Crain's New York Business, May 20, 2024

SLOW GO FOR IPOs

A sluggish IPO landscape is starving early-stage startups of funding and tying up talent

By Amanda Glodowski

Yukako Kiso has been planning restaurant gatherings among friends and strangers for as long as she can remember. But the nights always end in the same awkward way, with a “big fat check” sucking the energy out of the room.

So in 2021 she started a social dining app called Cuculi, named for the Japanese goddess of connection, to assuage bill-splitting anxiety and solve another quintessential problem for New Yorkers: making new friends. Users can set up and advertise “public tables” via the

Cuculi platform, where diners can mix and mingle with others looking to connect.

“People move to New York City, and they start their new life, not knowing anybody,” said Kiso, Cuculi’s CEO.

Cuculi has taken in about $420,000 through fundraising from friends and family and made $100,000 in revenue during its rst three years. e app has roughly 7,000 users who pay $1 each to set up or attend a public table. Cuculi also receives a cut of the restaurants’

Kushner Cos. may be saying goodbye to the East Village

In the past few months, the developer has unloaded about a third of its portfolio of three dozen properties in Lower Manhattan, and listed more

By C. J. Hughes

Kushner Cos. may be calling it quits in the East Village.

In the past few months, the developer has unloaded about a third of its portfolio of three dozen properties in the Lower Man-

How

hattan enclave, shedding prewar walk-up rental buildings on streets including Avenue A, East Fourth Street and First Avenue that it had owned for more than a decade. It’s also put a batch of similar properties on the market.

e East Village, where a young Jared Kushner lived, was the focus of the company’s rst major residential push into Manhattan after decades of investing in the New Jersey suburbs. And the rm didn’t just dabble in the area but

Startup seeks to be a LinkedIn for health care professionals, companies.

329-335 E. Ninth St., East Village | BUCK ENNIS

Cuculi co-founders

Yukako Kiso and Aleksandar Tisinovic at partner restaurant Burrito Loco. BUCK ENNIS

Hochul earmarks $35M to fund three nonpro ts’ supportive housing projects in the Bronx

Jacqueline Neber

Gov. Kathy Hochul has earmarked $35 million to fund three nonpro ts’ supportive housing projects in the Bronx, she announced May 9, to connect New Yorkers to medical, mental health and substance use care.

Supportive housing units provide vulnerable New Yorkers, such

The $86 million is part of Hochul’s $25 billion housing plan that aims to create or preserve 100,000 homes across the state.

as those with substance use disorder or who experience homelessness, with case management services and refer them to physicians. Bronx-based Samaritan Daytop Village received $15 million in funding, Bronx-based Unique People Services received $10 million and WellLife Network, based in New Hyde Park, received $10 million.

Samaritan Daytop Village will use the funding to help construct a Highbridge building that will be home to 315 apartments, 190 of which will support people who were previously homeless.

JUNE 13

HEALTH CARE SUMMIT

Join Crain’s and Healthcare Financial Management Association, Metro NY Chapter (HFMA) for a day of live interviews and panels with the city’s top health care leaders and decision makers. We’ll engage in lively discussions on a wide range of topics, including regulatory changes coming to Medicaid and Medicare Advantage, the current state of the pharmacy bene t manager industry and how technology is reshaping the health ecosystem in the city.

Jerry Mascuch, Samaritan Daytop Village’s vice president of real estate, told Crain’s social workers and case managers will refer those tenants with mental health conditions to primary and psychiatric care. Workers will connect individuals with other organizations such as Brightpoint Health, Damian Family Care Centers, which can be found throughout the city, Housing Works and Mount Sinai, he added. ere are also recovery coaches on sta to help tenants with substance use disorder.

Funding for the supportive services is provided by the city’s 15/15 supportive housing initiative.

Unique People Services will use the money to build a 111-unit facility at 1806 Anthony Ave. in the Mt. Hope neighborhood. Just under 70 of those units will support formerly homeless New Yorkers with mental health concerns, said Yvette Andre, the nonpro t’s chief executive.

Help tenants to manage

Case managers will connect those tenants to hospitals and providers for psychiatric care, senior director of real estate and development Lisa Downing said, and help them manage their medication in an e ort to help more peo-

ple integrate back into their community after experiencing homelessness. e nonpro t operates hundreds of units of supportive housing around the city for tenants with di erent needs.

