $71 million.

In addition, the city continues to see more companies form out of academic research and stay in the city instead of moving to Boston or San Francisco, the CBRE report said.

The commercial demand beyond the institutions, however, is “thin” right now, Hartman said, which contrasts CBRE’s outlook for the U.S. on the whole. Life science em-

ployment rates are growing across the country, and “continued demand for life science space should limit any future increases in vacancy,” the report said.

Ultimately, Hartman added, the health of the sector for the rest of the year will depend on whether the city’s smaller firms can get enough funding to last through a challenging time, get their research into clinics and move into commercialization.

CBRE’s New York office is in Midtown, and the firm is headquartered in Dallas. ■

BUCK ENNIS

MOUNT SINAI

prominence of the topic, noting that some towns have already been working to increase their supply as the threat of state action continues to loom.

“Obviously, it’s a disappointment that the governor and Legislature couldn’t get something done here,” Romita said following the plan’s collapse. “We’re sort of back where we started before all this happened.”

e suburbs’ reputation for opposing new developments is well earned, and the failure of Hochul’s housing compact demonstrates that the resistance remains strong despite broad agreement that the region’s housing production has not kept pace with its population growth in recent years.

But the opposition is not and never has been universal, and the housing compact’s being left out of the budget does not mean the end of pushing for more homes in the suburbs. Pro-housing groups such as the Westchester County Association and Long Island Housing Services are now settling in for what they always expected to be a long road ahead.

“You have to build public support. I heard from some elected o cials that they were getting calls from people opposing it and not the people in favor, which means the people in favor were not organized enough,” said Long Island Housing Services Executive Director Ian Wilder. “We have to get them to reach their elected o cials so their elected o cials know this is an issue they need to support.”

‘Well-planned growth’

Some pro-housing groups were reluctant to even frame the collapse of the housing compact as a total defeat. e mere fact that the issue played such a prominent role in budget negotiations has made the idea of state control over local

REAL ESTATE

housing policy seem much more real, encouraging municipalities to gure out how to deal with the shortage on their own now rather than deal with a state-mandated solution later.

Tim Foley, CEO of Westchester’s Builders Institute, pointed to ordinances Ardsley and Tarrytown have recently passed allowing for accessory dwelling units, generally de ned as apartments in a home’s basement, attic or garage, as an example of towns trying to get ahead of potential state requirements around housing.

“ ey think the government in Albany will be passing something on ADUs,” he said. “ ey’d much rather pass it in a way that they think strikes a balance for their community and say, ‘Look, we already have it’ than to have it foisted upon them.”

nish line on its rst attempt.

New Rochelle is generally seen as one of the more pro-development areas of Westchester County. e city has already welcomed at least two new apartment buildings with more than 100 units this year alone.

Nearby, in Mount Vernon, new apartment buildings are springing up along the Metro-North’s Harlem line, which accounts for two of that city’s three commuter rail stops.

Bramson took issue with the general perception of adding housing to an area as a necessary hardship for communities to endure, instead framing it as a positive move with far-reaching advantages.

“I do not regard well-planned growth as a burden. I regard it as a bene t,” he said. “If it’s done properly, it breathes new life into downtown areas. It creates new job opportunities. It moderates the upward pressure on housing costs and makes our region far more accessible.”

when you force it down people’s throats.” He argued in favor of a more targeted development approach from the state focused on speci c sites that would be good for housing rather than blanket growth requirements.

they have historically been the louder voices. e groups also seek to amplify the voices of community members who are in support of more development.

Tarrytown Mayor Karen Brown echoed this point, saying the town thought it would be best to get an ADU law passed “that t our local needs.”

“Judging by projects in the pipeline, I think we will see many of the governor’s housing goals reached organically here in Tarrytown and throughout the Hudson Valley,” she said.

And even the more controversial aspects of Hochul’s plan still found some support among local elected o cials in the suburbs. New Rochelle Mayor Noam Bramson described the initiative as “very positive,” with growth targets that were “reasonable and achievable.” He was disappointed but not shocked that such a big potential change to the suburbs didn’t make it over the

ough Mt. Kisco Mayor Gina Picinich agreed that increasing housing and making it more accessible was important, she stressed that every community would have di erent challenges to address and took issue with the idea of a 3% growth target across the board. She also emphasized that the image of Westchester being lled with nothing but expansive single-family homes was inaccurate, particularly in Mt. Kisco.

