Crain's New York Business, May 13, 2024

Women’s health VC checkup

Four funders share advice on standing out in a crowded landscape

By Jacqueline Neber

When Brooklyn Heights-based angel investor Leslie Schrock met with Dina Radenkovic, co-founder of women’s health startup Gameto, in 2022, Schrock noticed Radenkovic seemed exhausted. Just the day before, Radenkovic had donated her eggs to test her company’s protocol, which uses cell engineering to develop reproductive medicines for women.

Schrock was impressed by Radenkovic’s dedication.

“I knew Dina was the real deal,” Schrock said. “I thought to myself, Wow, not all founders are willing to do that. And they’re certainly not willing to show up to work the next day.”

BY THE NUMBERS $256M

The total amount of investments for women’s health-tech companies in New York

Radenkovic’s commitment convinced Schrock to join the bioethics committee for Midtown-based Gameto, which has raised about $40 million in a quest to bring women more treatments as they age. Schrock is also an adviser for Maven Clinic, one of the superstars of New York’s women’s health industry, and an angel investor for several other

Adams spends $250K of city money on tech conference with ties to Frank Carone

By Nick Garber

Mayor Eric Adams’ administration is spending $250,000 of city money to sponsor an upcoming tech conference whose organizer recently worked for Frank Carone, Adams’ political xer and former chief of sta .

e Smart City Expo USA is scheduled to be held in Lower Manhattan from May 22 to 23, and is touting Adams and more

than a dozen other top city o cials as speakers. Initially scheduled for October 2023, organizers canceled the conference four days before its start date. ey publicly blamed heavy rainfall, but ve people familiar with the event’s planning who spoke with Crain’s New York Business attributed the postponement to poor ticket sales and a lack of corporate sponsorships.

Mayor Adams has promoted the revived Expo as a chance to explore solutions to

EDUCATION

Does attending a New York law school help grads pass the state bar exam?

climate change and public safety: “As the tech mayor, I am committed to pushing our city forward,” Adams said in a video message rst posted to the conference’s YouTube page in April.

But Adams has not publicly mentioned his administration’s nancial support for the event, nor the organizers’ ties to his personal orbit: Aarti Tandon, the CEO of

CARONE on Page 28 See STARTUPS on Page 30

Mayor Eric Adams promoted the upcoming Smart City Expo USA in a promotional video released by the conference in April. SMART CITY EXPO USA

Angel investor Leslie Schrock (left)and Maven Clinic founder Kate Ryder | BUCK ENNIS

See

Martha Stewart and her daughter acquire a duplex on the Upper West Side for $12.3 million after selling triplex

C. J. Hughes

Martha Stewart has left downtown for uptown, and downsized in the process.

About a year after selling a West Village triplex, the home-decor doyenne and multimillionaire businesswoman and her daughter, media personality Alexis Stewart, have purchased a duplex on the Upper West Side.

e new six-bedroom home is at the Belnord, a full-block redevelopment project at 2376 Broadway at West 86th Street. e apartment, a 4,600-square-foot unit spanning the top two oors of the 12-story building, cost $12.3 million, according to the city register, which indicated the deal closed April 25.

now deluged by a torrent of lawsuits over unpaid bills and missed loan payments.

Scaling back price ambitions

$12.3M

Cost price for 2376 Broadway at West 86th Street

When the state attorney general’s o ce allowed sales to begin at the Belnord in 2017, HFZ envisioned getting $18 million for the Stewarts’ new spread, which has a living room with a replace, a formal dining room and views of both the building’s landscaped courtyard and West 87th Street, according to the o ering plan and marketing materials.

e deed also revealed the Stewarts have been in contract since April 2023, about two months after they found a buyer for their 9,500-square-foot former pad at 165 Charles St., a glass tower designed by Richard Meier near the Hudson River that was a celebrity hotspot after opening two decades ago. Both Martha and Alexis signed the Belnord deed.

e unit’s seller was the Belnord’s current developer, Westbrook Partners, which took over the project in 2021 from HFZ Capital Group, a once high- ying rm

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But as condo sales slowed in the years before the pandemic, which added its own layers of complexity, the development team appeared to scale back its pricing ambitions. In recent years the Stewarts’ unit was marketed for $13.2 million, according to Streeteasy, before nally trading below that.

e 213-unit Belnord’s most recent o ering plan calls for a sellout of $1.3 billion, but because the 1909 rental turned condo is rehabbing and selling units as they become vacant, the process has gone slowly. As of May 6 the Belnord had unloaded about 50% of its apartments, according to the real estate data rm Marketproof, which added that sale prices there

have ranged from $870,000 to $13.9 million.

e building’s own turn in the limelight might enhance its appeal. Exterior images of the ctional co-op the Arconia in the Hulu comedy series Only Murders in the Building are actually shots of the facade of the Belnord, a landmark. It’s not known if Alexis, a former radio and TV host, will live in the apartment with her family or share the residence with her mother, whose primary address still appears to be a farm in Katonah in Westchester County.

Richard Ziegelasch, the Corcoran Group agent who represented

the Stewarts in the deal, did not respond to a request for comment.

And Douglas Elliman broker Maya Kadouri, who marketed the unit, declined to comment.

Selling companies

In 2015 Martha Stewart sold her multifaceted company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, to Sequential Brands Group for about $350 million but continued to be involved with her rm, which published Martha Stewart Living magazine and other titles. In 2019 Sequential ended up selling the intellectual property to Marquee

Brands for $175 million. Stewart, a former model who in recent years has branched into marijuana-derivative-infused candies, also posed in 2023 in a bathing suit on some covers of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue at age 81. New condo sales have been a bit of a bright spot in a market still chilled by high interest rates. e median sale price for developments in Manhattan in the rst quarter was $2.1 million, which was up sharply from the $1.6 million in the rst quarter of 2023, according to Elliman data. But sales activity in the category slumped by 35% over the same period.

Progressive Brooklyn lawmaker Zellnor Myrie moves to challenge Adams for mayor in 2025

Nick

Garber

Brooklyn State senator Zellnor Myrie is taking steps to challenge Mayor Eric Adams for re-election in 2025, further complicating Adams’ already uncertain hopes for a second term amid sagging approval ratings.

Myrie, a 37-year-old progressive, con rmed in a statement on May 8 that he is moving to run against Adams. He joins former comptroller Scott Stringer in eyeing a Democratic primary challenge to the incumbent mayor.

fordable, safe, and livable — and that’s why I’m taking the rst steps to explore a race for Mayor in 2025.”

Myrie, who is Afro-Latino and an attorney by training, represents the state Senate district that Adams himself once held, covering Central Brooklyn neighborhoods like Crown Heights, Prospect Heights and Park Slope. Myrie won his seat in 2018 as part of a progressive wave that ended Republican control of the state Senate, and has since championed causes including criminal justice reform, including the “clean slate” law that will seal more criminal convictions.

“My parents came here from Costa Rica nearly 50 years ago because this city held promise and opportunity, but I’ve watched that opportunity disappear for too many New Yorkers like me.”

Zellnor Myrie

“For too many New Yorkers that I speak to, they’re tired of the showmanship,” Myrie said. “What people want to see are results. New Yorkers want to see their government working relentlessly to make this city af-

“My parents came here from Costa Rica nearly 50 years ago because this city held promise and opportunity, but I’ve watched that opportunity disappear for too many New Yorkers like me,” Myrie added in his statement. “We need to build a city where families can nd good housing in a safe neighborhood, schools to care for and educate our kids, and leadership that is laser-focused on solv-

ing our city’s challenges.”

Myrie told the New York Times that his campaign would focus on “competence,” and criticized Adams’ cuts to schools, parks and libraries. But he is sure to face his own hurdles: Myrie is not wellknown among voters citywide, and lacks Adams’ head-start on fundraising and his connections to powerful labor unions. Mayor Adams has $2.2 million on hand in his re-election campaign account. But the mayor’s vulnerabilities are obvious: Adams’ approval rating fell to just 28% in a December

Quinnipiac University poll, the survey’s worst-ever result for a New York City mayor. Myrie also has the potential to undercut Adams’ historically strong bases of support in Central Brooklyn, and in the Black and Latino communities.

Myrie’s interest in challenging Adams has been known for months, and was a topic of discussion at last year’s Somos conference that drew New York’s political power brokers to Puerto Rico. Others seen as potential challengers include Queens State Sen. Jessica Ramos and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Zellnor Myrie, a Brooklyn state senator, said that he will challenge Mayor Eric Adams in 2025. SUSAN WATTS/OFFICE OF GOV. KATHY HOCHUL

Martha Stewart (left) and the interior of 2376 Broadway | BLOOMBERG; CORCORAN GROUP

Elisabeth Wynn

66%

Overall pass rate for the July 2023 exam 83%

First-time test-takers from New York’s ABAapproved schools who passed the exam in July 2023, trailing out-ofstate counterparts by 5%

Does attending law school in the state help students pass the New York bar exam?

Studying at an ABA-approved school here or elsewhere in the United States did not translate to signi cant discrepancies in success on the test

More than 1,650 law school graduates are on their way to practicing law in New York after passing the New York State Bar Examination in February.

With 3,962 test-takers, the overall pass rate clocked in at 42%, up 2% from last year. at share is signi cantly higher for rsttime test-takers who attended American Bar Association-approved law schools, with that subset of examinees passing at a rate of 71%.

Whether a student studied law at an

ABA-approved law school in New York or elsewhere in the U.S. did not translate to signi cant discrepancies in success on the statespeci c exam.

Of the 418 graduates of New York law schools who took the exam for the rst time in February, 72% passed, outperforming their 338 counterparts from outof-state ABA-approved law schools by just 3%.

Of the 418 graduates of New York law schools who took the exam for the rst time in February, 72% passed.

Pass rates on the New York exam were much lower for foreign-educated candidates, though. Approximately 1,900 applicants fell into that category, just 35% of whom passed. Firsttime foreign-educated examinees fared fairly better with a pass rate of 45%.

Repeat test-takers also fared worse. Of the 2,575 repeat examinees, just 33% passed.

e bar is administered twice a year, typically in July and February. e summer exam is always the more popular option because more students graduate in the spring, and the prevailing wisdom is to take the exam as soon after graduation as possible. Less than half as many people who took the July 2023 bar exam in New York took the February 2024 exam.

e overall pass rate for the July 2023 exam was 66%, with rst time test-takers from New York’s ABA-approved schools passing 83% of the time, trailing out-of-state counterparts by 5%.

Midtown law rm moves to smaller space at lower rent

Aaron Elstein

Law rm Sullivan & Worcester has relocated its Midtown o ce and leased 20% less space.

e rm with 52 New York-based attorneys moved to 1251 Sixth Ave. from 1633 Broadway, a short walk away on West 50th Street.

e new space at 42,000 square feet is smaller but has a view of Rockefeller Center and a “fun and collaborative” environment, managing partner David Danovitch said. e rent is also lower than at 1633 Broadway, though Danovitch wouldn’t say by how much. More

importantly, the o ce is a touch closer to Grand Central Terminal.

“We wanted to be a bit more centrally located, a little bit easier to get to,” he said.

Prime tenants

Law rms have become prime tenants for o ce landlords with space to ll. e rms typically don’t pay top dollar but do tend to ll up the middle oors of o ce towers. A return-to-o ce survey by the Partnership for New York City last fall showed law rms had average daily attendance of 65%,

the same as nance and the most of any profession except real estate, at 75%.

Several major law rms may call the movers in the years ahead, including Willkie Farr & Gallagher, whose lease for 300,000 square feet at 787 Seventh Ave. expires in 2027. Ropes & Gray’s lease for 330,000 square feet at 1211 Sixth Ave also expires in 2027. Also looking for space are Goodwin Procter and Covington & Burling, both located in the New York Times Building on Eighth Avenue across from the Port Authority bus terminal.

Cravath Swaine & Moore is

moving this summer to 2 Manhattan West from Worldwide Plaza, a hefty blow to the Eighth Avenue building.

Sullivan & Worcester’s new ofce building is owned by Japan’s Mitsui Fudosan. e 54- oor tower’s lobby includes an artistauthorized replica of a tapestry by Pablo Picasso.

Danovitch said the goal is for the new o ce to replace Boston as the rm’s largest. e rm is contemplating an expansion into Hong Kong.

“New York is the gateway for what we’re trying to do,” he said.

More than 1,650 law school graduates are on their way to practicing law in New York after passing the New York State Bar Examination in February. | BLOOMBERG

Jack Grieve

Joint venture takes a big swing in Red Hook, where others have whiffed

New developer hopes to break the streak as it plans to create a single-purpose project for the historically commercial neighborhood

Red Hook, a shipping hub on New York Bay, has seen big dreams dashed like waves upon rocks. Many promised redevelopments of industrial sites have never come to pass despite obvious potential and considerable hype.

A new developer hopes to break the streak. Eschewing the mixed-use approach that has characterized previous proposals, the team of Bungalow Projects and Bain Capital Real Estate is planning to create a single-purpose project for the historically commercial neighborhood: a 225,000-square-foot, 4-soundstage lm studio on a site that once repaired cars.

“It will be a total game-changer,” said Newmark broker David Behin, a 20-year Brooklyn real estate veteran who found the site, at 145 Wolcott St., for the developers. “Red Hook is turning into a nice place to live and play and work.”

O ering a blank slate-esque oneand-a-half acres of vacant land across a nearly full-block site, Wolcott has appeal on a practical level. But it’s also located in a place that could translate into savings for lmmakers. Indeed, if a show is shot within eight miles of Columbus Circle (considered the city’s geographic center), producers can save on transportation and overtime costs for actors and crews.

Not served by any subway lines, out-of-the-way Red Hook has sometimes su ered for being hard to get to, though city ferries have serviced the neighborhood since 2017. Still, Hollywood workers are prone to get around the city by car. Bungalow and Bain, which will employ just 10 full-time workers at the Wolcott site, may be betting that the hundreds of others hired for productions will be unfazed by a little extra driving.

To be sure, the site has seen grand plans before. Previous owner W-G Capital Advisors, which bought the parcel in 2019 for $21.5 million, envisioned a multipronged project with o ces, restaurants and apartments, including a ordable housing. But W-G’s vision collided with local opposition over the developer’s approach to rezoning the property, which supposedly limited community input. e idea of building homes on streets that have been known to ood was also a point of contention.

But by o ering an industrial-only use at Wolcott, Bungalow and Bain may be able to swim where the previous landlord sank.

In any event, the developers appear to be moving on multiple fronts. In December they closed on a similarly industrial site on Moore Street in Bushwick for $26.7 million, a location where they are planning another movie studio, this one measuring 330,000 square feet with six soundstages.

