Crain's New York Business, June 12, 2023

Getting power brokers behind Penn Station overhaul

ASTM has worked to gain support from several key gures, earning compliments and complaints of manufactured hype

BY NICK GARBER AND EDDIE SMALL

Puzzling out how to renovate Penn Station has proven too tall an order for some of New York’s savviest power players in recent years. But the Italian developer ASTM has achieved surprising momentum for its own plan through an aggressive lobbying push, eye-catching designs and the sur-

prise hire of a respected architect—causing both delight and bewilderment among longtime stakeholders in the maligned transit hub. e company developed the plan over about three years, making it public in recent months. e plan calls for demolishing the 5,600-seat theater attached to the Eighth Avenue side of Madison Square Garden and building a glassy base around the arena, add-

ing two new train halls, and letting more light enter the below-ground station.

e plan has gained praise for o ering a way around issues that have derailed past attempts to improve the station—and skepticism for its lack of speci cs. Many are waiting impatiently for the company’s public rollout, slated for late June, which will include a fuller version of its plan complete with an all-

important detail it has yet to disclose: how much it will cost.

How did a rm known mostly for building toll roads in Western Europe and Brazil gain so much momentum? A combination of big ideas, political heavyweights as leaders to help sell them, and a willingness to spend

City’s LGBTQ venues showcase community roots amid attacks

On any given night, the city’s gay, lesbian and queer bars host an abundance of fun events: game shows, piano sessions, watch parties, drag nights, the list goes on.

BY OLIVIA BENSIMON

But with a rise in violence and a record-breaking number of laws passed around the country attacking the personhood of members of the LGBTQ commu-

nity, the venues, long essential purveyors of safety and solidarity, are reminded how essential it is that they keep striving to provide more than just a fun night out.

Activism has always been a tenet of the city’s LGBTQ establishments. More than ve decades ago,

Operating costs continue to climb at the largest hospitals in the New York area

GOTHAM GIG

The head of Friends of the High Line wants the park to be more accesible

As queer rights come under re nationwide, new and old local bars prioritize outreach, togetherness

AVEQ MOI MEMBERS Soleil (from left), Hana and Layla make bracelets during a weekly event at Vers in Hell’s Kitchen.

See LGBTQ on page 19

See OVERHAUL on page 22

Penn Station and Madison Square Garden are no longer compatible, say railroad chiefs

BY CAROLINE SPIVACK

The railroads that operate out of Penn Station say Madison Square Garden is no longer compatible with the transit hub, according to a blistering new report submitted to the city June 2.

e joint declaration from Amtrak, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and New Jersey Transit came ahead of a June 7 City Planning Commission hearing on the arena’s contested application to renew its operating permit. Transit o cials seek to persuade James Dolan, MSG’s owner, that several major changes must be carried out

aries impose severe constraints on the station that impede the safe and e cient movement of passengers and restrict e orts to implement improvements,” the report added.

Penn Station is owned by Amtrak with the MTA’s Long Island Rail Road and NJ Transit operating service under lease agreements.

To become a better t, the agencies say MSG’s footprint and truck loading area must be altered to “remove limitations on the ability of the railroads to address urgent safety issues and improve the substandard experience of the station’s customers.”

A representative for MSG Entertainment sought to downplay the railroads’ concerns.

quate circulation, crowding, confusing navigation, a lack of accessibility features and very little “street presence,” among other challenges.

‘Property swaps’

e report calls for the stadium to agree to “property swaps” for land along Eighth Avenue and the former mid-block taxiway. Doing so would make way for new entrances and enable the construction of a new loading area for trucks servicing the garden’s events. e term “property swaps” implies that the railroads are not o ering to pay MSG for the parcels.

to make the stadium a better partner for Penn Station if it is to remain.

“MSG’s general site plan and loading process may have been compatible with that of Penn Station and the surrounding community in the 1960s,” the so-called compatibility report states.

“Today, however, MSG’s existing con guration and property bound-

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■ The profile of Brian McGrath in the June 5 Notable LGBTQIA+ Leaders feature should have said he is the first openly gay man to co-chair Hinshaw & Culbertson’s national consumer financial services practice.

“We are disappointed to see this compatibility report from the MTA and the other rail agencies, considering how we have been cooperating throughout this process,” a MSG Entertainment spokesperson said in a statement. “ is is the opinion of a few and not all stakeholders involved.”

While the rail agencies concede not every challenge at Penn Station is a result of the stadium’s location atop it, the report describes MSG as “a key global constraint.” Currently, Penn Station su ers from inade-

e upgrades would require a major structural overhaul of MSG: columns and supports at multiple locations would need to be removed, replaced or modi ed. If the railroads get their way, the arena would contribute to the cost of improvements “proportionate to their bene t to MSG,” according to the report.

e railroads say they have begun talks with the garden regarding the proposed improvements, but an agreement has yet to be reached. ey are far from alone in their opposition.

Community Board 5 recommended denying the arena a permit in April, unless it develops a plan to move within three years and make way for an expanded Penn Station. Manhattan Borough Presi-

dent Mark Levine is open to the garden remaining where it is, so long as it shrinks its current footprint to enable an expanded Penn Station.

Levine told Crain’s he is “incredibly compelled” by a recently proposed plan that would require MSG to sell its attached theater and a service road to ASTM, the Italian developer behind the program. Under the plan, ASTM would raze the existing structures and build a new light- lled glass train hall with an Eighth Avenue entrance to Penn Station. Crain’s reported in May that a deal on the theater was close at hand, despite MTA executives repeatedly stating they don’t believe the project would be the best use of

public funds.

Both the community board and Levine’s positions are only advisory steps in the months-long land use review process MSG’s permit application must undergo. Still, they could prove in uential in the nal decisions made by the City Planning Commission and the City Council.

e next step in the approvals process was to start unfolding June 7, with the City Planning Commission hearing testimony on MSG’s proposal to operate the arena inde nitely once its current permit expires on July 24. e commission will vote on the matter later this summer before it heads to the City Council for one last review. ■

Carlyle snaps up stake in 517-unit development project in Gowanus for $100M

BY C. J. HUGHES

In dramatic fashion, Carlyle Group has ramped up its Brooklyn buying spree.

e global asset-management rm has purchased a majority stake in a two-towered, 517-unit development project on the banks of the Gowanus Canal for $100 million, according to deeds that appeared in the City Register on May 31.

Luxury developer Property Markets Group was the seller in the transaction, which involves a large parcel between Union and Degraw streets that goes by the address 267 Bond St. PMG paid $9 million for the site, which is actually made up of two properties separated by Sackett Street, in 2021. at’s the same year city o cials voted to rezone the once heavily industrial area to allow for more residential projects.

e two rental towers are under construction but do not yet have

A RENDERING of 267 Bond St.

their certi cates of occupancy, according to Building Department records.

One of the towers, called Society Brooklyn, has 344 studios to two-bedrooms, according to PMG.

e other, Sackett Place, has 173

one- to three-bedrooms. Both towers have outdoor rooftop pools. Of the 517 apartments, 25% are to be o ered at below-market rents to households making certain incomes.

To nance the joint venture, Car-

lyle borrowed $169 million from the Athene Annuity insurance company, records show.

Growing portfolio

With the purchase, Carlyle, a global asset-management rm based in Washington, D.C., adds to a quickly growing residential portfolio in Kings County. Since 2021, the rm, which had $373 billion under management at the end of 2022, has snapped up more than 100 apartment buildings, most of them on the smaller side, in neighborhoods such as Carroll Gardens, Park Slope and Bushwick.

PMG, which has been active in the area, previously sold 420 Carroll St. to the Domain Cos. and Vorea Group for $47.5 million in 2018. e Domain team is working on a two-towered project with a total of 360 apartments there.

Carlyle and PMG con rmed the transaction but otherwise had no comment. ■

THE AGENCIES’ REPORT CITES “SEVERE CONSTRAINTS ON THE STATION”

MADISON SQUARE GARDEN AND PENN STATION

How remote work has reshaped New York’s ‘super commutes’

highest-income

BY CAROLINE SPIVACK

Perhaps no one has benefited more from the proliferation of remote and hybrid work than so-called super commuters, those who spend 90 minutes or more traveling to work each way.

After years on the rise, this group of the country’s commuters has dropped to its lowest level in a decade, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data by Apartment List, a rental platform.

Lengthy commutes have been historically more common among high earners—think the executive who lives in the suburbs or out of state—but a greater flexibility to work from home has transformed that way of life. Now, in what represents a complete reversal to the prepandemic pattern, super commuting is most prevalent among the region’s lowestincome brackets who appear to have less

ability, or none at all, to work remotely.

In 2019, 4.4% of U.S. workers earning $100,000 per year or more were super commuters—more than double the rate (2.1%) among those earning less than $25,000 annually. But from 2019 to 2021, the rate of super commuting among those earning $100,000 plus was cleaved in half while the rate of super commuting for those earning under $25,000 declined modestly to 1.7%.

are spending less time on lengthy commutes

$25,000, from 5.3% in 2019 to 4.3% in 2021. It was a similarly slight decrease for those earning between $25,000 and $50,000 from 5.7% in 2019 to 4% in 2021.

SUPER COMMUTING IS NOW MOST PReVALenT AMONG THE REGION’S LOWeSTInCOMe BRACKETS

In the New York City region, the change is even more dramatic. About 9% of those earning $100,000 or more super commuted in 2019 compared to just 3.8% in 2021.

That figure shifted just one percentage point for those in the city earning less than

In other words, workers at the high end of the income spectrum are on the receiving end of the biggest drops in super commuting in New York and beyond. And whatever they’re doing with their recovered time, that means less of it is spent on trains and on the road.

Super commuting, though a relatively small slice of the labor market, had been on the rise for the last decade. In 2010, some 3.2 million Americans super commuted, and by 2019 that figure jumped to 4.6 million or 3%

of the U.S. workforce. Pandemic-induced work trends slashed that number to 3.1 million or 2% of the labor pool as of 2021—the most recent census data available.

Travel times

With so many more workers reporting from home, shifts in travel patterns have not been limited to super commuting. But the starkest change has been for those with long travel times. For instance, from 2019 to 2021 the number of U.S. workers traveling 30 minutes or less each way decreased by 8%, while the number of super commuters traveling 90 minutes or more dropped by 35%.

The census data, it’s worth noting, doesn’t give a full picture of hybrid commuters. Since it doesn’t ask workers who say they typically work from home about time spent traveling, Apartment List acknowledges that it’s very likely a sizable amount of “part-time super commuters” are a missing piece of the picture. ■

Tech investor tries again to sell SoHo penthouse

Jim Payne has lowered the listing price by 15% from what he was asking in the fall $11M

BY C. J. HUGHES

Atech entrepreneur is trying again to unplug from his SoHo triplex.

Jim Payne, who invests in start-ups and sold one of his own companies for $350 million, has relisted his penthouse condo at 52 Wooster St.

The asking price for the three-bedroom unit, which hit the market on June 1, is $11 million, a 15% reduction from its $13 million list price in the fall. Payne first brought the home to market in 2021 at $14 million.

In 2018, Payne bought the apartment for $14 million, meaning he

LISTING PRICE for the penthouse at 52 Wooster St.

suite with a balcony and a 1,200-square-foot rooftop terrace, is in a boutique building at Broome Street developed in 2014 by Continental Ventures.

The required monthly fee, which covers common charges and taxes at the four-unit building, is $13,337.

AN AD DESCRIBES THE APARTMENT AS BEING “NEW CONSTRUCTION”

would incur a significant loss if it traded at its current $11 million price. But the sales market appears to have deteriorated in recent months even at the highest levels, suggesting the discount is par for the course.

To wit: In May buyers signed 20 contracts for condos priced between $10 million and $20 million, versus 30 contracts in May 2022, according to new research from Douglas Elliman.

Payne’s penthouse, which has three-and-a-half baths, a primary

Payne, who appears to be based in Los Angeles, may not have spent many nights in the home. Although it is technically a resale, the apartment is described in its ad by listing agent Kristina Paces of Serhant as being “new construction” and “never-before livedin.” Paces declined to comment or make Payne available.