WellLife Network will use their share of the funds to construct similar units, according to Hochul’s o ce. WellLife currently helps more than 1,000 New Yorkers with mental illness and intel-

lectual and developmental disabilities, including those who were formerly homeless, through supportive housing programs. Representatives did not respond to a request for comment.

e grants for the three organizations, which are administered through the state O ce of Temporary and Disability Assistance, is part of a total of $86 million that the state has allocated for support-

ive, emergency and transitional housing. e remaining organizations that received chunks of money, which they earned through a competitive process, are all located upstate.

e $86 million is part of Hochul’s $25 billion housing plan that aims to create or preserve 100,000 homes across the state, including 10,000 with support services for vulnerable groups.

Blackstone parts with portfolio of Queens, N.J. industrial properties in $250M deal

Eddie Small

Blackstone has sold o a major portfolio of industrial properties in Queens and New Jersey to San Francisco-based real estate rm Terreno for $246 million.

Terreno announced earlier this month that it had purchased an industrial portfolio in the city, New Jersey, Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area for about $365 million, but the rm did not identify the seller. e portfolio consists of 28 buildings spanning about 1.2 million square feet that is 91.6% leased to 70 tenants.

e Queens properties consist of 21 parcels near John F. Kennedy International Airport. Blackstone had acquired the parcels in 2019 for about $130 million.

“Logistics has been a high-conviction theme for us for well over a decade, and this transaction illustrates the continued strength we see today,” David Levine, co-head of Americas acquisitions for Blackstone, said in a statement.

A representative for Terreno declined to comment.

Blackstone bet particularly heavily on industrial real estate in 2019, most notably through an $18.7 billion purchase of warehouses across the country from

Singapore-based rm GLP Pte. But Blackstone has more recently inked multiple deals to sell parts of its industrial portfolio, including a $3.1 billion sale to Prologis last year, and placed a huge bet on multifamily properties, striking a deal to purchase apartment landlord AIR Communities for roughly $10 billion earlier this year.

e rm is still a big believer in the industrial sector “as illustrated by our $175 billion global logistics portfolio,” Levine said.

Helping it stay strong

Industrial real estate in the city did very well during the pandemic, although growth from the logis-

tics and e-commerce rms that helped it stay strong slowed during the second half of last year. However, the sector got o to a strong start in 2024, with the outer boroughs seeing their busiest rst quarter since 2019, thanks in part to demand from wholesale rms and studios, according to Cushman & Wake eld.

The funding is part of a total of $86 million Hochul allocated for supportive, emergency and transitional housing projects

Blackstone President Jon Gray | BLOOMBERG

Brendan Carr

A decade-old Bronx brewery, citing increased costs, becomes latest city taproom to close its doors

is keg has run dry.

A decade-old brewery in the Bronx is closing its doors for good — becoming one of almost half a dozen in the city that have shuttered in the past six months.

e brew masters at Gun Hill Brewing Co., which opened in 2014 at 3227 Laconia Ave., planned to serve their last pint in the borough May 18 in what’s become a competitive industry.

“ ere’s been an explosion of breweries in the last 10 years,” said Dave Lopez, one of the partners behind the taproom. “We’ve had a hard time justifying all the price increases since Covid.”

en-Bronx Borough President Rubén Díaz Jr. celebrated the opening of the Wil-

liamsbridge neighborhood brewery during the kicko to Bronx Week in 2014, the Daily News reported at the time. Rapper Swizz Beatz, a native of the borough, was on hand as an honoree.

Lopez says the company is not tapping out of the business for good and will continue to make its hops upstate as well as operate a smaller o shoot of the brewery, the Gun Hill Publick House, in Sunset Park’s Industry City. But the rm’s decision to close the 5,000-square-foot taproom, between Boston Road and Duncan Street, was not made

lightly, said Lopez, who cited the increased costs of raw materials and utilities.

Gun Hill is now joining the fate of four other breweries across the city that have also recently closed:

Owner Charles Monaco told Crain’s May 7 that he hopes to rent it out to something other than an auto body shop.

Coney Island Brewery, Interboro Spirits & Ales in East Williamsburg, and LIC Beer Project and Big aLICe Brewing in Long Island City.

Coney Island Brewery, on Surf Avenue near Luna Park in what’s known colloquially as the people’s playground, similarly attributed its closure to nancial struggles and the “seasonality of the area,” which is usually packed during

the summer months but empties out as it gets cooler, according to Brooklyn Magazine.

