Crain's New York Business, September 4, 2023

CITY’S USE OF OPIOID SETTLEMENT THREATENED BY LAX OVERSIGHT, LIMITED FUNDS

By Amanda D’Ambrosio

New York state in the next 18 years will distribute up to $2.6 billion in settlements from lawsuits against opioid manufacturers and distributors including Johnson & Johnson, CVS and Walgreens over their role in the opioid epidemic that has claimed the lives of at least 30,000 New Yorkers. Meantime, New York City will distribute its own, separate settlement of $286 million.

Despite the in ux of settlement money, the opioid epidemic has persisted in the city, with overdose deaths rising almost every year since 2010. While no one expected an overnight x, watchdog groups say e orts to reduce overdose deaths have been further threatened by a lack of transparency in the city’s spending of settlement funds and the reality that the money simply is not enough to make a dent in the nation’s most pressing public health crisis.

e city’s approach to managing its funds stands in contrast to the state’s, because it secured separate settlement agreements in the past few years that give the city more leeway. While the state has appointed an advisory board and reported on its spending, the city has kept conversations about how to spend the funds behind closed doors. Watchdogs say that’s a problem.

“ ere's a lot of wiggle room in there [on what] to spend the

A look at the rm behind the city’s migrant contracts

By Caroline Spivack

City o cials early this year hired DocGo, a Midtown-based health care company and regular city contractor, to shepherd migrants upstate. en reports surfaced in late July that migrants had been misled with promises about nding work and mistreated once they arrived at hotels near Albany and Bu alo.

Now, Attorney General Letitia James, among others, is investigating whether DocGo violated state or federal laws in its treatment of people in its care.

e city awarded the for-pro t rm a $432 million no-bid contract beginning in May, a procurement shortcut made possible

when Mayor Eric Adams declared a state of emergency in October over the ongoing migrant crisis.

e company previously contracted with the city to provide Covid-19 testing, vaccinations and homeless health services under the umbrella of Ambulnz, a DocGo subsidiary.

Despite a lack of a track record with immigration services, DocGo’s arrangement with the city requires the company to cover a variety of asylum seekers’ needs, including transportation, lodging, case management and medical care.

DocGo has provided shelter

and services to 4,000 people in 28 hotels, according to city o cials.

In addition to the no-bid contract awarded by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, the city Health + Hospitals system this summer extended an existing migrant services contract with DocGo for $311 million.

If the company manages to reap the maximum value of the two contracts—more than $740 million—it would dramatically outpace the $440 million in

A no-bid $432 million agreement is only one component of DocGo’s dealings with New York City that are under re from elected of cials

MSG about to land 5-year permit as Penn Station rebuild looms

By Nick Garber

Madison Square Garden will get a new five-year permit allowing it to stay atop Penn Station, but the arena’s owners will be required to make improvements for pedestrians that could bring the aging facility more in line with a redesign of Penn Station, City Council members announced recently.

The council settled on a term shorter than the 10-year length recommended by the City Planning Commission—although it scraps some conditions that the commission sought to impose on the Garden—and is far more stringent than the permanent permit the Garden’s owners had sought. It is also shorter than the 10-year extension the council last granted in 2013, as urgency builds for reconstructing Penn Station in the near future.

The deal, unveiled after weeks of negotiations between the council, the Garden’s owners and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, was quickly approved by two council committees Aug. 28. The arena’s owners immediately condemned the decision as “shortsighted” in a statement, but it is nonetheless expected to be approved by the full council in mid-September.

The Garden’s new permit answers a key question in the ongoing debate over how to rebuild Penn Station. It adds to the likelihood that any grand new train hall will need to be built below the hulking arena—a fact that city and state policymakers have come to accept, even as some transit and community advocates continue to argue that the Garden must relocate for Penn to reach its full potential.

Erik Bottcher, the Midtown council member who represents the Garden area and played a leading role in negotiations, said the recommendation is geared toward resolving the “use conflict” between pedestrian access to Penn Station and the Garden’s loading systems—an arcane, thorny issue that played a major role in convincing transit officials that the arena poses a serious threat to the safety and operations of the station below it. Within six months of council approval, the Garden will need to submit a plan that would clear its parked trucks from certain streets and limit delivery hours to help improve pedestrian access.

“Five years will go by very quick-

ly, I believe. But I actually don’t think that we’ll need the entire five years,” Bottcher said Aug. 28.

Although the council angered MSG by imposing a short permit, lawmakers made some changes that seem to benefit the arena. The council dispensed with City Planning’s requirement that the Garden plan to make itself “compatible” with a redesigned Penn Station in favor of narrower language about loading.

During negotiations, Bottcher had argued for the simple fiveyear permit while both the MTA and the council speaker’s office favored a two-year permit that could be renewed for another eight years if the Garden showed it was cooperating with the Penn Station redesign, or just three years if no such progress was made, according to a person with knowledge of the negotiations.

‘The simplest way’

Bottcher, speaking to reporters after the first committee vote, defended the basic five-year permit as “the simplest way, with the least risk of complications.”

Other changes to City Planning’s recommendation include removing a stipulation that the Garden pay for some largely cosmetic improvements to the area surrounding the arena, including seating, trees and glass canopies over its Eighth Avenue entrances.

Still, MSG Entertainment, the Dolan family-owned company that officially owns the Garden, said in a statement Aug. 28 that it was “disappointed” by the council’s decision.

“A short-term special permit is not in anyone’s best interest and undermines the ability to immediately revamp Penn Station and the surrounding area,” the company said. “The committees have done a grave disservice to New Yorkers today, in a shortsighted move that will further contribute to the erosion of the city—that’s true now and will be true five years from now.”

Layla Law-Gisiko, a local community board member who has long advocated for moving Madison Square Garden in order to remake Penn Station, praised the relatively short new permit as an “incredible” outcome.

“Five years will compel everyone to negotiate in good faith,” she said.

The city has been keen to use the permit process as leverage

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over the Garden, as local officials describe a narrow window of opportunity to redesign Penn Station in the next few years. Favorable factors include serious planning at the state level, temporarily low train volume at Penn thanks to the recent opening of Grand Central Madison, and the possibility of winning federal funding with President Joe Biden in office.

Lawmakers have approached this year’s permit process differently than they did a decade ago, when the Garden’s initial 50-year permit expired. In 2013, the council granted a 10-year extension on the condition that the Garden take that time to find a new location— but MSG’s owners disregarded that requirement, and lawmakers now acknowledge the arena seems likely to stay put.

The Garden, for its part, has touted the arena’s cultural and economic impact and argued that a permanent permit would help future efforts to rebuild Penn, by assuring rail agencies that their planning would not be disrupted by the arena’s sudden departure.

The council vote will mark the end of the Garden’s monthslong quest for a new permit. It got off to a rocky start in April, when a local community board, in a symbolic vote, said the Garden should be given only three years and forced to make a serious plan to move.

But the next two stakeholders to weigh in on MSG’s permit—Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, followed by the City Planning Commission—both recommended that the Garden should stay in place and that its owners, the Dolan family, be forced to cooperate on a future Penn Station redesign.

Levine, in his report, threw his weight behind a rival Penn Station plan being pushed by Italian developer ASTM, which has complicated the state’s efforts to stick with its own plan. Both plans involve building expansive, new light-filled train halls below the Garden and in the mid-block area between Seventh and Eighth avenues that is now occupied by an unused driveway.

But ASTM’s plan, which seems to enjoy the support of the Garden’s owners, differs by also proposing a second new train hall on Eighth Avenue in place of the current Theater at Madison Square Garden, which ASTM would buy from MSG. The state-run MTA has been openly hostile to ASTM’s bid.

DETAILS

SEPT. 20

Council sides with 600,000 commuters

With mSG votes, the stars are finally aligning to build a dignified commuter hub at penn Station

For the first time, the interests of Penn Station’s 600,000 daily commuters took precedence over the wishes of Madison Square Garden and its owner, James Dolan.

Two City Council committees voted Aug. 28 to grant MSG an operating permit for five years, with the full council expected to approve it in mid-September. The Garden had asked for a permit in perpetuity, while the City Planning Commission and the Manhattan borough president thought 10 years was enough.

general’s office. Perhaps most importantly, since 2013 New Yorkers have learned they don’t have to settle for shabby public space.

LaGuardia Airport has been rebuilt and now is rated the best new airport in the world. The Moynihan Train Hall shows what a dignified rail hub can look like, and the grandly ambitious new Mario Cuomo Bridge came with pedestrian and bicycle lanes. The Second Avenue subway finally opened after decades of fits and starts.

Aaron Elstein

City Council member Erik Bottcher, who represents the Garden neighborhood, said granting the short-term permit was the best way to ensure the western hemisphere’s largest rail hub is rebuilt.

“All the stars are aligned to come up with something really great at Penn Station and we have a oncein-a-lifetime opportunity,” he said at a press briefing after the first committee vote. “New Yorkers have been waiting for six decades for relief from the cramped, drab, confusing Penn Station. We don’t want to wait. We want it now.”

Now, I understand there might be a little gremlin of doubt knocking on your door saying you’ve heard this all before.

It’s true that in 2013 Mayor Michael Bloomberg pressured Dolan to move the Garden so that a new Penn Station could emerge from the arena’s basement. The City Council voted to extend MSG’s permit for just 10 years so it could figure out a new location. The Garden, of course, was never evicted.

But over the past 10 years, some important facts on the ground have changed.

Yet the incredibly busy train station in Midtown remains a “hellhole,” as Gov. Kathy Hochul described it.

Dolan likes the Garden exactly where it is. But his own staff noted at a recent community board meeting that he has options to move the arena, starting with the site where the Hotel Pennsylvania stood across the street. There is also space in Hudson Yards.

Cost will surely be an issue, but then again, the Yankees and Mets managed to build new ballparks by negotiating property-tax exemptions that last until the 2040s. The Garden has an even better deal: It has enjoyed a blanket and perpetual property-tax exemption since 1982, an extraordinary benefit that has saved the owners more than $900 million over the years.

Assuming a new Garden generates more revenue than the existing one, its assessed value would rise and the tax benefit becomes even more valuable to Dolan.

Join us for a live interview with Andrew Kimball, President & CEO, NYC Economic Development Corp. He’ll share his priorities and outlook on the New York City economy, where the economy is heading, and how the EDC envisions the future for public-private partnerships.

Location:

Global warming makes investment in public transportation more urgent, especially while we have an Amtrak fan in the White House and a Congress that approved hundreds of billions for infrastructure. Dolan is an even more polarizing figure than before, and his practice of using facial-recognition technology to boot out unwanted ticket-holders drew the attention of the attorney

Dolan isn’t averse to spending on new arenas. He just spent $2.3 billion to build the MSG Sphere, a cutting-edge entertainment palace about to open in Las Vegas. He’s not eager to spend like that again, he said on a recent conference call, but he is interested in partners building Spheres in other cities.

“We’re looking at more of a franchise-type model, right, in terms of constructing the Spheres,” he said. “We’ve done a lot of innovation in the construction area...”

That sounds like an invitation to developers to design a new arena in Manhattan.

City Council member Erik Bottcher said granting MSG a short-term operating permit was the best way to ensure Penn Station (above) is rebuilt. | BLOOmBERG

the Aug. 21 Notable Leaders in Accounting, Tax & Audit, the profile of FORVIS partner Rick Cole should have said he serves as the market leader for the nonprofit, education and public sector.

180 Central Park South, NYC CrainsNewYork.com/ pb_kimball

Pet parenthood surges in Long Island City, and Fido-friendly businesses are lapping it up

for residents’ four-legged friends

Long Island City has gone to the dogs. And cats. And possibly even hamsters.

e American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals reports that approximately 23 million Americans adopted a pet during the pandemic. And a boom in housing construction in the Queens neighborhood in the past ve years has included a large number of pet-friendly apartment buildings, according to research rm CoStar.

e Partnership for Long Island City, the local economic development agency, has found that the number of dog licenses granted in the neighborhood ballooned 184% between 2016 and 2022, reaching 2,786 in 2022. e number of dog licenses in western Queens overall shot up 171% during that time frame, the partnership found, hitting 7,782 in 2022.

Pet-service businesses such as veterinary o ces and grooming salons have taken notice and have been popping up in the area.

By some counts, as of August there are 30 pet-oriented businesses in a neighborhood of approximately 60,000 residents.

On 23rd Street, there is Dog Island City, which provides boarding services.

Over on Jackson Avenue is Pet Island, which sells pet supplies. City Vet has brought its services to Vernon Boulevard. And on 11th Street is Dogo Pet Fashions, which sells dog accessories and apparel.

Pet-friendly businesses

Laura Rothrock, president of the Partnership for Long Island City, said that in addition to the pet-centric companies around town, “a lot of businesses also became very pet-friendly, so they allow dogs or have special events or promotions for dogs.”

Another business taking part in the Long Island City pet bonanza is InstaVet Technologies, which provides emergency vet services. After starting out as a mobile vet scheduling app in 2014, the company pivoted to a service that worked with vets to do house calls. Its founder and CEO, Elijah Kliger, says Long Island City provided a small enough area in which to test the rm’s new direction.

In 2016 InstaVet partnered with real estate developer Rockrose, which owns several rental buildings in Long Island City, to o er house calls as an amenity at the landlord’s pet-friendly properties in the neighborhood, Kliger said.

e partnership gave Kliger’s company exposure to approximately 10,000 pet-friendly apartments in the neighbor-

hood, but the rm had to stop making house calls during the pandemic.

Veterinary care

e company pivoted again, opening a 4,500-square-foot veterinary emergency facility at 44-16 23rd St. Kliger employs 20 workers, and there are 10 veterinarians in InstaVet’s network. e company has now resumed house calls, but only for end-oflife care.

It wouldn’t be an understatement to say pet owners want what’s best for their fourlegged friends. And, Rothrock says, having so many businesses in the neighborhood that cater to Fido, Mittens and Spot o ers bene ts in the form of camaraderie and convenience.