The 4,300-square-foot apartment was also listed last year as a rental for $50,000 per month before being taken off the market in the fall, although it’s unclear if the reason for the move was because someone leased it.

In 2010, Payne, a former manager at Google, founded MoPub, an ad-server platform that attracted $18.5 million in venture investment before being snapped up by Twitter three years later. In 2020, MoPub generated $188 million in revenue for Twitter, the company said. But

Twitter sold it earlier this year to software provider AppLovin for about $1 billion in cash as part of a restructuring of its business model. Since his sale to Twitter, Payne has helped seed startups like BrightHire, Timber and Facet Data, some of which have later been acquired, including by AppLovin, according to Payne’s LinkedIn profile. ■

Iconic Times Square Irish pub

Rosie O’Grady’s to shut down

BY EDDIE

Famed Times Square Irish pub Rosie O’Grady’s will permanently close as of July, according to a notice filed with the state.

The restaurant is located at 800 Seventh Ave. and employs 91 people, all of whom will be let go, according to the notice. Its lease

the property. “We will now look for another tenant to fill this important space on Seventh Avenue.”

Back rent

Michael Carty, president of the restaurant, acknowledged that it owed back rent but placed the blame for this entirely on the pandemic, which upended the city’s restaurant and hospitality businesses.

The eatery had no payment issues during the many years it was in Times Square before Covid hit, he said.

business,” he said. It closed once more and reopened again in June 2021 but continued to struggle during what Carty described as a “disastrous” summer.

Rosie O’Grady’s had reached an agreement with SL Green to pay a percentage of its rent for the next few years and pay off the back rent over time, but SL Green challenged this deal in arbitration court and won, according to Carty. The restaurant could not afford to pay its rent in full, so it opted to shut down instead, he said.

will end June 12, but the business will not shut down until around July 1, it says.

“After working with Rosie O’Grady’s for several years to address millions in unpaid rent, they decided to abandon the lease,” said Jeremy Soffin, a spokesman for SL Green, which has a ground lease at

“We never fell behind on anything until we were closed down during the pandemic,” he said.

The restaurant’s rent was about $3.3 million per year, according to Carty. It temporarily closed when Covid initially came to the city in March 2020 and tried to reopen that November but got “absolutely no

“We had no choice but to close. It’s not that we walked away,” he said. “We could appeal it and all that, and I just said no. I just can’t go through all that.”

SL Green disputed Carty’s characterization of the rent deal.

Rosie O’Grady’s occupies 6,500 square feet in the building, according to CoStar. The private event space Manhattan Manor is located above the restaurant. The location was established in 1973 and serves

several steak and seafood dishes, according to the restaurant’s website.

Pandemic fallout

Times Square establishments have had an extremely difficult time navigating the pandemic, and many are still dealing with financial problems. The Margaritaville Resort at 560 Seventh Ave. is facing a foreclosure auction, and neighborhood chains including Planet

Hollywood and the Hard Rock Café both faced lawsuits from their landlords over unpaid rent early on in the pandemic, although the suits were ultimately discontinued.

SL Green, one of the city’s major office landlords, has been struggling since the onset of the pandemic as well, given the persistence of remote work. The firm saw its largest quarterly drop in occupancy rates since Covid first hit New York during the first quarter of the year. ■

THE PROPERTY includes a 1,200square-foot rooftop ter race.

REAL ESTATE

SMALL

“WE HAD NO CHOICE BUT TO CLOSE. IT’S NOT THAT WE WALKED AWAY.”

Downtown Brooklyn hotel project heads into bankruptcy

BY EDDIE SMALL

ADowntown Brooklyn hotel project appears on its way to a bankruptcy sale despite being 95% complete, according to court filings.

An LLC linked to developer Abraham Leifer’s Brooklyn-based Aview Equities has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on the hotel project at 291 Livingston St. Claims against the firm include $34 million from lender Acres Capital and more than $3 million worth of mechanic’s liens, although all of the liens  are disputed, according to the filing.

The LLC, Hello Livingston Extended, formed in 2018 to buy 291 Livingston St. and acquired the property for $14.8 million, court records show. The firm has been constructing a 21-story hotel and luxury residential building spanning roughly 46,000 square feet on the site but ran out of funds before finishing its work, according to an affidavit about the bankruptcy. The project requires approximately $6 million in additional capital before it can be finished, the affidavit says.

Acres provided the developer with three loans for the project, which have fallen into default.

The company estimates the property, its sole asset, is worth $29.5 million and plans to sell it as part of the bankruptcy process to pay off its creditors, according to court filings. Declaring bankruptcy “was necessary to preserve the value of the estate and maximize a return to its creditors,” the filing says.

Lawsuits

Greg Corbin, a bankruptcy specialist at Rosewood Realty, will handle the deal. He had no comment on the property.

There have been eight lawsuits filed against the project as well, according to the filing. These are mainly about construction injuries.

PincusCo first reported news of the bankruptcy filing.

Representatives for Aview Equi-

Outdoor performances get a permanent slot on city’s culture calendar

BY NICK GARBER

ties and Acres did not respond to requests for comment by press time.

The city’s hotel industry struggled greatly during the pandemic, with many properties selling at huge losses compared to what they went for pre-Covid. However, the industry has shown some signs of recovery lately. The hotel occupancy rate hit 79.4% in March, not too far off from its 84.4% occupancy rate in February 2019, according to the latest snapshot report from the city’s Economic Development Corp. ■

New York City’s pandemicera Open Culture program will be made permanent under a City Council bill that passed on May 25.

The initiative, first intended to be temporary, has allowed arts and culture groups to perform in public outdoor spaces, including Open Streets, without paying any fee to participate.

“It was a lifeline during the pandemic,” said Manhattan Council Member Carlina Rivera, who sponsored the bill. “It allowed neigh-

bors, families and friends to come together in a safe way, and it made our communities more enjoyable and lively with all the things that were going on.”

The permanent program will take effect on Aug. 1, and the mayor’s office will need to produce annual reports on its reach.

Performers told Crain’s in 2021 that the program had been a welcome help during the difficult days of the pandemic, even allowing one dance company to hold rehearsals cheaply on a SoHo block instead of paying for studio space. ■

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Ex-Signature Bank director says namesake financial reform

Without the

Barney Frank, who joined Signature Bank’s board after a distinguished career in Congress, said the landmark financial reform law that he helped write after the 2008 financial crisis played a pivotal role in the bank’s collapse.

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 contains a provision that prevents regulators from providing relief to an ailing financial institution because it requires that at least two struggling banks must be involved. That language became relevant when Silicon Valley Bank failed in March after customers yanked out billions in uninsured deposits and the panic immediately spread to Signature Bank. When regulators seized Midtown-based Signature on March 12, they said the runs posed an unacceptable risk to the financial system and took the unprecedented step of guaranteeing all deposits at both institutions.

Frank said at a New York state

ON POLITICS

law was key in

lender’s collapse

Senate hearing on May 30 that he thought regulators might have closed Signature in order to gain the authority to take action they otherwise couldn’t have taken regarding uninsured deposits.

Failure

“Under the law—and maybe we should go back and look at this, I helped design it—they could not set up this [deposit guarantee] facility unless there was more than one bank,” Frank told the panel. “Whether that was a motivation or not, the failure of Signature was necessary to give the Fed the predicate” for guaranteeing deposits.

Signature, he insisted, was a healthy bank with a high rating under the confidential grading scale used by regulators before it ran out of cash almost instantaneously.

Frank insisted that Signature Bank could have survived if the Federal Reserve had acted quickly on the desperate bank’s requests for cash in its final hours. But he said Fed officials determined that

“several weeks” would be needed to evaluate collateral offered by the bank. Frank said he was “astounded” to hear the Fed needed so much time, considering the central bank “in a half-hour” approved hundreds of billions worth of relief for too-big-to-fail banks during the dark days of 2008.

“If they had been told, ‘We gotta get this done, high priority,’ ’’ I think there’s a chance it could have been

saved,” said Frank, referring to Signature.

Signature was the third-largest bank failure in history and its remains were sold to Flagstar Bank.

Unsatisfactory answers

Frank’s quarterbacking on May 30 was contrasted by testimony from the superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services, Adrienne Harris. She told

senators that the state regulator decided to seize Signature after getting unsatisfactory answers from management on how much money the bank needed and how it would be paid for.

“The bank’s liquidity plan was constantly changing,” Harris said. “Between noon and 3:09 p.m. that day [March 12], Signature provided four different liquidity plans. The listing of available liquidity changed from plan to plan with no explanation for the change. And in a phone call on Sunday, March 12 at 1 p.m. between the bank’s CEO and DFS, the CEO focused the conversation on what regulators should be doing to try and solve the bank’s liquidity crisis.”

She added that state regulators had pointed out several internal issues at Signature starting in 2018 that hadn’t been addressed fully when it failed. The five-year time lag puzzled some lawmakers. “How long would it take for someone to be called on that?” asked Sen. Cordell Cleare, a Democrat from Harlem.

“This is a question that, frankly, all regulators are grappling with,” Harris said. ■

Adams’ inflexibility on remote work hurt city hiring

Mayor Eric Adams, it seems, has finally given ground on his long-standing opposition to remote work.

More than a year after railing against a pajama class that allegedly wants to stay home all day, Adams reached an agreement with DC 37, the city’s municipal union, to permit remote work two days a week. As part of the agreement, workers who can perform their jobs remotely and have received a satisfactory review will be eligible to work from home.

The program will only kick off with two agencies—the Department of Buildings and Department of Social Services—before eventually expanding to more than 30 agencies, according to City Hall. On June 1, Adams told reporters he is still a “seven-day-a-week guy, and [that] I believe is not for everyone” but that he’s “not so rigid that I’m not willing to sit down and figure out how do we reach the goals that we want.”

ed, if much-needed; New York City government has a crisis of job vacancies that has gotten much worse since he took office. There are more than 20,000 unfilled positions, many of them in crucial agencies like the Department of Housing Preservation & Development and the Department of Buildings. At the Department of Small Business Services, more than a quarter of posts are vacant.

Attraction

ROSS BARKAN

Many of these vacancies are for the sort of workers that ensure municipal government remains functional. The far slower pace of housing construction, particularly of affordable stock, can at least be partially blamed on the sheer lack of experienced human beings who can process the projects. The workers who do remain are stretched to their limits, and the threat of burnout remains high.

have been able to keep up with inflation, offering higher starting salaries. Midtown and downtown employers have embraced workfrom-home positions to a much greater degree. Skilled workers know they can ask for such an accommodation in the private sector and usually receive it.

And it’s not just the private sector that can gobble up dissatisfied city workers—Kathy Hochul’s state government has been much more accommodating to hybrid work, allowing state employees based in New York City to work remotely several days a week. The federal government, meanwhile, has permitted remote work for decades, and federal employees working from Manhattan have usually been able to do their jobs a day or two a week from their homes.

offices, feeding a commercial vacancy crisis that hasn’t abated.

Adams believed, wrongly, that he could will these employers back by forcing his municipal workforce to trudge into their jobs five days a week. His predecessor, Bill de Blasio, believed the same thing, and a more nimble mayor would have been able to change course much sooner.

Quick takes

Adams’ change of heart is belat-

Since the rise of hybrid work in the pandemic era, the private sector has grown much more attractive for city workers. Private employers

The question is whether Adams’ announcement is too little, too late. His philosophical opposition to hybrid work was always foolhardy. Corporate employers learned at the start of the pandemic that their bottom lines wouldn’t suffer if their workers stayed at home. Some even realized they could save cash and stop renting expensive Manhattan

Over time, a remote work option should make city employment more palatable. But Adams will also have to raise starting salaries and end his administration’s de facto policy of offering the lowest possible salary, on the city’s pay scale, to new hires. He will have to stop being content with the enormous number of vacancies and care, much more, about governing.

● Rikers Island, the notorious jail complex, may not close in 2027 as planned—and it will likely require federal receivership before then, if reform is to happen.