“It’s de nitely part of a larger trend,” said Lopez.

Meanwhile, even more have opened in just the past few years: Torch & Crown Brewing Co. opened in SoHo in 2021; Talea Beer Co. has opened three new taprooms since 2022, two in Manhattan and a third in Cobble Hill; and Finback Brewery also opened up two taprooms, one in Long Island City and the other in Gowanus, in 2023 and 2022, respectively. e longtime owner of the former Gun Hill Brewing Co. property, Charles Monaco, told Crain’s May 7 that the lease goes for $10,000 per month, and he hopes to rent it out to something other than an auto body shop.

Long Island City project lands more than $200M in nancing

A massive multifamily project planned for Long Island City has landed a similarly huge construction loan.

North Carolina-based developer Grubb Properties has received roughly $215 million in nancing from Kennedy Wilson, a real estate investment rm based in Beverly Hills, for Link Apartments QPN, a 417-unit development at 25-01 Queens Plaza North in the bustling Queens neighborhood. e project is still under construction

but should be ready by next year for residents to move in, according to CBRE, which brokered the deal for Grubb.

e project will stand 26 stories tall, and 124 of the residential units will be set aside as a ordable for households earning up to 130% of the area median income, or about $182,000 for a family of three. It will also feature 6,920 square feet of retail space on the ground oor. Grubb is building an elevator to the Queensboro Plaza subway station as part of the development as well.

e project’s close proximity to public transportation was one of the main reasons Kennedy Wilson opted to provide the construction loan, said Patrick Crandall, senior managing director at the rm. It has long known Grubb to be a quality developer, he said.

Planning a 462-unit

Grubb purchased the Long Island City site in September 2021 for $63 million, property records show. It bought 111 Washington St. in Manhattan’s Financial Dis-

trict for about $89.2 million around the same time; it is planning a 462-unit residential project there that should be nished in 2026, according to the company.

e median rent in northwest Queens hit $3,244 in April, the second-highest it has ever been for the month, according to the latest report from Douglas Elliman. e overall record for the neighborhood is $3,900, set in August last year.

e CBRE team of Elliott Voreis, Nate Sittema, Kristen Reilley and Owen Hall represented Grubb in the transaction.

Gun Hill Brewing Co., which opened in 2014 at 3227 Laconia Ave., is closing this month. GOOGLE STREET VIEW

Julianne Cuba

Eddie Small

Supermodel Linda Evangelista lists penthouse near the High Line for nearly $9.5 million

The

six-story, four-bedroom, 4,000-square-foot

condo is on W. 22nd Street in West Chelsea

C. J. Hughes

Supermodel Linda Evangelista, who was the face of high-pro le brands including Versace, Armani and Ferragamo over a high-wattage, seemingly-everywhere-at-once career, is marketing something of her own.

Evangelista has listed her four-bedroom penthouse in West Chelsea near the High Line for just under $9.5 million, according to a listing that appeared May 8. e 4,000-squarefoot condo at 525 W. 22nd St., a 6-story converted furniture warehouse near 10th Avenue, features two baths, exposed brick walls in the pass-through kitchen and a dressing room packed with six custom-built closets. ere’s also a peek of a High Line view from the primary suite.

It’s unclear if the current listing includes the storage area. Carlos Garcia, the Compass broker representing the property, did not respond to a request for comment.

Second-ever owner

$9.5M

Listing price for 525 W. 22nd St., West Chelsea

Evangelista, who like Christy Turlington and Naomi Campbell was a ubiquitous sight in the 1980s and 1990s at fashion shows, on billboards and in glossy magazines such as Vogue, bought the apartment in 2001 for $8.4 million, a price that included a storage space, according to a deed in the city register.

Evangelista seems to be just the second-ever owner of the penthouse, which is part of a 30-unit, 1893 building with a roof deck and lined with 160,000 square feet of art galleries that was developed by the rm Savanna in 1996. Evangelista, who retired from modeling years ago but made a splashy appearance at this month’s Met Gala, her rst time at the celebrity-studded Manhattan charity event in nine years, according to Vogue, was a bit of a trailblazer on West 22nd. ough the block’s prewar former industrial buildings hummed with popular art galleries by 2001—the Dia Art Foundation opened at No. 548 in 1987, ushering in a parade of similar places to appreciate paintings and sculpture—the High Line then was little more than a weedy and desolate former train track. And apartments, not to mention luxury de-

Rents back at record highs, with more increases expected

Eddie Small

Well, the lull was nice while it lasted.