Former factory sites in the city often have quite different uses these days, although some holdouts remain, like this well-kept three-story brick structure with paned windows on a block-long site. It appears to have had a nearly continuous line of manufacturing tenants since its 1899 opening. Designed by William Tubby, an architect put to frequent use by Brooklyn’s well-known Pratt family, the multi-building complex was rst home to Witteman Brothers, which made bottles, corks, caps and labels for the beer and soda industry. Le Comte & Co., which made tin cans, moved in afterwards, and the company’s sign still endures in faded letters on No. 43’s façade. Segal Lock, which made the vertically-aligned deadbolts that are still ubiquitous in New York apartments, came next, according to a history of the property. Likewise, the site’s owner for the past couple decades has been E.R. Butler Co., which produces period door knobs, chandeliers and candlesticks. Butler, which has showrooms in SoHo, Boston and Italy, purchased the ve-building complex in 1998 for $1.5 million, records show, and paid off its $2.8 million note on the property, held by JPMorgan Chase & Co., last year. The restored building has joined “the creative foment that characterizes this diverse section of Brooklyn,” Butler’s site says.

The 4-story, 11,000-square-foot of ce building on this site, which opened in 2020, appears to have been built on spec, which might have seemed like a decent bet in pre-Covid times but is perhaps harder to fathom in the current remote-work era. The building, which has 13-foot ceilings with exposed ductwork for an industrial look, is completely empty, according to the commercial real estate database CoStar and the building’s own website. In fact, interested tenants can lease the entire structure, whose roof deck has Manhattan views. In 2023 Douglas Elliman was marketing oors for $35 per square foot annually, which is cheap relative to Manhattan, where $75 is the norm. In 2016 developer Ulgar Aydin of KSK Construction Corp. purchased No. 160, which formerly had a small parking lot, for $1.8 million, according to the city register. The FBI is currently investigating whether KSK illegally funneled Turkish contributions into Mayor Eric Adams’ 2021 campaign. No. 160’s seller was local landlord Red Hook Building Co., an investing arm of New Jersey-based rm Guido Enterprises. The neighborhood’s largest private owner of real estate, though, is the O’Connell Organization, a business founded in 1967 by former narcotics detective Gregory O’Connell.

117 FERRIS ST.

This nondescript complex has a colorful occupant, Dell’s Maraschino Cherries, which churns out multiple millions of pounds of its neon-red, Shirley Templegarnishing signature product a year. Founded in 1948 in a Carroll Gardens storefront by Italian immigrant Ralph Mondella, Dell’s relocated to Red Hook in the 1970s after it outgrew its space and became a quirky local presence. Local bees reportedly have a scarlet hue as does their honey. Ralph’s grandson Arthur Mondella, who took over the company after a stint on Wall Street, had a secret side hustle in recent years: an illegal marijuana farm hidden in No. 117’s basement. When authorities raided the space in 2015, they found 100 plants and 100 pounds of pot, according to news reports. After police arrived, Mondella locked himself in a bathroom and fatally shot himself. Mondella’s daughters Dana Bentz and Dominique Mondella run Dell’s today. In 1994, the company bought No. 117 for $265,000, which would be about $500,000 today after adjusting for in ation. The city puts the low-slung property’s market value at $2.1 million, which means it could trade for about $4 million.

A decade ago, California developer Estate Four had planned to turn this large parcel and ve other adjacent sites into a 12-acre, 1.2 millionsquare-foot mixed-use of ce and retail complex called the Red Hook Innovation District. But for unknown reasons, Estate Four bailed a few years later before selling the entire site to UPS in 2018 for a hefty $303 million; the package delivery service vowed to build a six-story distribution center there. UPS did later raze the Lidgerwood Building, a prewar structure at Ferris and Coffey streets that once churned out heavy machinery, including log skidders, coffee hullers and digging equipment for the Panama Canal, according to the blog Brownstoner. Also demolished was a brick structure at the end of Wolcott Street that housed a New York Daily News printing plant in the 1950s and later a Snapple warehouse. But no new buildings have risen on the desolate tracts yet.

Auto-repair shop Perfect Bodies occupied this nearly full-block site for years. Yards lled with cars surrounded a gray corrugated-metal garage. But in 2019, owner Gregory Iovine sold the property to Washington, D.C.-based W-G Capital Advisors, an investment rm headed by John Gerber, for $21.5 million. Soon after, Gerber and partners, including former Department of City Planning of cial Alexandros Washburn, unveiled the kind of ambitious mixed-use redevelopment that Red Hook’s half-empty blocks have often attracted in recent years, though usually with limited success. W-G’s offering was a 300,000-square-foot development featuring a 14-story tower, 210 apartments, of ce space, restaurants and shops, as well as light-manufacturing facilities. But opponents led by Council Member Carlos Menchaca criticized W-G for seeking a rezoning by variance and not through the more transparent land use review process. And despite demolishing the site’s garage in 2023, W-G ultimately unloaded No. 145 in April to Bungalow Projects and Bain Capital Real Estate for $35.1 million, records show. The team is planning a 225,000-square-foot lm studio with four 18,000-square-foot soundstages. A project spokesman declined to share the development cost but said that construction will begin in the rst quarter of 2025 and end in early 2027.

Up until a few years ago, residential condos were a rare sight in Red Hook. An early stab at a 70-unit conversion at 160 Imlay St., a concrete warehouse once used by mail-order powerhouse Montgomery Ward, was stalled for years before recently resuming sales. But perhaps as home-buyers become less concerned with proximity to their of ces, a handful of projects have entered the market, including the Conover, a 3-story, 22-unit offering at this address. With one- to three-bedroom units, the project, from developer RedHoek+, won approval for its offering plan in 2022, and had sold and closed 15 of its units between spring 2022 and May 2, according to the city register. A spokeswoman for the project said a handful of other units are in contract as well. Among them is No. PH3A, a three-bedroom that went for $2.6 million, or about $1,600 per square foot, which appears to be a local sales record. A $38 million total haul is expected, as per the offering plan. Shell company Red Hook Building Co. assembled the nine lots that make up the site, which had a mix of boarded-up buildings and windswept lots, and sold them to RedHoek+, whose principal is Lee Cohen, for $8.1 million in 2019, records show. A.G. Ship Maintenance Corp., a cargohandling rm, was a long-ago owner of the property.

Change turns heads in this aged and sleepy area. Arresting architecture may help too, like with this site’s new 4,200-square-foot nonpro t arts space, whose façade features a four-story glass wall ribbed with wooden ns. Along another wall are seven white angular sections that invoke sails, a seeming tribute to the time a few centuries ago when tall-masted schooners tied up nearby. Dr. Michel Cohen, the founder of the popular child-focused Tribeca Pediatrics chain, developed No. 202 after purchasing its formerly weedy 25-by-100-foot lot in 2017 for about $1 million, according to the city register. Known for his design-minded of ces, Cohen’s choice for an architect for No. 202 was Thomas Barry, who also styled Tribeca Pediatrics’ Bushwick and East New York of ces. The building is eventually supposed to host concerts, lms and parties, though permits indicate its interior is still incomplete.

C. J. Hughes

43 FERRIS ST.

145 WOLCOTT ST.

44 FERRIS ST.

160 DIKEMAN ST.

202 CONOVER ST.

199 CONOVER ST.

Developer loses Madison Avenue building to foreclosure

Julianne Cuba

A billionaire developer who for years has been ensnared in legal trouble for allegedly defaulting on loans now must give up his stake in a Madison Avenue o ce building that will be auctioned o this month, according to a court notice last month.

Ben Ashkenazy, who heads Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp., recently had his ground lease at 635 Madison Ave. foreclosed on as a result of a lawsuit brought in 2021 by

Ben Ashkenazy, who heads Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp., for years has been ensnared in legal trouble for allegedly defaulting on loans.

plainti s Wilmington Trust and Miami-based property management company LNR Partners after Ashkenazy failed to make payments. e court issued a judgment of $99.7 million, and the property will be sold at auction May 15, according to a New York

state Supreme Court ruling. e 150,000-square-foot building at the corner of East 59th Street is home to medical o ces as well as retailers Baccarat, Suit Supply and Montblanc, according to Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp. e tenants were not named in the suit and will not be a ected by the foreclosure, according to court records.

SL Green, billed as New York’s largest commercial landlord, had owned the 1950s-era, 19-story building before selling it to L&L Holding Co. for $153 million in 2018, city records show. But Ashkenazy still owned the property’s ground lease through 2048. Next door at 625 Madison Ave., Ashkenazy found himself in a similar situation a few years back. Following another foreclosure auction, SL Green was able to seize the entire property after initially owning just the physical building while Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp. con-

trolled the land underneath it. e full price SL Green paid for the property could not immediately be determined by press time, but Crain’s reported last year that the commercial landlord was able to acquire it in part after purchasing

Ashkenazy’s $195 million loan he had borrowed against the property. And then late in 2023 SL Green sold the Midtown tower for $632.5 million in what was one of the largest deals of the year, Crain’s reported at the time.

e plainti s’ attorney, Scott Tross, a partner at the New Jerseybased rm Herrick, Feinstein LLP, declined to comment, and attempts to reach both Ashkenazy and his attorneys were unsuccessful.

635 Madison Ave. will be auctioned off May 15. BUCK ENNIS

Ben Ashkenazy GETTY IMAGES

State’s new public matching fund program without limits for campaigns is ripe for fraud

The revised small-donor contributions created in Albany has loopholes which can threaten to upend the whole system

New York, at last, has a statewide system for public matching funds. Candidates for the state Legislature — and governor, attorney general, and comptroller two years from now — can receive contributions from small donors and have them matched to increase their value. is will, in theory, permit anyone running for o ce to focus far more on poorer people within their neighborhoods than the wealthy far beyond them — since matching funds are only unlocked from donations, up to $250, from within the district.

doesn’t exist for municipal campaigns in New York City, which are subject to strict spending caps if participating in the matching funds system.

But this being a program created in Albany, there are loopholes — and one, in particular, threatens to upend the whole system. ere is no spending limit for participating campaigns. A politician can see each of their contributions matched as much as twelvefold

New York City’s system, administered by the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Board, functions well. Straw donor scandals are a reality, as well as campaigns that too often exist to ply friendly consultants with public funds, but a vast majority of races are run legitimately and audited closely. at is one strength of the CFB: how much it scrutinizes individual campaigns and how much compliance it demands of those who decide to run. ere have even been arguments that the CFB is too tough, creating a barrier to entry for rst-time, outsider candidates who don’t know how to hire the right treasurer to ensure no laws are broken.

The only condition that triggers an automatic audit for state campaigns is when a candidate receives more than $500,000 in matching funds.

by public money and still spend however much they’d like, whether it’s from powerful political action committees or wealthy donors. (Self-funders, like Michael Bloomberg, would still be barred from receiving public funds.)

It’s a bizarre new reality that

e state system, naturally, has the opposite problem. For decades, campaign nance in New York has been something like the Wild West, with candidates routinely outing rules— the old Senate majority leader, Joe Bruno, once used campaign cash to buy a pool cover — and getting away with it because the patronage-ridden Board of Elections barely (or selectively) brought enforcement actions. Donation limits have long been inordinately high and it wasn’t an exaggeration to say New York,

until the last few years, had one of the very worst campaign nance systems in the country.

Automatic audit

Under state law, only one in three legislative campaigns is subject to a post-election audit in any one cycle. In New York City, every campaign gets audited and many are ned. e only condition that triggers an automatic audit for state campaigns is when a candidate receives more than $500,000 in matching funds: a total above the maximum an Assembly candidate could possibly receive in a primary and general election combined.

Controversial Crown Heights development site sells for $64M

By Eddie Small

A controversial Crown Heights development site has traded hands for the second time in less than two years at what appears to be a healthy pro t.

Brooklyn developer Yitzchok Schwartz has already led plans with the Department of Buildings for a large, new residential project at the site.

A limited liability company tied to Brooklyn developer Yitzchok Schwartz has purchased 124-130 Montgomery St., the former Spice Factory site near the Brooklyn

Botanic Garden, for $64 million, property records show. e seller was an LLC linked to nursing home operator Centers Health Care and its co-owner Daryl Hagler, who had purchased the site in November 2022 for about $42.4 million. Schwartz has already led plans with the Department of Buildings for a large, new residential project at the site. It would stand 7 stories and 74 feet tall with 289 residential units and 145 parking spots. e project would span about 240,000 square feet. Schwartz led plans for it May 3, the same day the deed appeared in property records.

e project is similar to one that Zev Golombeck, whose rm

owned the site for decades before selling it to Hagler, had led plans for in June 2022; it would have stood 6 stories tall with 293 residential units. It is not clear why that plan was scrapped.

Previous plans

Developers Lincoln Equities and Continuum Co. had also previously planned to develop a huge residential project at the site that would have spanned 1 million square feet. e rms were under contract to buy the property in 2017, but their plans proved extremely controversial and ultimately fell through.

e site, also addressed at 960 Franklin Ave., is currently home to a 5-story industrial building spanning about 67,000 square feet, ac-

Without e ective oversight, the new state campaign nance system could be rife with abuse and fraud. Fear of the CFB keeps most city campaigns in line. Absent state scrutiny, it will probably be left to federal prosecutors to root out instances of corruption or law-breaking. at’s far from ideal. e state must e ectively police itself before law enforcement gets involved. is is especially true because the money at stake is much larger than any seen in the city system. e state budget allocated $100 million to matching funds, which wouldn’t be a problem if audits were reserved for every campaign.

What might happen is the worst of all worlds: a faulty, failed campaign nance program that justies every criticism lodged at the public funding of campaigns. e CFB has survived all these years because it is relatively well-run. No mayor has ever felt any pressure to defund or destroy the CFB. It’s an accepted part of the municipal political process. But it’s not yet a durable reality on the state level. For publicnancing to work, it will need closed loopholes and real oversight. Otherwise, a lot of taxpayer cash is going to be poured down the drain. Ross Barkan is a journalist and author in New York City.

cording to city records. Demolition permits were led for it in early April.

Hagler and Schwartz could not be reached for comment by press time. A representative for Centers Health Care declined to comment.

Hagler’s real estate dealings themselves have also proved con-

troversial recently. New York Attorney General Letitia James led a lawsuit against Centers Health Care in June 2023 accusing the rm of mistreating and neglecting its nursing home residents while Hagler allegedly used company pro ts to buy $130 million worth of Brooklyn and Queens real estate.