“Pets are really important to people. ey are like a family member,” Rothrock said. “So it is important that when dogs go to a vet or a doggy day care, that it’s someone they can really trust. If it’s local, that is even better.”

Puddle, a French bulldog, and Jolene, a goldendoodle, play at a dog park in Long Island City. | BUCK ENNIS

The Queens neighborhood has seen an uptick in demand for services

By Mario Marroquin

“Pets are really important to people. They are like a family member.”

Laura Rothrock, Partnership for Long Island City

Turtle Bay townhouse of late Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim finds a taker within weeks

the seven-bedroom property is in a neighborhood that was expected to have a big year in 2023

By C. J. Hughes

The year began with predictions that Turtle Bay would be hot in 2023. A recent deal suggests the prognosticators might have been onto something.

The estate of Stephen Sondheim sold the late composer’s townhouse in the Midtown-adjacent Manhattan neighborhood within just a few weeks of listing it.

$7M

The seven-bedroom, 5,700-square-foot property at 246 E. 49th St., which is between Second and Third avenues, went into contract the week of Aug. 14, according to

according to StreetEasy. The sale price won’t be clear until the home’s deed hits city records. But Compass does not appear to have reduced the price for the five-floor, prewar townhouse during the brief time it was on the market.

The property is in a one-block historic district called Turtle Bay Gardens that has 20 Civil War-era townhouses that share a common back yard.

the Olshan Luxury Market Report, which tracks high-end sales week to week. Brokerage Compass listed the property July 11 for $7 million,

Critically acclaimed and award-winning Sondheim, whose decades-long Broadway career spawned smashes including Sweeney Todd, Company and Into the Woods, as well as tunes such as “Send in the Clowns,” died in November 2021 at his country house in Connecticut at age 91. He bought the townhouse in 1960 for an unknown price with proceeds from his hit Gypsy, Olshan said. The home, which Sondheim shared with his husband, Jeffrey Romley, was the only Manhattan townhouse in the luxury bracket to trade the week of Aug. 14, Olshan added. Though several news reports identified the home as Sondheim’s, Michael Franco, the Compass agent with the listing, did not explicitly mention the Broadway connection in

the ad for the property, which has three and a half baths, a piano-adorned studio and solarium and numerous stained-glass windows. It sits inside a one-block historic district, Turtle Bay Gardens, whose 20 Civil War-era townhous-

es share a common back yard.

The district, created in 1966 and one of New York’s first, represents “a fine example of cooperation and understanding among neighbors,” according to the area’s official plaque. Franco did not respond to a request for comment.

At the end of 2022, with subway ridership still below prepandemic levels, StreetEasy predicted that New Yorkers would seek out homes with in walking distance of their offices, which was expected to benefit Turtle Bay. Search traffic seemed

to buttress the claim. The neighborhood, which sits east of Lexington Avenue and between East 42nd and East 53rd streets, saw the biggest increase in housing searches from 2021 to 2022, with a 47% leap, the company said at the time.

A middle-of-the-pack pricing strategy may have also helped sell 246 E. 49th St. According to brokerage Douglas Elliman, the median price in the second quarter in Manhattan for luxury properties, or those in the top 10% of all transactions, was $6.7 million.

Acclaimed club in West Village club resumes paying rent in a good sign for the city’s nightlife

By Aaron Elstein

West Village club Le Poisson Rouge has resumed paying rent, an encouraging sign for the city’s nightlife sector, which still hasn’t recovered its prepandemic mojo.

The acclaimed independent venue at 158 Bleecker St., which opened in 2008, went dark in March 2020. Even after reopening in August 2021, it didn’t pay rent for more than a year, according to Fitch Ratings.

But now the music club is not only paying rent, it is also in discussions to settle outstanding bal-

co, Radiohead drummer Philip Selway and a Taylor Swift dance party. It also regularly hosts art exhibitions, burlesque shows, movies and drag queen bingo nights.

It isn’t clear how much the club owes or exactly when rent payments resumed. Neither co-founder David Handler nor the club’s marketing department returned emails seeking comment.

Improving fortunes

Le Poisson Rouge’s financial revival is a sign of improving fortunes for the city’s arts and entertainment impresarios, even though business remains depressed by certain metrics.

The revival in concerts and shows appears to be spilling over to restaurants catering to tourists and the pre-theater crowd.

ances and extend its lease, Fitch said in a report last month.

The club has a capacity of about 700, with upcoming events including singer/songwriter Ani DiFran-

Employment in the arts and entertainment industry, at 88,200 in June, remained 10% below 2019 levels, according to the New York State Comptroller’s Office. Attendance at Broadway shows for the season that ended in May came in 17% below 2018-19 levels and gross revenue 14% lower. The Public Theater and Brooklyn Academy

of Music have let go staff, while the Metropolitan Opera will produce fewer shows in the upcoming season than before.

But in the past few weeks business appears to have improved.

Attendance at Broadway shows for the Fourth of July holiday week was 99.6% of 2019’s level, the comptroller’s office said.

Officials at Madison Square Garden said last month that they would produce 185 shows at this season’s Radio City’s Christmas spectacular, four more than last year, because ticket sales are running 40% higher than a year ago.

“Both demand and tourism are making a more complete return post-pandemic,” MSG Entertainment’s Chief Financial Officer, Da-

vid Byrnes, said on a conference call Aug. 18.

The revival in concerts and shows appears to be spilling over to restaurants catering to tourists and the pre-theater crowd. The owner of the Bryant Park Grill said revenue at New York locations rose by

4% last quarter, to $12 million, and was 2% higher than the equivalent period in 2019. This fiscal year, sales at Ark Restaurants’ local locations are running 17% higher over 2022.

“New York sales have been very good,” CEO Michael Weinstein said on a conference call last month.

List price for the townhouse of late composer Stephen Sondheim

Stephen Sondheim; 246 E. 49th St. | GEttY mAGES, COmpASS

Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker St. | WIKIpEDIA

MTA must not risk congestion pricing by ‘double-tolling’ drivers

How much should cars pay to enter Manhattan? is question, at the very heart of the congestion pricing plan set to be implemented next year, is proving to be one of the thornier political quandaries New York bureaucrats have had to grapple with in recent years. After the state Legislature passed legislation in 2019 to permit tolling south of 60th Street, the MTA spent several years securing federal approval and trying to beat back opposition from New Jersey politicians.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy is still suing to scuttle congestion pricing altogether—the Democrat doesn’t want New Jersey commuters to pay extra to enter Manhattan—but his chances of success aren’t high. What he can do, however, is continue to foment backlash to congestion pricing, perhaps joining with Democrats in the outer boroughs and the surrounding suburbs to eventually undermine the pricing scheme.

As Charles Komano , the leading transportation analyst, recently

argued, congestion pricing must be implemented correctly to survive opposition from Murphy and his many allies.

While much of the opposition remains disingenuous, critics aren’t without merit. In a pre-Covid world, charging vehicles to enter Manhattan’s booming business corridors was a no-brainer. However, New York’s economic recovery from the pandemic has been gradual and uneven, with outer-borough businesses nding it much easier to return to full strength. e rise of remote work has emptied out Midtown and depressed various downtown enterprises. Commuting patterns have changed permanently.

Still, congestion remains a great concern on Manhattan streets; some New Yorkers got into the habit of buying cars to skip pandemic-era subway rides and now want to keep enjoying that comfort. Truck tra c, driven by the endless surge of online deliveries, clogs commercial corridors from sunrise to sundown.

New York desperately needs to

incentivize using public transportation. Congestion pricing can help and can o er critical funding for an MTA that can no longer rely on pre2020 ridership numbers.

Critics rightly point out that MTA o cials have a long history of wasting the revenue they hoover up— projects are routinely over budget, and New York construction costs, compared to what gets spent in London or Tokyo, are astronomical—and it will be up to state lawmakers to scrutinize where the tolling revenue actually ends up. But starving the MTA won’t produce better policy outcomes.

e MTA is considering imposing an extra toll on the tunnels that charge drivers to enter Manhattan. is would mean an automobile coming through the Hugh Carey Tunnel between Brooklyn and Manhattan or the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels from New Jersey would pay the current toll in addition to the new congestion charge.

Suddenly, a New Jersey motorist must reckon with the normal $14.75 peak hour toll and $15 congestion fee. e same would be true of a driver coming from Brook-

lyn who would pay the current $7 toll and the new congestion fee.

At least one member of the MTA’s congestion pricing team believes exempting these sorts of New Jersey and outer-borough drivers could require sticking other Manhattan-bound drivers with an additional $9 congestion tab. Komano and most transportation experts think the MTA’s math is wildly o , however. ey believe there’s no need to double-toll the tunnels and that a simple 15-9-3 pricing plan—capping the peak hour congestion toll at $15, reducing it to $9 on weekends and holidays, and $3 on various o -peak hours—would generate the $1 billion a year the MTA requires to hit its revenue targets.

e reality is that double-tolling the East River and Hudson River tunnels would incentivize the same sort of commuting patterns that plague outer-borough neighborhoods today. To avoid the Hugh Carey Tunnel, many drivers opt to stay on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and take the free crossings at the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges. In a scenario where motorists pay a $7 toll and a $15 conges-

WE'RE RAISING HEALTH FOR MORE PEOPLE IN NEW YORK THAN ANYONE

tion surcharge to drive through a tunnel into Manhattan, they’ll also decide to head to the cheaper option at the bridges. Toll-shopping would continue to blight the waterfront neighborhoods of the city. e greater question is why the MTA is insisting it must double-toll the tunnels. Going forward with such a plan would give credence to Murphy and other politicians who want to kill congestion pricing altogether. It amounts to sabotaging what is still a very good idea.

Quick takes

◗ Gov. Kathy Hochul is correct to call out the Biden administration for its slow response to the migrant crisis.

Temporary Protected Status authorization for immigrants from Venezuela would go a long way toward getting migrants out of shelters and into jobs to support their families.

◗ Hochul doesn’t want New York City’s right-to-shelter law to apply statewide, but it should—and it would take the burden o city shelters.

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

With more experts across all specialties working together, we’re Raising Health for more people in New York than anybody.

MORE EXPERTS. DEEPER INSIGHTS. NEWER BREAKTHROUGHS.

Ross Barkan

A plan the MTA is considering would force users of the Hugh Carey Tunnel to pay a regular toll and the new congestion charge. | BLOOMBERG

Developer thinks office-to-residential conversions, unique hotel perks have a big future in New York

Two ideas at the center of New York real estate these days are office-to-residential conversions and adding new types of entertainment options to the city’s hotels. Developer Bart Blatstein has plenty of experience with both. The Tower Investments CEO recently installed a massive water park at his Showboat Atlantic City hotel and has turned several office buildings into residences in his native Philadelphia. He believes there are several lessons from these projects for New York as the city struggles to figure out the future of its office and hotel properties in the wake of the pandemic. |

Interview by Eddie Small

CEO of tower Investments

68

Grew up: philadelphia

Why did you decide to add a water park to the Showboat?

This is a huge former casino, and it’s just filled with families. Everywhere you turn, there’s families. It became apparent that an indoor water park, which is year-round, would be a great fit. We built a huge arcade to start things off, and then we added a 40,000-square-foot indoor go-kart track in the lobby, and it was incredibly well received. And then a little over a month ago, we opened up the water park, and it’s been a kick. It’s a happy place.

Is there any concern that the casinos planned for downstate New York will hurt business in Atlantic City?

Everybody thought it was inevitable that New York would get more casinos, and the strong will survive. The problem with

Atlantic City casinos is there are some that are very, very old buildings, and in Las Vegas they would be demolished and rebuilt. It’s kind of like, innovate or die. If you don’t change things up, people will get bored going back, and opening up a new restaurant in a casino is not going to move the needle. It takes a lot more than that.

Will unique attractions like water parks and the thrill ride planned for one hotel in Times Square be an important way for hotels to attract business going forward?

Definitely. Everything is shifting to hospitality: taking properties and injecting heart and soul into them. You have to make sure that you give the customer a reason to come. It’d be very difficult in the city because of the cost of real estate, but there are all kinds

of other amenities that can go into these large hotels.

On the other side of real estate, what makes office properties challenging candidates for residential conversions?

The width of the buildings. It doesn’t matter how long the building is, but if it’s more than 70 feet wide, it’s a problem because the apartments become cavernous. The problem with a number of old office buildings is that they’re square as opposed to rectangular. That makes for difficult conversions unless you core out the center or come up with some other creative idea for using that space. You also have to take into account its location, and the replacement cost is outrageous. It’s helpful if you can buy the property very, very cheap.

Are office-to-resi dential conversions a good solution in general for the surplus of office space in the wake of the Covid?

One hundred percent. The conversion of office buildings into residential ones has been ongoing since the ’80s. It hasn’t happened as much in New York, but I’m sure it will. You’ve got a lot of very bright and capable leaders up there who are going to figure it out, and that will also help alleviate the demand for residential space. This is all about what’s missing.

Education: Bachelor’s in history, temple University

Poker face: Blatstein has been running a small, $100 poker game with friends for more than 40 years. they have played almost every version of the game in that timespan, but he says it is more about spending time together than winning money.

Waterworks: Blatstein’s Showboat hotel, which was built in 1987, has a water park that’s not just for fun. It also has two quiet areas where visitors can set up their laptops and get some work done, an acknowledgment from Blatstein that people really can work from anywhere these days.

Most rent-stabilized units don’t stay vacant long: report

By Eddie Small

A new report seeks to shed some much-needed clarity on a pair of hot-button issues: how many of the city’s rent-stabilized apartments are empty and how long they stay that way.

The report from the city’s nonpartisan Independent Budget Office found that fewer than 5% of rent-stabilized apartments are vacant on average, and most of them remain empty for less than a year. These have recently emerged as extremely contentious topics as the city deals with a severe affordable housing crisis and months of record-high rents.

The office estimated that in 2022

2022, while about 13,000 had been empty in 2022 and 2021, according to the report. The IBO could not determine how long the remaining roughly 4,000 apartments had been empty.

The number of empty rent-stabilized units hit its peak in 2021, when almost 60,000 were vacant, the report says. That was the only year since at least 2017 when the vacant number surpassed 5%, and nearly two-thirds of those units had been rented by 2022, according to the report.