● The state legislative session is almost done, and it’s shaping up to be among the most disappointing in recent years: no serious action on a housing crisis that will persist. ■ Ross Barkan is a journalist and author in New York City.

The mayor will have to stop being content with the enormous number of vacancies and care more about governing

Dodd-Frank law, the failed bank might have survived, Barney Frank said

BLOOMBERG

FRANK

AARON ELSTEIN

NYCMAYORSOFFICE

ADAMS

Pipe explosion at Harlem asylum center calls new migrant sites into question

BY ANA ALTCHEK

About 100 asylum seekers were forced out of an emergency respite center at the former Lincoln Correctional Facility after pipes exploded in the space June 3.

e site, which opened o cially June 1, is functioning as temporary housing for asylum seekers. e plumbing incident followed ongoing concerns about the current state of the building.

“We don’t know what the conditions are or what it would take,” said omas Moore, vice president of policy and programs at New York Immigration Coalition, located in Midtown. “We need to look at permanent housing for long unhoused New Yorkers.”

building rst opened as a housing space for Jewish immigrant women in 1914, before being used as a rest-and-relaxation center for U.S. soldiers during World War II. After being sold by the state in 1974, the space was used as a minimum-security jail and work-release center.

e site has been vacant since 2019 and does not contain any individual cells.

Josh Goldfein, a sta attorney at the Homeless Rights Project for the Legal Aid Society, located in the Financial District, says that migrants have also expressed concerns about the Harlem site being able to accommodate the needs of people of certain religious or sexual identities. e space doesn’t contain cells, individual rooms or separation from public spaces, he said, which prevents migrants from having access to privacy to pray or change clothing.

grants has not been resolved and the sta has failed to provide clean drinking water while they wait for the problem to be xed. e source also reports that cleaning and laundry services have not been provided.

Varying conditions

ese conditions aren’t necessarily present in all emergency migrant centers. e Holiday Inn, located at 99 Washington Street in the Financial District of New York, also houses migrants and has a housekeeping service that cleans three days per week and checks on the conditions. Goldfein said he is most concerned about sites that have been sitting dormant. He said one solution is for the federal government to speed up work authorization.

Gov. Kathy Hochul’s o ce began planning in March to convert the empty jail to a ordable housing as part of her plan to create 800,000 new homes in New York over the next decade. e switch to use the site as a temporary shelter came in response to the in ux of 70,000 asylum seekers arriving in New York City since last spring.

Raising questions

According to City Hall, the pipe explosion occurred in the morning and was resolved later that evening. Still, the incident raises questions from advocates about the conditions of the site and whether it will continue to function properly. e

e Harlem facility is one of 157 emergency sites to open to migrants, including nine large-scale humanitarian relief centers—and it isn’t the only site to be agged for questionable living conditions. As the city grasps for space to hold migrants, the recently closed Roosevelt Hotel also opened its doors to migrants in the last few weeks. e hotel has close to 1,000 rooms and is currently lled about three quarters with migrants, according to a volunteer at the site.

Goldfein said that migrants staying at the Roosevelt Hotel have reported brown water in their sink faucets, which has been resolved by running the water.

e volunteer, who asked to remain anonymous to keep her role, said the water issue for some mi-

COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE

Single men arriving in New York City have been able to nd housing within a month or two, according to Moore of the Immigrant Coalition. Families and women with children have faced di culty because the city hasn’t been able to nd larger living spaces.  Goldfein said there is a need for housing options outside of New York City.

Hochul’s o ce has budgeted $1 billion for migrant housing in the current scal year. e budget includes roughly $700 million to cover shelter costs, more than $160 million for National Guard support, $130 million for health care, $25 million for voluntary relocation and $10 million in legal assistance for asylum seekers.

During a press conference in Syracuse on June 2, Hochul said that her administration will continue to evaluate additional options in New York City. While her o ce is looking into housing options at SUNY

SL Green tries to soothe irked investors before annual meeting

BY AARON ELSTEIN

Ahead of an SL Green Realty investor vote to approve last year’s $16 million pay package to Chief Executive Marc Holliday, board members at the city’s largest o ce landlord were reminding shareholders that they feel their pain.

In light of the share price losing 70% since 2020 and investors rejecting Holliday’s compensation plan twice in the last six years, key SL Green directors reached out last week to remind investors that Holliday took a pay cut last year, had his company car taken away, and more of his future compensation will be stock-linked. e board even says it wants to hear from investors if those steps weren’t enough.

“We are committed to considering and addressing those concerns,” read the dear-fellow-stockholders letter from SL Green lead independent director John Alshuler and compensation-committee chief Lauren Dillard. While committing to getting better all the time, the letter added that already “pay outcomes” at SL Green “align” with shareholder interests.

‘Misalignment’

Institutional Shareholder Services begs to di er.

Citing “unmitigated pay-for-performance misalignment,” the in uential proxy adviser urged SL Green shareholders to vote against Holliday’s pay package at the June 5 meeting. Although the vote is non-binding, a third defeat after in-

vestors rejected his 2020 and 2016 packages would be a personal rebuke to Holliday, who has the dicult task of marketing a product that has lost a chunk of its market.

He’s not alone, of course. Scott Rechler’s RXR Realty defaulted on a lower Broadway o ce building last month. Vornado Realty Trust suspended its dividend in April, and the city’s second-biggest commercial landlord has shed 80% of its prepandemic market value. About a quarter of the investors who remain voted against CEO Steven Roth’s $10 million pay package at last month’s annual meeting, which was held online. It was more than double the average “no” vote this year at other public companies, according to consulting rm Semler Brossy. A Citigroup CEO turned in his resig-

Bu alo, she said this kind of alternative would further isolate migrants and make it more di cult for them to receive legal aid and other government resources.

“We’re focused on people having access to housing closer to the services and the community that they’ve already come with,” Hochul said. “But that being said, I’ve asked the state to be generous and to be welcoming. And we have some counties that are in that vein, and I’m really proud of them, and others that are not so much.”

Currently, 300 individuals are dispersed throughout New York in comparison to the 72,000 housed in the city. In addition to the former Harlem jail, Hochul announced that they are also working on opening a larger site at JFK.

Hochul’s administration has also had direct conversations with federal o cials including President Joe Biden, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro

Majorkas and others. In addition, Hochul met with congressional leaders in Washington D.C. in May and had a meeting with a bipartisan New York State delegation in February to request additional resources.

On June 5, Mayor Adams announced a new two-year partnership with the New York Disaster Interfaith Services. e organization includes 50 faith-based locations that will help house asylum seekers as the need for asylum grows. e interfaith community has a long history of providing housing help, which was put on hold during the pandemic.

Goldfein says that these sites often o er limited services because they are operated by volunteers and are only open certain days and times of the week. Still, it presents an option.

“Every little bit helps,” Goldfein says. “It can be very welcoming and useful to some people.” ■

nation in 2012 after a majority of shareholders rejected his pay.

“Most companies respond to a say-on-pay vote, it’s an e ective mechanism,” said Donna Anderson, head of corporate governance at T. Rowe Price, which manages $1.6 trillion in client assets and voted in favor of Holliday’s pay package.

e $16 million total last year represented a 20% cut in Holliday’s compensation from 2021, according to a regulatory ling. About $2 million was cash, and SL Green noted that his “projected realizable

compensation” was less and reached only 38% of its “potential.”

e board eliminated executive automobile allowances and decreed that bonuses based on the relative stock performance of the company wouldn’t be paid when SL Green’s shareholder return is negative.  Even so, ISS said SL Green’s practices remain “problematic” and recommended shareholders give Holliday’s pay the thumbs-down. SL Green said: “We expect that it will be supported [June 5] by the vast majority of our shareholders.” ■

THE FACILITY IS ONE OF 157 EMERGENCY SITES TO OPEN TO MIGRANTS

BLOOMBERG

CEO MARC HOLLIDAY faced a shareholder vote on his 2022 pay package.

THE FORMER LINCOLN CORRECTIONAL FACILITY

ASTM aces Penn Station plan launch, must now flesh out details and cost

Hats off to Italian developer ASTM for accomplishing what once seemed impossible—coalescing a near-consensus around an elegant if still complex plan to remake Penn Station without having to move Madison Square Garden.

The next step, though, will require a higher hurdle: Revealing the details of the plan, including its costs, and facing a level of public scrutiny that goes deeper than big ideas. It’s imperative that city and state officials not fall in love with the notion that ASTM’s proposal—and the company itself—are the only answer to a dilemma that’s bedeviled the city for years.

The possibility of seeking bids from other firms should be part of the discussion. As should the question that seems to have been temporarily sidelined as attention turned to ASTM’s proposal: Is it possible for a well-functioning Penn Station and MSG to coexist?

OP-ED

The leaders of Amtrak, the MTA and New Jersey Transit are on the record with an emphatic “no.”

They wrote in a blistering report to the city this month that the stadium imposes “severe constraints on the station that impede the safe and efficient movement of passengers and restrict efforts to implement improvements.”

A shiny new Penn Station won’t be a free ride for taxpayers, no matter who gets the deal, or how it is orchestrated. ASTM is expected to propose that—in exchange for covering the project’s cost and any overruns—it gets to manage the station for a set period, perhaps 50 years, at taxpayer expense. The company has not specified yet whether the payments would come from local governments or from Penn Station’s owner, Amtrak.

ASTM, a firm best known for its toll roads in Europe and Brazil, has deservedly won plaudits for the plan itself—it calls for demolishing the 5,600-seat theater attached to the Eighth Avenue side of the arena to make way for a new entrance, two new train halls and a glassy base around the arena

that lets in natural light. And beyond the eye-catching plan, the firm was smart to hire political heavyweights Patrick Foye, a former MTA and Port Authority executive, and Peter Cipriano, a former infrastructure adviser to ex-U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, to help sell it; invest in lobbyists to develop a savvy roll-out; and hire veteran architect Vishaan Chakrabarti (who led city planning under Mayor Bloomberg) to incorporate his airy vision for a more pleasant transit hub.

It’s no surprise the plan has won over civic leaders who once

argued fiercely for relocating MSG, including Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine and Tom Wright, head of the Regional Plan Association who helped shape the state’s own stalled attempt at redeveloping Penn Station.

But the honeymoon phase can’t last forever. The company has promised to share a fleshed-out plan later this month, and that’s the moment for serious negotiations that place a priority on getting the best deal for taxpayers and the roughly 600,000 commuters who use the nation’s busiest train hub every weekday. ■

The Garden should be granted a never-ending occupancy permit

BY DAN BIEDERMAN

Since I founded the 34th Street Partnership in 1989, businesses in our area have relied upon a busy Madison Square Garden to fill the area’s food and retail offerings with 20,000 sport and concert fans more than 200 times a year. Tens of thousands of Garden and neighborhood employees also rely on those events.

The Garden has been one of our most important community pillars since it opened in its current location in 1968. The iconic venue is responsible for driving millions of visitors to our restaurants, bars, stores and public spaces across hundreds of events—truly one of the main engines that keeps the neighborhood humming yearround.

Despite all of this, The Garden, which generates $2 billion annually toward the city’s economy, must obtain a special permit to operate events with more than 2,500 peo-

ple in attendance. That permit expires later this summer and is now being considered for renewal through the City’s land-use process. The New York City Planning Commission should grant the permit in perpetuity.

There are multiple reasons why keeping “The World’s Most Famous Arena” at full capacity makes sense. From Knicks and Rangers games to era-defining concerts, The Garden routinely brings around 20,000 people into our neighborhood. Limiting MSG to 2,500 spectators would deliver a stinging blow to our area as we continue to recover from the economic devastation of the pandemic. With tourism now finally bouncing back and office building use still lagging pre-Covid levels, now would be the worst possible time to curtail MSG’s ability to hold large-scale events.

The Garden is also proposing to improve the public realm as part of its application, including new

planters and benches, more accessible entry points, more bike parking, and enhanced lighting to make the area safer for pedestrians and cyclists.

These interventions would also complement potential plans for an improved Penn Station, and this brings me to a critical point: every viable plan proposed for the station clearly acknowledges that Penn Station can be turned into a world-class station with MSG operating at full capacity above. And so keeping Madison Square Garden in place is essential to advancing transformative plans—at long last—for Penn.