Ross Barkan

New York’s new matching fund program, while overdue, contains a glaring loophole that could jeopardize its success, writes columnist Ross Barkan. BLOOMBERG

The former Spice Factory site at 960 Franklin Ave. | GOOGLE MAPS

Long Island town les lawsuit to block MTA’s congestion pricing program, claims public transit is too dangerous

Caroline Spivack

A Long Island town claims in a new federal lawsuit that the city’s subway system is a dangerous, unreasonable alternative for commuters who want to avoid congestion pricing.

e town of Hempstead in Nassau County on May 1 became the latest municipality seeking to block the Metropolitan Transpor-

New Jersey that congestion pricing was not adequately studied and is unconstitutional but specifically takes aim at mass transit.

e lawsuit argues that Hempstead residents and town employees “do not have a reasonable mass transit alternative,” despite having a Long Island Rail Road station in the heart of town.

Hempstead o cials take particular issue with the MTA’s push for commuters to use the city’s subway for trips within Manhattan below 60th Street, pointing to safety concerns underground.

“The primary mass transit option in the city, the subway, is so dangerous that the governor has sent the National Guard into the subway system to provide security.”

tation Authority’s congestion pricing program, which is set to take e ect June 30 and charge most motorists $15 to enter Manhattan’s core, with a lawsuit led in the U.S. Eastern District of New York against state and federal transit o cials.

e suit mimics claims made by

“ e primary mass transit option in the city, the subway, is so dangerous that the governor has sent the National Guard into the subway system to provide security,” the lawsuit states, referring to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s controversial March deployment of 750 National Guard soldiers to assist the NYPD with bag checks for weapon searches.

“ e police and National Guard are requiring mandatory searches of private citizens’ bags for the ‘privilege’ of use of the subway,”

the lawsuit adds, “a ‘privilege’ that the defendants are presently trying to force on the people of the town by penalizing other means of entry into and transportation within the city by means of congestion pricing.”

Past opposition

In a statement, Hempstead Town Supervisor Donald Clavin, who is also a plainti in the lawsuit, claimed that congestion pricing will “come at the expense of hardworking Nassau residents who are just trying to get to work.”

e o cial also insists that congestion pricing has no bene t for Long Island residents.

e MTA, meanwhile, has said congestion pricing will generate $1 billion in annual revenue that the authority will bond to $15 billion to pay for upgrades to the subway, buses and commuter rail networks, such as the LIRR.

LIRR President Rob Free chastised Hempstead o cials for the lawsuit as well as for past opposition to commuter rail upgrades, such as the third track expansion project that ultimately increased service reliability on the LIRR. “I would say this is an investment in

Five Boro ughs ONE STAG E

Vito

Long Island’s future,” Free said in a statement to Crain’s MTA spokesman Mike Cortez pointed to a recent decline in subway crime.

After a brief uptick in certain crimes on the subway, along with a high-pro le Brooklyn shooting earlier this year, the number of incidents is currently down 6.4% compared to this time last year, according to NYPD crime statistics.

Police say 661 crimes were reported in the subway this year through April 28, down from the 706 inci-

dents logged during the same period in 2023.

Hempstead’s challenge follows half a dozen other lawsuits led against the toll in recent months, including by state and municipal leaders in New Jersey, Staten Island elected o cials, the United Federation of Teachers union and a group of Lower East Side residents who’ve raised environmental justice concerns. All of the lawsuits seek to halt the program and force MTA and federal transit o cials to conduct additional analysis of the toll.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 5 8:30–10 a.m. |

The MTA has installed toll gantries along the perimeter of the Manhattan congestion pricing zone. | BUCK ENNIS

EDITORIAL

More mayoral candidates on the ballot are a good thing for New Yorkers

Another potential challenger to Mayor Eric Adams’ 2025 re-election has emerged. at’s a good thing for New Yorkers.

Last week, Brooklyn State Sen. Zellnor Myrie announced that he is taking steps to contend with Adams in 2025, joining another potential challenger, former Comptroller Scott Stringer. State Sen. Jessica Ramos and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo are also rumored to be considering bids.

When 68% of registered voters are Democrats, it can feel like elections are predetermined. A competitive primary is critical to giving New Yorkers the chance to cast a meaningful vote. Adams edged out Kathryn Garcia in the 2021 primary by just 0.8 percentage points but then went on to soundly defeat Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa by 40 points in the November election.

Which is to say, primaries matter. e lead-up to the vote in June 2025 is when candidates will express their competing visions and solutions for this great city.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Advocates fought passionately to implement a pioneering fund-matching program for election nancing, speci cally to open up the eld to more candidates. Candidates backed by small donors can stand a chance against those bankrolled by powerful groups with special interests.

Variety of viewpoints

New Yorkers have not been thrilled with the mayor’s performance: His approval fell to just 28% in a December Quinnipiac University poll, the survey’s worst-ever result for a New York City mayor.

Mayor Adams has had some hiccups while in o ce. He has been fending o an FBI investigation into his campaignnances, and a few members of his inner circle have made headlines for scandalous behavior.

New Yorkers must be presented with options. More candidates being considered may even help buoy New York’s abysmal voter turnout: Just 21% of New Yorkers voted for mayor in 2021. Turnout was slightly higher, 23%, for the crowded 2021 primary.

Introducing new viewpoints to the conversation is essential to fostering a dialogue and mayoral agenda that serves all New Yorkers. ere’s no shortage of urgent problems the city is contending with: the surge of migrants, preparing young people who were knocked sideways by lost schooling during the pandemic for the workforce, the a ordable housing crisis, the tenuous future of the o ce market and the role of the police, for starters. Adams won’t welcome the challenge, but he should. Public debate will allow him to tout his accomplishments thus far and revisit what priorities matter most to voters.

New York is a vast city with problems to scale that need urgent solving. Healthy competition is good for democracy.

Vornado is fulfilling its dream at Penn Station

YOUR ARTICLE ON APRIL 11, 2024, mistakenly suggests that the Penn District is largely a dream unful lled. Nothing could be further from the truth. In just over ve years since I left Vornado, I am struck by the extraordinary progress that Steven Roth and his team have made in the area surrounding the busiest transportation hub in North America.

When I was at Vornado, the dream was that public-private partnerships could spur signi cant improvements to Penn Station. And that is exactly what has happened. In that time, the MTA, Amtrak, Vornado and other partners have given birth to the spectacular Moynihan Train Hall. ey created a brand new glasstopped entrance to the station at Seventh Avenue and 33rd Street, and multiple other expanded and modernized entrances to the station, including the hub’s busiest entrance at Seventh Avenue and 32nd Street. ey also greatly widened the LIRR concourse, raised its roof, and brought in a new generation of retailers to the corridor linking Seventh and Eighth Avenues.

When I was at Vornado, the dream was

that an enhanced above-grade public realm would make the district more inviting to commuters, o ce workers, residents, and tourists. Since then, Vornado and the city of New York worked together to create a new pedestrian-only plaza on 33rd Street, as well as improvements to ten acres of public space surrounding the PENN 1 and PENN 2 o ce towers.

When I was at Vornado, the dream was to combine those public improvements with investments in the buildings to attract best-in-class tenants and drive higher rents in an o ce submarket previously seen as second-rate. Since then, it has been reported that Vornado is achieving triple-digit rents in its buildings and luring exciting companies such as Meta, Amazon, Samsung, Major League Soccer, and more.

When additional new towers do emerge in the Penn District, it will ful ll a dream not only for Vornado, but also for city planners who know that high-density development is best located adjacent to major transportation hubs. In the meantime, I celebrate the dreams ful lled in spectacular fashion by Steven Roth and my former colleagues.

Mayor Eric Adams faces a growing eld of Democratic challengers for the June 2025 primary election. | BENNY POLATSECK/MAYORAL PHOTOGRAPHY OFFICE

Vornado and the city have successfully worked together to revamp Penn Station and attract exciting companies, writes Marc Ricks, former senior vice president of development at Vornado. | BUCK ENNIS

Marc Ricks was the senior vice president of development at Vornado from 20152018.

Fixing zoning is not enough. We must proactively create a ordable space for small businesses in a growing city.

This spring, the City Council will vote on Mayor Eric Adams’ City of Yes for Economic Opportunity proposal — an important step for solving the myriad real estate challenges that small businesses face in a changing economy. It brings about long overdue changes to zoning created over 60 years ago by city planners who could not have conceived of how — and where — our city’s economy operates today. As the Department of City Planning describes it, this proposal will “allow more types of businesses in more places” and remove barriers to growth.

It’s remarkable how outdated New York City’s zoning is. For example: Zoning dictates where haberdasheries (purveyors of men’s clothing) and millineries (women’s hat makers) can locate yet contains no mention of 3D printing.

Zoning also prescribes what types of stores can be located in destination commercial corridors or local retail streets. But technology has dramatically shifted how we shop, driving up brick-and-mortar retail vacancy

PERSONAL VIEW

in some neighborhoods. Prescriptive zoning makes it more di cult to adapt to a rapidly changing, unpredictable retail environment.

Sulin Carling is a principal at HR&A Advisors, a consulting rm. As senior economic development planner at the City Planning Department during the de Blasio administration, she developed zoning strategies that are being implemented in the City of Yes for Economic Opportunity proposal.

Zoning separates even relatively clean manufacturing uses from others, a vestige of a “smokestack economy.” Today, breweries, bespoke apparel manufacturers, and ceramics studios are not currently permitted on retail corridors, even though they depend on customer foot tra c.

Zoning in most manufacturing districts assumes all workers will drive to work, requiring so many parking spaces that it essentially makes constructing new buildings infeasible.

e City of Yes for Economic Opportunity proposal makes common sense changes to these outdated rules. It will allow more emerging uses like life sciences and urban agriculture, more types of businesses on commercial streets, and more multi-story loft buildings in manufacturing districts without onerous parking requirements near transit. But the City needs to do more than update outdated regulations

— it must proactively create a ordable space for small businesses in a growing city with a nite amount of real estate.

Take one iconic neighborhood, Manhattan’s Chinatown. Chinatown has a unique historic signi cance to New York City and its identity is deeply tied to its legacy businesses, but those businesses face signi cant displacement pressures. In a study released by Welcome to Chinatown, a not-for-pro t dedicated to supporting the neighborhood’s small businesses, between 2010 to 2019, rents increased by 39% and property taxes by 110% in Chinatown; in a survey, 60% of Chinatown businesses said rent costs were one of their top three challenges. While rent, labor, and supply costs are rising, many Chinatown businesses feel pressure to keep prices low: visitors expect Chinatown to be a ordable, and many businesses also serve a low-income clientele.

To prevent displacement of businesses — and to reduce barriers to entry to new AAPI-owned businesses — the City must pilot bold strategies for creating a ordable commercial space. is could include providing low-interest loans, tax credits, and/or capital to private or not-for-pro t property owners who agree to limit rents. Vacant spaces could be repurposed as popup incubators that o er low-cost, short-term leases to allow new businesses to test the

Business Improvement Districts at 40: Four decades of building a city for everyone

In 1984, New York City was pulling itself out from the depths of a decade of crisis. e city shed more than one-tenth of its population in the prior decade, arsonists scorched entire blocks of homes and businesses, and families that had called New York home for generations were eeing to the suburbs.

Kevin

Near Union Square, a handful of shopkeepers decided to band together and plant a stake in their city’s future. Not content with scrubbing graffiti from their windows each morning, they formed the Union Square Partnership—the city’s first Business Improvement District or “BID.”

D. Kim is the commissioner of the Department of Small Business Services. Erin Piscopink and Robert Benfatto are co-chairs of the NYC BID Association.

Over the last 40 years, New York City has become home to the nation’s largest network of BIDs, with 75 non-pro t organizations covering nearly 300 miles of commercial corridors that — last year alone — infused more than $194 million in services into our city’s local neighborhoods and economy. e post-Covid economic recovery we are seeing is bolstered by the

strength of our BID partners, which supplement city services and promote the unique characteristics of our neighborhoods. In the darkest days of the pandemic, the city and the Department of Small Business Services (SBS) worked hand-inhand with our BID partners to get nancial relief directly into the pockets of more than 10,000 business owners, share information about regulations as they changed almost daily, and distribute countless masks and PPE. Today, when businesses ask their BIDs where to go for loans or help with a lease, they know that they can go to one of SBS’s 7 NYC Business Solutions Centers, use the state-of-the-art NYC Funds Finder online marketplace, or call our team to be enrolled in the Commercial Lease Assistance program.

A new analysis by the SBS shows that on average, every day BIDs collect 10,000 trash bags, remove more than 1,000 instances of gra ti, and engage 1,300 visitors. ey

raise the pro le of our commercial districts through advocacy, community events, beauti cation, and small business support.

For instance, this past year, the Chinatown BID partnered with local charities and nonpro ts to distribute over 200 free security cameras to businesses in their district to address the safety concerns of Chinatown residents. e Woodhaven BID hosted their annual street fair, transforming busy streets into ourishing commercial corridors for neighborhood residents to shop from local vendors o ering food, clothing, jewelry, home decor, handmade crafts, and more. And to improve safety around Sgt. Joyce Kilmer Square in Brooklyn, the Kings Highway BID installed additional streetlamp xtures and tree lights — brightening the corridor and helping to create a safer nightlife environment.

E orts like these attract visitors to commercial zones and play a pivotal role in helping the city’s 200,000+ small businesses and residents thrive. By investing in our BIDs, new shops and restaurants help replace empty storefronts, making our city stronger, safer, and more resilient. Since Mayor Adams took o ce, the administration has made historic investments in BIDs as trusted partners in equitable economic development. is includes recognizing the crucial role of BIDs in the New

market. Larger spaces could become multitenant markets for both existing and new businesses — similar to the city-managed Essex Market on the Lower East Side, which has dedicated a ordable space for legacy businesses. City-owned buildings could also be leveraged to o er a ordable space. City of Yes for Economic Opportunity is an important step toward updating archaic zoning to create greater exibility for a changing economy, but it is just a rst step. To become a national leader in promoting equitable entrepreneurship, the City should build on this momentum by piloting approaches to a ordable space for small businesses, with a focus on communities of color such as Chinatown.

New York plan and allocating $27 million in SBS neighborhood grants, which we are proud to continue next year. ese funds support the formation of new merchants associations and BIDs, help smaller BIDs enhance their services, and boost locally designed programs that improve lighting, attract new businesses, and prioritize the revitalization of our commercial areas.

As we celebrate the 40th birthday of the Union Square Partnership, our city’s partnership with BIDs enters its fth decade stronger than ever. On May 6th, the city celebrated the second annual “BID Day,” with more than 40 BIDs across the ve boroughs showcasing their impact on our neighborhoods with door-to-door outreach, tabling, clean-up days, community service events, social media campaigns, live music, and more! With these new investments, we are continuing our shared mission to revitalize our neighborhoods and create safer, cleaner, and more prosperous communities. ese are the goals that are transforming New York into a City of Yes.