The vacancy rate for rent-stabilized units in Manhattan and on Staten Island was 6% last year, while the rate in Brooklyn and Queens was 5% and the rate in Brooklyn was 4%, the report says. Manhattan had the highest number of empty units, at about 14,000, while Staten Island had the lowest, at 421.

estimate how many consecutive years city rent-stabilized units were staying vacant.

not cost-effective to renovate and upgrade apartments that they can’t charge more for in the end.

sands of apartments to stay empty.”

about 92.5% of rent-stabilized apartments, or 800,000, were rented, while 4.9%, or 42,000, were vacant. The remainder were temporarily exempt from rentstabilization rules, meaning they were likely occupied by an owner, employee or nonprofit.

Of the empty units, about 25,000 were newly vacant in

Queens had the highest median rent for vacant units, at $1,857, while the Bronx had the lowest, at $1,400, according to the report.

Landlords register an average of roughly 880,000 apartments per year with New York State Homes and Community Renewal, and IBO examined that data to

The number of empty rent-stabilized apartments in the city has been a source of heated debate, particularly given concerns that landlords are “warehousing” them, or keeping them off the market on purpose following the state’s strict 2019 rent law, which limits how and when they can remove units from rent stabilization, especially after renovations. Landlords have blamed the law for the empty units, saying it is

“The only rational conclusion you can draw from this data is that newer, high-rent apartments in 421-a buildings that were vacant during the pandemic are now being rented because there is high demand for housing,” said Community Housing Improvement Program Executive Director Jay Martin. “The number of overall vacancies should be dramatically lower, but the current laws are forcing thou -

Cea Weaver, campaign coordinator at Housing Justice for All, pushed back on that, arguing that the study showed the 2019 rent law is helping keep rents low and that the crisis of empty rent-stabilized units is overblown.

“These are normal vacancy rates. It’s just not a significant number,” she said, “and for those units that are vacant year over year, it’s simply not that many compared to the overall stock.”

The city’s Independent Budget Office found that fewer than 5% of rent-stabilized apartments are vacant on average, and most remain empty less than a year.

Manhattan apartments. BUCK ENNIS

New York Power Authority bonds upgraded by Moody’s in part over strong fiscal year

By Caroline Spivack

Moody’s has revised the New York Power Authority’s bond outlook to positive from stable and upgraded the bond rating of its affiliate, SFP Transmission, to A1 from A2. The changes stand to impact $2.4 billion worth of debt se curities, according to Moody’s.

The ratings agency noted a strong past fiscal year for NYPA due to higher market energy pric es and positive momentum on two transmission line projects.

NYPA is in a critical moment of transition: In the state budget that passed in May, after four years of debate, lawmakers empowered the state-owned electric utility to play a greater role in New York’s shift to green energy. Additionally, NYPA has a new president and CEO, Jus tin Driscoll, who was able to drop “acting” from his title in July based on an obscure section of state law.

“NYPA serves as an instrumen tality of the state and plays a key part in its economic development goals,” Moody’s wrote in an Aug. 17 report. “[The upgrade] acknowl edges the successful execution of construction for SFP’s two inaugu

Moody’s analysts said the success of two transmission projects—so far both on time and within budget—bodes well for future power line projects.

ral projects and the increasing amount of revenue and cash flow visibility that will emerge and be sustained overtime as transmis sion assets are completed.”

SFP, which NYPA formed in 2021, was created to finance, oper ate and maintain transmission projects and collect revenue. SFP was purposely structured to have its bonds paid by revenue generat ed from the transmission projects.

One undertaking Moody’s cited in its report was SFP’s $484-mil lion Smart Path Reliability Trans mission project, which overhauled 78 miles of state transmission lines to help deliver more renewable energy downstate. Those upgrades went live in May.

Strong earnings

A second effort, known as the Central East Energy Connect Proj ect, is on schedule for completion by the end of this year. The project is set to expand electric capacity along 93 miles of transmission lines in the Mohawk Valley and Capital Region at a cost of $615 million.

Moody’s analysts said the suc cess of both transmission proj ects—so far both on time and with

in budget—bodes well for future power line projects.

Another key bright spot for NYPA was a strong year of earnings due to higher market energy prices and transmission revenues.

Operating revenues and operating income for NYPA in 2022 totaled

Moody’s upgrade. “The improved rating outlooks are critical for the Power Authority to ensure that we can continue leveraging the capital markets to provide affordable, reliable, and green electricity in support of the state’s transition into a clean energy economy,” he in an emailed state

As part of the Climate Leader ship and Community Protection Act passed in 2019, New York must

draw 70% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030 and by 2040 have all of the state’s electricity be carbon-free.

Toward that end, the fiscal 2024 state

failed to keep pace with the state’s

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Power lines in New York. bLOOmberG

Prioritizing protection of bicyclists will help mayor rebuild residents’ trust

In 2014 the city launched Vision Zero, an initiative to reduce tra c deaths and injuries, including for the booming number of New Yorkers who get to school and work via bike. ough well-intentioned, the program has not curbed tra c collisions and fatalities for cyclists. Now the city is on pace to make 2023 the deadliest year for bike riders in 40 years, with 22 cyclists and e-bike riders dying as of mid-August.

While on the campaign trail, Eric Adams promised to champion street safety. is is important because making the city safe for people to get around is key to its attracting and retaining businesses. But as reporter Caroline Spivack reported recently, despite wins when it comes to keeping pedestrians safe, the mayor has been slow to follow through on his pledge to increase the number of protected bike lanes.

As a candidate, Adams said he would implement 300 miles of protected bike lanes in just four years—or an average of 75 miles per year. In his rst year in o ce, however, the Adams administration created just 26.3 miles of protected lanes. De-

partment of Transportation Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez pointed to sta shortages as the reason for the city’s slow rollout of protected bike and bus lanes.

It’s disheartening that the mayor ipopped on installing a protected bike lane planned for the infamously dangerous McGuinness Boulevard in Brooklyn, home to restaurants and other businesses. Adams had approved the upgrades in March, but then his top aide raised concerns about the project after a push reportedly by the family behind the Broadway Stages lm production company, which is headquartered nearby. e Department of Transportation walked back its plans in July.

Essential to local quality of life

e Adams administration ultimately announced that it would proceed with scaled-down safety improvements on McGuinness Boulevard, including protected bike lanes. e new plan has received mixed reactions, and opponents of bike lanes have taken note that the mayor’s

purported focus on street safety is up for discussion, especially if his sta and top advisers get involved.

A mayor who aims to get stu done for the people of New York should stick to his plans, especially ones for which the community has weighed in and given its OK. Flip- opping on matters of public safety is not a good idea for Adams, who is ostensibly looking to rebound from a recent Siena poll that found 64% of the New Yorkers surveyed rate the job he’s doing as just fair or poor. In the same poll, only 32% of respondents said the city is on the right track. Showing that he is committed to putting New Yorkers’ needs and safety rst is a good way to rebuild trust.

As the city pushes to have fewer cars on the roads, that means more bikes will be hitting the streets. Making sure bicyclists are safe as they head to work or to run errands is essential to local quality of life as

well as to helping the city achieve its climate goals. is is not to mention that ensuring that the city is bicycle-friendly will help to attract European and Asian tourists used to zipping around on bikes and make life safer for the deliveristas who bring us our takeout and packages.

To make all this happen, the mayor must live up to his campaign promises. He should show New Yorkers that in getting stu done, he values sticking to his word.

We deserve a high-quality environment in Union Square

Union Square turned into a scene of unrest on Aug. 4 after social-media streamer Kai Cenat said he was holding a big giveaway. Such events underscore an important reality: Our parks and plazas are a vital thread in the fabric of our city. Union Square Park is the backdrop of so much life coursing through New York—the agship Greenmarket, the annual Earth Day Festival, subway commutes and meetings with coworkers and friends.

e melee also provides a clear case for the critical role that our business improvement districts play. In this case, Union Square Partnership team was among the rst to observe that a large queue was forming and the site would need to be secured to safely accommodate a growing crowd.

During and after the event, we worked alongside city and state agencies to monitor the situation, communicate with local stakeholders, clean and repair the park and reach out to local businesses to see if they sustained damage and make them aware of available support. We are proud of our team’s swift action and our partners’ dedication throughout that weekend to make sure the district was open for business the next morning.

is dynamic response and partner collaboration builds on the work that we do

every day stewarding the Union Square14th Street District—from our Clean + Safe program to our greening initiatives and a robust events calendar throughout the year—to ensure the best possible experience for tens of thousands of residents, workers and visitors every day. e work

projects including street murals, public art and holiday lights, Union Square Partnership is simultaneously advancing a bold new vision plan to transform Union Square’s public space—to make the rst major capital investment in the park in almost 15 years and the rst signi cant redesign of the entire square in almost four decades. Unveiled in 2021, the USQNextPlan pointed a way forward, centering on three key improvements: prioritizing accessibility, greening initiatives throughout the district and substantial increases in public open space.

health: It is a leading transit hub, a powerful jobs center, a robust residential community, a center for culture and recreation, a burgeoning tech campus and a shopping destination.

led by Union Square Partnership reaches these individuals daily—the families at Evelyn’s Playground, the o ce workers eating lunch at our bistro tables and the visitors watching a street performer or sampling the seasonal bounties of the Greenmarket.

USQNextPlan

In addition to keeping the park clean and undertaking a range of beauti cation

e vision plan is an opportunity to invest in the modernization of Union Square to ensure this important commercial center meets the needs of today’s New York—and those of generations to come. It is also a model of its kind, and it’s clear that New Yorkers and our civic leaders are ready to champion such ideas.

Just months ago, Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams introduced the “Making New York Work For Everyone” action plan by calling for the reimagination of our business districts into vibrant, 24/7 destinations for all through a suite of interventions including catalytic investments in beautiful, permanent public space. Union Square has many of the building blocks the action plan identi ed as key to business district recovery and sustained

at makes Union Square uniquely positioned for catalytic investment in its public realm, investment that would jumpstart not only a virtuous cycle of economic growth in the district itself, but also be a model live-work-play neighborhood that advances the city and state’s business district recovery goals for New York City as a whole.

After a banner year of new business openings throughout the district, now is the time to transform Union Square into the high-quality urban environment New Yorkers deserve—with contemporary, safe transit, improved accessibility, sustainable greenery and expanded open space— creating the dynamic mixed-use business district that New Yorkers need. ere has never been a better or more crucial time to invest in accessibility, safer public spaces and the modern evolution of the very heart of our city.

Julie Stein is executive director of the Union Square Partnership.

Lynne P. Brown is co-chair of the Union Square Partnership.

William Abramson is co-chair of the Union Square Partnership.

Union Square is uniquely positioned for catalytic investment in its public realm.

BUCK ENNIS

Time to tackle the insurance crisis in affordable housing

Recent news articles describing discrimination by insurance companies against buildings with affordable housing in New York City were met with shock and condemnation. But for organizations like ours, which partner with mission-driven organizations to bring affordable housing to communities in need, the findings were not surprising. Such discrimination is just one aspect of the broader problem of skyrocketing costs and diminishing availability of insurance for affordable housing in New York.

This problem has been much studied. In 2022, the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) released a report, mandated by New York state legislation, that analyzed the issue of high costs and the diminishing insurance marketplace. In its report, DFS describes its role under the NYS Financial Services Law as “the reduction and elimination of fraud, criminal abuse and unethical conduct by,” among other industries, over 1,700 insurance companies.

Meanwhile, the affordable housing world in New York has absorbed shocking insurance premium hikes over the past several years, with properties commonly seeing triple-digit percent increases at renewal, despite often solid claims history records. It has seen the number of companies willing to write policies for affordable

PERSONAL VIEW

housing dwindle down to a small handful.

And it has seen insurance companies persistently ask whether properties contain subsidized units, such as those with rental-assistance vouchers. This is despite a New York state law that our organization, Enterprise, led the effort to pass that prevents source-of-income discrimination by those very landlords.

As a low-income housing tax credit syndicator, asset manager and nonprofit lender, Enterprise has a window into these practices and has heard our partners, many of whom are nonprofit and minority and women business enterprise owners, speak with growing alarm about the pure unaffordability of insurance.

This is a serious concern. With these increases, the thin operating margins that affordable housing survives on gets thinner or worse, going from the black to the red. When this starts occurring across the state’s portfolio, it becomes a significant public policy concern.

Coupled with other expense challenges, such as increases in utility and labor costs and large rental arrears, the insurance crisis is creating a perfect storm. It threatens the very viability of projects, portfolios and the organizations that own them.

Why, then, hasn’t New York State taken a larger role in examining every option to reduce costs, enforce anti-discrimination

measures and reverse the trend of insurance companies simply walking away from affordable housing when the production and maintenance of that housing is one of the state’s most important priorities?

Not pure math at play

We understand the solutions are not simple. Insurance premium increases are not limited to New York or to the residential real estate market. The DFS report points to a number of factors influencing these rates, many of which are valid. However, when insurers treat rental assistance as a blanket risk, we know it is not pure market mathematics at play.

To that end, we are encouraged that a number of New York State legislators have pledged to tackle the issue of discrimina-

Enforcement alone will not solve New York’s gray market weed problem

Across New York state, raids of unlicensed cannabis retailers have become more ubiquitous than stores licensed to sell it.

These unlicensed retailers have put a gaping hole in the city’s balance sheet where elected officials thought tax revenue would be. Whether or not it is fair or moral to sic cops on cannabis business owners who operate in regulatory no-man’s land is a debate for another time. From a policymaking standpoint, the most important question is a narrow one: Will the enforcement actions work?

We can report that they will not. We know this because we invested the time and effort to poll New York residents who use cannabis, seeking to find out what’s keeping the gray market alive. Three hundred and fifty four people in New York state who use cannabis responded, and while the data is non-scientific and contains selection bias, it’s the first effort we’re aware of to investigate the situation by polling a critical mass of real people.