“ e accusation is that Westchester is just this suburban, single-family-zoned community where people are restrictive and exclusive. It’s not,” she said. “Only 25% of my housing is free-standing single-family homes.”

Patchogue has been fairly supportive of new housing on Long Island, although Mayor Paul Pontieri stressed that “it doesn’t happen

Brodsky joins Avery Hall on Gowanus project, lands $155M in nancing

BY EDDIE SMALL

The Brodsky Organization is joining the rush of developers into Gowanus following the rezoning of the Brooklyn neighborhood.

Brodsky has partnered with Avery Hall Investments on a 350-unit development at 499 President St., the company announced. e mixeduse project, designed by SLCE Architects, will also include 20,000 square feet of ground- oor retail and span roughly 322,000 square feet overall. M&T Bank and the Bank of New York have provided a $155 million construction loan for the project, and work on it should wrap up in the spring of 2025.

Of the 350 apartments, 75% will be market-rate, and 25% will be affordable. e a ordable units will

be split between 10% for residents earning 40% of the area median income ($53,360 for a family of four), 10% for residents earning 60% of the area median income ($80,040 for a family of four) and 5% for residents earning 100% of the area median income ($133,400 for a family of four).

He was particularly enthusiastic about identifying areas along the region’s train lines, which he viewed as ripe for more residential projects.

“Let’s start out with transit-oriented developments,” he said. “If you get on a train someday, look out the window, what do you see? You see a bunch of junkyards, vacant properties, industrial properties, all of these non-housing properties along the rail lines.”

Boosting organization

Starting a conversation around housing and towns making moves to increase production on their own are still small steps compared to the more sweeping changes the housing compact would have sparked. Pro-housing groups are mostly focused on getting more organized going forward so they can more e ectively counter groups opposed to plans like the compact, as

Open New York, a pro-housing group that has so far focused mainly on the city, recently launched chapters on Long Island and in Westchester as well. is will hopefully start to change what politicians in those areas hear from their constituents about new developments, said policy director Andrew Fine.

“Our goal is to organize those people and to make those voices heard and keep on getting individual projects o the ground to show that this is good for communities, is not scary, creates a lot of bene ts and brings in great new neighbors,” he said.

Although Fine was frustrated that the compact didn’t make it into the budget, he stressed that the organization always knew approval would be a di cult process.

“We’re de nitely disappointed, but we expected this to be a long ght,” he said. “If it were easy, it would have changed a long time ago.” ■

Amenities in the development will include coworking spaces, a yoga center and an outdoor swimming pool.

Avery Hall had previously filed plans for what appeared to be a storage facility spanning about 70,000 square feet at 499 President St., but the firm changed its plans after the city passed the long-awaited Gowanus rezoning in late 2021.

The rezoning went through after an extremely contentious fight that lasted for years and has turbocharged changes to the Brooklyn neighborhood. The de Blasio administration estimated the rezoning would bring about 8,000 units of new housing to Gowanus, more than 3,000 of which would be affordable. The final deal included

$200 million in funding for a pair of local public housing developments and a requirement that new construction must not further pollute the Gowanus Canal.

Several major projects are now on their way to the neighborhood from developers including RFR, Domain Cos. and the Vorea Group. ■

“I DO NOT REGARD WELL-PLANNED GROWTH AS A BURDEN. I REGARD IT AS A BENEFIT”

A MULTIFAMILY development near the Fleetwood stop in Mt. Vernon

BRAMSON

THE MIXED-USE PROJECT WILL INCLUDE 350 UNITS AND 20,000 SQUARE FEET OF GROUND-FLOOR RETAIL

Notice of Formation of JOSEPH DEFRAINE GREENWELL LLC. Arts of Org filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 2/4/23. Office Location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent upon whom process may be served and shall mail copy of process against LLC to 603 West 148th St, Apt 10B, New York NY 10031. Purpose: any lawful act.

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Location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent upon whom process may be served and shall mail copy of process against LLC to 228 PARK AVE S, #974932 NY, NY 10003 R/A: US Corp Agents, Inc. 7014 13th Ave, #202, BK, NY 11228 Purpose: any lawful act.

