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WEEK OF DECEMBER A CONCEPTUAL MESSAGE OF LOVE ◄P.12
7-13 2017
Advocates of a newly passed measure easing the tax burden on Manhattan retailers hope the policy will help reduce the number of vacant storefronts lining the city’s streets. Photo: Michael Garofalo
TAX CUT FOR MANHATTAN SMALL BUSINESSES Council Member Corey Johnson (right), whose political base is in Chelsea, campaigned with then-candidate and now Council Member-elect Francisco Moya (left) in Corona, Queens, in June. Johnson, who is running for City Council speaker, donated $2,750 to his campaign and campaigned on his behalf. His Manhattan rivals for the speaker post, members Mark Levine and Ydanis Rodriguez, also contributed to Moya’s campaign. Photo: Twitter/@CoreyinNYC
COMMERCE Council approves long-sought commercial rent reform BY MICHAEL GAROFALO
With a hoped-for aim of making Manhattan’s retail landscape more hospitable to small businesses, the City Council last week passed legislation reducing the number of enterprises obligated to pay the city’s commercial rent tax. Manhattan businesses below 96th Street are the only ones still taxed under the policy, which applied to commercial tenants citywide when it was implemented in 1963. The outer boroughs and Upper Manhattan were gradually granted exemptions; by 1996, the taxed area had been whittled down to its current footprint, which includes some of the city’s most important commercial districts. Further changes exempted some smaller businesses with lower rents from the tax — since 2001, commercial tenants with annualized rents below $250,000 haven’t been required to pay. But since then, commercial rents have skyrocketed throughout Manhattan — increasing 431 percent in SoHo, 264 percent along Fifth Avenue in the Flatiron
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CASH COW FOR COUNCIL MEMBERS POLITICS The heated race for City Council speaker has become a fundraising bonanza for elected officials and candidates as aspirants for the city’s second most powerful post shower favors – and dollars — on the colleagues whose votes they seek BY DOUGLAS FEIDEN
Never before has so much attention been lavished by so many striving Manhattan politicians on the relatively obscure, and safely Democratic, 49th District
Member Corey Johnson, who represents Chelsea, Hell’s Kitchen and Greenwich Village, from joining her on the campaign trail in a district that’s much closer to Bayonne, N.J., than it is to Times Square. “My BABY @CMDebiRose — she’s the best,” he tweeted, sending out a picture of the two of them on the stump on June 17. “Re-elect Debi!” There’s more: Johnson’s campaign committee, Corey 2017, cut a check for $2,750 to Debi Rose 2017 on March 8, according to filings with the city’s Campaign Finance Board. That’s the maximum legal contribution allow-
City Council seat on the North Shore of Staten Island. The lucky recipient of favors, friendship and funds in the runup to the November 7 election was incumbent Council Member Debi Rose, who routed a weak GOP challenger to coast to a 24-percent blowout victory. Her political fiefdom is located a distant five miles south of Battery Park. She was ranked by City and State Magazine as “one of the worst members” of the Council — 46 out of 51 — with an attendance rate, 67 percent, that was the third-worst in the chamber in 2016. But none of that kept Council
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WEEK OF APRIL
SPRING ARTS PREVIEW < CITYARTS, P.12
FOR HIM, SETTLING SMALL CLAIMS IS A BIG DEAL presided over Arbitration Man has three decades. for informal hearings about it He’s now blogging BY RICHARD KHAVKINE
is the common Arbitration Man their jurist. least folks’ hero. Or at Man has For 30 years, Arbitration court office of the civil few sat in a satellite Centre St. every building at 111 New Yorkers’ weeks and absorbed dry cleaning, burned lost accountings of fender benders, lousy paint jobs, and the like. And security deposits then he’s decided. Arbitration Man, About a year ago, so to not afwho requested anonymity started docuhe fect future proceedings, two dozen of what menting about compelling cases considers his most blog. in an eponymous about it because “I decided to write the stories but in a I was interested about it not from wanted to write from view but rather lawyer’s point of said Arbitration view,” of a lay point lawyer since 1961. Man, a practicing what’s at issue He first writes about post, renders and then, in a separatehow he arrived his decision, detailing blog the to Visitors at his conclusion. their opinions. often weigh in with get a rap going. I to “I really want whether they unreally want to know and why I did it,” I did derstood what don’t know how to he said. “Most people ... I’d like my cases the judge thinks. and also my trereflect my personalitythe law.” for mendous respect 80, went into indiMan, Arbitration suc in 1985, settling vidual practice
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MANHATTAN'S APARTMENT BOOM, > PROPERTY, P.20
2015
In Brief MORE HELP FOR SMALL BUSINESS
The effort to help small seems to businesses in the city be gathering steam. Two city councilmembers, Robert Margaret Chin and Cornegy, have introduced create legislation that wouldSmall a new “Office of the within Business Advocate” of Small the city’s Department Business Services. Chin The new post, which have up told us she’d like to would and running this year, for serve as an ombudsman city small businesses within them clear government, helping to get through the bureaucracy things done. Perhaps even more also importantly, the ombudsman and number will tally the type small business of complaints by taken in owners, the actions policy response, and somefor ways to recommendations If done well, begin to fix things. report would the ombudsman’s give us the first quantitative with taste of what’s wrong the city, an small businesses in towards important first step fixing the problem. of for deTo really make a difference, is a mere formality will have to the work process looking to complete their advocate are the chances course, velopers precinct, but rising rents, -- thanks to a find a way to tackle business’ is being done legally of after-hours projects quickly. their own hours,” which remain many While Chin “They pick out boom in the number throughout who lives on most vexing problem. said Mildred Angelo,of the Ruppert construction permits gauge what Buildings one said it’s too early tocould have the 19th floor in The Department of the city. number three years, the Houses on 92nd Street between role the advocate She Over the past on the is handing out a record work perThird avenues. permits, there, more information of Second and an ongoing all-hours number of after-hours bad thing. of after-hours work the city’s Dept. problem can’t be a said there’s with the mits granted by nearby where according to new data jumped 30 percent, This step, combinedBorough construction project noise Buildings has data provided in workers constantly make efforts by Manhattan to mediate BY DANIEL FITZSIMMONS according to DOB of Informacement from trucks. President Gale Brewer offer response to a Freedom classifies transferring they want. They knows the the rent renewal process, request. The city They 6 “They do whatever signs Every New Yorker clang, tion Act go as they please. work between some early, tangible small any construction on the weekend, can come and sound: the metal-on-metal or the piercing of progress. For many have no respect.” p.m. and 7 a.m., can’t come of these that the hollow boom, issuance reverse. owners, in business moving The increased beeps of a truck has generto a correspond and you as after-hours. soon enough. variances has led at the alarm clock The surge in permits
SLEEPS, THANKS TO THE CITY THAT NEVER UCTION A BOOM IN LATE-NIGHT CONSTR NEWS
A glance it: it’s the middle can hardly believe yet construction of the night, and carries on full-tilt. your local police or You can call 311
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able to a Council candidate during a single election cycle. Why would a dyed-in-the-wool Chelsea progressive, just reelected with 94 percent of the vote, leave his comfort zone, cross New York Harbor, and take up the cudgels for a Richmond County pol best known for championing access to the Kill Van Kull and advancing the borough’s maritime interests as chair of the Council’s Waterfront Committee? Rose’s office didn’t respond to questions. Johnson’s chief of staff, Erik Bottcher, didn’t return multiple calls and emails. But the
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