What we found was eye-opening. It’s not just that law enforcement can’t keep

up with the rate at which gray market locations open. It’s also that New Yorkers have a ton of misplaced trust in the unlicensed market for cannabis.

Consumer trust: that’s the real problem here.

Sixty-one percent of respondents who buy cannabis in unlicensed gray market locations said they trust that it has been tested for contaminants and 70% said they trust it is accurately labeled. But gray market purveyors do not have testing requirements. Much of their cannabis has been trafficked into New York state precisely because it failed testing requirements elsewhere. Counterfeiting and mislabeling are widespread, and many workers at gray market stores do not have the training sufficient to make informed recommendations to consumers. If left unchecked, this will cause greater problems.

The legal recreational market features useful regulations that govern cannabis production and cultivation. Licensed retailers provide pretty good advice to those who are new to the substance. But if the most common consumer entry point to

cannabis is via gray market retailers that sell tainted products and provide no guidance on use, then the customer experience will suffer.

Our data supports this view. Most respondents who buy cannabis in the gray market reported one or more negative experiences. About 30% said it made them higher than they expected, while 31% said the product looked, smelled or tasted odd and 65% said the product didn’t get them as high as they expected. Nearly 8% reported that it made them feel unwell.

A public health issue

So if not enforcement, what’s the solution? It’s a combination of more licensed recreational shops and more consumer education that highlights the differences between gray market weed and the good, legal stuff.

There’s been recent, if modest, progress to open more stores. As of mid-August, 12 recreational dispensaries had opened in the past four months, and the state has recently approved an additional 212 licenses. Operators will still have difficulties accessing capital and finding retail space that’s up to code, but the point is that it’s in motion from a regulatory standpoint.

tion. This is an important aspect of solving the broader problem. However, why is new legislation necessary when a source-of-income discrimination law is already on the books and when there is already a state agency—DFS—whose role includes overseeing the insurance industry and eliminating unlawful and unethical conduct?

High insurance costs are undermining both the state’s laudable goals with respect to increasing affordable housing production and the work done by the agencies responsible for meeting those goals.

The question we consistently hear from our partners is: “What is being done to fix this?” With some much-needed public attention on this longstanding problem, it is our hope that New York State leaders will soon have answers to that critical question.

More stores should address the budgetary shortfall that elected officials are encountering. But the problem is more than financial. It’s also a public health issue, and policymakers should treat it like one.

There has been no effort we’re aware of to educate the public about why legal cannabis is superior to gray market product. There needs to be. This, not enforcement, is where policymakers should focus.

Alex Milligan is co-founder and CMO of NuggMD, a cannabis telehealth company.

Baaba Halm is vice president and New York market leader of Enterprise Community Partners.

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This civil rights lawyer sued the mayor’s office 34 times. Then the city elected his good friend.

Interview by Raina Lipsitz

Norman Siegel is so passionate about the Constitution that he goes to a New York City park with a group every Fourth of July to read and discuss it. In July 2022, the longtime civil rights and civil liberties lawyer appeared alongside Mayor Eric Adams and Community Healthcare Network President Robert Hayes to announce the launch of the Street Homeless Advocacy Project (SHAP), a volunteer-staffed initiative intended to support New Yorkers experiencing homelessness and, over time, to persuade them to accept shelter.

Having sued a number of city mayors in his former role as executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, Siegel has long been an antagonist of City Hall.

But at 79, he finally has a friend in Gracie Mansion; he and Adams go back decades.

Siegel spoke with Crain’s about addressing homelessness, safeguarding our rights and what it’s like to work with a mayor who’s also a friend.

You’ve said that you’ve been an outsider for most of your career, but are now “a little” on the inside via your work with City Hall. Which have you found more effective and why?

Being a civil rights and civil liberties lawyer for 53 years now, I’ve mainly been the outsider suing government officials, especially mayors like [Ed] Koch and Giuliani. Now I have this new challenge. I have a friend of almost 35 years, [Eric Adams], and I can talk with him as I have for many years. But he’s now the 110th mayor of New York City. So how do I handle that?

Takeaway for business professionals

Siegel believes the Street Homeless Advocacy p roject (SHA p ) benefits the business community as well as people experiencing homelessness, given that business owners, activists and the vast majority of homeless people agree that no one should have to live on the streets.

Where I grew up, you try to be helpful to your friends, which in this context means give advice, make suggestions, and also, when necessary, offer criticism. [Handling disagreements privately] is easy. When Eric was announcing that he was doing his encampment raids on homeless people, I called him and we had a very intense private conversation. But then in November, he announced that he was going to use the police to involuntarily commit people. I have a long history of defending people who were picked up against their will and taken to psychiatric hospitals [where they’re not being provided with any meaningful services]. We disagreed on that both privately and publicly.

Siegel says SHA p volunteers ha ve so far persuaded more than 30% of the homeless New Yorkers they’ve interacted with to voluntarily leave the streets or parks for a referral to or placement in a non-congregate shelter.

It’s very, very important to me to keep my independence and my integrity. That’s something that I’m still trying to figure out. Because for so long I’ve been comfortable being the outsider … dealing with government officials is extremely frustrating. And I’m finding out even when you know the mayor, and even when the mayor will refer you to some of his deputy mayors or commissioners, that sometimes it’s [still] frustrating to try to bring about change.

Why did you endorse Adams in 2021 and how would you characterize his performance today?

I do have to answer this question to a lot of my friends and even some of my former clients who say to me things like, “But he’s a cop.” First of all, we shouldn’t stereotype even cops. And Eric is much more than a former cop. I think he’s thoughtful. I know he’s caring and inspiring, and I’ve seen him evolve. I first met Eric probably in the late 1980s when I was head of the New York Civil Liberties Union and he was head of the [NYPD] Guardians, and then in the

mid-’90s, when he was the head of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care. The rank-and-file of the NYPD is very diverse, and Eric and others should get credit for that. We still have the problem of bringing diversity to the higher ranks, and hopefully he’ll do something on that and on police misconduct.

I think that he has done an okay job so far. It’s an incredibly challenging and difficult job, especially in a town like New York where everybody has their own opinions, whether they know the facts or not. I think Eric understands that government inefficiency leads to social injustice…. I don’t use my access as a lobbyist or to help others advance their financial interest. I do get calls. Some people who know me, some who don’t, but they say, “I hear that you’re friendly with the mayor. Can you make a call?” I have to be really careful on that. In some ways it was easier just to sue people.

What do you make of the fact that the police commissioner rejected more than half of the Civilian Complaint

Review Board’s disciplinary recommendations in 2022?

I helped create the independent civilian complaint review board almost 30 years ago. That was a struggle from the mid-60s, and we made it happen and thought that we had accomplished something great. And now that dream has either been deferred or it’s become a nightmare, because when you have the police commissioner rejecting 425 recommendations from the CCRB, what does that say? It was good on paper. But did it actually bring about the change to get accountability? There are plenty of civil rights lawyers today who actually tell people not to go to the CCRB anymore. That’s bad.

How did the Street Homeless Advocacy Project come about and what distinguishes it from previous efforts to address homelessness?

I’m very proud of New York for being the only place in America that affirmatively recognizes the right to shelter in our state constitution. [One issue] is that we created these

POWER MARKS

NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES 0 [Siegel, Teitelbaum & Evans consists of four lawyers, three of them part-time, and one part-time assistant—according to Siegel, none of them are “employees”]

ON HIS RÉSUMÉ partner in the La w Offices of Siegel, teitelbaum & evans; co-founder of the Street Homeless Advocacy project (SHAp); executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union; project director at mFY Legal Services; field director at the New York Civil Liberties Union; executive director of Youth Citizenship Fund

BORN manhattan

GREW UP borough park, brooklyn

RESIDES Upper West Side

EDUCATION “proud public school graduate” of brooklyn College (bachelor’s in political science) and the New York University School of Law

BREAKING THE MOLD the New York Civil Liberties Union participated in 34 First Amendment lawsuits against former mayor rudy Giuliani’s administration and prevailed in 26 of them. most of those lawsuits were filed during Siegel’s tenure as executive director.

traditional congregate shelters, which street homeless people [associate with physical and sexual abuse]. It’s safer to be on the streets. The premise is that no New Yorker should have to live on the streets. And what’s surprising is most individuals who live on the streets will, when asked respectfully— “respectfully” is key—tell you that they would rather be living somewhere else. We need to offer viable options for street homeless New Yorkers and they will then come inside voluntarily. My dream is to have lots of volunteers of all different backgrounds, especially young people. It’s time in New York and other cities to create teams of students, formerly homeless people, social workers, lawyers, doctors, people from all walks of life, to regularly venture into our streets and parks to learn about homeless people, who they are, why they are homeless, and what they need to come inside…. I know the business community is very concerned…. [We need to] get [business owners] to understand that there’s common ground here; no one wants people living on the streets. If we do this correctly and ameliorate the problem of street homelessness, it could become a model nationally.

To read more of the conversation with Norman Siegel, visit CrainsNewYork.com/ power-corner.

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UHY announced that Jason Garfield has been promoted to Principal. Jason has over a decade of audit and advisory experience and leads engagement teams through all phases of the audit process in both public and private companies across various industries. Jason is also well versed in interfacing with all levels of client management and suggesting improvement in accounting policies and procedures for his advisory clients.

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Holland & Knight has strengthened its Nonprofit and TaxExempt Organizations Team with the addition of a fiveperson group of attorneys and nonprofit professionals.

Andrew Grumet and Christina Cahill, both previously shareholders at Polsinelli PC, where Mr. Grumet was chair of the Nonprofit Organizations practice, lead the team in New York. Over the past 25 years Mr. Grumet has served on numerous boards, worked as an outsourced CEO to a billion dollar nonprofit, helped to secure transformative funding, as well as served as a trusted advisor to a wide range of organizations.

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David B. Feldman, has joined the New York office of Phillips Nizer in the Employment & Labor Law practice. He represents clients in a wide range of areas including wage and hour, fair employment practices, and executive compensation and agreements. David has extensive experience counseling and, where necessary, defending employers before federal and state courts and administrative agencies at the federal, state, and local levels.

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Grumet Cahill

Airbnb alternatives try to work around new city rules

By Cara Eisenpress

When Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia and Nathan Blecharczyk were just starting out to create Airbnb in 2009, they were admitted to the prestigious tech accelerator Y Combinator. Paul Graham, Y Combinator’s co-founder, asked the team about its user base.

“We don’t have a lot of traction,” Chesky admitted to Graham, according to the podcast Masters of Scale. “There’s a few people in New York using it.”

Hosts and visitors in this early-adopting city proved crucial to the company’s eventual success. Airbnb’s market capitalization is now $82 billion, with second-quarter revenue of $2.5 billion, to say

tourists’ experience of the city and a moment of reckoning for hosts who counted on the supplemental income. Alternative business models are testing these uncertain waters: Among them are Sonder and Mint House, which rent apartments that don’t fall under the registration requirement, and Kindred, a cashless home-swapping service.

The registration rule caps years of regulatory and legal back-andforth between the industry and the city. As New York has progressively implemented a city law passed in 2021, bookable Airbnb units have winnowed further and further.

The registration rule caps years of regulatory and legal back-and-forth between the industry and the city.

nothing of copycats from Booking. com to KidCoe, which markets family-friendly spaces.

But the Big Apple quickly became a thorn in the side of the short-term rental platforms, as the industry’s popularity came into conflict with local hotels, the city’s complicated housing code, affordable housing advocates, and building managers and co-op boards. Finally on Aug. 14, Airbnb stopped accepting reservations for any unit that has not provided the platform with a city-mandated official registration number.

The most recent blow is the “glacial” pace, in one judge’s words, of the city’s Office of Special Enforcement as it registers units. The office said it had approved just 199 units as of Aug. 14 at 9 a.m.

Which means that this fall, as millions of people around the world host and book stays, Airbnb will once again have only a few customers in New York.

The result will be big changes in

There are about 40,000 Airbnb listings in the city, according to Inside Airbnb, which tracks the shortterm rental industry. Approximately 5,200 of those listings seem likely to be eligible for booking; they meet the city standard that says it’s OK to rent rooms in a host’s occupied apartment. Renting a whole apartment for fewer than 30 days is now verboten, eliminating many units.

The city opened the registration process in March and said it had 2,123 applications by mid-August. During a court hearing, the office had no clear answers for Judge Arlene Bluth, who chided the Office of Special Enforcement to get through applications faster. She ultimately dismissed Airbnb’s legal challenge, paving the way for the registration rule to take effect on Sept. 5.

Where will tourists stay?

Tourists will come to New York in the fall for fashion week, tech week and various conferences. This will not be the first autumn with limited home-sharing. Anticipating the city government’s crackdown, many booking sites de-listed their New York City offerings over the course of the last two years. For example, a search on the luxury rental site One Fine Stay

surfaces a note dated April 1, 2021 explaining that “we no longer offer stays of less than 30 nights.” Early this year, it was rare to see a New York City listing on Booking.com or Expedia’s Vrbo.

Some observers fear that visits to New York will decline as a result.

“When you think it through, more accommodation options keeps the marketplace more competitive,” said Nick Scarci, state and local government affairs director for the Vacation Rental Management Association. Renting someone else’s home can be “an affordable and practical option, especially for families with children or relatives who want to stay under the same roof.”

Some businesses are looking to cater to this crowd. San Francisco-based Sonder has units in the Financial District and elsewhere that are Class B, so they don’t have to go through the city’s registration process. New York’s Mint House also has legal apartment-style units at 70 Pine Street, though it appears to be expanding faster outside of the Big Apple than in its hometown. Neither company responded to requests for comment on what they expect this fall. Sonder may be especially vulnerable because it lists its units on Airbnb and credits such platforms with driving business.

The Ritz-Carlton in NoMad has 16 new, short-term rental apartments it calls pieds-à-terre, but they will attract a select clientele at $9,000 a night.

Finally, San Francisco-based Kindred has an approach that hews more closely to the couch-surfing spirit of home-sharing. The two-year-old startup charges residents to join a community of fellow travelers and home-sharers. Once on the platform, members can swap their homes with other members, or host out-of-towners to earn points that go to future Kindred stays. No money exchanges hands.