Finally, it’s important for the City Planning Commission to consider the ramifications of simply extending MSG’s permit for, say, five or 10 years. By leaving the very existence of MSG up in the air every few years, the city creates uncertainty around the Garden that isn’t helpful.

Nobody wants to undermine the

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Garden’s ability to bring the worldclass events—and the visitors they draw—to our business district. I urge the Commission, which may well agree that the Garden shouldn’t and won’t move, after completing a $1 billion investment in its facility in 2013, not to kick the can down the road again for purely symbolic reasons.

For all these reasons, the choice is clear: allowing MSG to operate at full capacity in its current location constitutes sound public policy, smart economic and public realm planning, and just plain common sense. The City Planning Commission should renew its special permit in perpetuity, and the City Council should do the same at the culmination of the land-use process. ■

Dan Biederman is president of 34th Street Partners, a nonprofit, private management company organized as a business improvement district.

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THE IDEA OF SEEKING BIDS

FROM OTHER FIRMS SHOULD BE PART OF THE DISCUSSION

At Hudson Yards, Related Companies got a sweet deal. Now it wants more.

BY OLIVIA LEIRER AND LUCAS SANCHEZ

The glass and steel construction of Hudson Yards has come to dominate the west side of Manhattan over the past five years. The brainchild of developer Related Companies and its Trump pal Chairman Stephen Ross, Hudson Yards is already a massive playground for New York’s wealthiest.

But to get approval for the original Hudson Yards project, Related had to make some small conces-

Related has been vague about its continued commitment to affordable housing on the site, and the company has insisted that its casino plan will still include the long-promised new school—but with no public comments on where the school would be located or how the casino would be meaningfully separate from it.

It’s important to remember that the original agreement on which Related is now trying to renege was already incredibly favorable for Related, at the expense of tenants and those in search of housing: Only 431 of the 5000 planned apartments were set aside as affordable.

and $60 million penthouses—is already an absurd temple to wealth. A new resort casino would only add to the absurdity.

Solutions needed

It’s obvious that we cannot count on developers to keep their promises to New Yorkers. We need solutions that address the needs of tenants now.

Elected officials should pursue expanded tenant protections, most critically good-cause eviction, to keep renters in their homes and prevent families from being displaced. Lawmakers should also fund and support stronger rental assistance programs to help more families afford their rental units— particularly as COVID-era federal funding begins to dry up.

sions to area residents and the city, including affordable housing and a school. Those concessions were slated to be part of Phase 2 of the project, on what is called the Western Yards.

Now, Related is abandoning even its small concessions in favor of an even more obnoxious money grab: A brand-new casino. The 1,500room resort, which would be operated in partnership with Vegas giant Wynn Resorts, would be accompanied by a nightclub and 20 new restaurants.

OP-ED

New York officials already gave Related a sweet deal once. Not content with the favorable agreement of the 2000s, though, the developer is now asking for even more.

The casino proposal represents a clear change from the plans that Related initially shared with local residents and elected officials, at the worst possible time. New York has never had a more urgent need for housing of all types, particularly below-market-rate, affordable housing. Hudson Yards—with its Cartier and Louis Vuitton outposts

And in the ongoing casino fight, New York’s elected officials should prioritize a site that does not take away potential land for additional housing units. Related’s play is just one particularly brazen example to take valuable land in residentially zoned neighborhoods and build a massive gaming complex from the ground up. Similar proposals in Willets Point, Coney Island and the Bronx would also take up land that could otherwise be set aside for housing.

It is clear that mega-developers like Related are happy to ignore

New York’s housing and focus on their bottom line. If they are unwilling to do their part to make New York City a more affordable place to live, then our city and state governments must take even more proactive measures to provide residents with the housing that they deserve. ■

Olivia Leirer and Lucas Sanchez are co-executive directors of New York Communities for Change.

Editor’s Note: Related provided the following response from Jon Weinstein, an executive vice president: “The writers misstate facts that should be corrected for the record.

As has been reported by outlets including Crain’s, Related is committed to delivering all of the affordable housing, open space and the school building that were envisioned under the original plan for the Western Yards. Affordable housing, open space and the school are vital pieces of the puzzle for this project and important for us and the community. In fact, the plan to bring a worldclass resort spurring the development of the Western Yards means more affordable housing, 5,000 permanent jobs, tens of thousands of construction jobs and billions in revenue for the city and state to support the MTA, education and community organizations.”

Uber riders must pay their fair share under the city’s congestion pricing plan

BY ROBERT CARROLL AND ALEX MATTHIESSEN

The Federal Highway Administration recently signed off on New York City’s first-inthe-nation congestion pricing plan, which means that, with few exceptions, every car and truck entering Manhattan’s Central Business District will be charged a toll.

To secure FHWA approval, New York had to add a robust package of measures specifically designed to protect the health and livelihoods of New York’s minority and immigrant communities.

Unfortunately, one element of this package misses the mark: Companies like Uber and Lyft will only have to pay the toll to enter the congestion zone once a day. Uber has

Please

made it clear that it intends to spend millions in a campaign to protect this loophole and they will claim concern for the well-being of the drivers, but their goal is to maximize market share and enrich their shareholders, all while continuing to clog our streets and pollute our air.

We have both spent years advocating for congestion pricing and are eager to see it up and running.

But if New York is serious about curbing traffic congestion, we must address the excessive use of ridehail companies. In 2022, over 52 million for-hire vehicle rides started and ended in Manhattan below 60th Street, most of them Uber or Lyft, despite that same area being served by 19 subway lines.

An Uber trip from Tribeca to Midtown is a luxury and should be treated as such. The once-per-day toll on for-hire vehicles will do nothing to reduce traffic and will invariably be

charged to the working-class drivers the FHWA and MTA are trying to protect, instead of their more welloff passengers.

The solution is to replace the once-per-day toll with a significant increase to the current $2.75 surcharge on every for-hire trip that begins in or enters Manhattan below 96th  Street, with the surcharge paid by the passenger, not the driver.

For trips entering the zone the increased surcharge should be half of the peak toll and somewhat more than this for trips that begin and end in the zone, with discounts for both at night.

Devalued medallions

Yellow cabs should be exempt from the new increase; cab drivers paid as much as $1 million each to the city to obtain medallions, but the value of those once coveted medallions was destroyed by the city’s failure to properly manage and regulate the introduction of Uber and Lyft to city streets.

Concerns about worker dislocation should be taken with utmost

seriousness during the shift to new policies and technologies, but we should not accept the argument that polluting industries and practices be protected for the sake of preserving jobs and profits. If congestion pricing works and demand for for-hire rides softens, we could, for example, create a fast track for former Uber and Lyft drivers to work for the MTA.

Done right, New York’s congestion pricing program will markedly reduce traffic, improve air quality

and street safety, modernize mass transit, and create an overall healthier and more livable city. But to do so in a way that is truly equitable, forhire companies and their customers must pay their fair share. Only then can we claim to be a model program other U.S. cities should follow. ■

Robert Carroll is an assemblyman representing Brooklyn’s 44th district. Alex Matthiessen founded Move NY, a campaign which led to the passage of congestion pricing in 2019.

uSe OF RIDE-HAIL COMPANIES

Flooding-risk disclosures are coming to leases, but will they help tenants be informed?

BY ANA ALTCHEK

Anew bill that requires landlords to disclose to tenants residential units’ ooding risks will go into e ect June 21.

e Right to Know bill, signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul after citywide ooding caused by Hurricane Ida in September 2021 that a ected several outer-borough lower-level apartments, requires residential landlords to provide notice whether a rental unit is within a Federal Emergency Management Agency-designated oodplain, special ood hazard area or moderate risk ood area. e landlord will also have to disclose if the space had any previous ooding incidents.

“My administration is committed to defending tenants’ rights to ensure that all renters feel safe and secure in their own homes,” Hochul said.

“Even though most renters’ insurances do not cover ood damages, New York landlords are not legally obligated to inform their tenants if their home is in a ood zone or had previous ood damage. Our bill changes that.” HolymanSegal said.

Because of the insurance issue, some have voiced skepticism about how e ective the legislation will be.

Frank Ricci, executive vice president of the Rent Stabilization Association, nds the new requirement unavailing.

Discrepancies

“First of all, when you buy insurance on buildings, it could be a 50page policy easily, and the insurance company policies on ooding can be very complicated. It could cover you from natural disasters but not other oods,” Ricci said.

“ ere’s all kinds of variations.”

Ricci said these discrepancies make the insurance process complicated, and that won’t be remediated by a mere disclosure of risk.

e governor said she intends to promote transparency between landlords and tenants with this bill. Its sponsor, state Sen. Brad Holyman-Segal, a Democrat who represents the 47th district in New York, said he believes the legislation will help tenants make more informed decisions about where they live, but he noted setbacks when it comes to insurance policies.

Je Schneider, president at Gotham Brokerage, a Manhattan-based company that sells homeowners insurance, says that typically the cost for individual ood insurance varies between $150 and $200 annually and covers $50,000 worth of damaged content. In order for tenants who live above the ground level to obtain insurance, though, a ooding incident had to have hit their oor to le a claim, he noted.

Ricci says that the additional language in the lease that’s required by

the new legislation will more directly o er protection to landlords. In fact, he said, the newly required disclosure could even hurt tenants, who may not read the ne print in a lease.

“ ere’s so much information already required in the lease as well as riders on top of that,” Ricci said. “It may help the owner if they say, ‘I had it in the lease. You should have taken out renter’s insurance.’”

Ricci said the inclusion of this information will have no impact on a landlord’s decision to buy insurance on a unit or building. Instead, it will put the responsibility on the renter to purchase protection.

According to Scott Bloom, presi-

City employees can work remotely twice a week, Adams says

BY NICK GARBER

City employees will be able to start working remotely up to two days per week as part of a deal stemming from their new contract with the city, Mayor Eric Adams announced June 1. New York’s tens of thousands of municipal workers have mostly been forced to commute to their

ble work programs the city o ers must acknowledge the reality that there are some roles that cannot be performed remotely,” Adams said in a statement. “ is new pilot program will protect core services that New Yorkers rely on while o ering city workers additional exibility in their schedules.”

dent of Bloom Real Estate Group, located in Manhattan, the bill will have little impact on lease transactions. He says the new bill is similar to any other landlord disclosure responsibility that tenants usually only bring up if there’s an issue down the line.

“Tenants won’t care to have language inserted,” he said. “ ere’s nothing that’s going to help them there.”

Negotiation

If tenants have a broker or attorney look over the contract, they may decide to negotiate terms based on the ooding risk, he said.

Ed Harris, president of Commercial Tenant Services, a Manhat-

tan-based company that guides commercial tenants in the lease-signing process, the Right to Know bill is still a step in the right direction. e normalization of disclosing details that a ect the tenant, even if the potential risk is unlikely, is a sign of progress toward improving the imbalance between the two sides.

“ e government’s role is to help people who don’t have fair representation or equal opportunity,” Harris said. “Landlords are known for optimizing return on assets, leasing as quickly as they can, disclosing as little as they have to and getting the highest rent that they can. So I think this motivates them to do the right thing.” ■

o ces ve days a week since September 2021. Critics, including Comptroller Brad Lander, have blamed the strict policy for exacerbating the city’s worker shortage by lowering morale and deterring potential applicants.

“I have always said that any exi-

A committee to study remote work was a key component of the ve-year contract deal that the city reached in February with District Council 37, the union representing about 90,000 municipal employees. at committee had a goal of creating a pilot program for hybrid work by June 1, City Hall said.

Workers from more than 30 of the city’s roughly 50 agencies will be able to work a hybrid schedule once the program is rolled out, according to City Hall.

e number of total workers is yet to be determined, since each agency will submit its own exible work plan and a list of eligible employees. Eligibility will be determined by workers’ job performance, whether they are represented by DC37, and whether their title allows for remote work, the city said.