Over the last 40 years, New York City has become home to the nation’s largest network of BIDs. BLOOMBERG

The City of Yes for Economic Opportunity plan is an important step toward updating archaic zoning, but it is just a rst step, writes HR&A Advisors Principal Sulin Carling. | BLOOMBERG

MINORITY-OWNED BUSINESSES CRAIN’S LIST

H+H resident physicians submit complaints about staf ng at public hospitals in bid for higher pay

Amanda D’Ambrosio

Resident physicians at the city’s public hospital system are taking aim at poor sta ng in emergency, OB-GYN and surgery departments as they continue to push the mayor to improve their pay and working conditions.

More than 2,000 residents represented by the labor union Committee of Interns and Residents submitted sta ng complaints to New York City Health + Hospitals on May 1, outlining almost 500 violations over a two-week period. e complaints allege that the public hospital system forced physician trainees to take on extra work, in part because of understa ng of positions such as phlebotomists, social workers and nurses.

Residents say they frequently pick up “out-of-title” work, which describes tasks that aren’t a part of their core duties as physicians. These tasks include drawing blood, transporting

need,” said Dr. Rachel Percelay, a third-year psychiatry resident at H+H/Bellevue. But designating extra work to residents — many of whom work 80-hour weeks — takes away from their medical training and ability to provide sufcient care, she added.

Sta ng violations submitted by the union spanned emergency rooms, internal medicine departments, pediatric units, labor and delivery and surgery departments, according to complaints reviewed by Crain’s. e grievances were led against seven hospitals within the city’s public health system: Bellevue, Kings County, Jacobi, Harlem, Lincoln, Metropolitan and South Brooklyn.

“Obviously, we’re going to do those tasks because we want our patients to get the care that they need.”

Dr. Rachel Percelay, third-year psychiatry resident at H+H/Bellevue

non-emergent patients and scheduling follow-up outpatient appointments for people upon discharge — jobs typically assigned to phlebotomists, technicians and social workers.

“Obviously, we’re going to do those tasks because we want our patients to get the care that they

Administrators at the hospitals that received complaints are required to respond to the union within 10 days. Stephanie Buhle, a spokeswoman for H+H, said that the health system and the union will address the grievances through a process that’s outlined in their contract. Union representatives and hospital administrators have the opportunity to address the complaints in a meeting; but if an agreement is not reached, the union can push for an appeal and ultimately, arbitration, according to a union spokesperson.

Percelay said the violations occur because the hospital system is “stretched thin.”

Many public hospitals have struggled to hire health care workers or have outdated equipment and electronic health records. “We are the ones left lling the gaps,” she said.

Sta ng grievances are residents’ latest attempt to draw at-

tention to the lagging pay and poor working conditions at the city’s public hospital system. e Committee of Interns and Residents has been in negotiations with the city since August for a new contract, pushing for pay equity with other safety-net hospitals citywide and their rst raise in more than four years.

New contract

Currently, rst-year residents at H+H have a starting salary of around $66,000, lagging behind other safety-net hospitals, the union said. A new contract proposal from the city’s O ce of Labor Relations would put rst-year resident salaries at least $5,000 behind those at peer hospitals — a

Omnibuild co-CEO resigns amid indictment, legal battle with HFZ

Eddie Small

John Mingione has resigned as co-CEO of the construction rm Omnibuild shortly after being indicted by the Manhattan district attorney’s o ce for allegedly being part of an $86 million fraud

nouncement from Mingione to its social media channels May 1. e move will allow him to focus more fully on clearing Omnibuild’s name, he wrote.

“We are absolutely innocent, and I am profoundly sorry for the hurt and pain caused by the DA’s wrongful actions,” he wrote. “We have been ghting the false charges night and day, and I will not rest until our good name is cleared.”

“We have been ghting the false charges night and day, and I will not rest until our good name is cleared.”

John Mingione, former co-CEO of Omnibuild

scheme allegedly orchestrated by former HFZ executive Nir Meir — accusations the rm has pushed back on strongly at every turn.

Omnibuild posted the an-

Stepping down will also let Mingione “address some health concerns that have been exacerbated by recent events,” he wrote.

Omnibuild co-CEO Peter Serpico will now run the rm as sole CEO.

Omnibuild had worked for HFZ as the construction manager at the

XI, the developer’s high-pro le luxury condo project by the High Line. e rm led a claim against HFZ in summer 2020 for roughly $100 million worth of unpaid bills on the project, one of the rst of several lawsuits to hit the company.

Other accusations

Meir was arrested in Florida in February, and the Manhattan DA’s o ce has accused him of being the mastermind behind conspiracies that allegedly stole $86 million from investors, contractors and the city. e o ce also indicted Mingione and Omnibuild accountant Kevin Stewart in the case over accusations that they took part in the scheme by making it seem as though Omnibuild had completed more work on the XI

gap that increases to nearly $10,000 as physicians progress further into residency.

Despite continued calls from the union and a City Council oversight hearing earlier this year blasting pay inequities and working conditions, negotiations have remained at a standstill. Mayor Eric Adams’ administration has refused to increase resident pay because of budget constraints, Percelay said. A representative from the mayor’s o ce referred Crain’s to H+H for comment.

Percelay said that the Adams administration has proposed a deal that would contribute additional funds to a pool of money known as the patient care trust fund, which the union allocates for hospital equipment or innova-

tive studies and public health projects. But under that deal, the city would delay 3% pay increases to residents by another six months — a proposal that Percelay called “disrespectful.”

Sen. Jessica Ramos, chair of the labor committee who represents Queens neighborhoods including Corona, Jackson Heights and East Elmhurst, said that the mayor has underfunded hospitals that serve the city’s most vulnerable populations — including at Elmhurst Hospital, which was the epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“ ese doctors are doing their best with what they have,” Ramos told Crain’s. “ e city is not helping them create an environment that is conducive to our health.”

than it actually had, causing the lender on the project to release more funds.

Omnibuild aggressively disputed these accusations in a civil lawsuit the rm led against HFZ and the XI lenders in Manhattan state Supreme Court in April. e suit essentially argues that Omnibuild repeatedly tried to sound the alarm about the exact nancial issues at the XI that Meir was ultimately indicted over, but the company was ignored every time. e suit seeks about $350 million in damages.

Bellevue hospital in Manhattan | BUCK ENNIS

Omnibuild co-CEO John Mingione has resigned effective immediately. RALPH D’ANGELO, CIG DIGITAL INC

SPOTLIGHT on WESTCHESTER

In Westchester, it’s easy to tout the many reasons that make our County stand out above the rest as a tremendous place to live, work and play. We’re always about taking the next step towards economic development and growth in our communities, and this Spotlight on Westchester clearly demonstrates that.

We are proud to have developed a culture in Westchester as a place where innovation thrives. While we are strategically located just outside of New York City, life here isn’t all about our big neighbor to the south. With our picturesque views, beautiful parks and landscapes, and bustling downtowns and business districts, we have grown into a beautiful tapestry of more than one million people who greatly contribute to our economic development.

We are home to a distinct and diverse corporate roster, which has allowed our strong economy to excel above the rest. From IBM—a great multinational corporation, to nancial services companies like MasterCard, to consumer products from PepsiCo, to the biotech and health care boom powered by companies like Regeneron Pharmaceuticals – our business district has something for everyone.

e County recently established its Clean Energy Accelerator program to identify ways to increase training opportunities and ways to produce more talent to help our clean energy solution providers grow. e clean energy industry is booming with state, federal and utility incentives, creating more career opportunities at every education level. By expanding Westchester County’s capacity in this sector, we have seen a tremendous bene t to both current and future employers, as well as our residents.

Our o ce of Economic Development is constantly introducing new programs to aid our ercely talented workforce, and we are working in lockstep with our chambers of commerce in all of our municipalities in Westchester. We are always searching for new ways to improve the experience for our businesses, and help our startups, small and mid-sized companies succeed.

We consistently reach beyond our borders, welcoming fresh ideas from all industries. With this wonderful feature in one of the city’s leading business publications, I invite you to learn more about why Westchester truly has it all.

Sincerely,

George Latimer Westchester County Executive

Lasdon Park and Arboretum. Photo by Ferg, courtesy of Westchester County Tourism & Film.

SPOTLIGHT on WESTCHESTER

Beyond the microscope

Westchester fosters entrepreneurial approaches to life sciences and green energy

For the second straight year, the Westchester County Life Sciences Showcase celebrated the hard work and innovation going on in life sciences research throughout the county. But like any good researcher, Westchester County took what it had learned the rst time around and made adjustments to bring it closer to its goals.

In 2023, the county brought a busload of people up from New York City to share what the county had to o er.

“We started last year with the notion that no one in New York City knows what we have here, and they need to see we’re part of the extended local community,” said the county’s Director of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Deborah Novick, who oversees the showcase.

It turned out that locals wanted to see what was really happening in their backyard. “People were saying to us, ‘Hey, I’ve never been to Regeneron or BioInc and I’d like to go,” Novick said. “So this time we’re looking to inspire more collaboration within Westchester. ere’s so much expertise here and nobody has the time to get to know each other.”

Novick also discovered that people wanted less traveling and more conversation. “ at is where relationship building and collaboration comes in,” she said. “You have to create opportunities for people to nd each other.”

is year on May 1, the revamped showcase began at Regeneron. In addition to a tour of the company’s renowned genetics center, participants attended a talk about social impact and STEM education, and its Together for Change initiative. is provides grants to support and promote STEM studies and careers among Black students and will allow for the development of an African ancestry genomics database to o set the dearth of information being used in medical research.

e remainder of the day was spent at BioInc, where Novick provided an overview of the ecosystem of life sciences in Westchester.

Following this introduction, a series of panel discussions were held, including an overview of Westchester County Biosciences Accelerator Program which reviewed the most recent impact results, who got funding, who received a grant and an overview of what’s happening at BioInc.

ere was also a discussion of the plans for the North 80, which will become a bioscience and technology campus in Mt. Pleasant, followed by a panel on Alzheimer’s Disease featuring executives from White Plains-based Oligomerix and Purchased-based Cognition

erapeutics. ( ey went public in 2021, but, Novick said, also recently raised another $11 million.)

A er lunch, a panel called Spotlight on Health Equity in Clinical Trials focused on the importance of recruiting a diverse set of participants in clinical trials, moderated by Mary Howard who runs the accelerator program. e nal panel at BioInc spotlighted cell and gene therapy bringing together experts from New York Medical College, Westchester Medical Center and e New York Blood Center.

e Blood Center is a welcome addition, Novick said, because they are planning to move their headquarters into the vacant Avon campus in Rye, which is currently undergoing a gut renovation.

“ ey’re a new participant in our life sciences ecosystem, and they’ve been extremely generous and have participated in everything since they decided to move up here. ey’ve just

“Life science is a marathon, not a sprint. If you take the long view, then you don’t worry about the downtime in the cycle. You just forge ahead.”

- Deborah Novick, Westchester County’s Director of Entrepreneurship and Innovation

been amazing,” she said.

e day concluded at the Opus Hotel, where, before the reception, three companies — CatchU, JelikaLite and Quadrus Medical — were featured in a presentation about innovations in the eld of medical devices.

ese companies are plowing ahead despite in ation and a down moment in the cycle for science investing, Novick said.

“Life science is a marathon, not a sprint. If you take the long view, then you don’t worry about the downtime in the cycle. You just forge ahead,” she said. “We are just as committed to the sector as we always were and these people, who are in the business of creating lifesaving outcomes, are just as committed as they always were.”

Even during a low point, Regeneron announced a half a billion-dollar investment. “ ey’re our anchor in the

sector and they’re making a gigantic commitment to sticking around,” Novick said.

Westchester County’s commitment to science and business does not begin and end with a one-day showcase. Director of Economic Development

Bridget Gibbons noted that four years ago, the county created an economic development strategy that would focus its human and nancial resources not only on life sciences. but also on technology, advanced manufacturing and clean energy.

Last year, Gibbons established a partnership with Sustainable Westchester, a local nonpro t member organization funded by the municipalities in Westchester County, which educates homeowners and businesses about decarbonization and clean energy solutions.

“My partnership with them enabled me to establish a working group of employers or solution providers like solar, geothermal and heat pump installers,” Gibbons said.

e Clean Energy Careers Working Group now meets quarterly and, as Gibbons tried to nd ways for the county to help their businesses grow, she discovered di culty hiring quali ed people. Following a survey, Sustainable Westchester and the county looked at labor data in the to examine where growth opportunities in years to come.

“ en, we looked at what training programs we have and where there are gaps. What popped up was a need for geothermal drillers,” she said, noting that geothermal is a “very e cient solution for heating and cooling and is becoming an important tool for counties to reach our energy goals.”

As a result, the county is working to establish an apprenticeship program for geothermal drillers and is exploring options for obtaining drilling equipment.

On top of that, the working group decided to create a job and resource fair for everyone from middle schoolers to people in the workforce.

“We were able to convene the clean energy solution providers with people that are just starting their career and people looking to change careers who may have transferable skills,” Gibbons said.

ey had about 30 employers and a turnout of about 200 people interested in exploring this area.

“It was our rst clean energy job fair, and we connected everyone within this ecosystem,” Gibbons said. “It was really wonderful. We’re already planning our next one.”

Doris Alcivar of FirstXFounder provides an overview of the Westchester County Biosciences Accelerator.

(left to right) Arthur Klausner of Concarlo Therapeutics moderates a discussion with innovators Katya Sverdlov (JelikaLite), Nicolas Chbat (Quadrus Medical), and Jeannette Mahoney (CatchU)

SPOTLIGHT on WESTCHESTER

The affordable housing visionary of Westchester County

Reshaping communities one vibrant building at a time

Rella Fogliano has never gotten swept up by a tornado and fought o a wicked witch, but working in real estate, the CEO of MacQuesten Development still learned the same lesson that Dorothy does in “ e Wizard of Oz”: “If I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own backyard.”

Fogliano likes to quote that movie when she tells the story of how she found herself becoming one of Westchester County’s most signi cant developers of a ordable housing. Her company specializes in the nancing, designing and construction management of multi-family (as well as commercial) properties that are then privately held by a liated companies.

Growing up her home was the Bronx, where her father, Sabino Fogliano, an immigrant who was a successful contractor, took his only child around

“We work so well with the county of Westchester in all respects. It’s really very exciting.”

- Rella Fogliano, CEO of MacQuesten Development

to all his construction sites. She loved taking the express bus into Manhattan to see the “wonderful, beautiful buildings,” dreaming of owning her own building one day. She worked part-time for her father until she graduated from Fordham University and joined him full-time. When he retired, she created her own company and in the early 1990s, started erecting buildings in her home borough.