More than 1,000 residents across the New York metro area have

joined Kindred, co-founder Justine Palefsky said in an email, and 30,000 people are on the waiting list. Members are booking 10 times the number of nights worldwide this summer as last summer, she said, and in New York, the average member hosts for about one week each quarter.

“Kindred increases the utilization of primary residences, without incentivizing investors to take homes off the market,” Palefsky explained. “All Kindred homes remain real homes—it’s just that instead of sitting empty for a few weeks here and there when you’re traveling, someone you trust can take care of the place while you’re gone.”

Few alternatives for hosts

For weeks after the city opened the host registration portal, applications just trickled in. By June 1, only 29 units had successfully completed registration, of about 400 submitted.

The registration rule was supposed to have taken effect in July but Airbnb sued the city, pushing back the date. By the time of the court hearing, around 1,700 applications had been submitted and 141 approved, according to documents filed in the case.

Of the 2,123 applications filed as of mid-August, 42 had been denied and 334 were returned to ap-

plicants for correction, according to the Office of Special Enforcement. The office did not respond to questions about whether it had found ways to speed up processing following the judge’s reprimand.

Jason Mondesir-Caesar, who coowns a two-unit townhouse in Stuyvesant Heights, said he plans to submit a registration application for the unit he inhabits. He had also been listing a second unit since March, when a tenant finally vacated. Having the long-term renter was not a good experience, he said, and he went through savings doing repairs the tenant demanded.

“I’ve just been trying to make a little money over the summer,” he said.

Guests frequent both units because they have families who live nearby. He has also hosted visiting doctors and nurses working at the local hospital, Interfaith.

He said he will look for a longterm tenant for the separate unit. He is also seeking a hardship waiver to the $150 application fee to register the qualified listing.

Other hosts who had previously listed whole apartments on Airbnb said they had converted the minimum stay to 30 nights, which avoids the need to register with the city. But they were apparently receiving little interest in the longer stays.

Luxury hotel in Times Square facing foreclosure

By Mario Marroquin

The saga of the property at 20 Times Square, home to the luxury Times Square Edition hotel, shows little sign of abating.

Last month a division of M&T

alleges is a $750 million loan from 2018 that became due in May.

The 39-story property is home to the 452-room Times Square Edition hotel, which opened in 2019.

Bank filed a lawsuit in Manhattan Supreme Court against the property’s owner, a limited-liability company controlled by Indianapolis-based real estate group Maefield Development; Maefield’s head, Mark Siffin; and more than a dozen other parties over what it

Wilmington Trust National Association alleges in the suit that Maefield failed to make the loan whole by its maturity date and that Maefield failed to keep the property free and clear of liens, breaching the terms of the agreement made in 2018. Wilmington also alleges that modifications made to the ground lease on the property triggered additional defaults on the loan.

The lawsuit was first reported in PincusCo.

The 39-story property is home to the 452-room Times Square Edition hotel, which opened in 2019. The site includes 76,000 square feet of retail space leased by The Hershey Co. as well as the restau-

rant Terrace and Outdoor Gardens, according to CoStar, and 18,000 square feet of signage. Rooms at the hotel start around $460 per night.

Wilmington’s lawsuit against Maefield comes nearly a year after The Real Deal reported that a $900 million loan on the property was transferred to special servicing.

French-based financial services firm Natixis originated both loans in 2018 and took control of the building through foreclosure in 2021. The firm tapped SL Green to manage the property. A limited-liability company affiliated with Maefield Development still retains the deed to the property, records show.

Representatives from Maefield did not return a request for comment. Wilmington Trust declined to comment on the lawsuit.

A 2021 law passed by the City Council requires short-term rental hosts to register their units and agree to comply with a long list of complex rules in the city’s housing code. | bLOOmberG The hotel at 20 Times

Obscure city office meant to take pitches from business staffed by a friend of the mayor and an NYPD lieutenant

By Nick Garber

When upstart entrepreneurs decide they want to do business with Mayor Eric Adams, whom do they approach? One possible answer: a two-person bureau, staffed by a longtime Adams loyalist and an active police lieutenant, that the mayor quietly tasked with taking pitches from the private sector.

Adams never announced the creation of the Mayor’s Office of Innovation and Emerging Markets. A spokesperson would not say when it was formed, although it appears to have been up and running by June 2022. City Hall has officially mentioned it just one time—in a January press release about the launch of the mayor’s direct-to-constituents newsletter.

The existence of the under-the-radar office has puzzled some people in the city’s business and technology worlds, who say it serves little public purpose and is run by people without obvious expertise. But it fits a pattern for a mayor known both for elevating friends to obscure roles in city government and for his receptiveness to pitches from businesspeople.

“Like many things in the administration, it feels a little discombobulated and potentially duplicative,” said one lobbyist who has worked with the administration on tech issues. “None of the people I work with have sought to meet with them for any reason.”

‘I’m a people person’

The office’s two employees are Denise Felipe-Adams, a longtime friend of the mayor’s, and Jonathan Salomons, an active New York Police Department lieutenant—both of whom appear to share the title of “executive director,” according to their LinkedIn profiles. Felipe-Adams—who is not related to the mayor—worked as an aide to him during his tenure as Brooklyn borough president and as a fundraiser on his mayoral campaign, while Salomons’ 18-year police career has included stints in antiterrorism, employee relations and communications.

These days, Felipe-Adams works out of 375 Pearl St., the Lower Manhattan “Verizon Building” where Mayor Adams keeps a low-profile office, according to her business card, which was viewed by Crain’s. Top Adams lieutenants Timothy Pearson and deputy mayor Phil Banks also reportedly work there.

Felipe-Adams and Salomons sketched out their role last year in two little-watched interviews on cryptocurrency-oriented podcasts that also were posted to YouTube. Those are among the only other public mentions of the office’s existence. The idea behind the office, Felipe-Adams told an interviewer, was to sift through the many business owners who approach the mayor in search of a partnership.

“There’s a lot of people who

pitch things to him, who are in his ear, wanting to share ideas to grow the city,” Felipe-Adams told a YouTuber known as MissTeenCrypto last June. “He’s always delighted to have those conversations, but he’s the mayor and he has a very tight schedule, so what he decided to do is start this new unit—knowing that I’m a people person, I love people, I love to network, I love to innovate.”

Mayor big on crypto

A City Hall spokesman would not say whether the Office of Innovation and Emerging Markets had successfully negotiated any contracts or purchased any products for the city, leaving its ultimate impact unclear. But Felipe-Adams said in the interviews that the office was focused on everything from cannabis to dyslexia—and, most of all, on cryptocurrency and related technologies like the blockchain and NFTs, of which Mayor Adams is a noted fan.

“He’s doubled down on cryptocurrency,” Felipe-Adams said in a December interview for a podcast produced by Urban Change, a crypto initiative.

Indeed, Mayor Adams made a rare mention of the office during a May 2022 appearance at a “Security Token Summit” in Manhattan, when he acknowledged Felipe-Adams and Salomons in a brief speech. Felipe-Adams was listed as a speaker at that crypto confer-

government.”

Multiple people who deal with the administration on tech issues said the office seemed to overlap with the separate Office of Technology and Innovation, which is assumed to be the main clearinghouse for new technologies being piloted by the city. Allon said in his email that Innovation and Emerging Markets is not housed within OTI and that Felipe-Adams and Salomons report directly to City Hall Chief of Staff Camille Varlack.

$111,792 as a special assistant at the borough president’s office, where she began in 2017 at $70,000. Not an automatic concern

On Eric Adams’ mayoral campaign, Felipe-Adams, who is Dominican American, served as a strategic adviser for Latinx alliances, according to her LinkedIn profile. She was pictured alongside the now-mayor at his Election Night party at the exclusive Zero Bond nightclub in November 2021, and emceed a Dominican Heritage celebration at Gracie Mansion last month.

he touted as borough president in 2019. Others have sparked ethical concerns, like the suspect-ensnaring police tool he promoted while running for mayor—in which Frank Carone, his friend and eventual chief of staff, had a financial stake.

ence, whose other guests ranged from Brooke Shields to the former Donald Trump spokesman Anthony Scaramucci.

City Hall did not answer questions about why Adams never announced the office’s creation or whether Felipe-Adams and Salomons had any expertise relevant to their roles, although a spokesman said both have “significant experience working in government.”

“Mayor Adams believes our city must do a better job of harnessing cutting-edge technologies that make municipal services more efficient and effective, and the Office of Innovation and Emerging Markets is critical to advancing that vision,” mayoral spokesman Jonah Allon said in an email. “Under the co-leadership of Denise Felipe-Adams and Jonathan Salomons, the office speaks with a wide array of innovators with ideas about how to improve public safety, streamline government operations, and move our city forward, and shares its findings with partners across city

But Adams has shown a willingness to create overlapping offices before. Keechant Sewell’s surprise resignation as police commissioner in June came after Adams elevated allies Pearson and Banks to senior public safety roles that seemed to sometimes supersede hers.

A handful of companies have listed Salomons or Felipe-Adams as lobbying targets, records show, including a supplier of air purifiers interested in procurement deals, a Las Vegas-based artificial intelligence company, and the Home Depot, which wanted to discuss legislation combating organized retail crime. From spring 2022 until March of this year, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase hired lobbyists Bolton-St. Johns to arrange meetings with Felipe-Adams and Salomons and explain how their platform “can benefit New Yorkers,” according to one filing.

Felipe-Adams was paid $123,000 last year, city records show—up from her most recent salary of

Salomons, who described himself in the December interview as being “on loan” to the mayor’s office, received a $149,068 salary from the NYPD last year. City records do not show him receiving any separate salary from the mayor’s office.

BY

THE NUMBERS $123K

the salary that Denise Felipe-Adams was paid last year, according to city records.

In last year’s interview for the Urban Change podcast, Salomons hinted at differences between how he and Felipe-Adams view these prospective business partners.

“One of the things the NYPD has taught me is to be very careful about how we review a company,” he said. “I tend to be the more critical one.”

Since his days as borough president, Adams has developed a reputation for being “up for a pitch,” as a New Yorker profile put it last month. Some of his favored products have raised eyebrows for their sheer strangeness—such as the nauseating rat-drowning buckets

Cryptocurrency, which appears to be a major focus of the Office of Innovation and Emerging Markets, has been in the background throughout Adams’ mayoralty. In the past two years, Adams has flown to Puerto Rico on a private jet owned by crypto billionaire Brock Pierce, converted his first three paychecks in bitcoin— promptly losing money from the transfer—and was revealed last month to have met with Sam Bankman-Fried before the entrepreneur’s fraud indictment.

The unorthodox setup of the Office of Innovation and Emerging Markets is no automatic cause for concern, said Richard Briffault, a government ethics expert at Columbia Law School who formerly chaired the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board. But, he added, much depends on what Felipe-Adams and Salomons are doing in the meetings that the city has not disclosed.

“If they’re out there boosting his name for a future re-election, that’d be a problem,” he said. “If they’re out there talking to people who have interesting business ideas for New York City, that might be a waste of money, but it’s not unethical.”

Multiple people who deal with the administration on tech issues said the office seemed to overlap with the Office of Technology and Innovation

Denise Felipe-Adams, pictured alongside now-Mayor Eric Adams during an Election Night Party at Zero Bond in 2021. Felipe-Adams, a longtime friend of the mayor’s, now leads a technology-focused office whose creation was never announced. | EUGENE GOLOGURSKY/GEttY mAGES FOR HAUtE LIVING

City is on track for the deadliest year for cyclists in four decades

By Caroline Spivack

On May 3, Adam Uster was biking from a Brooklyn Wegmans with a cart of groceries when the driver of a flatbed truck struck and killed him.

The 39-year-old, who was a passionate cycling activist, was traveling along an unprotected bike lane on Franklin Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant when the driver of the truck turned onto the thoroughfare at Lexington Avenue and crushed him. Uster was on his way home, where his wife and mother, who was visiting from out of town, were waiting for him.

“The shock of seeing him and then six hours later seeing him dead—it does something to your brain,” said Anne Goldner, Uster’s mother. “I was actually on Wall Street when 9/11 happened, and it was that kind of ‘What is happening?’ Surreal. It is such a shock to the system.”

At the time, Uster was the 13th person to be killed in 2023 in the city while riding a bike—by far the most at that point in any year under Vision Zero, a city initiative

launched in 2014 to reduce traffic deaths and injuries. The death toll continued its grim climb in the months that followed. To date, traffic collisions have killed 22 cyclists and e-bike riders this year. Transit observers say the figure puts New York City on track to have the deadliest year for bike riders in 40 years.

‘Moving far too slowly’

How we arrived at this moment is a mix of increasingly large SUVs and trucks proliferating on streets, a biking boom in the five boroughs and a city that has struggled to build out the infrastructure needed to support cyclists.

Mayor Eric Adams pledged vociferous support for street safety on the campaign trail, but despite making visible gains on pedestrian safety and overall traffic deaths, he has yet to follow through on his promises to dramatically expand the city’s network of protected bike lanes.

Candidate Adams vowed to roll out a whopping 300 miles of protected bike lanes in just four years—that pencils out to an aver-

age of 75 miles per year. In his first year in office, his administration laid 26.3 miles of protected bike lanes. That’s a little more than half the mileage needed each year to comply with the mandates of the Streets Master Plan, which became law in 2019. The city remains behind on achieving its targets, and it’s a policy failure that comes with fatal consequences.

“[Twenty-two] is a lot of lives lost, a lot of survivors grieving,” said Eric McClure, executive director of the pro-bike political action committee StreetsPAC, which endorsed Adams in his bid for mayor. “The deaths have held pretty consistent across the year and should be a real

In February, Department of Transportation Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez pointed to staff shortages as the reason for the city’s slow rollout of protected bike and bus lanes. The agency began the year with about 5,500 staffers and roughly 800 vacancies. It had 4% fewer staffers than in 2019, and 14% less staff in the department’s crucial transportation planning and management division.

the administration left it withering on the vine for months.”