‘Flexibility measures’

e initial hybrid pilot will run until May 2025 and will be renewed for another year if both parties agree, according to the announcement. e city and DC37 will discuss creating other “ exibility measures” for workers whose jobs do not allow for remote work, according to Adams’ administration.

“ e world of work has changed, and this remote-hybrid pilot is one tool in our arsenal to provide a exible workplace that still delivers the best services for New Yorkers,” said Henry Garrido, District Council

37’s executive director.

e city had nearly 23,000 vacant positions as of January. at understa ng has led to a deterioration in services, including slower

processing for food-stamp applications and drops in childhood immunizations and restaurant inspections, according to Lander’s o ce. ■

WORKERS IN MORE THAN 30 AGENCIES WILL BE ABLE TO WORK A HYBRID SCHEDULE

“I THINK THIS MOTIVATES [LANDLORDS] TO DO THE RIGHT THING”

BLOOMBERG

HURRICANE IDA damage in 2021

MAYOR ERIC ADAMS embraced District Council 37 Executive Director Henry Garrido after they announced a contract deal in February.

THE LIST

LARGEST HOSPITALS

New York–area institutions ranked by operating expenses

Hospitals’ operating costs continue to rise with the price of labor

Operating expenses jumped an average of 5% across the city’s largest hospitals, according to this year’s largest hospitals list. The shift reflects more investment in the workforce amid a health care worker shortage, as well as increasing costs to providing care.

The top five hospitals on the list remain the same as last year, however, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center edged out NYU Langone Health for the No. 2 slot.

On average, hospitals across the five boroughs and parts of New Jersey had average operating expenses of just under $2.1 billion, a slight decrease from last year’s $2.2 billion. Montefiore Health System and New

York-Presbyterian saw the biggest jumps in operating expenses since last year, with increases of 17% and 14%, respectively.

Total net patient revenue was $67.63 billion, a 7% increase from last year’s figures. All in all, the hospitals on the list completed more than 28 million ambulatory care visits, with Montefiore completing the most for the second consecutive year, nearly 4 million. The institutions featured on the list accumulated a total of 7.8 million inpatient days. The organizations account for 29,279 beds in the area, an average of 837 per institution. The hospitals have a collective workforce of more than 260,000.

— Amanda Glodowski

$2.1B

AMBULATORY CARE

conducted in total by the hospitals across the list. Montefiore completed more than any other hospital, 4 million.

VISITS

AVERAGE operating expenses across hospitals on the list for fiscal year 2022.

areaareaincludesthe fiveboroughsofNewYorkCity andNassau,SuffolkandWestchester countiesinNew York,and Bergen, Essex,HudsonandUnion countiesinNewJersey. Crain's uses staffresearch,extensive surveys andthemost currentreferencesavailabletoproduceitslists, but there is noguaranteethattheselistingsarecomplete.Hospitalsareranked by unroundedtotaloperating expensesof separatelyincorporatedfacilities,as identifiedby Medicarenumber,and mayincludemultiplefacilities. Executives may hold additionaltitles.CARESactfundsarenotincluded infigures, unless otherwise noted. 1 Includesthesystem'sCornell, Columbia and Lower Manhattancampuses,excludingpsychiatricandrehab services. 2 Includesall ofNYU LangoneHealth's hospital sites. 3 2021figure. 4 FranklinandForestHillsarecombinedunderLongIsland Jewish MedicalCenter. 5 Syossetis combinedunderNorth Shore UniversityHospital. 6 Comprisesfigures from Mount SinaiMorningsideand Mount SinaiWest, whichwerepreviously known as Mount SinaiSt. Luke's and Mount Sinai Roosevelt,respectively. 7 NewYork-PresbyterianBrooklynMethodist fully mergedwithNewYork-Presbyterian Hospital (NYPH)

Retirees sue city to stop Medicare Advantage plan two months after contract is signed

BY JACQUELINE NEBER

On May 31 nine municipal retirees, along with the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees, led a class action lawsuit against the city, Mayor Eric Adams, the city’s O ce of Labor Relations and Department of Education, and other parties over the city’s move to switch retirees from supplemental health insurance to Medicare Advantage plans.

roll retirees in the plan unless they opted out, and eliminated supplemental plans.

Now, the plainti s allege that this development has caused them irreparable injury; one plainti said he is considering purchasing a Medigap supplemental plan on the open market, but can’t a ord the minimum $800 monthly premium.

Other plainti s allege their doctors won’t accept the Medicare Advantage plan.

In light of this, hundreds of retirees rallied outside City Hall on May 31 in protest of the switch, sharing their experiences with doctors who said they wouldn’t accept the Medicare Advantage plan and protesting the change.

Potential complications

e suit alleges that the city has been trying to “escape” its supposed health care obligation to retirees–paying for their coverage in full–by switching them to Advantage plans. City o cials have said the Medicare Advantage switch will save the city hundreds of millions of dollars in premiums annually–but retirees argue those savings could in turn jeopardize their health care and nancial security.

“Had he known that the City would renege on its health care promise, he would have made very di erent nancial choices in his life,” the document reads.

THE CLASS CONSISTS OF MORE THAN 250,000 RETIREES AND DEPENDENTS

Many city retirees have been nancially dependent on receiving free health insurance from the city throughout their retirement, the court ling reads. Now, it says, the insurance they can opt into is inferior to their existing supplemental plans.

Years-long saga

Lawsuit documents chronicle the last several years of the Medicare Advantage saga between retirees, the city and unions, which seemed to conclude in March, when the city signed an Advantage contract with Aetna that would automatically en-

CANNABIS

According to the documents, the city has promised retirees for the last 50 years that it would provide and pay for a choice of Medicare supplemental insurance, such as the Senior Care plan about 180,000 retirees are currently covered by. e suit argues that the city has thus not followed the procedures required by the New York City Administrative Procedure Act, violated retirees’ rights under the state Constitution and common law, and “engaged in an unjust bait and switch.”

On a Medicare Advantage plan, retirees could be hit with prior authorization complications or copays, Nancy Lossino, one of the plainti s in the case, said at the rally.

“ ey will nickel and dime you to death,” she said.

Meanwhile, according to a letter the Municipal Labor Committee sent to union leaders earlier this spring, Aetna agreed to eliminate prior authorization requirements for more than 70% of procedures that would require it.

Aetna’s initial Medicare Advantage proposal, which the insurer presented to the city’s Municipal Labor Committee in March, consists of at costs for hospital admissions and several zero-dollar co-pays, including for primary care visits, and a smaller deductible than the Senior Care plan currently o ers.

e court documents further allege that the petitioners in the case submitted notices of claim to city comptroller Brad Lander and the Department of Education, and neither have taken corrective action after at least 30 days.

Marianne Pizzitola, the president of the retiree organization, sent a letter to o ce of labor relations

commissioner Renee Campion asking the city to stop the implementation of the switch, the ling says. As of May 26, there has been no response.

e class consists of more than 250,000 Medicare-eligible retired city workers and their dependents. e plainti s have asked the court to preliminarily and permanently stop Medicare Advantage automatic enrollment, enforcement of the June 30 opt-out deadline, and implementation of any other aspect of the switch.

Plainti s also ask that the court award damages to the class, and demand a jury trial, if a preliminary injunction is not granted. Jake Gardener of Walden Macht & Haran LLP, who represents the retiree organization in the case, said halting

the plan immediately is the goal. e plainti s are waiting for a date from the court for a hearing to argue the preliminary injunction, he added.

City Hall representative Jonah Allon told Crain’s the customized Medicare Advantage plan is in the retirees’ best interests based on its o erings, and the city will review lawsuit documents when they are received.

In March, the city declined to choose a provision in the draft Aetna contract that would have allowed it to continue o ering supplemental plans to the retirees because that option would undermine the city’s ability to save money.

As it stands, municipal retirees are set to be automatically enrolled in Medicare Advantage on Sept. 1. ■

State’s top cannabis cop promises to crack down on hundreds of unlicensed smoke shops in city

BY AARON ELSTEIN

Atop state cannabis o cial vowed to quickly bring the heat now that Albany has granted regulators the power to shut down hundreds of unlicensed smoke shops across New York City.

“We are pivoting so that we can begin as soon as possible,” said Tremaine Wright, chair of the New York Cannabis Control Board. “It is coming.”

Wright told Crain’s at an industry conference on June 1 at the Javits Center that her agency would work with state tax agents, local police and consumer-protection o cials to rein in the estimated 1,500 unlicensed retailers around the city that sell pre-rolled joints, edibles and other forms of marijuana. Authorities are also investigating landlords who rent them space.

In the last two years, unlicensed cannabis shops have spread across the city like a weed because pro ts, after rent and other expenses, range from $1,000 to $15,000 a day, ac-

cording to Paula Collins, a Manhattan attorney who specializes in the business of cannabis.

Apart from sheer numbers, unlicensed operators enjoy key advantages over licensed rivals. For example, they can accept credit cards if they’re willing to deceive payment processors about the nature of their business, while the ve licensed shops in Manhattan only accept cash or debit cards.

Gentle treatment

e Adams administration has mostly treated unlicensed weed shops gently. After the city sued a bodega at 736 Broadway earlier this year for selling bootleg cannabis close to a licensed dispensary, a settlement was quickly reached stipulating the shop owner would scale back so that cannabis products take up no more than 20% of the store’s space.

“Continuing to sell these products will give my [business] an edge over other, more traditional convenience stores, especially with the

proximity of the retail cannabis dispensary down the block,” read a new business plan led by the bodega owner in New York state Supreme Court.

Wright indicated the days of treating unlicensed operators with kid gloves ended in May when Gov. Kathy Hochul signed legislation granting the state O ce of Cannabis Management enforcement powers. OCM can ne unlicensed operators up to $20,000 per day and seek court orders to close stores.

“I don’t want to pretend we’re going to wipe away the illicit market overnight,” Wright said. “ is is going to be a process.”

Licensed retailers say something must be done if cannabis sales are going to produce the sort of tax revenue anticipated by the state.

“ e unlicensed shops are undermining everything,” an industry executive told Crain’s at the industry conference.  “We know this isn’t what we signed up for,” said Dasheeda

THERE’S AN ESTIMATED 1,500 unlicensed smoke shops across the city.

Dawson, founding director of Cannabis NYC, a division of the city’s Department of Small Business Services whose mission is to help licensed shops ourish.

More licensed dispensaries could help solve the problem.

After all, bootleg liquor is seldom sold in stores because licensed dealers have the clout to force state

regulators to stop that activity, observed Artie Minson, chief executive of LeafLink, a Financial District-based rm that connects cannabis distributors with licensed retailers.

“Right now you have fewer than a dozen licensed shops trying to take on 1,500 unlicensed ones,” Minson said. ■

JACQUELINE NEBER

MUNICIPAL RETIREES rallied outside City Hall after the lawsuit was led.

Meta’s New York City workforce to drop to around 5,000

BY CARA EISENPRESS

Meta Platforms laid off 548 employees in a second round of firings last month that brings its total New York headcount to 5,086.

Local headcount for the social media giant, which operates Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, had not been previously reported and was shared in a May 30 notice required by the state for employers who are laying off large numbers of workers.

year’s crew of laid-off workers disappeared from the payrolls. The latest figures about New York City’s workforce suggest that the city accounts for about 7% of all Meta jobs.

Local offices

The state filing also shed light on the company’s local offices. Nearly 1,000 Meta employees were based at 30 Hudson Yards, where the company is letting its lease run out; Meta had leased a total of 250,000 square feet at 30 and 55 Hudson Yards temporarily as it awaited the build out of more than 1 million square feet of office space at 50 Hudson Yards.

mized the city for tech firms deciding on where to locate their headquarters.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in March that the firm would let go of 10,000 employees this year and remove 5,000 job listings, part of an initiative he called the company’s “year of efficiency.” The March announcement followed a late-2022 round of layoffs that eliminated 11,000 positions worldwide.

At the end of the first quarter, Meta’s headcount was 77,114, down 11% from the end of 2022, as last

There are also 2,339 Meta employees at 372 9th Ave., which is inside The Farley Building at Moynihan train hall. Lastly, 2,336 employees work at 770 Broadway, below Union Square, where the company has leased around 800,000 square feet. The layoffs were about evenly distributed among the three locations.