“It was not exactly the greatest time for construction, but my father did help me and gave me a good foundation, pardon the pun,” Fogliano recalled. He had been buying and selling properties in the Bronx, but she persuaded him to let her build on some of his land. Realizing that the city was woefully short of a ordable housing, she successfully navigated the labyrinths of bureaucracy and began building a ordable and middle-income housing in the Bronx and later in Harlem—she got some of her funding for her rst building from the New York State Housing Trust Fund Corporation, then became the rst to utilize the city’s New Housing Opportunities Program, then again was rst in on the state’s Homes for Working Families Program and Tax Exempt Bonding.

But home had another meaning for Fogliano—her father’s and then her o ces had always been in Westchester and they’d been on MacQuesten Parkway in Mount Vernon for more than thirty years, which is how she ultimately chose her company’s name. And two decades ago she began shi ing her attention to Westchester, starting in Mount Vernon with e Modern, an 81-unit building of all a ordable housing (with space leased to the county for workforce development) and following up with Heritage Homes in New Rochelle, which provided 228 low and very lowincome units in a four-story building and townhome clusters on the site of the obsolete Hartley Houses.

While Fogliano initially faced some resistance to building a ordable housing in Westchester, that has begun shi ing over time, as she noted last fall at the groundbreaking for e St. Clair at 34 Main Street in Yonkers, which will be ten stories and 76 units of all a ordable housing.

Still, she argues there’s much more to be done, saying that while Mayor Mike Spano of Yonkers has really embraced a ordable housing, many towns and their residents are still more reluctant. “A ordable housing doesn’t mean you’re bringing in a transient population but o entimes that’s how it’s perceived,” she said, adding that because Westchester is so a uent a lot of a ordable housing, aimed at people with 80 percent of average median income, is not really a ordable for many people. “I think it would be for the betterment of Westchester to build more real a ordable housing. ere’s a great deal that can still be done.”

Beyond her passion for a ordable housing is her concern for the environment. Many of her buildings are within walking distance to mass transit, another important ingredient for Fogliano. “Transit-oriented development is also something that’s near and dear to my heart, so people can use mass transit instead of getting into a gas-guzzling car.”

Fogliano is especially proud of the 17-story, 189-unit Mount Vernon building, 22 South West, “one of the most beautiful buildings in Westchester.” While she has long emphasized sustainability—the Heritage Homes’ energy-e cient construction included recycled exterior cladding (“I’m an obsessive recycler,” she said), bamboo oors, and Energy Star appliances and indoor and outdoor lighting—she went above and beyond at 22 South West, attaining the coveted LEEDS Certi ed Gold standard. “Energy e ciency is very important to me,” she said, pointing to her decision to use “passive house” standards on the new 160-unit a ordable housing called e Parker that’s being planned for Yonkers and for Crescent Manor, which is a 74-unit building for seniors

(with a tness center and a clubhouse and a local non-pro t providing services) in Ossining.

“Seniors have a very special place in my heart,” she said, noting that her 98-yearold mother-in-law lives in senior housing that is “not so a ordable” and is not as accessible for people in wheelchairs as it should be, which motivates her to get the details right. “I want seniors to be very comfortable.”

While Fogliano is proud of her work, she is quick to give credit to the state and the county. “It’s not just me,” she said. “We work so well with the

head psychologically and it just gives me more satisfaction. I don’t have children, so my buildings are my babies.”

MacQuesten buildings are easy to spot from the street for their architectural embellishments and splashes of color, an approach that carries over throughout the interior. “I have a lot of fun picking out colors,” Fogliano said. “We paint corridors in di erent colors so you know when the elevator opens, if you see yellow that’s not your oor but if you see red that’s yours.”

She also makes sure her buildings’ laundry rooms are not the stereotypical “dark and dingy” places

but are instead lled with light. “I tell my architects never to put laundry rooms in a basement. I know it’s a loss of real estate but it matters.”

Infusing her buildings with these touches “makes me happy,” Fogliano said.

“I do have a vision and I don’t want to look at the world through rose-colored glasses, I want the world itself to be rose-colored,” she explained. “And if in my little world I could do that through my buildings, it gives me a great deal of satisfaction.”

county of Westchester in all respects. It’s really very exciting. I see myself more as a conduit-- if it weren’t for the opportunities out there through state nancing and through Westchester County government nancing, we wouldn’t be able to do all of this.”

Sustainability, a ordability, helping the elderly—Fogliano said she strives to do well by doing good. “I was raised that way,” she said. “I consider myself a very fortunate person. I work very hard and I’m very hands-on, but I just feel very grateful and fortunate. And if I can help others, I just want to do so.”

ere’s one other way Fogliano tries to create a better world for the people living in her buildings—she refuses to settle for cookie-cutter construction. “I can’t help myself,” she said. “Your home should be a place of peace, and I try to transfer into the apartments that we build. I make less money, but it helps my

Crescent Manor, Ossining, NY. (Passive House Design)

The St. Clair, Yonkers, NY

SPOTLIGHT on WESTCHESTER

Yonkers takes long-term view of development

City of cials are ‘teed up and ready’ for casino, while also looking forward to school openings, housing projects — and a pickleball restaurant

Robert Halmi Sr. was a freedom ghter for Hungary during World War II before becoming a successful movie and television producer. Sonia Sotomayor is just the third woman and the rst Hispanic person to sit on the Supreme Court. Now, these two very di erent people share a distinctive bond: both will have schools named for them in Yonkers opening this fall, helping the city meet its capacity needs.

e Sotomayor School, which will be state of the art, per the mayor, is a crucial addition because Yonkers is closing two schools ( omas Cornell Academy and School 9), which are both aging and in need of expensive overhauls. e students from both those schools are majority Hispanic or Latino, and those who qualify for the dual-language program will have rst preference at the Sotomayor School. Mayor Mike Spano hopes to get the Supreme Court Justice to attend the school’s opening.

e school named for Halmi will be on the campus of studios built by Great Point, the company owned by Halmi’s son Robert, also a producer. Great Point is a venture with Lionsgate Studio that has transformed that portion of Yonkers as well as the lm industry in the Northeast. Spano, a lifelong resident of the city who is now in his fourth term, notes that the school is in a retro tted building “that’s as good as any brand new school with an Olympic size swimming pool.”

Equally important is that the school, which will serve about 600 students from sixth to 12th grade, has been developed in a partnership rst with Syracuse University and then New York University, both of which are known for their media and lm and television programs. e curriculum will be built around those areas and graduates will have a chance to work at the studios, Spano says.

Jim Cavanagh, president and CEO of the Yonkers Industrial Development Agency, notes that the studio (and others) continues to expand throughout the city. “We’ll have 22 sound stages up and running when all is said and done in four or ve years,” he says. “It’s pretty exciting.”

Betting on casino license

e consistent march of expansion in the studio business comes at an ideal time because New York State has inexplicably delayed until late 2025 its decision on which three downstate sites will be granted a full casino license. Cavanagh calls the turn of events “very frustrating” and Spano names it “disappointing,” since Empire City Casino by MGM Resorts has invested so much, is a leading

candidate to nab one of the slots and, more than any of its competitors, it is raring and ready to go. “It’s a sure bet,” the mayor says.

“MGM is teed up and ready,” adds Cavanagh. “ ey already have a casino, so they could be up and running with full gaming really quickly. e loss of tax revenue is staggering. e casino would help economic development for other businesses, and we estimate it will bring at least $30 million a year for the city government.”

He adds that the city is in the process of rezoning the area around it now to create a casino district, which will boost the application’s chances, because it is indicative of strong local support. at should be done by year’s end.

“You’re not going to see any roadblocks in Yonkers,” Spano adds. “We have the ability to open up a full gaming casino faster than any other community that’s going to be o ered to any one of those three licenses.”

He notes that full gaming would make this a true “regional destination” that would snatch up some of the “limited pie” and keep people in the area from traveling to New Jersey or Mohegan Sun in Connecticut.

“You’re not going to see any roadblocks in Yonkers.”

- Mike Spano, Mayor

It would also enable MGM to triple its roster to 6,000 employees, he says, and a partnership with a local community college will help train people to work there, creating good middle-class jobs not just for residents of Yonkers but down to the Bronx and over to Mount Vernon, two other regions that could use that boost. Still, while the delay is frustrating, Spano remains “completely con dent” that Yonkers and MGM will emerge triumphant.

Housing developments, retail projects move forward

Meanwhile, Spano and Cavanagh say that while soaring interest rates have slowed development in the city a little, they are optimistic about progress on that front too. Spano says that while Chicken Island, which will add 2,500 units of housing, has not gotten “shovels in the ground nor cranes in the air,” the project remains active and

other projects are moving forward undeterred.

Cavanagh, who believes Chicken Island will move ahead in 2025, agrees. “We see that developers are taking the long-term view, at least the smart ones do,” he says. “So while the interest rates are not a welcome thing, we don’t think it will measurably slow down development in Yonkers.”

at’s because, Spano says, Yonkers remains the safest big city in the state. “It’s a place that people want to come to,” he says, adding that rents remain more a ordable in Yonkers than in neighboring White Plains and New Rochelle and that Yonkers will bene t from Governor Kathy Hochul’s successful push for more housing, speci cally more transit-oriented and a ordable housing throughout the state, but especially in New York City’s suburbs.

Meanwhile, the IDA just granted approval for the $458 million development called Teutonia Towers, which will feature a 41-story building that will host 906 apartments and nearly 3,000 square feet of commercial space, enriching the area’s commercial landscape. And while that’s a luxury development (albeit with 90 units of a ordable housing), the city is also adding buildings like MacQuesten’s St. Clair in the heart of the city, which will be 76 units of entirely a ordable housing for people who earn at or below 80 percent of the Westchester’s area median income.

“We also see a lot of other good things happening,” Cavanagh continues, pointing to the Ridge Hill Shopping Center, which like so many malls struggled in the era of e-commerce but is getting a makeover. “ e new owners are recon guring some of the streets and plaza areas to make it more pedestrian-friendly, and they are increasing the entertainment options.”

He says the back of the long empty Lord & Taylor building will be demolished for housing while the front will become a pedestrian walking area with restaurants. “We’re really happy to see that Ridge Hill is going great,” he says, adding that another bit of evidence that the city’s developers continue to move from the past to the future is the plan for a pickleball restaurant. Yes: a place where you can eat and play a game of pickleball all in one spot.

And there’s more to come. “ ere’s an additional development on the table right now for the city that I’m not at liberty to discuss yet,” Spano says, adding that when rates start to come down a lot will happen quickly.

“We’re showing the world that Yonkers is a good place to do business,” Spano says.

Project Rendering of Empire City Casino by MGM Resorts

Project Rendering of Warbuton Avenue Apartments

Project Rendering of Teutonia Towers

THE NEXT GEN ERATION OF INNOVATION YONKERS

“We looked at the investment that industries and businesses are making in Yonkers, and Yonkers is the place where things are really cooking!”

BELINDA MILES President SUNY Westchester Community College

“We’re expanding every day with a brand new radiology department, a soon to be completed brand new emergency room, and all new state-of-the-art equipment.”

MICHAEL J. SPICER President &

CEO

Saint Joseph’s Medical Center

“Once this project is completed, Yonkers will be home to one of the largest Mediapro studios in the world and will be recognized globally as Hollywood on Hudson.”

JOE

COTTER

President & CEO National Resources

“We’ve been operating a restaurant in Yonkers for over 30 years now, and we continue to see opportunities to expand and grow.”

ALFONSO ALVAREZ TORRES Chef Dos Marias Bar & Restaurant

“By creating the North Yonkers Medical Mile, Yonkers residents are able to be treated right here in their community with top-notch, quality care.”

JOE SIMONE President Simone Development Companies

SPOTLIGHT on WESTCHESTER

Transforming White Plains A visionary developer’s plans for a new era

$2 billion overhaul to revitalize White Plains Mall into a city-changing hub

The Galleria Mall in White Plains was so ‘80s… which was ne in that rst decade a er it opened in 1980. But over time, this big, ugly hunk of concrete lled with lusterless shops slid downhill, a drag on downtown and a symbol of the past in a town trying to adapt and redevelop itself for the present and the future.

A few years ago, Pacific Retail Capital Partners and Aareal Bank planned to renovate the mall with the addition of apartments, but as e-commerce rendered that idea obsolete and the mall continued to flounder, the partners realized they needed a new start. They began looking for outside help, knowing that it would have to be someone with a strong vision and the ability to pull it off.

In their hour of need, they turned to SL Green Realty and especially e Cappelli Organization. Louis Cappelli who has worked in Westchester for more than four decades, has transformed White Plains and New Rochelle. One of the county’s premier builders, he’s the founder of the Cappelli Organization and chair and CEO of its subsidiaries, LRC Construction and Cappelli Development Company.

“ ey came to me and said, ‘What do you think of this plan’ and I said, ‘ row it away,’” recalled Cappelli, who was born in the Bronx but moved to Yonkers as a child. “ ey said, ‘We’ve been working on it for ve years’ and I said, ‘But you can’t build it.’”

Cappelli explains that their plan was fatally awed, with too much retail and above-grade parking that while a cost-saver would chew up open space and ruin any visual coherence.

“We came in and the rst thing we did is what we do almost all the time-- we took all the parking, 3,500 cars and put it under the ground,” he said.

“Now you have eleven acres of fresh land in downtown White Plains, in a beautiful location connecting the central business district to the train station.”

e new plan features seven residential towers with around 3,200 apartments, more than ten percent of which will be designated as a ordable. While many of Cappelli’s biggest successes in Westchester are towers lled with condos, he said this one will largely be multifamily rentals.

“ at’s where the demand is now,” he explained. “I’d like to have one condominium building because when you have home ownership you have a stake in the community. Interest rates have put an arti cial stop on condo

sales now anyway, but everything turns back around.”

As part of Cappelli’s reimagining of downtown, the former mall site will be at least half open space accessible to the public. is will create a quarter mile green promenade with pet playgrounds, pocket parks, landscaping and areas for public entertainment and art.

“It will be magni cent,” said Cappelli, who now lives in a condo at the Ritz which he redeveloped more than a decade ago. His other major projects include New Roc City, which sparked New Rochelle’s downtown revitalization and City Center in White Plains. More recently he also demolished the White Plains Mall to replace it with the $650 million Hamilton Green development.

“It is a city changer—it would make a good city into a magni cent city, a model for the whole country.”