The McGuinness Boulevard debacle marks a messy chapter in the mayor’s bike infrastructure agenda—one that signals to bike-lane opponents a willingness to mothball projects and that has likely done some serious damage with regard to community trust on future projects.

alarm for the administration that we need to do better.”

Charles Lutvak, a spokesman for the mayor, declined to comment. The Department of Transportation noted that it is launching an “education and awareness campaign” on how to safely ride e-bikes (16 cyclists killed this year were on e-bikes) and is working with community partners to help new cyclists build their skills.

“We are committed to installing high-quality bus lanes, bike lanes and protected bike lanes this year,” DOT spokeswoman Mona Bruno said in a statement. “NYC DOT is also implementing new cycling-friendly designs on Bike Boulevards, widening our bike lanes and hardening existing lanes with sturdier materials.”

“We know what works when it comes to street safety and reducing traffic crashes: it’s building out protected bike lanes for more people to feel safe and comfortable biking,” said Elizabeth Adams, a deputy executive director for Transportation Alternatives, a street safety advocacy organization. “We’re just moving far too slowly when it comes to investing in that infrastructure.”

Even with the surge of cyclist deaths, the mayor waffled on installing a protected bike lane planned this summer for the infamously dangerous McGuinness Boulevard in Brooklyn. Adams had personally approved the upgrades in March, but then his top aide Ingrid Lewis-Martin raised concerns about the project after a campaign by a powerful opposition group. The Department of Transportation walked back its plans in July.

The City reported that the owners of film production company Broadway Stages, which is headquartered near the thoroughfare, led the push against the plan. The family behind Broadway Stages are longtime donors to Adams, according to campaign finance records.

In yet another twist, on Aug. 16 the city said it will proceed with scaled-backed street safety improvements on McGuinness Boulevard, including protected bike lanes. The new plan has received mixed reactions. City Council member Lincoln Restler, whose district includes the boulevard, is less than thrilled with how the process unfolded.

“I had really hoped that this would be an area where we would see eye-to-eye, and the back and forth on McGuinness Boulevard was incredibly disappointing,” Restler said. “We had spent two years holding extensive community meetings to finally come up with a plan to make the most dangerous strip in North Brooklyn safe, and

“Every opponent of street safety projects from Brooklyn to the Bronx now knows the playbook for how to slow down lifesaving projects: Just get the mayor’s chief adviser on the phone,” Restler said. Lewis-Martin couldn’t be reached for comment.

One way to help speed up bike lane installation is cutting through procedural red tape. To that end Restler has a bill working its way through the City Council that would pare down notice requirements to community boards. The bill, a version of which was first introduced by then-Council member Antonio Reynoso, is stalled in the council’s transportation committee.

Every death ‘preventable’

Council member Selvena Brooks-Powers, who chairs the committee, said “we’ve been working very closely on that bill, and I’m looking forward to seeing its passage.” She said concerns around timelines, specifically when community boards are out of session in the summer, have been resolved and that she aims for the bill, along with other street safety measures, to soon come up for a vote.

“For me, as someone who is very community-oriented, I think it’s important to have members of the community engaged, as well as all stakeholders on issues pertaining to safety and infrastructure,” Brooks-Powers said. Not all council members or communities, of course, are keen on embracing safe streets infrastructure, and they can be roadblocks to projects.

The council’s transportation committee, Brooks-Powers said, plans to hold an oversight hearing this fall on the city’s latest progress in carrying out the Streets Master Plan.

“Every traffic fatality is not only heartbreaking, but also, as I’ve said in hearings, preventable,” she said. “So what we’ve seen in terms of the uptick [in cyclist deaths] shows that there is a lot more work to be done.”

“We are committed to installing high-quality bus lanes, bike lanes and protected bike lanes this year.”

Statement from DOT spokeswoman Mona Bruno

The City Council’s transportation committee plans a hearing this fall on the city’s latest progress in carrying out the Streets Master Plan. | bUCK eNNIS

These photos show cyclists in Manhattan. | bUCK eNNIS

money on,” said John Kaehny, executive director of the state watchdog organization Reinvent Albany. “I would think the most likely thing here, by far, is this money, given how small it is, is just going to be sopped up by the massive substance-use crisis and poverty alleviation.”

New York City has so far allocated its funds to the public hospital system, the city health department and the office of the chief medical examiner, saying the money will strengthen existing substance-use treatment programs, boost the behavioral health workforce and provide relief to families who lost loved ones to the crisis. Rachel Vick, a spokeswoman from the health department who spoke on behalf of city agencies, said the city has consulted a “variety” of

The Covid-19 pandemic may have drawn attention away from the overdose crisis, but it also exacerbated it. People who use drugs were not able to get addiction care because of treatment center closures and the risk of infection during the early days of the pandemic. Social isolation and worsening mental health conditions compounded the crisis, with overdose deaths rising 60% between 2019 and 2021.

Nearly 6,000 people in the state died from a drug overdose in 2021, a number expected to rise when final data is released for 2022, according to Dr. Chinazo Cunningham, head of the Office of Addiction Services and Supports. In the city, 2,668 people died from a drug overdose in 2021. Fentanyl—a synthetic opioid that’s 50 to 100 times stronger than heroin—has become ubiquitous in the drug supply and driven the rise in deaths, according to the health department.

New York state appointed an advisory board made up of public health experts, clinicians and people directly affected by the opioid crisis to guide its spending. The state held 14 hourslong advisory meetings in the past year, developing reports and hearing public comments about how the money should be spent. It’s also made $127 million available to nonprofit organizations, treatment providers and local health officials that are tackling the overdose crisis.

released a plan on how the remaining rounds of funding will be spent, nor has it released reports about how much money has been spent to date—although a City Council law enacted last December required it to start reporting by June of this year.

Nonprofits ‘the backbone’

experts and providers to determine how it should use the funds, but she did not answer questions about which experts it consulted, nor whether it had appointed an advisory board.

Both the city’s and state’s settlement agreements fall under a state law that calls for the funds to help mitigate a staggering overdose crisis and includes requirements that ensure the money is allocated to things like medications for opioid use disorder, harm reduction services and housing.

The law prevents settlement funds from being dumped into a general government bank account to cover other municipal expenses—a lesson the state learned after the majority of the $16 billion it received in tobacco settlement money was spent on initiatives that had nothing to do with smoking.

‘Issue No. 1’

Some public health officials say that more resources are needed to tackle a pressing public health crisis that took a backseat during the pandemic. Dr. Ashwin Vasan, commissioner of the city health department, has said that if not for the other public health emergencies in recent years, the overdose crisis would be “issue No.1, on A1 of every paper every day,” adding that the city needs “more, more, more” funding to face the “formidable opponent.”

New York City officials, in contrast, decided to directly allocate more than half of its $286 million to three city agencies: New York City Health + Hospitals, the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and the Office of Chief Medical Examiner. The city has funneled money into agencies to bolster hospital emergency room overdose responses, support mobile clinics and build up services surrounding overdose-prevention centers, supervised drug-use sites that prevent overdose deaths, Mayor Eric Adams announced in June 2022.

The Adams administration did not present this plan to an advisory committee or appoint a task force before deciding where to allocate settlement funds. It has not

Daniel Sparrow, a spokesman for City Councilwoman Linda Lee, who sponsored the bill, said the council is waiting on the report from the Office of Mayor’s Management and Budget. He did not respond to additional questions about when the report would be released, or whether it would be shared with the public.

At an opioid settlement fund advisory board meeting in July in Albany, leaders from local governments presented on their community’s investment of opioid settlement funds. Deepa Avula, executive deputy commissioner of mental hygiene at the city health department, was scheduled to present on New York City’s spending. However, the city never presented, and the Mid-Hudson region was given double the time, where representatives from each county shared details about settlement fund initiatives that were reducing overdose deaths. A representative from Avula’s office said the presentation was postponed, and did not share additional information on city spending.

Spokespeople from the city health department have not responded to specific questions about how much settlement money city agencies have spent to date, or plans to report use of the funds. When Crain’s approached Avula at a press conference in July to ask about the funds, she directed questions to the press office.

Nonprofit leaders and treatment providers like Ann-Marie Foster, president and CEO of Phoenix House, say the city’s funding choices leave gaps in the treatment system that they have

been tasked to fill, without giving them funding to fill it.

“The nonprofits have been the backbone of this crisis,” Foster said, adding that more money is needed to build a substance-use workforce, provide residential treatment and offer access to medications for opioid use disorders to address chronic and acute illnesses.

The city has not made any settlement funds available via contracts. City organizations can apply for funding from the state, which is spread across a spectrum of substance-use disorder services.

Dr. Bradley Stein, director of the opioid policy center at the RAND Corp.’s Pittsburgh office, said transparency is just one piece of the concerted effort to ensure that all the settlement funds do not go to one entity, noting that so many people have been harmed by the opioid epidemic.

“The idea of transparency makes sense,” Stein said. Governments have held open meetings or public forums to get feedback on their opioid funds—a fairly simple oversight strategy, he added.

settlement payments, he added. Comparing annual settlement funds to an overall state budget of $230 billion, “that’s pretty dinky.”

The National Institutes of Health estimates that the annual cost of treating an individual with opioid-use disorder could reach up to $20,000. New York City’s $30 million a year is not enough to fund treatment for the number of people who died from substance use disorder in 2021—and that’s assuming that all money is spent on treatment.

BY THE NUMBERS

6,000

“Opioids are just much more destructive per amount of private-sector revenue than tobacco is,” Kaehny said. “A hand grenade might cost hundreds of dollars, but if it’s thrown into a crowd of people—that’s going to cost millions of dollars in trauma.”

Nearly that many people died of drug overdoses in the state in 2021.

$30M

What NYC will allocate to opioid programs for each of the next five years.

Cunningham, of OASAS, said the city’s money is not subject to recommendations by the state board, but officials are in discussions about whether or not it will be required to report spending to the state.

While regulators have stressed oversight and transparency to hold officials accountable for how they use opioid funds, there is one big difference between the opioid and tobacco settlements.

“The real-life issue here is that it’s just not that much money,” Kaehny said. The state has around $145 million a year to allocate from opioid settlement funds, less than half of the annual tobacco

Cherita Simmons, a certified peer recovery advocate at Phoenix House’s Long Island City outpatient treatment clinic, knows more about the needs of people with substance use disorders than most—until five years ago, she struggled with drug use. Now, she helps people with substance use disorder get jobs, navigate medical appointments or reconnect with family members in recovery.

Simmons said her work is challenged by long waiting lists for residential services and few housing options for people in recovery.

Sometimes a client will leave treatment after six to nine months, ready to make a change in their life. But because of a lack of stable housing options, many return back to neighborhoods and homes where they have opportunities to use—continuing a cycle of substance use that is hard to break.

“What the plan is after treatment can be a little bit stronger,” Simmons said. “But it takes resources.”

The agreements prevent settlement funds from being dumped into a general bank account to cover other municipal expenses.

Cherita Simmons (standing), a certified peer recovery advocate at Phoenix House’s Long Island City outpatient treatment clinic, works with clients Barron H., Frederick S., and Rusmaldi F. BUCK ENNIS

City’s health care sector gained almost 74,000 jobs since last July

By Jacqueline Neber

The city’s health care and social assistance sector grew by nearly 74,000 jobs since last July, an almost 9% increase, according to the latest jobs report from the state Department of Labor. The increase brings the sector’s total to about 925,000 jobs without seasonal adjustment.

Within health care, home health care services saw the largest jump in numbers: The workforce added 37,000 jobs over the course of the year, a 15% increase, bringing its total to 276,000. Ambulatory health care also saw a large increase of almost 12%, bringing the number of jobs in that subsector to more than 426,000 as hospitals move more of their services to ambulatory facilities to bolster revenue.

Meanwhile, skilled nursing and other residential care facilities— beyond those that care for New Yorkers with disabilities, substance-use disorders and mental health challenges—saw only slight upticks in job numbers at 1.5% and 2.9%, respectively. Other residential care employees make up one of

Over 40% of NYC’s water service lines could contain lead: research

By Amanda D’Ambrosio

More than 40% of water service lines in New York City could be contaminated by lead, according to research from Columbia University released last week.

the smallest subsectors in the workforce, with fewer than 4,000 jobs.

The one-month net change in jobs from June to July was insignificant throughout the health care sector. General medical and surgical hospitals saw the biggest increase, 1,300 jobs, an uptick of less than 1%. Jobs at skilled nursing facilities and all residential facilities stayed flat from June to July.

Overall the city’s economy seems to have suffered a setback in July based on job numbers: There were 8,100 fewer jobs in July than in June. There are about 4.69 million jobs in the city, a lower count than in spring 2020.

Of the 850,000 residential lines that researchers analyzed, 16% were potentially made of lead and 27% were made of an unknown material that could be lead, according to a study published Aug. 30 in the academic journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

Brooklyn was home to 91,000 potential lead-contaminated service lines, the greatest number of any borough. But the highest proportion of contaminated lead services lines were in the Bronx and Queens, where in each borough one in five of all lines were at risk of lead contamination.

The researchers found that lead-contaminated water service lines were more likely to be in ZIP codes with a higher proportion of Latino residents, as well as in communities where children were already vulnerable to lead concerns in other substances.

“There’s a critical need to immediately identify and replace all

lead service lines,” Dr. Anne Nigra, an environmental health scientist at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health who led the research, said in an email. “Our findings underscore the extent of the problem across NYC and support that the city and state should be taking these inequities into account when they prioritize communities for lead service line replacement.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Lead and Copper Rule requires public water systems to conduct routine eval-

uations at taps across the distribution system. But those regulations are not enough to reduce water exposure and mitigate racial disparities, researchers said.

“Replacing all lead service lines is a critical public health need in New York City, New York State, and across the country,” Nigra said in her email.

“NYC water is safe,” Patrick Gallahue, a spokesman from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, said in an email, also writing that, “We know that water is not a primary source of lead exposure in New York City, especially for young children.”

The health department says the number of children in New York City with blood lead levels of 5 mcg/dL or greater fell 93% between 2005 and 2020. The majority of exposures are due to leadbased paint, the department said.