New York rents were back at record highs last month after dropping slightly in March, indicating another painful spring and summer could be in store for the city’s apartment hunters, according to

for the month on record at -0.1%, meaning many apartments went for more than their initial asking rent.

Didn’t scare off renters

In Brooklyn, the median rent hit $3,599, also a record for April and up 3% compared to March.

the latest report from Douglas Elliman and Miller Samuel.

In Manhattan, the median rent rose to $4,250, a record high for April and a 3.7% increase month over month, the report says. is was the third time in the past four months that it rose year over year. e listing discount was the lowest

velopers, were very few and far between, though the neighborhood teems with ashy high-rises today. e rst leg of the High Line park, meanwhile, opened in 2009. Greenery, glitz and popularity weren’t enough to prevent the area from struggling a bit in the pandemic, however. Indeed, Covid, and the shutdowns that it prompted, caused a drop-o in

visitors to the area, and led to some of No. 525’s galleries becoming vacant.

Savanna, which has owned the spaces since redeveloping No. 525 in the 1990s, apparently responded to the problem by slashing retail rents to attract replacements.

But cutting the rental income undermined Savanna’s ability to pay back a $14 million mortgage,

according to the ratings service Moody’s, and a special servicer assumed control of the foreclosure-threatened loan last fall.

But the price increase didn’t seem to scare o renters. ey signed 5,482 new leases, up signi cantly month over month and year over year, making it the second-busiest April on record. Listing inventory increased to just under 8,000 apartments, while the vacancy rate ticked up to just under 2.5%, the report says.

In Brooklyn, the median rent hit $3,599, also a record for April and up 3% compared to March. New lease signings and listing inventory were also both the second-highest for April on record, at 3,066 and 3,944, respectively.

e median rent did not set a re-

cord in northwest Queens but still rose month over month to $3,244, the second-highest it has been for April. New lease signings were the second-highest on record at 678, up almost 150% year over year, while listing inventory rose more than 65% annually to hit 754 apartments.

e city’s all-time record highs for rents were set in July and August last year, at $4,400 in Manhattan, $3,950 in Brooklyn and $3,900 in northwestern Queens, according to the Elliman reports. And with high interest rates keeping many potential buyers out of the housing market and in the rental

market, it could just be a few months before even these records are broken, said Jonathan Miller, CEO of Miller Samuel and author of the report.

“If this continues, then it’s reasonable to expect new records being set in the summer,” he said, “barring a drop in mortgage rates.”

525 W. 22nd St. and Linda Evangelista. | COMPASS; GETTY IMAGES

Morgan Stanley M&A chief picks up ex-Ferrari CEO’s penthouse

C. J. Hughes

A sports car executive has managed to steer a Wall Street bigwig to his Park Avenue penthouse.

Louis Camilleri, the former chief executive of Ferrari, has sold his ve-bedroom triplex penthouse at 470 Park to Michael Boublik, a Morgan Stanley managing director who chairs the investment bank’s regional mergers and acquisitions division, according to city property records.

Boublik and his wife, Miriam, a management consultant turned philanthropist who has worked to end homelessness in New York, paid $8.2 million for the co-op, which spans nearly 5,000 square feet indoors and features an additional 2,000 square feet of terraces. e apartment also o ers six full baths and one half-bath, a living room with a replace and a skylight-topped passageway that under Camilleri’s ownership was lined with art and a Ferrari engine.

e top- oor home, located in a prewar edi ce at East 58th Street at the edge of Midtown, hit the market in July 2023 at $10.8 million, according to Streeteasy, suggesting that the Boubliks were able to pick up the auto chief’s pad

at a notable discount. But it’s not clear what Camilleri, a decades-long resident of the 12-story, 62-unit building, originally paid.

Sudden departure

Camilleri, who has also served as chairman of Philip Morris International, a role that overlapped with his being in the driver’s seat at Ferrari, stepped down from both the cigarette-maker and the Italian carmaker in December 2020 after being hospitalized for Covid. A statement at the time cited “personal reasons” for the sudden departure.

Camilleri had accepted the top slot at Ferrari after the death of former CEO Sergio Marchionne in 2018.