- Louis Cappelli, Founder of Cappelli Organization

Cappelli added that there will still be retail as part of the mix at the old Galleria site but with a di erent emphasis than what the mall o ered. “I’m a big believer in retail that’s amenity driven, restaurants, groceries, tness, a hardware store or shoe repair place, the kind of things that the 6,000 people living there would need,” he said, adding that there may also be a movie or performing arts theater to create that feel of a “city within a city.”

e restaurants and other streetlevel retail will also be important as a bridge for people moving between the train station and home or the train station and the central business district. “I’ve been here for four decades and people weren’t inclined to walk because the Galleria loomed large in the middle and created a vast dark corridor that wasn’t very inviting to walk along,” said Cappelli, whose company also just built new towers on Bank Street as well as 25 North Lex across from the train station (“one of the most magni cent buildings we’ve ever built) to further enhance the revitalization of the area. He sees that building, which will have a restaurant, along with

Hamilton Green and the replacement for the Galleria as bringing customers downtown.

“We’re going to connect all those residences down there, with people using the Galleria amenities but also walking up the esplanade. ey’ll be able to walk right to the center of the city with this beautiful walkway we’re creating.”

Cappelli, who calls himself a “developer-aholic,” said that at this point in his life—he’s turning 73 this year—”it’s not about making money anymore.” He doesn’t want to throw money away, of course, but he said that his priority at this point is “leaving a legacy and making a di erence.”

To that end, he won’t just go and build 150 units in some stand-alone project in a town in Westchester. “I have maybe seven more years of a development career and I have nothing to lose at this point,” he said. “What I’m looking at are transformational projects. At this point in my life, I want to build stu that not a lot of other people would undertake.”

e Galleria project certainly ts that de nition. While the Ritz was a $750 million project, this one would run more than $2 billion. “Try to get your arms around that—two-and-a-half billion dollars, six high rises and acres of public space, with performing arts theaters and all these di erent things,” he said. “It is a city changer—it would make a good city into a magni cent city, a model for the whole country.”

Cappelli, who has a deep understanding of and tremendous clout in the county along with a seemingly boundless amount of optimism — “everything can only get better; I’m planning on a bright future, no matter who is president next year”— said this plan is so massive that even he’s not certain it will win full approval.

“It’s the only project I’ve ever done I fear may not get approved,” he said, saying politicians and other o cials understand a new tower or two but this is harder to grapple with. “It’s scary to a lot of people. It’s certainly scary to me. When it’s this big you draw in everybody with an opinion and it’s almost polarizing. You can’t take care of them all.”

Even if this project does get approval, Cappelli accepts the fact that it is such a massive undertaking that he may be retired by the time every last little bit of it is nished. “But I will get it to the point where it has its own momentum and then I’ll know it will be nished,”

District Galleria Farmers Market

District Galleria open plaza landcaping

District Galleria Winter Plaza

HAMILTON GREEN

SPOTLIGHT on WESTCHESTER

A healthy growth spurt

White Plains Hospital continues innovating and expanding

Tounderstand the ambitions and expansions of White Plains Hospital in 2024, you need to travel back in time, said White Plains Hospital chief medical o cer Dr. Michael Palumbo.

ree decades ago, he explained, patients used to be hospitalized for more reasons and for longer periods.

To lower costs, enhance e ciency and reduce infection risks for patients, the medical eld began treating more and more people in ambulatory settings.

For instance, where a cancer patient once was hospitalized for two or three weeks for daily chemotherapy treatments, newer freestanding infusion centers allowed people to stay home.

at meant hospitals were “no longer seeing their capacity stretched like they had been in the past,” and due to changes in the insurance industry, many were shrinking, closing units or even closing down or merging.

But White Plains Hospital President & CEO Susan Fox pushed a new vision. “If we wanted to remain invaluable for our community, we needed to strategize and become a care provider for a more complex level of care than might typically be seen at a community hospital,” Palumbo said.

In 2015, they partnered with Monte ore Hospital, which was rapidly expanding—they now have 10 hospitals, most north of their Bronx campus.

“Monte ore realized they needed a tertiary facility to support the advanced care needs of some of the smaller a liates across the Hudson Valley. at allowed the Bronx campuses to focus on things that are even more complex, like transplants, and we all work together to ensure that patients get the right care in the right location at the right time,” Palumbo said.

An example of the collaboration between Monte

Plains Hospital can be seen across their comprehensive cardiac services.

“We initially had one cardiac catheterization lab, which had gotten very busy, but we didn’t have the specialized interventional cardiologists on sta to be able to support a 24/7 lab, which you need for dealing with acute heart attacks,” Palumbo said, explaining that Monte ore provided those cardiologists, allowing White Plains to open a second cath lab, which allowed them to tackle a larger quantity of more complex procedures.

White Plains Hospital has now since added a world-class cardiac electrophysiology program dealing with subspecialties like abnormal heart rhythms and pacemakers, and now can perform open-heart surgery, which they started in 2021. e main surgeon leading these e orts is Dr. Robert Michler, Palumbo noted.

Dr. Michler is not only Monte ore’s chairman of cardiac cardiothoracic surgery, he is also their surgeon-inchief. “He’s very accomplished and world famous and he’s at White Plains every day.”

There has been similar expansion in the field of transcatheter aortic valve replacements (TAVRs) for vulnerable heart patients, a modern technique that often has patients out of the hospital in just one day. White Plains Hospital added this service in 2023 under the direction of Dr. Azeem Latib, who comes from the Bronx hospital to perform around a halfdozen of these advanced procedures per week. “We are providing complex, high-quality care close to home,” Palumbo said. “That’s the trifecta.”

e hospital has also added specialty stroke and neurological care now thanks to “an aggressive strategic plan” building a new team, as well as a new operating room to accommodate their work. “ at took us three years to build and has allowed us to provide rapid life-saving care with the latest treatments for anyone su ering a stroke,” Palumbo said.

en there’s the hospital’s Emergency Department, the busiest in Westchester, which now handles 80,000 patients annually, up from 45,000 around 15 years ago. Despite the crowds, Palumbo said the ED has a di erent culture than most.

“Most ED’s have very long waiting times and that has clinical impact because the patients are sick but also they’re anxious and just sitting there,” he said, adding that the hospital does patient satisfaction surveys and adapts accordingly because there is a direct correlation as shown in numerous studies between patient satisfaction and clinical outcomes.

“It’s about communicating with patients in ways they can understand,” Palumbo said. “Our Emergency

Department has remarkable patient satisfaction ratings because we put an emphasis on that communication. We have made the patient experience a priority across the organization, which translates to better outcomes.”

Of course, satis ed customers spread the word and Palumbo said more and more patients are now choosing to go to White Plains Hospital, especially since the hospital has been nationally recognized for the quality of its care. White Plains Hospital is the only

“We’ve expanded the facility twice, but we need more space,” he said, adding that since the Emergency Department is “the front door of the hospital” the growth there means the hospital is busier overall and thus better able to support those complex service lines like cardiac surgery and neurosciences.

But the hospital, which has grown to 53 practices across more than 30 sites is still racing to grow even more. ey’ve moved things like human

“Our Emergency Department has remarkable patient satisfaction ratings because we put an emphasis on that communication. We have made the patient experience a priority across the organization, which translates to better outcomes.”

- Michael Palumbo M.D., Executive Vice President & Chief Medical O cer at White Plains Hospital

hospital in Westchester and Fair eld Counties to earn a 5-Star Quality Rating from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) – the highest rating given – for two years in a row. It’s also the only hospital in the county to be awarded an “A” safety grade from the Leapfrog Group 11 consecutive times and was just ranked among the top 5% in the nation for patient safety by Healthgrades.

resources, occupational health and ambulatory imaging out of the main building and into newly acquired or constructed facilities to increase clinical space. And three years ago, the hospital opened a new 250,000 ambulatory pavilion, its Center for Advanced Medicine & Surgery. (It was built “from the ground up during COVID, both on time and on budget.) at is “huge,” Palumbo said, “with

so many specialists practicing under one roof our patients can get all the specialized care they need in one building.”

But overwhelming demand for services means it’s time for the hospital to grow again. While there are still plans awaiting nal approval, the goal is to add a new signi cant expansion that will add new private rooms, new additional state-ofthe-art operating suites, and more than double this size of its existing Emergency Department.

“ is expansion will allow us to eventually get to 100% private rooms, which is state-of-the-art for hospitals these days,” he said, adding that the private rooms are not a luxury but a necessity for “healing and preventing hospital acquired infections.”

e new building, which is expected to see its rst patients in 2028, will also allow White Plains Hospital to expand its critical care space, which is needed to handle the increasingly complex services that the hospital now provides.

Palumbo acknowledges that the hospital’s growth plans are intended to not only meet the needs of patients today but anticipate what the community will need in the future. “We are privileged to care for our community and want to ensure that we remain strong and continue to provide the highest quality care for generations to come.”

ore and White

White Plains Hospital

MICHAEL PALUMBO, MD

Executive Vice President & Chief Medical Of cer at White Plains Hospital

White Plains Hospital is Westchester’s

White Plains Hospital is proud to be acknowledged for our outstanding quality, safety and patient experience.

Visit wphospital.org/awards

SPOTLIGHT on WESTCHESTER

Westchester County tourism set for major expansion

Gears up for a business visitor revival and unveils ambitious plans for growth

Westchester County is back.

Four years after Covid, close to 99% of the county’s $2 billion a year tourism industry is fully restored, said director of tourism and film Natasha Caputo. “Tourism is an indicator of the quality of life and our vitality and resiliency.”

Even the one area that has lagged behind is about to see not one, but two major splashes, which should fully complete the comeback.

“The one area we have not fully regained has been business visitors,” Caputo explained and several hotels closed after the pandemic. Now she said the overhaul of the Westchester Marriott in Tarrytown and the new Crotonville Conference Center in Ossining will prove major draws in that category. “The Marriott is getting set to unveil a complete top-to-bottom

renovation. That’s extremely important for us as we go out and prospect and solicit the business side.”

The Conference Center was, until recently owned by GE, training generations of executives there. Now it will be open to the public for meetings and conferences. “It brings us 45,000 square feet of additional meeting space, which will make a big difference,” Caputo said, noting that the new owners have gone all-in, adding 248 hotel guestrooms, dining options and recreation from hiking trails and firepits to basketball and volleyball.

Knowing that these two options are about to come alive, the county began seeking ways to enhance its presence. To that end, Caputo said that the county is launching a new incentive program for businesses called Westchester Workshops. “If corporate

meeting planners book 50 nights by the end of the year for any time through 2025 then we will offer a unique experience from Westchester makers,” she said. “You may get a sampling of local foods or craft beverages or a jazz quartet to come and play. We will bring Westchester to their meetings.”

Of course, Caputo noted that the county wants more than just business executives and to that end, they’re launching a “craft beverage trail” and an app that’s a curated collection of local breweries that visitors can earn points and eventually swag from. There’s also a new Children’s Museum in Rye to the second seven-day, 200-mile Cycle the Hudson Valley tour in August that highlights the communities, culture, history and scenic landscape. “Revolutionary Westchester 250” supports local reenactments and family-friendly festivals tied to the Revolutionary War while Sleepy Hollow is celebrating its sesquicentennial anniversary with numerous events.

Caputo said the county does a better job of extending its reach than ever before thanks to its social media campaigns, which won the Public Relations Society of America Bronze Anvil Award of Commendation one year after earning the Bronze Anvil in 2022 for “Best Use of Social Media.” When Caputo said she wanted to reach

everyone, she meant it. Last year the parks foundation introduced Trails Without Limits, an adaptive hike program that allows individuals living with disabilities the opportunity to immerse themselves within Westchester County Parks—at no cost to the user— with All-Terrain Trackchairs. The county airport also launched its Hidden Disabilities Sunflower Program where passengers with hidden disabilities and accessibility needs wear a special

lanyard so airport staff can find them and help provide a supportive environment.

This year, the county is introducing educational workshops and seminars promoting accessible tourism for its business partners, Caputo said. “We will offer this program to all our hotels and other partners to further enhance that hospitality which will be accommodating and welcoming for all.”

Kingsland

Photo by Margaret Fox

Bicycle Sundays

SPOTLIGHT on WESTCHESTER

A drive for growth

A local law rm builds on its national dreams

Lawyers generally don’t drive 200 miles an hour or change tires in a matter of seconds, yet Jon Dorf still sees the Rye-based rm Dorf, Nelson & Zauderer as akin to a Formula 1 racing team.

“ e teams that win don’t just have the best drivers,” he said, “they’re fully integrated—from the driver to the technologists to the folks in the pit—and operate as a team. at’s how we run our operation—we put a lot of emphasis on how we can work as a collective unit.”

Dorf, who noted that the rm recently did a team building event at an F1 race, said this mindset is especially important because of the rm’s rapid growth over the last year. “We’re excited with our present position and bullish about the future,” he said.

Beyond their Rye headquarters, they already had a small Los Angeles o ce but they’ve opened satellites in Red Bank and Paramus, New Jersey and a agship o ce in Manhattan, with about 25% more attorneys but a disproportionately higher revenue

growth, Jonathan Nelson said, because of the type of work the new lawyers do and the fee structures and the opportunities in those given areas.

“Jon, Mark and I are entrepreneurs so we’re always looking to grow but you have to do it in smart ways that are productive and add value,” Nelson said.

Dorf said their expansion was a “a delicate balance” of planned growth and seizing opportunities to bring in seasoned lawyers that meshed with the rm’s “ecosystem” and t its market needs. “In these cases, two plus two actually equals six, seven or eight. We’re taking multiple steps forward.”

e rm purposefully expanded into the growth eld of cybersecurity, data privacy, data protection and arti cial intelligence, bringing in people like Antony Haynes—an Air Force Academy graduate who earned an informational science degree before becoming a lawyer.

“ ere’s a great need there as we’ve seen it in the media recently,” Dorf said. By contrast, they acted more

opportunistically in launching their new tax department. “ ere’s a lawyer who has a concentration in taxation and this just landed on our plate, but it matched nicely with our corporate department and other areas,” Dorf said.

e addition of New Jersey o ces, which happened last summer, had also been on Dorf’s and Nelson’s to-do list, though until then they had yet to nd the right partners… ( ey’re also contemplating Florida as another area to expand.) “ is was a combination of being purposeful and opportunistic,” Dorf said—while the state was on their radar, they just happened to connect with this group of litigators based there. “ ey had very sound practices. We evaluated their skill sets and how they could coordinate and collaborate with the rm as it existed and it was a great opportunity for our geographical expansion so a er some quick discussions we moved forward.”

Last summer brought an even more notable addition to the rm, when they added Mark Zauderer and the Manhattan o ce last summer. Zauderer successfully defended New York Stock Exchange chief Richard Grasso against a suit by then attorney general Eliot Spitzer and United States Secretary of Commerce Ronald Brown against a lawsuit from Eugene McCarthy; he is a past president of the Federal Bar Council and chaired New York’s Commission on

the Jury, which worked to improve the state’s jury system.