POSITIONS AVAILABLE

Thursday September 7, 2023 (the “Sale”). The Secured Parties shall conduct the Sale in accordance with Section 7-210 of the Uniform Commercial Code (the “UCC”) and the Transaction Documents (as defined below) and will conduct the Sale via http://www.comly.com/ at the following location:

Wm. F. Comly & Son, Inc. 1746 Winchester Road Bensalem, PA 19020-4542

Pursuant to (i) certain rate sheet agreements entered between August 2022 and January 2023, (ii) the General Services Terms and Conditions and iii) the Port of Wilmington Terminal Tariff effective on January 1, 2022, as applicable, by and between the Secured Parties and the Debtor (all documents or instruments evidencing and/or securing the Debtor’s obligations to the Secured Parties thereunder, as amended, supplemented, renewed, reaffirmed, or otherwise modified at any time, and from time to time, collectively being the “Transactions Documents”), which the Debtor and the Secured Parties agreed to by entering into the rate sheet agreements and utilizing the services of the Secured Parties, and (iii) under Section 7-209 of the UCC, the Debtor granted the Secured Parties security interests in those assets of the Debtor in the Secured Parties’ possession and described on Exhibit A attached hereto (the “Sale Assets”). The Debtor is in default of its obligations under the Transactions Documents. In total, the Debtor owes approximately $971,820.76 plus additional interest and collection costs, including attorneys’ fees. Upon request, the Secured Parties will work to provide potential bidders with additional information and/or inspection rights regarding the Sale Assets.

TERMS OF SALE: The Secured Parties shall, in its sole discretion, sell the Sale Assets in a single lot or in multiple lots, by way of one or more contracts, and on such terms and conditions as are agreed upon between the Secured Parties and any purchaser of the Sale Assets, subject to the Secured Parties’ security interests and any other valid liens or security interests in existence.

Any party wishing to bid on the Sale Assets at the Sale should pre-register at http://www.comly.com/ before 11:59pm (prevailing Eastern Time) on Monday September 4, 2023 to ensure any applicable pre-qualification criteria are met. A party may be required to prequalify as a bidder by delivering, if requested, proof (satisfactory to the Secured Parties) of such party’s financial ability to consummate a sale of the Sale Assets to counsel for Secured Parties at the address listed below or through http://www.comly.com/ by no later than 11:59 pm (prevailing Eastern Time) on Tuesday September 5, 2023. Each prevailing bidder must pay the entire purchase price for its successful bid by wire transfer, certified check, or cashier’s check payable to the Secured Parties within ten (10) to twenty (20) business days after the Secured Parties’ acceptance of such prevailing bidder’s bid. The Sale Assets will not be shipped or loaded out until the entire purchase price is paid.

A public inspection will be available to any party wishing to bid on the Sale Assets on Tuesday September 5, 2023 by appointment only

If any prevailing bidder defaults on payment of the purchase price for any of the Sale Assets, the party that submitted the next highest bid for such Sale Assets shall automatically be deemed to have submitted the prevailing bid, and the Secured Parties may, at their option, consummate the sale of such Sale Assets to such bidder.

The Secured Parties reserve the right to: (a) submit a “credit bid” for any or all of the Sale Assets; (b) adjourn or cancel the Sale without notice; (c) alter the bidding, auction, or payment procedures for the Sale; (d) abandon or elect not to dispose of certain Sale Assets; and/or (e) reject any and all bids. If the Secured Parties accept bid(s) for any Sale Assets, the Secured Parties will provide the prevailing bidder(s) with a bill of sale for such Sale Assets with no representations or warranties of any kind or nature whatsoever. At the time of the Sale, the Secured Parties may announce additional disclosures and disclaimers regarding the Sale Assets and additional or alternative terms, conditions, and procedures related to the Sale.

The Secured Parties expect to publish notice of its intent to conduct the Sale in advance of the Sale date.

By selling and purchasing the Sale Assets pursuant to the Sale, neither the Secured Parties nor any purchaser of the Sale Assets shall assume any liability or obligation whatsoever regarding any debts, expenses, or liabilities of the Debtor or any other person or entity, and all such debts, expenses, and liabilities shall not be assumed or deemed to be assumed by the Secured Parties or any purchaser. Neither the Secured Parties nor any purchaser shall be, or shall be deemed to be, a “successor” of or to the Debtor or any other person or entity for any purpose.

Except to the extent that such right is waived, and in accordance with Section 7-210 of the UCC, the Debtor, any secondary obligor, or any other secured party or lienholder has a right to redeem the Sale Assets at any time before the Secured Parties has disposed of the Sale Assets or has entered into a contract for the disposition of the Sale Assets by tendering fulfillment of all obligations secured by the Sale Assets as well as any expenses reasonably incurred by the Secured Parties in retaking, holding, and preparing the Sale Assets for disposition, in arranging for the Sale, and, to the extent provided in the Transaction Documents and not prohibited by law, the Secured Parties’ reasonable attorneys’ fees and legal expenses.

All sales of the Sale Assets will be final and made on an “AS IS, WHERE IS”, “WITH ALL FAULTS” basis, and will be made WITHOUT WARRANTY, EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, AS TO ANY MATTER WHATSOEVER, INCLUDING TITLE, POSSESSION, QUIET ENJOYMENT, THE LOCATION OF OR ACCESS TO THE SALE ASSETS, THE QUALITY, CONTENT, OR CONDITION OF THE SALE ASSETS, AND WITHOUT ANY RIGHT OF SET-OFF OR RECOUPMENT; ADDITIONALLY, THERE ARE NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR AS TO ANY OTHER MATTER OTHER INQUIRIES: The Debtor is entitled to an accounting of the unpaid indebtedness secured by the Sale Assets. The Debtor may request such an accounting (and interested parties may request additional information regarding the Sale or the Sale Assets) by contacting counsel for the Secured Parties:

Joseph C. Barsalona II, Pashman Stein Walder Hayden, P.C., 1007 North Orange Street, 4th Floor #183, Wilmington, DE 19801, (302) 592-6497, jbarsalona@pashmanstein.com

/s/ Joseph C. Barsalona II Joseph C. Barsalona II, Esq. Counsel to Enstructure Wilmington Holdings, LLC, PCI Wilmington, LLC & Intercontinental Services LLC

Portfolio Manager (Pacific Investment Management Company LLC (PIMCO) –New York, NY); Mult. pos. avail. Offered salary $169,000 to $240,000. Execute trad’g for a variety of bond, currency, & derivative instruments across public mutual funds & separately managed accounts. Conduct quantitative & fundamental research to develop financial forecasts & related investment recommendations. F/T. Apply w/ resume to lupe.rubalcaba@pimco.com. Ref. Job ID: 6679691.

Sr. Integration Developer - Workday positions (WarnerMedia Services, LLC; NY, NY). Resp for developing & supporting critical apps in Enterprise Technology, HR Solutions, & Provisioning portfolio. May work remotely. Salary range is $130,000/yr - $160,000/yr, depending on qualifications. Email resume to GMRI@warnerbros.com. Ref: 6961657SIDW2.

Senior Technology Recruiter

(Citadel Securities Americas Services LLC – New York, NY); Mult. Pos. Avail. Set and execute search strategies in collaboration with sr mgmt. for technical positions in Quant Research and Global Trading bus areas. Support full lifecycle recruiting efforts incl candidate ID, screening, evaluation and closing. F/T. Offered salary range of $244,000 to $310,000 per year. Resumescitadelrecruitment@citadel.com. JobID: 6936787.

Senior Engineer Consultant –Software Development needed by Verizon in New York, NY. Design and develop e-commerce systems using HCL Commerce V9. Telecommute role, may work remotely from anywhere in the U.S. Rate of pay: $153,920.00 - $182,000.00 per year.

To apply, email resume to vzapply@verizon.com. Refer to job code DGGAVN- L.

OFFICE SPACE NEEDED

Responsible portfolio manager seeks to sublease small single office (with locking door) near Columbus Circle in Manhattan. If you have an extra office you are not using but want to monetize, please respond with specifics to AKHS1973@gmail.com

PUBLIC & LEGAL NOTICES

Notice of Formation of 215 SULLIVAN 5B LLC. Arts of Org filed with Secy of State of NY (SSNY) on 5/30/23. Office Location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent upon who process shall be served and shall mail copy of process against LLC to 201 Varick St. Frnt 1 #522 New York, NY 10014.

Purpose: any lawful act.

Notice of Formation of Adaptive PQ Strategies LLC. Arts of Org filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 4/20/23. Office Location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent upon whom process may be served and shall mail copy of process against LLC to 516 E 78th Street #3-O, New York, NY 10075.

Purpose: any lawful act.

PUBLIC & LEGAL NOTICES

office of LLC: 109 W. 27th St., 8th Fl., NY, NY 10001. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543.

Purpose: Any lawful activity.

PLAI Studio Architecture, LLC, Arts of Org. filed with Sec. of State of NY (SSNY) on 02/14/2023. Office location: New York County. SSNY desig. as agent upon whom process against it may be served & shall mail copy of process to 250 Mercer St C308, New York, NY 10012. Purpose: Architecture and Design.

Notice of Formation of BLOOM S.H. OASIS LLC.

Arts of Org filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 3/27/23, Office

Location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent upon who process may be served and shall mail copy of process against LLC to 500 West 45th St, Unit 310, New York, NY 10036.

Purpose: any lawful act.

Notice of Formation of KATUSHA CAB LLC

Arts of Org filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 6/9/23, Office Location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent upon who process may be served and shall mail copy of process against LLC to 5456 Lagorce Drive, Miami Beach, FL 33140.

Purpose: any lawful act.

RPM6800 Home Inspections Services, LLC Art. Of Org. Filed Sec. of State of NY 5/8/2023. Off. Loc.:Richmond Co. SSNY designated as agent upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY to mail copy of process to The LLC, 56 E. Scranton Ave., Staten Island, NY 10308. Purpose: Any lawful act or activity

Notice of Formation of SAS FAMILY ASSOCIATION LLC. Arts of Org filed with Secy of State of NY (SSNY) on 3/10/23. Office Location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent upon whom process may be served against LLC to: 1967 Wehrle Dr. Ste 1 #086, BUF, NY 14221, USA. Purpose: any lawful act.

Formation of NEXTSTEP CAP LLC filed with the Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 6/26/2023. Office loc.: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. The address SSNY shall mail process to David Gottlieb, 777 6th Ave., Apt. 16C, New York, NY 10001.

Purpose: Any lawful activity.

THE BLACK LINKUP LLC. Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 03/03/23. Office: New York County. SSNY designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to the LLC, 775 Riverside Drive, Unit 1C, New York, NY 10032.

Purpose: Any lawful purpose.

Notice of Formation of HARLEM LOCKS LLC. Arts of Org filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 3/2/2023. Office

Location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent upon whom process may be served and shall mail copy of process against to Legalcorp Solutions, LLC, 11 Broadway, Ste 615, NY, NY 10004.

Purpose: any lawful act.

Notice of Formation of JIT MFT 923 5TH, LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/11/23. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Risk Analyst (Citadel Securities Americas Services LLC – New York, NY); Mult. Pos. Avail. Review risk exposures, monit risk intraday and EOD, and proactively engage with the bus to avoid/resolve any guideline exceedances. Review and improve risk reports to effectively monit and assist with portfolio construction.

F/T. Offered salary of $140,000 - $180,000 per year. Resumes: citadelrecruitment@citadel.com. JobID: 6961332.

PUBLIC & LEGAL NOTICES

Aquarian Productions, LLC filed Arts. of Org. with the Sect'y of State of NY (SSNY) on 8/4/2023. Office: New York County. SSNY has been designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served and shall mail process to: c/o The LLC, 186 Pinehurst Ave, NY, NY 10033.

Purpose: any lawful act.

Notice of Formation of BROOKPARK STRATEGIES LLC. Arts of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY ( SSNY) on 4/1623.

Office Location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon who process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: 1763 2nd Ave, Ste 18P. NY, NY 10128. Purpose: any lawful activity

Notice of Formation of THE RUGGED CROSS FILM LLC Arts of Org filed with Secy of State of NY (SSNY) on 6/16/23. Office Location: NY County. SSNY designated agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served, and shall mail process to the LLC,330 W 28th St, Apt 1H NY NY 10001 Purpose: any lawful act.

Notice of Formation of 1982 WEST BEIRUT, LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 9/28/21. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to 373 Wyeth Aave, 503, BKYLN, NY 11249.

Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Formation of IFD SPACEX LLC filed with the Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 6/21/2023. Office loc.: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. The address SSNY shall mail process to David Kungl, 300 Rector Pl., Apt. 9F, New York, NY 10280. The LLC is to be managed by one or more managers.

Purpose: Any lawful activity.

ARZZ 1293 BROADWAY LLC.

Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 07/25/23. Office: New York County. SSNY designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served.

SSNY shall mail copy of process to the LLC, c/o Foster Garvey, P.C., 100 Wall Street, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10005

Purpose: Any lawful purpose.

Notice of Formation of CROWNNCURLS LLC

Arts of Org filed with the Secretary of State of NY (SSNY) on 5/22/23. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent upon whom process may be served and shall mail copy of process against LLC to 401 E. 115th St, Apt 3n, NY, NY 10029. Purpose: any lawful act

Notice of Formation of BREAKBEAT FILMS, LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 08/03/23. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 200 Park Ave. S, Fl. 8, NY, NY 10003. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Joshua Work at the princ. office of the LLC.

Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of SURGE DIGITAL MARKETING LLC. Arts of Org filed with Secy of State of NY (SSNY) on 5/29/2023. Office

Location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent upon whom process may be served against LLC to: The Limited Liability Company 228 Park Ave S. #868409, NY, NY, 10003, USA, RA: United States Corporation Agents, Inc. 7014 13th Ave, Ste 202 BK, NY, 11228, USA.

Purpose: any lawful act.

Notice of Formation of HUDSON HEALTH LONGEVITY MANAGEMENT SERVICES LLC

Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/17/23.

Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 281 Broadway, Second Fl., NY, NY 10007. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Jonathann C. Kuo, MD at the princ. office of the LLC.

Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of APEROBOT PRODUCTIONS

LLC. Arts of Org filed with Secy of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/31/2023. Office Location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent upon whom process may be served against LLC to: The Limited Liability Company 228 Park Ave S #788672, NY, NY, 10003, USA Reg Ag.: United States Corporation Agents, INC. 7014 13th Avenue, Ste 202 Brkln, NY, 11228, USA.

Purpose: any lawful act.

Notice of Formation of LOUIS L. SHAPIRO LLC

Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 08/10/22.

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

Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of MAIALE LLC

Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 08/16/23. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 37 W. 21st St., Apt. 1106, NY, NY 10010. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543.

Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Qualification of AJAX BBC, LLC

Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 08/03/23. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 02/25/22. 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 122072543. 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., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Qualification of MACELLUM ADVISORS GP, LLC

Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/13/23. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 09/26/11. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. DE addr. of LLC: 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State, 401 Federal St., Ste. 3, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Qualification of AAI UNSCRIPTED LLC

Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 08/02/23. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 07/31/23. Princ. office of LLC: 1359 Broadway, 21st Fl., NY, NY 10018. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC at the princ. office of the LLC. DE addr. of LLC: c/o Corporation Service Co., 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State of State of DE, Corp. Dept., Townsend Bldg., Dover, DE 19901.

Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Qualification of MACELLUM ADVISORS, LP

Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 7/13/23.

Office location: NY County. LP formed in Delaware (DE) on 09/27/11. NYS fictitious name: MACELLUM ADVISORS, L.P.

Notice of Formation of BOTTLE HILL PROPERTIES LLC

Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 09/10/21.

Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC, 12 Overhill Dr., Madison, NJ 07940. The regd. agent of the company upon whom and at which process against the company can be served is U.S. Corp. Agents, Inc., 7014 13th Ave., Ste. 202, Brooklyn, NY 11228. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Qualification of Ogden Pond Realty LLC. Appl. for Auth. filed with NY Dept. of State on 3/10/22. Office location: New York County. NY Sec. of State designated agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served, and shall mail process to the LLC, c/o Baratta, Baratta & Aidala LLP, 546 Fifth Ave, 6th Fl, New York, NY 10036. DE addr. of LLC c/o Vanguard Corporate Services Ltd, 3500 S Dupont Hwy, Dover, DE 19901. Cert. of Form. filed with DE Sec. of State, 401 Federal St., Dover, DE 19901 on 11/9/21.

Purpose: any lawful activity.

Notice of Qualification of RP BRONX TERMINAL MARKET C, LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/06/23. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 06/30/23. Princ. office of LLC: 423 W. 55th St., 7th Fl., NY, NY 10019. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co. (CSC), 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. DE addr. of LLC: c/o CSC, 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State, 401 Federal State St., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: All legal purposes related to renewable energy.

Notice of Formation of BRIX MANAGEMENT LLC

Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 08/01/23. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 1407 Broadway, 3rd Fl., NY, NY 10018. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of Clement King Executive Counseling LLC Arts of Org filed with Secy of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/09/2023. Office Location: NEW YORK County. SSNY designated as agent upon whom process may be served against LLC to: THE LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY 228 PARK AVE S #790130, NEW YORK, NY, 10003, USA Reg Ag.: UNITED STATES CORPORATION AGENTS, INC. 7014 13TH AVENUE , SUITE 202 BROOKLYN, NY, 11228, USA

Purpose: any lawful act.

Notice of Formation of OMS 30C LLC. Arts of Org filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 5/26/23. Office Location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent upon who process may be served and shall mail copy of process against LLC to DGW Kramer LLP, One Rockefeller Plaza, Ste 1060, New York, NY 10020. Purpose: any lawful act.

Notice of Qualification of 60 CENTRAL AVENUE ENERGY STORAGE 2 LLC

Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/10/23.

Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 07/05/23. Princ. office of LLC: 7

Notice of Formation of CVE US NY BREWERTON 108 LLC

Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 08/02/23. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 109 W. 27th St., 8th Fl., NY, NY 10001. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543.

Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of DD VELEZ KINGSBORO JV LLC

Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/31/23. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 7 Penn Plaza, Ste. 600, NY, NY 10001. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC at the addr. of its princ. office. Purpose: Any lawful activity

Notice of Qualification of WINGSPIRE CAPITAL RWL LLC

Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/12/23. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 06/16/23. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC, 11720 Amber Park Dr., Ste. 500, Alpharetta, GA 30009. DE addr. of LLC: c/o Corporation Service Co., 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State, Div. of Corps., John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St. - Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of NEW AGE HOUSE OF LIFE LLC

Arts of Org filed with Secy of State of NY (SSNY) on 5/11/23. Office Location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent upon whom process may be served against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: 1492 Park Pl 4F, BK, NY, 11213 Purpose: any lawful act.

Contact Suzanne Janik at 313-446-0455 or email: sjanik@crain.com

Duration of LP is Perpetual. SSNY designated as agent of LP upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. Name and addr. of each general partner are available from SSNY. DE addr. of LP: 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of LP filed with Secy. of State, 401 Federal St., Ste. 3, Dover, DE 19901.

Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of MONTICELLO ACQUISITION, LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 08/16/23. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 30 Hudson Yards, 72nd Fl., NY, NY 10001. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207.

Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Qualification of LONGEVITY HEALTH AGENCY, LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/10/23. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Florida (FL) on 06/16/22. Princ. office of LLC: 11780 N. US Hwy. 1, Ste. N107, N. Palm Beach, FL 33408. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State, 500 S. Bronough St., Tallahassee, FL 32399-0250. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Qualification of DRP SOLARIS MULTISTATE, LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/11/23. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 07/06/23. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Corporation Service Co. (CSC), 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. DE addr. of LLC: c/o CSC, 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State, Div. of Corps., John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Ste. 3, Dover, DE 19901.

Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Times Sq., Ste. 3504, NY, NY 10036. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. DE addr. of LLC: 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State, 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

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Notice of Formation of SKULLI PRODUCTIONS LLC Arts of Org filed with Secy of State of NY (SSNY) on 3/8/2023. Office Location: NEW YORK County. SSNY designated as agent upon whom process may be served against LLC to: The Limited Liability Company 228 Park Ave S #525546, NY, NY, 10003, USA Reg Ag.: United States Corporation Agents, Inc. 7014 13th Ave, Ste 202 Bklyn, NY, 11228, USA.

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revenue the company generated in 2022. The contracts represent about 6% of the $12 billion the city expects it will cost to manage the migrant crisis over the next two years.

The players

DocGo President and Chief Operating Officer Lee Bienstock joined the company in 2022 after 10 years at Google, where his last position was global head of enterprise partnerships for devices and services. He also held roles in Google Search, YouTube and Fiber. Af-

the company since 2017 in a handful of roles, including as chief technology officer and chief product officer.

Andre Oberholzer served as DocGo’s chief financial officer and in January was promoted to treasurer and executive vice president of capital markets and strategy. He collected some $1.3 million selling shares at an average price of $10.26 on Aug. 16—the largest insider sale at DocGo over the past year, according to records from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Adams has visibly supported the company, attending DocGo’s June investor conference at Nasdaq’s offices in Times Square. “If you don’t have docs on the go, then you have a retro thinking of health care,” Adams told investors at the conference.

On its website, DocGo describes itself as “one of the largest medical transportation companies in both the U.S. and the U.K.” The company says it has more than 4,500 fulltime medically trained field staff globally, along with a fleet of over 1,000 ambulances and other vehicles. DocGo says it transports more than 600,000 patients each year, along with offering mobile health services to bring medical care to patients outside of traditional hospital or clinic settings.

The uproar

that [DocGo] is meeting all of their contractual obligations because I’m not convinced that that is happening in every area,” Hochul said. “They are being paid a lot of money from the city, and we want to work with the city to ensure that all requirements are being met.”

Company history

quarter of the year.

ter becoming the runner-up in the fifth season of The Apprentice, he went to work for Donald Trump, serving as the associate vice president of The Trump Organization from 2005 to 2007.

DocGo’s Chief Executive Officer, Anthony Capone, has been with

DocGo’s contract went into effect May 5, but City Comptroller Brad Lander’s office confirmed to Crain’s that the document was only received for review Aug. 16—a noteworthy delay as a review by the comptroller is the final step in city contract approvals. Records show that the contract’s prime vendor is listed as Rapid Reliable Testing NY, which filings with the SEC show is a fully owned subsidiary of DocGo.

Recent scrutiny of DocGo’s management of migrants has yielded allegations of mistreatment and calls for greater oversight of the company’s handling from local and state officials. Multiple migrants told The New York Times they were misled about help finding work and the conditions they’d experience upstate. Those bused into the Capital Region have reported issues receiving health care, concerns about food and trouble accessing local transportation, according to the Albany Times Union.

Local authorities say DocGo has not consistently provided key information about arriving migrants that would help them access assistance programs and pursue asylum cases.

Amid the slew of complaints, Gov. Kathy Hochul told reporters she is “not satisfied” with the situation. “We are doing a review and working with the city to make sure

DocGo, which launched in 2015 and is headquartered in Midtown, says it has worked with a variety of health care networks, governments across 26 states and major corporations, including Disney, Amazon and Uber. Covid testing made up roughly a third of the company’s $318.7 revenue in 2021.

The company was valued at $889 million as of Thursday, Aug. 17. At the end of June, the company had generated more than $451 million in revenue over the previous 12 months, according to PitchBook.

DocGo went public after it closed a merger with Motion Acquisition, a special-purpose acquisition company, also known as a SPAC, resulting in the combined company trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol DCGO beginning Nov. 5, 2021. Since then the company has experienced rapid growth that hasn’t let up. DocGo’s Chief Financial Officer, Norm Rosenberg, celebrated on an August earnings call that DocGo set a revenue record in its second quarter, generating $125.5 million—an 11% increase compared to the first

On the earnings call, Bienstock referred to the city contract, which hasn’t been publicly released, as a “mobility health contract.” He added that the company landed the contract after it “successfully worked with the city across numerous contracts, spanning multiple years, building our track record and the city’s trust.” Company officials said they believe DocGo is positioned to earn the contract’s full amount and expect the contract will be extended beyond its March 2024 end date.

What’s next

DocGo has maintained that it is meeting its contractual requirements. The city comptroller and the state’s Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance are working to review the contract and the company’s handling of its responsibilities.

The long-term impact on the company remains unclear, with shares trading at $8.92 on Aug. 30—down 6.4% from $9.53 at the start of the year.

Perhaps in an attempt to do some damage control, DocGo is looking to hire a director of government relations and relationship management. The position would pay up to $150,000 annually with responsibilities that include “identify and develop processes and tools to expand our government reach and success.”

“We are doing a review and working with the city to make sure that [DocGo] is meeting all of their contractual obligations because I’m not convinced that that is happening in every area.”

Gov. Kathy Hochul

Bronx entrepreneur is bringing capital to disadvantaged neighborhoods

Tomas Ramos

Growing up in Washington Heights and raised by a single mom, Tomas Ramos developed a do-it-yourself attitude.

“My mother moved us through a lot,” he said. “She protected us and tried to give us the best upbringing so the cycle wouldn’t repeat itself with us.”

After he graduated from Temple University in Philadelphia in 2010,

pro ts, taking roles at Children’s Arts and Science Workshops in Upper Manhattan in 2016 and the Bronx Community Center. His time at those organizations strengthened his resolve to ght generational poverty in the city, but he realized that simply waiting around for public money to address the community’s issues would not get things done. So he set out to do it himself.

the gap in access to capital left by publicly funded nonpro ts and the private sector. He named the company Oyate after the word for people in the Dakota language. e rm, which has six employees, makes donations and investments.

Expanded work

Ramos moved back to New York City and realized that not many others in his community had been able to get a leg up.

“People weren’t progressing, and this vicious cycle of generational poverty continued to repeat itself,” he recalled. “[Ending] this cycle was something I was very passionate about, and I knew I could do something more to help my community.”

He began working at local non-

“Many nonpro ts operate from a decit mentality and a scarcity mindset,” Ramos said. “ ey are always ghting for the same small government contracts, and that’s what led me to found my own organization.”

Ramos launched Oyate Group in June 2020, shortly after the onset of the pandemic, with the help of his college network, which connected him to private corporate donors and foundations. e goal of the South Bronx-based nonpro t, where Ramos is president and CEO, is to help local entrepreneurs in Upper Manhattan and throughout the borough to bridge

e nonpro t raised $500,000 to support small businesses a ected by Covid-19 and soon after began distributing money to help businesses looted during the unrest spurred by the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, Ramos said. Oyate distributed $200,000 to businesses on Burnside Avenue and Fordham Road in the Bronx in less than three weeks, he said.

Oyate Group then raised an additional $3 million and organized Covid-19 vaccine drives at New York City Housing Authority developments in the Bronx.

Since then Ramos has expanded his work to help undocumented immigrants and organize community events and giveaways in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx. His goal is to give out $2 million by

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Who he is: Founder and president, Oyate Group

Age: 37

Grew up: Washington Heights

Resides: Harlem

Education: Bachelor’s in nance, Temple University

Outdoorsman: When Ramos is not at work, he enjoys riding horses, hiking, off-roading on an ATV and scuba diving.

World traveler: After an internship fell through in 2008, Ramos enrolled in the study-abroad program Semester at Sea. He visited 13 countries during his time in the program and said the experience opened his eyes to the world beyond Wall Street and making money.

the end of the year.

“We are going to have the resources to really impact the most underserved in our communities and the backbone of our community, which is small businesses,” he said.

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Tomas Ramos is founder and president of South Bronx-based nonpro t Oyate Group. BUCK ENNIS

Tomas Ramos, head of Oyate Group, says he realized that just waiting around for public money would not get things done

By | Mario Marroquin

“...This vicious cycle of generational poverty continued to repeat itself.”

Tomas Ramos, founder and president, Oyate Group