The local offices of Silicon Valley tech firms have had an outsize impact on the city’s tech sector, building a talent pool that has legiti-

The largest city companies have far more employees in total than Meta, even before the layoffs, though they, too, have shrunk their New York City workforces over the last decade. JP Morgan, the city’s largest employer, is building a new Park Avenue tower for just 14,000 of its 293,000 employees; in 2019, it had around 37,000 employees in the New York metro area, according to Pensions & Investments.

Tech companies tend to be smaller in scale, and the Silicon Valley giants have made a massive impact on the local talent ecosystem by opening large offices here. As of last summer, Google parent Alphabet had around 12,000 employees in the city, according to data from Center for an Urban Future. Amazon, Meta and Apple together employed another 11,000 as of a year ago, the think tank found. Homegrown tech firms are smaller still. One of the largest

publicly traded tech employers with New York City headquarters is UI Path, which has just 1,150 local employees, according to its 2022 annual report. Private digital mortgage company Better.com employed nearly 3,000, according to the  Crain’s Privately Held Companies list, but after spending several years fully remote, it’s unclear how many were in New York City.

Representatives for Meta declined to comment about the im-

pact of the local layoffs or which teams had been affected. Zuckerberg’s note said that May’s layoffs would focus on business and advertising departments, after April’s round culled tech and engineering teams. Zuckerberg also suggested that most layoffs would peter off after May. But the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification said there would be a second phase of layoffs in New York City on Aug. 25. ■

THE CITY ACCOUNTS FOR ABOUT 7% OF ALL MeTA JOBS, FIGURES SUGGEST

New York City’s new short-term rental registration requirement slows Airbnb’s business to a crawl

BY CARA EISENPRESS

Tourists coming to New York City this summer can book accommodations in their choice of 29 registered short-term rental units.

The meager offering represents a fraction of the 42,931 local units listed on Airbnb. Only those few have made it through a new enforcement program the city imposed in March to prevent illegal short-term rentals. Among other things, officials want to ensure that hosts never rent out entire apartments and are on site when they rent a room for fewer than 30 days.

Short-term rental platforms like Airbnb will be prohibited from processing payments until they verify that a host has registered the unit with the city beginning in July.

says it will lose $6.7 million in net revenue per month due to the lack of registered units.

The company said that only nine units on its platform had successfully gone through registration as of May 3. Those nine units represented “0.05% of Airbnb’s annual net revenue of $85 million associated with short-term rental listings in New York City,” according to the lawsuit. It was unclear whether the other 20 of the 29 cited by the city were approved in the remaining weeks of May or were from hosts using alternate platforms.

The registration requirement comes from Local Law 18, which the City Council passed in late 2021 after years of tussling with Airbnb. In March, the city Office of Special Enforcement opened an application portal and received applications from about 50 hosts in the first week.

and managers were able to sign up to ban short-term rental listings in their buildings.

registration law was duly adopted by the City Council, and OSE implemented rules pursuant to the law.”

the case is decided.

The host registration requirement entails much more than box checking. Each application requires hosts to conform to a series of existing zoning and housing laws. They include a prohibition on rentals for fewer than 30 days, a requirement that a host must inhabit the unit they list, and a ban on more than three unrelated adults dwelling in one apartment.

Offerings

“Airbnb will have to cancel thousands of registrations,” said Karen Dunn, an attorney for San Franciscobased booking site Airbnb, which filed two lawsuits against the city on June 1. “New York City will be the Grinch who stole summer.” Airbnb

Hosts had submitted 419 applications as of 9 a.m. on May 31, according to OSE. In addition to the 29 that registered successfully, seven applications were denied, 52 were returned to hosts for more information, 229 were under review and 102 were awaiting review.

There are also 8,014 buildings on a new prohibited building list, according to the city. Building owners

Enforcement

“This administration is committed to protecting safety and community livability for residents, preserving permanent housing stock, and ensuring our hospitality sector can continue to recover and thrive,” said Jonah Allon, a spokesperson for City Hall, in an emailed statement. “The rules governing short-term rentals, codified in both city and state law, have been clear for years. The short-term rental

Enforcement legally began on May 9, but the city hinted it would wait until mid-July to begin enforcement by blocking payments.

Airbnb’s lawsuits allege that the regulation acts as a de facto ban on short-term rentals and violates previous agreements between the city and the company. One suit names the company as plaintiff, while the other was filed on behalf of three local hosts. Airbnb is seeking an injunction on the law while

There are about 5,200 Airbnb listings for private rooms that have been recently and frequently booked, according to Inside Airbnb, an independent website that tracks the platform. Such rooms are more likely to comply with these and other housing rules. That represents a small percentage of the 42,931 Airbnb units still listed for the city. There are another 7,100 recently and frequently booked entire homes or apartments, none of which would pass muster with the city.

Allon said the OSE would review Airbnb’s lawsuit. He did not address a question about why there had been so few applications approved.

“We have consistently worked with hosts and platforms to ensure they were aware of their requirements under the law,” he said. ■

Artificial intelligence creates more work for servers. That’s good business for Midtown-based MongoDB.

BY CARA

It’s easy math: A software company that charges its customers based on their consumption of its services will make more money when its customers use more.

Midtown-based MongoDB told investors and analysts on June 1 that its customers were doing just that. Consumption of its hightouch database product called Atlas were “better than expected,” CEO

companies produce and store more data than ever, internal developers have sought out modern databases to undergird their ambitions.

The company’s core insight is especially relevant now that artificial intelligence has reached a tipping point of adoption. Chat models like OpenAi’s ChatGPT, require a massive amount of server space.

Dev Ittycheria said on the company’s recent earnings call. “The more apps are used, the more revenue that drives.”

MongoDB is a data platform that offers developers databases and database services they can use to build software. The structure gives its customers the ability to build multiple large-scale applications that can deal with massive amounts of data without slowing down. As

“We expect MongoDB to be a net beneficiary of AI,” explained Ittycheria. “The reason being is that as developer productivity increases, the volume of new applications will only increase, which, by definition, will create new apps, which means more data stores.” Ittycheria said he expected the trend to continue, since having a modern database platform would be imperative, not optional, for AI application builders.

The company counted more than 200 new customers who started running their AI apps on Atlas, Ittycheria said. Existing customers are also trying out new AI use cases, further amping their existing consumption of MongoDB services.

Customers’ caution about expenses had caused a slowdown of growth in recent months, but the uptick in consumption this quarter belied investors’ worries.

Growth

The company had revenue of $368.3 million in its recent quarter, up 29% over the same period last year. The company continued to add customers, reaching 43,100 customers as of April 30. Among its

existing strategic partners is Chinese internet giant Alibaba, which has integrated MongoDB into its cloud services. New customers include one of New York City’s leading artificial intelligence companies, called Hugging Face. Mongo’s results and stock market jolt could have an impact on the myriad private enterprise technology startups in the city, which have been holding on amidst a frozen IPO market and vastly slower ven-

ture capital deal flow than in recent years.

Leading local public software firms, like Datadog and UiPath, which went public in the buzzy days of 2021, are trading below their private valuations, stoking more hesitancy in the private markets.

On the other hand, Mongo’s shares, which were already trading far above its 2017 IPO level of $29, rose about 30% to $372 the morning after the earnings call. ■

EISENPRESS

BLOOMBERG

“NEW YORK CITY WILL BE THE GRInCH WHO STOLe SUMMER”

“THE MORE APPS ARE USED, THE MORE ReVenue THAT DRIVES”

MONGODB

Excessive LIRR shifts put workers, riders at risk, says MTA inspector general

BY CAROLINE SPIVACK

Long Island Rail Road employees are working “implausibly long and continuous” shifts, frequently more than 24 hours at a time, according to a scathing new MTA inspector general audit released June 1. e result is fatigue that endangers themselves and passengers, the report said.

Work rules required by union contracts are partially to blame for the lengthy shifts, along with sta shortages and the LIRR failing to properly manage work schedules, the audit found. e combination of factors can lead to dangerous working conditions.

“Fatigued workers put the safety of employees, the public, and railroad assets at risk, and we should not continue to normalize the situation,” Acting MTA Inspector General Elizabeth Keating said in a statement.

Investigators found that 267 employees worked 24 hours or longer on more than 4,000 occasions between January 2021 and June 2022.

ose lengthy shifts can have deadly consequences: an LIRR

track worker was struck and killed by a train near the Queens Village station in 2017. Federal investigators concluded that the incident was fatigue related after examining employees’ work schedules and determining that they were unable to get “restorative sleep” for two consecutive nights prior to the incident.

Complicating factor

Union work rules are a hugely complicating factor, say auditors.

e LIRR contract with SMART Transportation Division 505, which represents track workers and other railroad workers, requires that the most senior employees are o ered overtime rst, and those workers are in control of how many hours they juggle.

“Each employee is trusted not to take on more than they are capable of, but cannot be stopped from taking on additional shifts, even if management thinks it may be too many consecutive hours for one person to work,” the audit states.

e MTA’s contract with SMART is set to expire this month. Auditors say the negotiations represent “an opportune moment for agency

management to work with labor representatives to nd solutions.” In its o cial response to the audit, the MTA said it is looking to modify contract rules that could contribute to excessive hours and worker fatigue.

Anthony Simon, SMART’s general chairman, pointed the nger at inadequate sta ng and accused the MTA of failing to manage outside contractors who rely on LIRR sta for support.

“Around the clock work requires around the clock hours. We will always do what we need [to do to] keep our riders and members safe,” Simon wrote in an email to Crain’s

“Fatigue is always a concern, but our membership knows what they can handle and accept, as does management,” Simon added. “It’s worked ribbon cutting after ribbon cutting.”

Auditors for the inspector general’s o ce examined employee-logged LIRR time cards and pay data. ey discovered one sta er who performed equipment maintenance was on duty for 24 straight hours more than ve dozen times.

Another worker tasked with installing rail tracks and switches logged a

whopping 84 hours in a row. Yet another employee, who worked with heavy machinery, worked 107 hours in a single week.

Historically, the LIRR and other MTA networks have struggled to properly manage overtime schedules, leading to corruption. In 2018, longtime LIRR employee omas Caputo was sentenced to eight months in prison for his role in an overtime fraud scheme. Caputo logged excessive hours that made him the MTA’s highest-paid employee in 2018, but instead of actually working he was often out bowling, federal prosecutors found.

e MTA told the inspector general that it aims to better coordinate shifts to limit overtime hours and provide greater employee training for di erent types of equipment. As required by federal regulators, the LIRR is currently developing a “fatigue risk management pro-

gram” to limit long work hours. e plan is due this July.

“ e LIRR will never compromise on employee safety and has increased its e orts to reduce excessive hours by lling open positions and starting the process of establishing a centralized manpower o ce to better plan and coordinate work shifts,” MTA spokesperson David Steckel said in a statement. “ e LIRR is always looking for opportunities to work with its union partners and identify opportunities to decrease consecutive hours and improve safety.” ■

Nominate a realtor who demonstrates an innovative approach to marketing a property. They should be involved in the community through philanthropic activities, mentoring programs or diversity and inclusion initiatives.

MTA/PATRICK CASHIN

A TRACK CREW WORKS on deck plates on the 48th Street bridge as an LIRR train passes.

early in the modern-day gay rights movement, Julius’ Bar and the Stonewall Inn were at the forefront of political organizing. Now, newcomers to the scene are staying true to those roots.

Brendan Donohoe opened Mary’s Bar in Brooklyn at the end of April with the intention of its being fundamentally more than “just a pub.”

“It will be a place for you to not only form new connections or old connections but to develop a sense of belonging to a community and then be entertained,” Donohoe said. “ ere’s a want and drive for a public house for queer people that people can come and connect without the need [or] feeling that they have to be entertained by something other than the personalities and the relationships that they form within.”

He says having a place that is inclusive and where people are able to feel safe is crucial to him.