“Mark is a legendary trial and appellate lawyer and this introduced us geographically to Manhattan, opening new windows of opportunity,” Dorf said. “ is has dramatically changed our footprint optically and functionally.”

But Nelson added that they remain a Westchester-based rm. Noting that when he and Dorf joined forces 15 years ago there was de nitely a perception in New York that they were on the periphery of the action. “ e industry has changed and now you can be a national law rm with a headquarters in Westchester,” Nelson said. “ e perception really has shi ed.”

RESORTS IS ALL IN ON NEW YORK! THE FUTURE IS BRIGHT!

(left to right) - Jonathan B. Nelson, Jon A. Dorf, Mark C. Zauderer

SPOTLIGHT on WESTCHESTER

Maximizing community bene ts

Mayor Yadira Ramos-Herbert shares vision for future of New Rochelle

Change has come to New Rochelle. No, not just more buildings, although the city is pro-development with a fast-track process that builders love. is time, change has come to City Hall, where Yadira Ramos-Herbert is both the city’s rst female mayor and its rst mayor of color.

A former city council member, RamosHerbert is also pro-development but aims to “maximize community bene ts,” from climate change to ood mitigation to future development. She spoke to Crain’s about her new job.

How was the shift from being part of a council to being in the mayor’s seat?

I represented a historically AfricanAmerican community and served as their advocate. When you represent the whole city, you learn everybody’s concerns. I’ve had to master more issues and learn how to be humble to understand di erent perspectives. For instance, I started out thinking we didn’t need to focus on parking, but from developers and planning folks

I learned that we need it to attract tenants downtown. So, I think about parking di erently while also making sure we’re forward thinking about how we use our land.

Our city manager and commissioner of development and I oat into one another’s o ces pretty much throughout the day. We just had a quick impromptu meeting which covered ve di erent topics.

As an Afro-Latino do you bring a different perspective to City Hall?

I can talk earnestly about my support for development, while also making sure people understand I rmly believe in equity. I’m making sure that we’re really thinking about all of the cultures that make up New Rochelle, and that those voices and faces are at the job sites, helping us know the needs of the community so we can advocate directly to our developers.

How do you make sure you know what the community wants?

It’s something that I’ve really tried to prioritize as a council member and certainly as mayor. ere’s de nitely not one way to get feedback. I’m big on talking to the community and having meetings and sharing information and leveraging technology to get feedback from anybody who cares. When we were talking about ooding, we opened an online portal so people could submit pictures of the impact to help galvanize our professional resources.

You’ve talked about parking spaces for more cars and ood mitigation from climate change, which are sort of contradictory. How do you navigate the competing needs and desires of residents and businesses?

I’m not pretending that these solutions are easy, but we need to think creatively. We need to balance shortand-long term needs, so we talk about parking, but also investment in EV charging stations and micro-mobility opportunities in New Rochelle with scooters and a free electric shuttle that has an incredibly high utilization

rate. And you have to communicate and communicate again. We’re not pretending to attain perfection. It’s about being agile.

What are some of your biggest plans for the near term?

We have rezoned the Lincoln Avenue neighborhood to facilitate more housing, but housing consistent with the neighborhood, not glass towers. e near term plan will leverage the rezoning to implement programns that engender economic development for the residents of the neighborhood. Housing and a ordable condos in this community that was blighted by Robert Moses in the sixties can help revitalize it. And we’ll layer opportunities for small business incubation to

help minority- and women-owned businesses and culture and art. We also have e Linc, which is converting a highway into a pedestrian walkway and park that will connect this AfricanAmerican community to downtown.

We also have a robust redevelopment of our waterfront, moving our public works station to another site and using that strip of the water for condos, rentals, a hotel, a revitalized armory for veterans and public access to the waterfront. It’s a game-changer and it’s going to be stunning, and it will have green infrastructure and will give the community a public amenity.

In 10 years you’ll see a very di erent New Rochelle, and I’m excited to be a part of that.

VISION FOR THE FUTURE OF NEW ROCHELLE

Opportunities for Youth and Community Engagement

Through a multifaceted and collaborative programmatic effort with higher education institutions, millions of dollars have been dedicated to nurturing our future leaders.

Enhanced Public Infrastructure

An extraordinary $78.8 million is set to be invested in Capital Projects through 2031, in addition to a ten-year flood mitigation program.

Strong Economic Development

The city’s accelerated zoning process will continue to enhance the downtown area by supporting job creation, property values, and private investment.

Access to Affordable Housing

There will be hundreds of new affordable housing units coming to Downtown New Rochelle in 2024.

Championing Sustainability

The GreeNR sustainability plan will guide the City’s future development so that New Rochelle can grow in an environmentally responsible, economically vibrant, and socially equitable manner.

The LINC - Birds Eye North Ave Plaza - Rendering Courtesy of Starr Whitehouse Landscape Architects and Planners

on WESTCHESTER

Revitalizing Cortlandt: A commitment to fun, health and growth

Initiatives from pickleball courts to waterfront parks, fostering a sense of community and well-being in Cortlandt

The Town of Cortlandt has long been committed to making itself a fun and healthy place to live—town supervisor Richard Becker noted that they set aside one acre toward preservation for every acre that’s developed—and these days the town’s philosophy can be seen in additions both small and large.

“Quality of life issues are important and we’re always improving,” Becker said.

For starters, the town is making people happy 880 square feet at a time. at’s the size of a pickleball court and the town has added nine of them in just the last two years, with plans for another three near the town’s community center. e rst four went into an empty piece of property and the second batch came about from a mid-summer brainstorm. “I was at our town ice skating rink on a hot July day and I was the only person there and I thought,

‘What a waste,’” recalled Becker. (He doesn’t play himself but his wife is a passionate convert to the sport.) “I asked our engineers how many courts we could put in the rink and we had ve running within a few months. ere was already lighting and because it’s adjacent to the train station no one’s concerned about the noise of the balls on the paddles.”

On a grander scale the town has changed zoning to mixed-use in some areas to encourage development that will include more housing and there are plans afoot for a resort and a Marriott hotel as well as the redevelopment of an old bowling alley into what Becker said will be a modern entertainment facility with bowling and amusements and upscale restaurants. “People are really investing in the area,” he said. “ ey want to help make the area a destination.”

Another crucial addition is the new

30-acre waterfront park on land donated by a former resident named James Martin. “If this unbelievable site had been developed it would’ve been the most expensive housing in Westchester,” Becker said. “It’s directly on the river, unobstructed by railroad tracks, the only such place between New York City and Albany. But we turned it into a park.”

e town has a ribbon-cutting planned for early June for the new Cortlandt Performance Stage, “You’ll be able to watch the river and all the boats going by while you’re enjoying a concert,” Becker said. And a grant from the county will also help with an aviation-themed park (Martin was an aviator) that will open this summer. ( e town has also re-done its swimming pool and bathhouse.)

With so much good stu happening, Becker is eager to spread the word, so the town has created an online

THE TOWN OF CORTLANDT IS WHERE LIFE WORKS AT HOME, WORK AND PLAY

AND IT IS PRIME FOR INVESTMENT!

Commercial space is often available with twice the space at half the cost, along with access to a highly educated and diverse workforce as well as a location near major transportaation. Cortlandt is committed to aiding investors and entrepreneurs through a streamlined approval process.

newsletter lled with updates and videos that has become the town’s digital community bulletin board. “I wondered how many people would read this but people do and they spend more than a few seconds on it,” Becker said, adding that 13,000 people get the newsletter. “ is is tremendously important in creating a sense of community. Before this people in one part of town wouldn’t know about a concert or the new pickleball courts or our youth programs or veteran’s programs in other parts of the town and so they’re more involved in the community.”

Becker said his e orts to improve that community feeling can also be seen in the hiring of a tra c

Four Strategic Areas for Growth

and safety o cer and a community resource o cer. “We were the rst ones in Westchester to do that, to hire someone speci cally trained a detective in de-escalating situations,” Becker said. Meanwhile, the tra c o cer issued 700 violations in his rst month “and that got the message out about slowing down very, very quickly.”

“At all our events I introduce the two of them by name so the community can get to know them,” Becker added, noting that the community resource o cer, Matt Wirth, raises alpacas and brings them to a town event. “People see him there and know he lives here and it really gives us the feeling of being one community.”

In all, there are four strategic areas of potential economic growth,based on Cortlandt’s award winning Sustainable Master Plan.

The Master plan focuses on trends for the future of employment, such as work from home options and co-work spaces in order to reduce commute times, reduce negative impacts on the environment and attract a new talented workforce.

WHAT WORKS FOR YOU?

For more information on how the Town of Cortlandt can help bring your business and investment here contact: George Oros, Town of Cortlandt, Economic Development Coordinator at goros@townofcortlandt.com

If you are looking to locate, expand or relocate your business, Cortlandt is the smart choice. Cortlandt is where life works… for your employees, your customers and your business.

- Supervisor Dr. Richard Becker

Cortlandt Riverfront Park Stage in contruction

the for-pro t company that runs Smart City Expo, last year worked for Carone’s lobbying and consulting rm, Oaktree Solutions. Carone and one of his current employees, Matthew Quinonez, were both copied on an outreach email, reviewed by Crain’s, that Tandon sent last year to prospective speakers and sponsors.

e Adams administration’s $250,000 commitment is seen by some as extraordinarily high for a city sponsorship of a privately produced event. Sources told Crain’s that the payment has aroused concerns within the city’s Economic Development Corp., which is listed online as a “visionary sponsor” of the Expo and has helped coordinate the city’s support along with the O ce of Technology and Innovation.

e mayor’s o ce and EDC declined to answer questions about how the administration became involved in the conference and whether Carone had any in uence on the sponsorship, instead referring Crain’s to a statement by the O ce of Technology and Innovation.

“As we continue to build New York City’s tech sector and our future-focused sectors, like green economy and life sciences, the city has proudly supported a broad range of economic devel-

BY THE NUMBERS $250K

One-time “sponsorship contribution” that is now being used to produce this year’s event

we had the infrastructure or desire to work on, so we amicably decided to go our separate ways.”

Oaktree had announced Tandon’s planned hire as a managing director in May 2023, two days before the city announced it would host the Smart City Expo.

Several people who have worked with Tandon on the Expo told Crain’s they were unaware she had ever been affiliated with Oaktree. Tandon declined to comment on her affiliation with Oaktree, and Carone did not respond to follow-up questions about when she stopped working there.

“It only makes sense to convene leaders in NYC to talk about modernizing our airports, the latest innovations in security, mobility, sustainability, and more.”

Aarti Tandon, CEO of Smart City Expo USA

opment e orts, including events like the Smart City Expo, which attract visitors from around the world,” wrote spokesman Ray Legendre. “We look forward to welcoming attendees to help bolster our city’s economy and advance innovation to improve life for New Yorkers.”

Carone, reached for comment on Friday, initially told Crain’s that he “was never involved in it in any iteration, ever.” When pressed, however, he conceded that he had planned to solicit private-sector sponsors for last year’s Expo and “provide seed money myself to the organization” running the event.

“You’ve got to start from somewhere,” he said. But Carone said he never made the intended investment and has no financial stake in the event. The Expo is Tandon’s “baby,” Carone said, adding that he assisted Tandon while she worked for Oaktree but severed ties to the conference last year when she left his company on amicable terms after a short tenure. Tandon continued to lead Smart City Expo USA, where she has been CEO since 2019.

“We were going in a different direction, quite frankly, internationally,” Carone said. The Expo, he added, was “not something

“We postponed the conference because it just wasn’t the right time to host it,” Tandon said in an emailed statement in response to questions about the event. “Glad we waited because it’s going to be great.”

Much of the conference is marketed toward entrepreneurs interested in doing business with cities. John Kaehny, executive director of the watchdog group Reinvent Albany, argued that it makes little sense for New York City to sponsor an event geared toward companies trying to score public contracts.

“It is a concern when the city is directly subsidizing events for vendors whose goal is to sell stu to the city,” Kaehny said. “ at’s taxpayer money, and you have to say, what is the point of that expenditure given that the city is already hosting?”

‘I haven’t heard any buzz’

The Adams administration initially committed $250,000 to last year’s event through a June 2023 vote by the board of the Economic Development Corp., whose members are appointed by the mayor. The $250,000 was a one-time “sponsorship contribution” that is now being used to produce this year’s event, Office of Technology and Innovation spokesman Legendre said in an email.

Legendre said the city’s support also included identifying speakers from within the administration, but it is unclear whether that extends to staffing help or

other resources. The deal approved by EDC’s board last year included both the $250,000 sponsorship and also “any needed funding source agreements” for the Expo.

e O ce of Technology and Innovation was listed as EDC’s partner in securing the city funding, and the Expo website refers to OTI as a “host” of the conference. e o ce is a mayoral agency whose leader, Matthew Fraser, was appointed by Adams.

Carone said he played no role in asking the Adams administration to put up money for the conference. He was legally barred from lobbying his former City Hall colleagues for one year after he departed the administration at the end of 2022, and still has not registered as a lobbyist. Several of his employees are registered lobbyists, however, and Carone has been open about the fact that he advises his clients about how to approach his former colleagues in city government.

Tandon said in an email that New York City has been “extremely supportive” of the conference, noting that the National League of Cities and the African American Mayors Association are serving as co-hosts. Given plans to host the 2026 FIFA World Cup in the region, Tandon said, “it only makes sense to convene leaders in NYC to talk about modernizing our airports, the latest innovations in security, mobility, sustainability, and more.”

Opinions about the conference are mixed. Several people told Crain’s they planned to attend this year’s Expo on Pier 36 in the East River, and said they were impressed by the extensive program and lineup of speakers — which, besides the slew of City Hall ocials, also includes the mayors of a few mid-sized cities, the governor of New Mexico and dozens of executives in business and real estate.

But others in New York’s business and technology sectors said there was little organic demand for the Expo. e smart-city concept, which broadly calls for using digital infrastructure to improve

city services, was a craze during the 2010s but commands less interest now, with attention having shifted to other topics like arti cial intelligence.

“I haven’t heard any buzz or any kind of real energy coming out of that event,” said one wellconnected tech industry gure.

Tandon, asked whether waning interest in the smart-city concept had been a hurdle for sponsorship and ticket sales, responded that “It’s unfortunate that some have not embraced making NYC ‘smart.’”

“ e rest of the world is eating our lunch,” Tandon said in an email.