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Notice of Qualification of VANDERBILT HEALTH CLUB

LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 04/04/23. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 03/28/23. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Corporation Service Co. (CSC), 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. DE addr. of LLC: c/o CSC, 251 Little Falls Rd., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of the State of DE, c/o The DE Dept. of State, Div. of Corps., John G. Townsend Bldg., P.O. Box 898, Dover, DE 19903. Purpose: Any lawful activity

PUBLIC & LEGAL NOTICES

Rupish Transport, LLC. Art. Of Org. filed with the SSNY on 2/8/2023. 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, 769 Broadway, #1158, New York, NY 10003.

Purpose: Any lawful purpose.

NOTICE OF FORMATION of DU SEL LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY.

Arts of Org filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 3/17/23. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent upon whom process may be served and shall mail copy of process against LLC to 99 Warren St, NY, NY 10007.

R/A: US Corp Agents, Inc. 7014 13th Ave, #202, BK, NY 11228.

Purpose: any lawful act.

BRONX PRIMARY MANAGEMENT, LLC

filed Arts. of Org. with the Sect'y of State of NY (SSNY) on 2/16/2023.

Office: New York County. SSNY has been designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served and shall mail process to: c/o Julio A. Sanchez, 3421 Broadway, NY, NY 10031. Purpose: any lawful act.

912 PLYMOUTH STREET LLC. Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 11/01/22. Office: New York County. SSNY designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served.

SSNY shall mail copy of process to the LLC, 234 Bradhurst Ave 6, New York, NY 10039. Purpose: Any lawful purpose.

RI Feng LLC filed w/ SSNY 4/24/23. Off. in NY Co. SSNY desig. as agt. of LLC whom process may be served & shall mail process to the LLC, 57 E. Broadway, NY, NY 10002. Any lawful purpose.

POSITIONS AVAILABLE

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Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 04/04/23. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 03/10/22. Princ. office of LLC: 625 W. 57th St., Apt. 713, NY, NY 10019. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co. (CSC), 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. DE addr. of LLC: c/o CSC, 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with DE Secy. of State, 401 Federal St., #4, Dover, DE 19901.

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Investment Associate needed by Tikehau Star Infra Partners, LLC

(formerly Star America Infrastructure Partners, LLC) in New York, NY. Lead aspects of and assist in other aspects of the pursuit and acquisition of investment opportunities as a junior member of the deal team. Rate of pay: $140,400 to $190,000 per year.

To apply, send resume to Claudia Gibson at cgibson@tikehaucapital.com. Please refer to Job code MENQ-L

Java Developer positions (Future US, Inc.; NY, NY). Develop product features w/ minimal supervision. Analyze req’ts & dev’t SW solutions. Position is fully remote & may be performed from anywhere in the U.S. Salary range is $86,000/year - $100,000/year, depending upon qualifications. Send resume to jess.gates@futurenet.com, & indicate you are applying for the Java Developer (LN) opening.

REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL

Invitation to Prequalify and to Bid

Rehabilitation and Flood Mitigation of the New York Aquarium, Brooklyn, NY : Turner Construction Company, an EEO Employer, is currently soliciting bids for the Rehabilitation and Flood Mitigation of the New York Aquarium from subcontractors and vendors for the following bid packages:

BP #041B - Plumbing

Only bids responsive to the entire scope of work will be considered and, to be successful, bidders must be prequalified by Turner. Certified M/WBE and Small Business (13 CFR part 121) companies are encouraged to submit.

In order to receive the bid packages, potential bidders either (1) must initiate the prequalification process by submitting a Subcontractor/Vendor Prequalification Statement to Turner, or (2) must be prequalified based on a prior submission to Turner (Note: Prior prequalification submissions that remain current will be considered as previously submitted or may be updated at this time.) All bidders must be prequalified by the bid deadline: July 6th, 2023 and initial submission of a prequalification statement not later than July 6th 2023 is strongly encouraged All bidders must have an acceptable EMR, and will be subject to government regulations such as 44 CFR and Federal Executive Order 11246. Successful bidders will be required to use LCP Tracker compliance verification software. Note that while this is a New York City prevailing wage project, union affiliation is not required for BP #041B

A Webcast about the above Bid Package/s will be held on June 8th, 2023 Attendance is optional for all; the Webcast is designed to assist potential M/WBE subcontractors/vendors.

Link: Please join this meeting from your computer, tablet or smartphone. https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetupjoin/19%3ameeting_NTVjNmZlMTctODdjNy00YWRmLWJmMmYtZjI4NzNjMzcwNWVi%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%2220e277 00-b670-4553-a27c-d8e2583b3289%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22732a90ce-24b7-42eb-bf78-d638e2a629ac%22%7d

To obtain further information about contracting opportunities and/or the prequalification package and bid solicitation package/s, please contact Lyndsey Spangel lspangel@tcco.com 646-842-1659.