For his part, Michael Boublik, who has worked for Morgan Stanley since 1990, according to his LinkedIn pro le, has frequently ended up on best-of lists for his M&A e orts and is considered one of the country’s top deal-makers. In 2019 he had a hand in AbbVie’s $63 billion takeover of Botox-maker Allergan, consulting on behalf of AbbVie, a Chicago-based pharmaceutical giant.

J. Roger Erickson, the Douglas Elliman agent who marketed the penthouse, had no comment by press time.

e penthouse at 470 Park and a similar-sized unit next to it were created by former co-op residents Ken and Gerry Greenspan in the mid-1980s by combining a line of longtime but unused maids’ rooms, according to news reports from the time.

Despite hopes that Manhattan’s residential sales market would begin the year with a burst, it can seem to have plodded in recent months. Indeed, the median sale price of $1.05 million in the rst quarter, for instance, was down more than 9% from the end of 2023 and more than 2% in a year, according to an Elliman analysis.

High interest rates, a recognized culprit, seem to have dragged on sales of o ce buildings and other types of real estate as well.

470 Park Ave., Midtown | DOUGLAS ELLIMAN

Zellnor Myrie could doom Eric Adams even if he loses

Together with Scott Stringer, he can rack up enough votes to block the mayor from winning the June 2025 Democratic primary

Mayor Eric Adams has a new challenger in the Democratic primary next year.

Zellnor Myrie, who holds a version of Adams’ old state Senate seat, announced he was opening an exploratory committee to run. Myrie put up a launch video with the announcement; barring unforeseen circumstances, he is going to be an o cial candidate before the year is out.

What does this mean?

Can a 37-year-old state senator from Brooklyn get elected the next mayor? He’s a long shot. Adams is sitting on more than $2 million and should have the backing of several large labor unions. He’s an incumbent, and mayoral incumbents rarely lose.

It’s important to remember primaries and special elections in New York City are now run with ranked-choice voting. In the primary next year, just as they were able to in 2021, Democratic voters can choose up to ve candidates on their ballot. Second-place votes matter greatly. RCV is a good system because it rewards candidates who can build broader, deeper coalitions. Adams can’t rely on a narrow plurality to get himself the nomination.

grounded in municipal management and battling back against certain unpopular budget cuts, like Adams’ attempt to trim spending for libraries. Myrie’s hope, as a candidate, will be to forge a coalition of center-left Democrats in Manhattan and Brooklyn while pitching himself to moderates as someone who can successfully oversee the city agencies Adams has stu ed with patronage hires or let wither altogether.

But Myrie can help deny Adams a second term, even if he doesn’t win. Scott Stringer, the former city comptroller and a 2021 candidate, is likely to run as well. Together, it’s plausible they rack up enough votes to block Adams from winning the June 2025 primary.

Myrie has several strengths. He represents a vote-rich district in central Brooklyn. He is Afro-Latino and can potentially gobble up middle class and professional class Black voters who are souring on Adams. Progressives in western Queens, northern Brooklyn and the brownstone belt could be attracted to his candidacy, since he has a reputation as a reformer in Albany; he’s a politician who fought to expand childcare and x election laws.

Myrie is part of the state Senate’s progressive bloc, but his pitch, like Stringer’s, is more

Myrie’s challenge will be building name recognition and raising money. Even with public matching funds, he’ll need to raise around $1 million on his own if he wants to get on television and scale up a ve-borough campaign. is is far easier said than done. Stringer, who’s run citywide before, has an advantage on this score.

The most unpopular mayor

Ranked-choice voting incentivizes alliance-building, and it’s not hard to imagine a Stringer-Myrie coalition that wins many more votes than Adams in Manhattan and sections of Brooklyn and

Queens. Adams has a large working-class base, but it’s shrunk since 2021. He is, by polling, the most unpopular mayor in decades, and it’s possible a federal investigation into his fundraising results in him — or close aides — getting indicted. If so, the eld might expand further. Indictments could lure Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced former governor, into the race, and he would be formidable, even with the large number of voters who view him negatively. Either way, Adams is already the most endangered incumbent since David Dinkins, who lost his re-election in 1993 to Rudy Giuliani. e most apt historical compar-

ison, though, might be Abe Beame, who had to govern through the scal crisis and saw his popularity plummet by 1977, when he was up for re-election. Democrats piled on Beame like Democrats are beginning to pounce on Adams, and Beame lost the primary.