Some industry players said they see the conference as a valuable networking opportunity, although the attendee pool may be limited by its steep ticket prices — $1,095 for private-sector employees and $500 for people from the public sector or nonpro ts. Organizers are marketing the Expo as a chance for startup founders to “Pitch your technology to cities,” and the Adams administration is indeed sending some of the ocials in charge of New York’s multibillion-dollar contracts budget, like chief procurement o cer Lisa Flores.

Abrupt cancellation

e decision to postpone last year's conference appeared to be made abruptly — some city ocials involved in planning only learned of the cancellation when it was announced publicly.

The event’s primary boosters inside the administration include Fraser, the chief technology officer who leads the Office of Technology and Innovation, two people said; Fraser is scheduled to give a welcome address before Mayor Adams’ kickoff speech at the Expo’s opening day on May 22. Other listed sponsors include Google, Accenture and Microsoft.

Tandon, a lawyer by trade, has an eclectic resume that includes stints as a documentary lm producer and an advisor on Michael Bloomberg’s 2020 presidential campaign, where she worked on

Black media engagement, according to her LinkedIn.

In the years before the pandemic, Tandon helped organize a previous series of smart city events in New York that several attendees recalled as successful. e current iteration, Smart City Expo USA, is a spino of a larger conference, the Smart City World Congress, held annually in Barcelona and sponsored by a Spanish trade group. e OTI spokesman told Crain’s that the Adams administration decided to support the Expo because of its a liation with the Barcelona conference, a prominent event that last year drew 25,000 attendees.

In 2022, Tandon donated $400 to Adams’ re-election campaign, records show. Last year’s press release announcing her hire at Oaktree said she would serve as managing director for equity, entertainment and technology, working in the sports and media industries and focusing on “the intersection of profit and purpose.”

“One of the many things I admire about Aarti is that she meets people where they are,” Carone said of Tandon in last year’s announcement.

Carone has attracted considerable scrutiny for his decision to leave City Hall during the rst year of the Adams administration and start his own rm — all while maintaining a leading role on Adams’ 2025 re-election campaign. Although critics see Carone as pro ting from his connections to the mayor and his sta , Carone has maintained he is staying within ethical guidelines by not communicating directly with city agencies.

Mayor Adams, for his part, has a well-documented a nity for new and often unproven technologies. In March, he announced plans to install scanners in subway stations to detect weapons, although critics noted that the same machines had a dubious success record. Last year, Crain’s reported on the existence of an obscure two-person o ce Adams created to screen private-sector business pitches, with an apparent focus on cryptocurrency.

Aarti Tandon (left), CEO of Smart City Expo USA, brie y worked last year for Frank Carone (right), former chief of staff to Mayor Eric Adams who now owns the lobbying and consulting rm Oaktree Solutions. | GETTY IMAGES (LEFT); OAKTREE SOLUTIONS (RIGHT)

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Associate (Apollo Management Holdings, L.P. – New York, NY); Mult. Pos. Avail. Research, develop, and implement streamlined technologies across all bus lines at Apollo. Develop scalable solutions and anticipate future needs. F/T. Position based in New York, NY. May telecommute 2-3 days per week. Sal range $169,229$189,229/yr. Resumes: pkotakonda@apollo.com. Ref Job ID: 8286319.

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Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 03/21/24. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 02/28/24. NYS fictitious name: FOUR TREES CAPITAL MANAGEMENT NEW YORK LLC. 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 Jeffrey W. Bullock, 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

ELBOW CLUB LLC Arts of Org filed with Secy of State of NY (SSNY) on 2/13/24. Office Location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent upon whom process may be served against LLC to: PO BOX 488, LINCOLN PARK, NJ 07035, USA, Purpose: any lawful act.

Notice of Formation of 11 LEONARD STREET LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 04/10/24. 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.

Notice of Qualification of NYMI 2110 LLC

Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 04/11/24. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 11/05/14. Princ. office of LLC: c/o LaSeven, Inc., 21 W. 58th St., Ste. 100, 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 122072543. DE addr. of LLC: CSC, 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with DE Secy. of State, 401 Federal St., #4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

STARTUPS

companies focused on women. She is far from the only investor interested in the space. In New York, women’s health is a hot ticket. e city raked in half of all women’s health-tech funding in the U.S. in 2023, according to Deloitte. Investments totaled $256 million, cementing New York as a hub for companies focused on reproductive health, fertility issues and pregnancy, among other women’s issues.

As such, the city has become a competitive landscape for founders jockeying for investments. And a number of female venture capitalists have taken up the goal of helping female entrepreneurs get their fair share of funding. To help them break through the noise, four female investors told Crain’s what companies can do to win them over–and win their dollars.

Painkillers, not vitamins

In this increasingly crowded landscape, Schrock says, women’s health startups should seek to tackle broad issues and not just niche ones. e wider the base of women who will use the company, the more appealing it will be to investors.

should aim to solve a large problem, not just help people deal with it. Founders need to show that they can address a persistent need and then expand to o er other xes, Schrock said.

Many women’s health rms focus on nding solutions to only one problem, such as polycystic ovary syndrome, said Schrock. at worked for a while. But as the sector has grown, she says, having a singular mission is no longer enough.

One of the clearest examples of this idea is Hudson Square-based Maven Clinic. Founder Kate Ryder started the virtual clinic, which Schrock also advises, in 2014 to solve pregnancy issues, beginning with doula care. Since then Maven has raised $300 million, was one of the early unicorns in the women’s health space and now o ers care for mothers and newborns, children and women going through menopause.

Build relatability

Often female investors will draw from their own experiences when choosing which startups to back.

“If you are building something that’s not going to have a $100 million exit, it’s probably not going to be appealing for most venture capitalists.”

Leslie Schrock, angel investor

“Is the problem you’re solving big enough? Is it painful enough?” she asked. “If you are building something that's not going to have a $100 million exit, it's probably not going to be appealing for most venture capitalists.”

To that end, she said, a startup should look to be “a painkiller, not a vitamin.” In other words, it

Four days after Holly Maloney, a managing director at the venture capital rm General Catalyst, which has an o ce in SoHo, had her rst healthy baby, she was rushed to the emergency room for symptoms of preeclampsia, a complication involving high blood pressure that can be fatal. During her second pregnancy, which was otherwise healthy, Maloney suffered a placenta abruption, in which her placenta detached from her uterus.

“I’m in a fortunate position where I have really high-quality insurance,” she said.

“I am engaged in resources that can give insight into what [I’m] dealing with. at’s just not the case for so many women out there.”

Maloney’s personal experience serves as her guide when she considers which companies to invest

in. She hones in on startups that are trying to educate women early in pregnancy in an e ort to prevent more dangerous outcomes.

In addition to Maven, she’s invested in Mirvie, a San Franciscobased platform that aims to predict complications before they occur.

“It was just so clear to me that a company needs to exist that can detect these very high-cost complications as early in the pregnancy journey as possible,” she said of her thought process around Mirvie, “if we're ever going to ip the narrative around the mortality rate in the U.S.”

Show how the business will work

Although investors can be moved by the stories behind companies, they are ultimately looking to make a return. Forest Hills-based independent angel investor and adviser Christina Farr said she chooses to make early investments in founders

who can prove that their business will work.

“ ere are companies in women's health that are doing well from what I’ve heard, but I think there’s a lack of information and education around how,” Farr said. “Who are you selling to that’s buying these solutions? What is the pitch? What are the mechanics of it? Investors have their own needs, their own targets. ey have to believe in your business.”

She looks for evidence of revenue, product market t and metrics that look like they’re going in the right direction when deciding whether to contribute funding.

Showing proof only becomes more important once a rm is looking to raise a Series A or B funding round, Farr said. She noted that it’s vital for women’s health rms in particular to show proof of concept and viability as well as data because there is “all kinds of bias against women and women's health companies … and most venture capitalists are male.”

She pointed to Chelsea-based Summer Health, a platform on which parents can text pediatricians about issues a ecting their kids, as one example of a rm that showed her it could go big. She learned this by using the platform herself, as a mother of a young child, and seeing whether it could improve parents’ experience with nding pediatricians. at, in addition to her talks with founder Ellen DaSilva and her understanding that pediatrics is underfunded, pushed her to invest. Summer Health, which counts women as the majority of its users, most recently raised a nearly $12 million Series A round in April.

New York City’s Caraway Health, another rm Farr invested in, focuses on reproductive health for college students. Her previous fund, OMERS Ventures, got involved from the start because investors saw a “huge need” for health and mental health care focused on Generation Z, with few companies pursuing the population. Caraway, founded in 2022,

cinched a $17 million Series A round last year because founders showed the investors they could patch that hole.

When in doubt, stick it out

ere is a perception that the city’s women’s health space is already crowded. But Lexi Henkel, a principal at Maverick Ventures, which has a Midtown o ce, said the recent urry of activity is just the beginning. e founders who can stick it out for the long haul will be rewarded.

“Women control 80% of health care spending [and are] 50% of the population. Yet only 2% of venture funding in 2023 went toward women's health innovation,” she said. “So while we're hearing more and more about it, there's still so much whitespace. We haven't even hit the tip of the iceberg.”

She seeks out companies that aim to patch persistent gaps in the sector, such as the one that exists for in vitro fertilization. IVF is responsible for just 2% of births, and 15% of people are infertile. San Francisco-based rm Frame Fertility as well as Branch Care and Mate Fertility, which is located in Oklahoma City, are just a few of the startups making her excited for the future, she said.

But smart entrepreneurs will understand that women are concerned with and a ected by more than just fertility issues. Going forward, Henkel expects to see more rms pop up to address conditions including cardiovascular concerns and Alzheimer’s disease, both of which disproportionately a ect women.

Ultimately, Schrock said, founders will need to prove they are willing to go the distance and take big swings, as Gameto’s Radenkovic did. She emphasized that the impact they can make in women’s health is worth it.

“It’s a long road starting these companies, especially working in health care. It’s a ground assault,” she said. “Do you have the resilience to stick with this, even when times get tough?”

Founder Ellen DaSilva (left) of Summer Health, a platform on which parents can text pediatricians about issues affecting their kids | BUCK ENNIS

Forest Hills-based independent angel investor and adviser Christina Farr said she chooses to make early investments in founders who can prove that their business will work. | BUCK ENNIS

Startup wants to make urban EV chargers as common as lampposts

Say goodbye to the days of looking for charging stations several neighborhoods away, or even New Jersey By

| Caroline Spivack

In the rst months of the Covid-19 pandemic, Je ery

Prosserman decided to purchase an electric vehicle to get around the city. At the time he had a 2-year-old son, Max, and wasn’t comfortable bringing him on mass transit. But he still wanted a sustainable way of traveling.

An electric vehicle seemed like a sensible decision until it came to juicing up the car’s battery. Prosserman was living in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, at the time and didn’t have access to a private garage. So he would go on what he called “charging missions” several neighborhoods away, or even to New Jersey, to nd chargers.

“It literally made no sense to have an EV back in 2020 in New York City. You could count the amount of charging [stations] on one hand,” said Prosserman. “Now there’s a little more, but it’s still very much a charging desert.”

Climate crisis protests at the time had inspired Prosserman to exit his role at Samsung as the director of innovation and enter Columbia University’s sustainability management masters program. He soon began exploring ways to make vehicle charging easier for city dwellers, and the idea for what would become Voltpost was born.

Prosserman co-founded the company with Joern Vicari, Voltpost’s chief product o cer, whom he rst collaborated with while at Samsung, and with Luke Mairo,

Voltpost’s chief operating o cer, who served as the president of the Columbia University Environmental Entrepreneurs student group in the masters program Prosserman attended.

Prosserman, who serves as chief executive, and Voltpost's now 20 employees have spent the past three years focused on developing charging technology that repurposes infrastructure already connected to the power grid and that’s plentiful on sidewalks: lampposts.

Installation

Cities are historically tough places for drivers to embrace electric vehicles because many residents lack access to a private garage where they can have a charger installed. Building out chargers for the curbside or in parking lots is tricky because they have to tap into the power grid, which often means expensive projects to cut trenches into streets and sidewalks.

Voltpost works around the problem by tapping into power already coursing through lampposts. is means, Prosserman said, that Voltpost can install a charger in one to two hours at a reduced cost by avoiding construction or the lengthy permit process needed for power upgrades. e electricity used for charging is reported to the utility or to public and private organizations that are hosting a charging project.

e concept quickly drew investor interest, with a preseed round of fundraising in 2021 and a seed round that raised a combined $5 million, said Prosserman. Voltpost’s backers include Exelon, the largest utility in the U.S.; German energy giant RWE; and early-stage venture capital rms such as Hillside Ventures, Climate Capital and Twynam Funds Management.

e company’s post-funding valuation is $13.6 million as of May 2023, according to Pitchbook; Voltpost says its valuation is higher but would not share the number.

To date, Voltpost has tested its chargers in small pilot projects in New York City in 2022 and in Detroit in 2023. Just last month the company announced the commercial availability of its sleek, modular system that encases streetlights and retro ts them into at least two and up to four charging ports. Users can access the chargers through an app; they pay Voltpost a charging fee whose rate depends on the region’s utility.

A bonus to the design of Voltpost’s charging hub is that it can accommodate other services a private partner or municipality may want, such as adding wireless internet, tra c or air-quality sensors or even screens for ads, said Aditi Desai, Voltpost’s director of partnerships.

“I like to think of ourselves as more than just a charger but really a platform that we can license to cities and companies to provide

FOCAL POINTS

Company Voltpost Founded 2021 Employees 20 Management Jeffrey Prosserman, CEO and co-founder; Joern Vicari, chief product of cer and co-founder; Luke Mairo, chief operating of cer and co-founder

Locations The company has an of ce in Midtown and innovation space at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Voltpost also has a team based in San Francisco.

Funds raised $5 million Post valuation $13.6 million, according to Pitchbook. Voltpost says its valuation is higher but would not share the number.

Markets New York, Chicago and Detroit are the initial markets the startup plans to target. Website voltpost.com

them with data that's relevant to them,” said Desai. “ at's us also being able to future-proof our product.”

e company is looking to generate revenue both through charging fees and contracts for private and public partnerships (for example, a building's private parking lot or one for a municipal eet). Prosserman said the startup is in talks with “several dozen” enterprise partners, including real estate developers, private parking lot owners, universities and others. But for the time being the company’s leadership says it’s focused on deploying as many chargers as possible, with plans to deploy in New York, Chicago and Detroit later this year.

“Really the mission is to decarbonize mobility by democratizing EV charging access,” said Desai, “and that means putting these chargers up where people need them most.”

Jeffrey Prosserman, CEO and co-founder, and Aditi Desai, director of partnerships, at Voltpost. | BUCK ENNIS

WOMEN IN CANNABIS SUMMI T