To that end, Mary’s, which sits on the border of East Williamsburg and Greenpoint, is planning events that are perhaps more laid-back than the average drag night and can showcase the diverse interests of the queer community, such as jewelry making, poetry and tarot card readings, clothing swaps and donation drives.

“ e queer community is very, very giving,” he said. “ ey don’t have a lot, but they’re willing to give a lot.”

Many of the city’s newer LGBTQ bars, including Vers in Hell’s Kitchen, have taken their role as a community gathering space seriously.

David DeParolesa opened Vers a little over a year ago partly because he was worried that a lot of gay bars would close permanently due to fallout from the pandemic, and many of those safe spaces for the queer community would disappear.

“We’re saying, through the physical space [at Vers], through the programming, that we are a safe space,” he said, “and we are embracing a world and living a truth and an experience that is being diminished

in other places.”

In early March Vers hosted a Rainbow Revolution fundraiser, taking in $7,000 for an organization supporting transgender youth and drag artists in Tennessee just as that state’s legislature passed sets of bills restricting drag performances in public spaces and banning gender-a rming care for minors.

“Here, we are living in this privileged New York City, like almost gay euphoria in some respects,” DeParolesa said. “We have the ability through our money, our work, our words, our media to in uence and positively impact people in other places.”

“We have to support each other because we are a marginalized community in general,” added Lisa Menichino, owner of the historic LGBTQ bar Cubbyhole in the West Village.

Fundraisers

Every year Cubbyhole hosts fundraisers for the AIDS Walk in May and for breast cancer research in October. It also welcomes the cast of the burlesque show and fundraiser Broadway Bares for events in support of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. And the bar has held events bene ting queer people starting a theater career and recently one for a transgender youth organization in Florida.

“We try to support fundraisers whenever we can. e problem why we can’t do more is because we are really small, so space is limited,” Menichino said. “But when we have the space and the ability to support other marginalized communities, we do it.”

In Brooklyn, when C’Mon Everybody reopened in earnest following months of mandated closures during the height of the pandemic, co-owners Eric Sosa and Mike Zuco decided to make the Bedford-Stuyvesant venue, which opened in 2015, into a fully queer space with queer programming.

“ at was something we learned and are still learning: how to be there for our community, what’s important and what people need,” said Zuco. “We bring in a lot of programming that has a fundraising or community contribution aspect to it.”

Between C’Mon Everybody and Good Judy, its sister bar in Park Slope that opened in the summer of 2020, the focus, Zuco said, is on events supporting and amplifying the queer community, in addition

to advocacy on a hyper-local level.

For example, the venues put on shows and use their social media platforms to raise funds for sta needing medical procedures and performers or other community members that have run into nancial di culties.

“You might know X performer from the stage but not know anything about their personal life or even their o stage name,” Zuco said. “But then all of a sudden, you have this local venue or bar posting like, ‘Hey, this person needs help because they’re going through XYZ,’ and that may be a need that you might not have ever known about if it hadn’t been for the outreach.

at’s a pretty good feeling, to be able to help people in that way.”

C’Mon Everybody held a fundraiser for the rst anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting, which happened in Orlando in June 2016. Last summer the owners shared accurate information about the monkeypox virus and worked with the city’s Department of Health to set up tents for vaccinations outside Good Judy.

“Stu like that is really meaningful to me because I’m also a registered nurse,” Zuco said. “Aside from community building and funds, when it comes to community health, it’s something I feel very strongly about. And it’s a good way for me to bring that other part of my life into this because, a lot of times, health status isn’t really on the forefront of what people are vying for.”

is past winter the bar launched the Good Judy Reader, a bimonthly zine meant to echo pre-internet times, to share information, interviews, events and horoscopes, among other things, with the additional goal of spotlighting a queer-centered nonpro t organization. Issues have showcased the Drag Defense Fund and the AntiViolence Project. In April the zine’s second issue highlighted the urgency for political action amid the number of anti-trans laws and other bills attacking LGBTQ freedom and urged readers to register to vote ahead of the City Council primaries in June.

Halfway through 2023, more than 520 bills seeking to curtail LGBTQ rights have been introduced in 49 states, with 220 of those speci cally targeting transgender and nonbinary people. To date, 70 bills have passed nationwide, ranging from banning gender-a rming care for transgender youth to banning books in schools and libraries, according to the Human Rights Campaign’s latest data roundup.

e city’s annual Pride parade through downtown Manhattan is rooted in activism; it began to mark the anniversary of the riots in 1969 at the Stonewall Inn, said to be the beginnings of the modern gay rights movement. Amid recent political upheaval, it is emphasizing those roots. e theme for this year’s NYC Pride is Strength in Solidarity, and the celebration will feature a roster of events that highlight the LGBTQ community’s cultural signi cance.

Between the annual Pride March in Greenwich Village, parties and DJ sets hosted at venues citywide, NYC Pride—the nonpro t organization producing much of the city’s Pride programming—will also host events such as e Rally, showcasing activists and advocates amplifying LGBTQ rights.

At Vers, this year’s Pride celebration will include a queer Asian American evening and a Sapphic night, important at a time when the number of lesbian bars in the city is declining.

“It’s a time where the world comes to New York, where people from these very states that don’t get to express their own sexuality or gender expression come to New York to do that very thing,” he said.

“So having Vers exist and be open, it’s just a way to give them an opportunity to be themselves.”

Taking action

Liz Alpern began Queer Soup Night on the heels of Donald Trump’s inauguration in January 2017 as a fundraising tool and a way to bring queer folks together in a space “that felt comforting, supportive, positive and also actionoriented—like you could do some-

thing about it,” she said.

Queer Soup Night, which has been held at spots including Oddly Enough in Bed-Stuy and Ginger’s Bar in Park Slope, has since opened chapters in 10 other cities nationwide. During the dinner parties, community members can be together, enjoying soup made by local chefs, and raise funds for local social justice organizations.

“We started Queer Soup Night at a moment that felt particularly scary, and we’re at another moment that feels particularly scary for the community,” Alpern said. “And in between, there are lots and lots of scary moments too. So it’s a constant hum of fear of not feeling safe that makes queer [spaces] so important.”

e parties took on a di erent shape during the height of the pandemic, Alpern said, but the desire to gather did not abate. Now that larger events can be organized again, Alpern said, it feels as though Queer Soup Night is rebuilding.

“I feel a lot of love from the community when people show up, a lot of love and appreciation for the space that we’re creating,” she said. “ at was always true, but I denitely really feel it now, and I can’t separate the political moment we’re in from the excitement to be gathering again after the pandemic. We really need to be together again, and we really need to be together right now.”

Donohoe of Mary’s Bar agrees that the current political and social landscape makes the need for togetherness and revelry especially necessary. Because despite the upheaval, there is still much happiness to be found.

When he worked at Ginger’s Bar, partnering with its founder, Sheila Frayne, Donohoe had a vision of the kinds of events and vibe he wanted to bring to Mary’s: a place where people could celebrate birthdays, graduations, engagement parties, weddings and all the joyful times in life.

“To be that space that people choose to celebrate those days, there’s no reward like it,” he said. “I take a lot of personal joy from that.” ■

“WE REALLY NEED TO BE TOGETHER AGAIN ... AND RIGHT NOW”

BUCK ENNIS THE OUTSIDE OF THE CUBBYHOLE in the West Village

THE PRIDE MARCH held in New York City in 2022

Notice of Qualification of 744 Madison Sale Center, LLC

Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/08/23.

Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 04/04/23. 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. DE addr. of LLC: c/o CSC, 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with State of DE, Secy. of State, Div. of Corps., 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

PUBLIC & LEGAL NOTICES

Notice of Formation of Cosmetic Eye Surgery, PLLC. Arts. Of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 5/8/2023.

Office location: New York County.

SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: The LLC, 1 Central Park West, #41C, NY, NY 10023.

Street address of principal place of business: 1 Central Park West, #41C, NY, NY 10023.

Purpose/character of LLC: Any lawful purpose.

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.

Notice of Qualification of BRSP BLANCHARD LIC, LLC

Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/12/23. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 04/27/23. Princ. office of LLC: c/o BrightSpire Capital, Inc., 590 Madison Ave., 33rd Fl., NY, NY 10022. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Corporation Service Co. (CSC), 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. DE addr. of LLC: c/o CSC, 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State, 401 Federal St., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

POSITION AVAILABLE

Associate Conservator positions (The Metropolitan Museum of Art; New York, NY). Perform art conservation duties for the Dept. of Asian Art, incl. conservation of the collection of Chinese paintings in the Dept. of Asian Art. Must be fluent in Mandarin Chinese. Must be willing to travel domestically 5% and internationally 5%. Salary range $96,600 - $100,000 per year. Email resume: lara.fayyaz@metmuseum.org. Ref. 6254298.

PUBLIC & LEGAL NOTICES

Notice of Formation of 80TH 12J, LLC

Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/02/23.

Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Daniel Sperling, 300 Manida St., Bronx, NY 10474.

Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Advertising Section

To place an ad contact Suzanne Janik at 313-446-0455 or email: sjanik@crain.com

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.

NOTICE OF FORMATION OF Psychotherapy Counseling Services LCSW PLLC. Arts of Org filed with the Secy of State of NY (SSNY) on 5/2/23. Office location: NEW YORK County. SSNY has been designated as agent upon whom process against it may be served. The Post Office address to which the SSNY shall mail a copy of any process against the PLLC served upon him/her is: 418 Braodway ste N, Albany, NY, 12207. The principal business address of the LLC is: New York. Purpose: any lawful act or activity.

Notice of Formation of LITTLE MAC'S MARKET LLC

Arts of Org filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 2/17/23. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent upon whom process may be served and shall mail copy of process against LLC to 228 Park Ave S, #48324, NY, NY 10003. R/A US Corp Agents, Inc, 7014 13th Av, #202, BK, NY 11228. Purpose: any lawful act

Notice of Formation of Prince Driving Schol LLC. Arts of Org filed with Secy of State of NY (SSNY) on 1/12/23. Office Location: BX County. SSNY designated as agent upon whom process may be served and shall mail copy of process against LLC to 1759-B Jerome Ave, Bronx, NY 10453. Purpose: any lawful act.

WEDDLE & GILMORE ARCHITECTS, PLLC filed an App. for Auth. with the Dept. of State of NY on 5/1/2023. PLLC formed in AZ on 8/21/1998. Office located within NYS: New York County. The Sect'y of State of NY is designated as agent upon whom process against it may be served and shall mail process to: Goetz Fitzpatrick LLP, Attn: John B. Simoni Jr. Esq., One Penn Plaza, Ste 3100, NY, NY 10119. Purpose: Architecture.

money on lobbyists to develop a savvy roll-out that has made allies of in uential o cials and civic groups.

e e ort has borne fruit: Civic leaders who once argued ercely for relocating Madison Square Garden to expand Penn Station have reversed themselves in recent weeks and now back ASTM’s bid.

e project got its most formal boost last month, when Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, after meeting with ASTM, all but explicitly endorsed the company’s plan as part of his suggestion that the City Council keep the Garden’s operating permit.

Tom Wright, head of the in uential Regional Plan Association, helped shape the state’s own stalled attempt at redeveloping Penn Station. Now he, too, is getting on board the ASTM train.

‘It’s just hype’

Nearly all the public gures praising ASTM’s proposal caution that they are not formally endorsing it and have not seen any detailed nancial plan. Instead, they are compelled by the company’s vision of improving Penn Station without needing to relocate the huge arena on top of it.

Peter Cipriano, ASTM’s senior vice president, sketched out the company’s plans during an April town hall sponsored by Community Board 5. A public-private partnership with the state would have ASTM front “a large amount of capital” to acquire the eater at Madison Square Garden and raise money for construction through a mixture of loans and federal grants.

ASTM would pay for Penn Station’s rebuild as well as any cost overruns and then manage the station, at taxpayer expense, for a set period—50 years, for example. ASTM has not speci ed whether the payments it eventually collects would come from local governments or from Amtrak, which owns Penn Station.