The date for the virtual public opening at the Turner Construction Company office located at 66 Hudson Yards, New York, New York is July 7th, 2023 10 AM

Link: Please join this opening meeting from your computer, tablet or smartphone. https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetupjoin/19%3ameeting_NThmN2MzNDctNGEzNC00MTA5LWE2NjYtZTI0ZWVjZGVmM2Nj%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22 %3a%2220e27700-b670-4553-a27c-d8e2583b3289%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22732a90ce-24b7-42eb-bf78d638e2a629ac%22%7d

PUBLIC & LEGAL NOTICES

Notice of Formation of SILVER HILL MANAGEMENT GROUP, LLC

Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 03/14/23. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 208 Valley Rd., New Canaan, CT 06840. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC at the addr. of its princ. office. Purpose: Any lawful activity

Notice of Formation of REED PLACE LLC. Arts of Org filed with Secy . of State of NY (SSNY) on 2/27/23. Office location: BX County. SSNY designated as agent upon whom process may be served and shall mail copy of process against LLC to 1418 Reed PL. Bronx, NY 10465.

Purpose: any lawful act

NOTICE OF FORMATION OF ZE3NO LLC Arts of Org filed with Secty of State of N.Y. (SSNY) on 1/6/23. Office location: NY County. SSNY desginated as agent upon whom process may be served and shall mail copy of process against LLC c/o Martin S. Rapaport, P.C., 18 East 48th St., 6th FL. New York, N.Y. 10017. Purpose: any lawful act.

Notice of formation of Immescherable Consulting LLC. Arts of Org filed with Secy. Of State of NY (SSNY) on 1/24/23.

Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent upon whom process may be served and shall mail copy of process against LLC to 149 E 23rd St, #186, NY, NY 10159. P/B/A: 280 Park Ave S, #9M, NY, NY 10010.

Purpose: any lawful act.

TRASH

Containerization has been an elephant in the room as Mayor Eric Adams has tried to tame the city’s rat population, which researchers say is driven mainly by the availability of garbage. When the mayor appointed his new “rat czar” last month, he declined to commit to a citywide container program, although he said better bins were “very much part” of his rodent-fighting strategy.

In the report the Adams administration still does not commit to a citywide program. Besides changing New Yorkers’ behavior and transforming the city’s streetscape, the program would require an entirely new fleet of automated,

ing containerized trash bins within a West Harlem community district, deploying wheeled bins to serve 10 residential blocks and 14 schools. A standard sanitation truck retrofitted with a new mechanized lift will unload the waste.

A Sanitation Department representative would not estimate how much a citywide program would cost, although Commissioner Jessica Tisch told The New York Times it would be “not inexpensive.” Adams’ latest budget sets aside $5.7 million over two years for the West Harlem pilot program, the representative said, providing a clue as to how much it would cost to expand containerization to all 59 of the city’s community districts.

side-loading trucks to lift refuse from the new bins. It would take the city at least three years and “significant capital investments” to design and manufacture the trucks, which are not widely available in the U.S., according to the study.

But the city will take a step forward in the coming months by test-

The study included a block-byblock look at how trash containerization would work across the five boroughs, and it considered the examples of Barcelona, Chicago and Singapore, all cities that manage to avoid letting garbage languish on sidewalks.The 11% of New York City streets deemed unsuitable for containerized trash are in high-density neighborhoods, such as the Financial District, Downtown Brooklyn and Midtown West, which generate too much trash and are too narrow to accommodate shared bins, according to the report. But a full 80% of streets

could host containers without any changes to their pickup frequency, while the remaining 9% could accommodate bins if the city doubled its collections.

Not for commercial corridors

Most commercial corridors would be unable to containerize their waste, given the huge volumes of garbage they produce—especially in Lower Manhattan and Midtown, the study found.

Containers have already been tested out in dozens of locations across the city—including Times Square, Downtown Brooklyn and other business improvement districts—through a Sanitation Department program called Clean Curbs. But the new report conceded that those bins were not scalable citywide, since they require workers to hand-load trash bags.

“There is a process from making sure we have the right trucks to pick

up the containers, to make sure that we look at the design of the containers,” Adams said in a news conference last month. “There is a process to getting this city to become the cleanest city in America, which we’re going to do.”