“We are really placing a huge bet by saying, ‘We have done an enormous amount of diligence, we’ve designed what we believe will be an excellent passenger experience, and we know we’ll deliver it at this cost,’” Cipriano said in April.

Crain’s reported last month that ASTM was nearing a $1 billion deal to buy the theater and a service road from MSG, but the Garden has not announced any agreement.

Gov. Kathy Hochul has been silent on the ASTM plan but could ultimately decide its fate given her control over the MTA. Until recently, Hochul pushed a plan initiated by her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo, which would have allowed the developer Vornado Realty Trust to build several new o ce towers

around the station, creating tax revenue that the state would use to fund its own renovation of Penn.

But Hochul recently conceded that the state-led plan appears to be doomed by Vornado’s decision to halt new o ce development as it contends with plummeting demand—creating an apparent opening for a rival bid.

Appreciation for the ASTM plan is not universal: e Metropolitan Transportation Authority remains skeptical, as does the watchdog group Reinvent Albany. at group’s executive director, John Kaehny, harshly criticized the plan in an interview with Crain’s, slamming its lack of details (including how much it will cost taxpayers) and ASTM’s e ort to frame their idea as the only way forward for improving Penn Station.

“What ASTM is trying to do is hype a story in which there’s no competition, in which there’s this inevitability of, ‘We’ve got this great idea, and you should give us the money,’” he said. “From our perspective, it’s just hype.”

And ASTM’s proposal would do nothing to expand the rail capacity at Penn Station, a long-held goal among transit planners. at multibillion-dollar concept, known as Penn South, would entail bulldozing the block south of Madison Square Garden to build new tracks and platforms.

Key players

ASTM, the second-largest toll road operator in the world, is an obscure name in the city compared with Vornado. But the rm has leaned on two well-connected executives to sell its proposal: Patrick Foye, a former MTA and Port Authority executive, and Cipriano, a former infrastructure advisor to ex-U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. Both joined ASTM’s North America division in 2021, with Foye serving as CEO. e presence of both men has given the Penn Station plan credibility, elected o cials say.

“Pat Foye is a well-known gure in Albany. He was in the middle of a lot of these conversations,” said state Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal, who represents the Penn Station area and has met twice with ASTM’s team. “ ere is a certain level of trust he’s established with state legislators—that’s a huge advantage he has.”

ASTM has been positioning itself to take on bigger public-private partnerships in the U.S. since 2017, when its subsidiary, Itinera, merged with the New York-based construction rm Halmar International. It scored a victory last year when Halmar won a $1.85 billion contract from the MTA to design and build Penn Station Access, which will extend Metro-North trains to Manhattan’s West Side for the rst time by 2027.

Chris Larsen, the CEO of Halmar, is a proli c donor in New York politics. He has given more than $140,000 to various campaigns since 2018, including $69,700 to Hochul’s campaigns since she became governor in 2021, putting him

in the top tier of her campaign donors, state records show. He donated $50,000 to the New York State Democratic Committee in 2022 as well.

As for lobbying, ASTM began paying BerlinRosen a relatively modest $5,000 per month at the beginning of the year, soon along with an $8,000-a-month deal with Brown & Weinraub. e two rms have lobbied Hochul’s o ce, six state legislators, City Council Member Erik Bottcher, Levine, and a member of the neighborhood community board on the Penn Station proposal, records show.

A mid-meeting hire

e people intrigued by ASTM’s proposal say they are drawn to its substance, not only its style.

Assemblyman Tony Simone, whose district includes Penn Station and is one of the legislators ASTM has been lobbying, said the proposal addresses many of the concerns he had about the Vornado plan, which he staunchly opposed. It does not depend on revenue from o ce towers, for instance, and it addresses the need for an Eighth Avenue entrance.

“ASTM felt they had the best plan, and there was a void,” he said. “ASTM took advantage of it. at said, we still want to see the nal plan. I want to hear what the community thinks.”

Supporters also say ASTM, which declined to comment for this story, has already done more than other rms that have trotted out Penn proposals over the years to work seriously with the many parties that hold stakes in the station, from Amtrak to MSG to the states of New York and New Jersey—although none of those entities has voiced public support thus far.

Elizabeth Goldstein, head of the Municipal Art Society, is another onetime proponent of moving MSG who changed positions after meeting with ASTM in recent weeks.

“We have been disappointed by what seems to us to be a lack of coordination,” Goldstein said of past proposals. “We were relieved by the ASTM proposal because they’ve been talking to many of these parties.”

e veteran architect Vishaan Chakrabarti, whose own glassy Penn proposal attracted attention

in past years, is doing more than just supporting the plan. Near the end of a meeting with ASTM’s leadership this spring, the company surprised him with a job o er, which he accepted after a sleepless night, he said in an interview with Crain’s Chakrabarti’s rm is now contributing to the design of the future train hall alongside HOK, ASTM’s rst architectural partner. He offered a wonkier reason for the momentum behind ASTM: the sophistication of its design plans.

“What’s di erent is the level of due diligence that’s been done,” he said.

“An enormous amount of structural engineering, mechanical engineering, how it impacts the public realm.”

Private conversations have already led to changes in the plan. Wright said ASTM had initially focused only on renovating the Eighth Avenue side of Penn Station, which has the most space for a new train hall but is used by fewer commuters than the block’s other sides. In response to feedback, ASTM broadened its focus to include the midblock gap between the Garden and the o ce building at 2 Penn Plaza, where the rm now envisions building a second train hall, Wright said.

e sense of a ticking clock has contributed to energy behind the project as well. To have a shot at federal funding to renovate Penn, several ASTM supporters say the state should pick a project within the next year and a half, while New York’s own Chuck Schumer is Senate Majority Leader and noted rail fan President Joe Biden remains in the White House.

“We’d be taking a big risk if we just sit back and wait,” said Levine.

‘Adding cost without bene t’

As for the all-important MTA, CEO Janno Lieber criticized ASTM’s proposal as a waste of cash in late April, only to clarify weeks later that he is “not against it.” But Jamie Torres-Springer, head of construction and development for the MTA, cast further doubt on ASTM’s vision during the agency’s board meeting last month, saying not enough passengers use Penn Station’s west entrances to justify the $1-to-$2 billion it would cost to build the new train halls.

“We don’t think that’s a good use of public resources,” he said. “Our

focus is on xing existing Penn, and not the place where far fewer passengers go.”

And while the city and the MTA want to force Madison Square Garden to help pay for Penn upgrades as a condition for staying put atop the station, Torres-Springer noted that ASTM would do the opposite— paying MSG for the privilege of demolishing their theater.

“We’re adding cost without much bene t,” Torres-Springer said. “It’s not a proposal that we think, on the face of it, is particularly interesting.”

A closely watched report released this month by the MTA, Amtrak and New Jersey Transit concluded that the Garden is not “compatible” with future upgrades to Penn Station. But it also found that MSG could make itself compatible by handing over land it owns along Eighth Avenue and between the arena and 2 Penn Plaza to the railroads—the same two areas being eyed by ASTM for its own plan.

Amtrak, for its part, “looks forward to learning more about ASTM’s proposed design and evaluating how it could contribute to our goals” of improving the station, a spokesperson said.

John Lindsay, a spokesperson for Hochul, did not specify whether the governor has a stance on the ASTM idea. In a statement, he said Hochul is “committed to ensuring we have a world-class Penn Station that improves the commuter experience and puts New Yorkers rst.”

Reinvent Albany’s Kaehny took issue with the idea that ASTM would have to be the rm to carry out this plan even if it is the one that ultimately moves forward.

“ASTM could have a great design proposal. It could be wonderful, but why the heck is ASTM the only rm that could build that?” he asked. “Why is it inevitable, and why would it be assumed that, if that idea was pursued, the MTA would have to hire ASTM rather than have a regular procurement bidding competition?”

Still, ASTM proponents say the reception to its plan has been heartening. Chakrabarti said that “people are tired of the acrimony” after years of failed proposals to reimagine Penn Station.

“ is is the most optimistic I’ve been in two decades that something great could happen here,” he said. ■

“THERE’S A CERTAIN LEVEL OF TRUST [ASTM’S NORTH AMERICA CEO] ESTABLISHED WITH STATE LEGISLATORS— THAT’S A HUGE ADVANTAGE”

ITALIAN DEVELOPER ASTM is in talks to buy the service road between Madison Square Garden and an adjacent of ce building, where it would build a grand new Penn Station train hall.

ALAN VAN CAPELLE

GREW UP Commack, Long Island

RESIDES Lower East Side

EDUCATION Bachelors in public policy analysis, the City University of New York; master of public administration, New York University’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service

FAMILY MAN Van Capelle has been with his husband, Matthew, for 21 years. The couple has two young sons, a 9-year-old and an 11-year-old, whom they adopted at birth.

CELEBRATED HERITAGE

Proudly Jewish, van Capelle is active in Jewish civil rights advocacy and was honored by the Jewish Daily Forward as one of the publication’s Forward 50 in 2013.

THE SPOT Van Capelle’s favorite spot for people watching on the High Line is the Diller-von Furstenberg Sundeck, where visitors can splash around in the water feature.

Making the High Line accessible

The executive director of the nonpro t behind the elevated park wants to promote a sense of belonging for all visitors and will soon help unveil the Moynihan Connector pedestrian bridge

BY CAROLINE SPIVACK

Alan van Capelle can recall the awe he felt the rst time he visited the High Line. It was back when the linear park on Manhattan’s West Side opened in 2009. At the time, van Capelle was working as the executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda, a political group that advocated for LGBTQ rights, at an o ce just a few blocks from the elevated walkway.

He was struck by the High Line’s gardens and vistas, but also by how it quickly became a space where New Yorkers from all walks of life could mingle. Van Capelle had no inkling then that 14 years later he’d lead the nonpro t behind the space, but the sense of wonder and belonging he felt have stayed with him and are feelings he now seeks to promote for those who visit the park.

“For me, I think having something beautiful and accessible to every single New Yorker is really im-

portant,” said van Capelle, who in January became the executive director of the Friends of the High Line.

e linear park, which runs a mile and a half through the Meatpacking District to Hudson Yards, is a draw for tourists but is also the local green space for a mix of city dwellers. Whether a visitor lives in a luxury co-op or a public housing complex, van Capelle wants the pull of the High Line to be the same: “to feel like they belong.”

‘Building community’

You could say that is a throughline of van Capelle’s career. From his days in college studying public policy at the City University of New York, he says, he was “bitten by the social justice bug.”

While in school he began working in labor. At 20, he bargained his rst contract after the negotiator for workers at the Jersey City Medical Center suddenly quit. He went on to work with a mix of unions repre-

senting hospital workers, doormen, janitors. e goal was always the same: to ensure an essential, often “invisible” workforce could build full lives, he said.

At the Empire State Pride Agenda, where he started working in 2002, van Capelle and the group’s members were an Albany xture, pushing for the legalization of same-sex marriage, which came to pass in 2011. He did a brief stint as deputy comptroller for public affairs under former City Comptroller John Liu, before switching tracks to run Bend the Arc, a Jewish social justice advocacy group. More recently, van Capelle served as president and chief executive of the Education Alliance, where creating a level playing eld for New Yorkers again took center stage.

“ e more you nd connective tissue, the more you end up building community,” he said.

It is that same ethos of community building that van Capelle says drives his work at Friends of the

Highline. He entered the role ve months ago and says he’s spent much of that time as a sponge, soaking up expertise and input from the sta and surrounding communities.

One of his rst initiatives was to analyze concessions sold at the elevated park to set price points within reach of everyone. “If you’re selling a $20 empanada, we’re communicating to people who belongs on the High Line and who doesn’t,” he said.

Come June 21, the High Line will open the striking Alaskan yellow cedar bridge known as the Moynihan Connector, which will create a seamless link from Penn Station and Moynihan Train Hall to the High Line at West 30th Street and 10th Avenue—what van Capelle sees as yet another way to make the park accessible to a mix of people.

“We’ve become a very polarized city,” said van Capelle, “and I think the High Line is one of the places where people are able to come together.” ■

ALAN VAN CAPELLE is executive director of the Friends of the High Line.