The city is in various stages of reforming other parts of its garbage collection process. By next year it hopes to begin implementing a long-delayed program focusing on waste generated by businesses, which will divide the city into 20 “commercial waste zones” in hopes of taming an unruly system dominated by private hauling companies.

Since April 1, the city has required residential buildings to put out their trash later in the day to reduce the amount of time that garbage bags sit on the street—and become targets for hungry rats. Sanitation Department representative Joshua Goodman said that while there was no immediate data showing that effort’s success, “it’s clear that New Yorkers are experiencing clean sidewalks for far, far longer parts of the day.” ■

MICHAEL APPLETON/MAYORAL PHOTOGRAPHY OFFICE

THIS STREET-LEVEL garbage container in Times Square has been part of a pilot program since April 2022. Such containers could expand to nearly all city streets, a Sanitation Department report says.

“NEW YORKERS ARE EXPERIENCING CLEAN SIDEWALKS FOR FAR, FAR LONGER PARTS OF THE DAY.”

THIS MIDTOWN-BASED TECH VETERAN WANTS TO GIVE CHATGPT A RUN FOR ITS MONEY

His rm, LivePerson, offers an AI chatbot to automate customer service, marketing and sales

BY CARA EISENPRESS

In December OpenAI made a pitch to investors that ChatGPT would generate $200 million in 2023, its rst full year on the market, according to a report from Reuters.

Yet there’s an arti cial intelligence company in the city that’s already bringing in more than double that amount, even as it faces headwinds from big-name competitors such as Microsoft and Google.

stantially—40% in two years—since it entered the AI market. LivePerson rst hit pro tability in 2003, according to a 2011 Crain’s article.

LivePerson recently launched a new product called Bella AI that lets customers create their own “assistant bots,” which can be programmed to automate customer service and business processes or help with personal needs. Notably, the product is only its second with “AI” in the title.

tion of innovation and customer service brick by brick to put us in the middle of this great revolution.”

Drop in share value

ket and enterprise customers spent, on average, $680,000 on LivePerson’s products last year.

Times Square-based LivePerson, which has made and sold automated customer-service products since 1997, brought in $514.8 million in 2022, according to its annual ling. e company’s revenue has grown sub-

e company’s hallmark is an automated tool that works across messaging platforms and allows companies to communicate directly with their customers. Some products seek to aid real people providing customer service, while others give full rein to the bots. LivePerson used more than two decades of such conversations to train its newer machine learning tools—some built inhouse and others brought in through acquisitions.

“We have always had the vision that a machine could be as empathetic as a human,”

Rob LoCascio, founder and CEO of LivePerson, said at the launch. “We built a founda-

But LivePerson’s early entrance into a buzzy space has not given it a clear advantage in the markets. e company’s stock price peaked around $71.50 in early 2021 and then cratered. After the new product announcement, it was trading around $4. Recent lings with the Securities and Exchange Commission showed a loss of $225.7 million in 2022.

Some of the drop in share value can be attributed to a handful of strategy decisions. LivePerson made a foray into digital health care that hasn’t panned out yet, and the company made a costly decision to pay its 2022 bonuses in cash instead of stock. e new product announcement failed to bolster the stock, a puzzling sign given the soaring demand for AI services from investors and business leaders.

LivePerson has 18,000 business customers, including HSBC, Virgin Media and Burberry, according to its 2022 annual report. Midmar-

Going forward, the company said that it would emphasize safety in its AI products so that real people would be able to keep an eye on generative AI tools they use.

“It’s not enough for us to tell you we’re improving the models and making generative AI safer,” said Joe Bradley, LivePerson’s chief data scientist. “As an enterprise, you are responsible for your customers, to your regulators and to your stakeholders. We’ll give you the tools to take action and manage the safety of the AI yourself.”

Bradley added that the product gives companies the ability to keep data safe and make sure that automated responses are accurate instead of just sounding human.

LivePerson’s new product comes as Microsoft is planning to test a private version of ChatGPT that runs on dedicated cloud servers for customers worried about data security, according to an article on e Information. It could cost 10 times as much as customers pay to use the public version of ChatGPT. ■

LOCASCIO says LivePerson is “in the middle of this great revolution.”

“WE HAVE ALWAYS HAD THE VISION THAT A MACHINE COULD BE AS EMPATHETIC AS A HUMAN”