Adams does have a path to victory, but he needs to gure out how to win back the voters he’s lost while proposing new policy initiatives that can drum up fresh excitement and interest. Adams needs a compelling argument for a second term. Absent one, he’s veering toward becoming a oneterm mayor.

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

Art Deco post of ce in the Bronx hits market for $75M

By C. J. Hughes

A developer has decided to say farewell to a landmarked post ofce that has been the focus of dreams about the turnaround of the South Bronx.

Chelsea-based Youngwoo & Associates, which helped transform a dilapidated Manhattan cargo warehouse into the food hall complex Pier 57, has listed 558 Grand Concourse for about $75 million. In 2014 Youngwoo paid $19 million for the 4-story, 175,000-squarefoot government property, public records show. Afterward it invest-

“The area has gotten tremendously better in the last decade.”

ed $40 million to renovate the upper oors of the full-block, Art Deco site, which besides housing a small postal facility is also home to Zona de Cuba, a ve-year-old Cuban restaurant.

“While development plans are to be unveiled at a future date, [Youngwoo] intends to build upon the property’s legacy as a trophy of the Bronx and an iconic gateway to the borough,” said a statement

from the developer from around when it bought the property, a major bet on the area at the time. A food hall was once considered for the property, which is at East 149th Street.

Eye-catching edi ce

With the revival of the area in full swing, the brokers now marketing the property expect the eye-catching edi ce to attract a single occupant, which would presumably use it for classrooms, ofces or as a medical facility, though the existing leases would transfer with it.

“ e area has gotten tremendously better in the last decade,” said James Nelson, the Avison Young broker handling the sale. “And this is not just some old warehouse.”

Nelson added that since Youngwoo purchased the property, which was accomplished with the help of a $12.4 million loan from Cathay Bank, the South Bronx has become awash with residential development. Indeed, developers have added 62,000 new homes in the past decade, he said, and nearly 17,000 are planned, he pointed out. e 1935 granite-and-marble Bronx Central Annex, whose facade features tall, arched windows and two mounted statues, re-

ceived local landmark status for its exterior in 1976.

“ e elegant simplicity of the building with its nely executed details make[s] it one of the best examples of government architecture in this style,” says the o cial report compiled for the designation. “It met a long-felt need in the Bronx when built, and continues to serve that function today.”

In 2013 city o cials also conferred landmark status on a por-

tion of the inside of the building, a rarity. A series of 13 Great Depression-era murals called “Resources of America,” depicting scenes of workers harvesting wheat and ring furnaces, that was painted by the husband-and-wife team of Ben Shahn and Bernarda Bryson Shahn grace the space.

No. 558 o ers 169,000 square feet inside and 4,400 square feet outside, across several terraces, plus 39 parking spaces, its listing

shows. e post o ce leases about 10,000 square feet, and Zona de Cuba occupies 15,000, Nelson added. e terms of those leases was not immediately clear.

Bryan Woo, an executive at Youngwoo, a rm founded in 1979 by his father Young Woo, declined to comment. In addition to Pier 57, Youngwoo served as a developer of 200 11th Ave., a West Chelsea highrise condo whose apartments come with adjacent garages for cars.

Ross Barkan

Zellnor Myrie’s challenge to Mayor Eric Adams is serious, but Myrie may need to rely on ranked-choice voting to have a shot at unseating the incumbent, writes columnist Ross Barkan. SUSAN WATTS/OFFICE OF GOV. KATHY HOCHUL

James Nelson, Avison Young

558 Grand Concourse, South Bronx | BUCK ENNIS

City’s staffing shortfall could stymie crucial housing and climate initiatives

As New York grapples with pressing urban challenges — from climate action to housing a ordability — the sta ng shortages in the Department of Buildings could undermine the city's capacity to translate legislative intentions into tangible outcomes. e city's new initiatives, Local Law 97 and the City of Yes for Economic Opportunity, are pivotal, aiming to make New York cleaner and streamline business approvals. Yet, without adequate sta ng, these initiatives risk becoming mere entries in a ledger of unful lled promises.

At the heart of the problem lies a discrepancy in the city’s sta ng priorities. While departments such as the NYPD enjoy robust support — evidenced by an 86-member public relations team, as documented by New York Focus — the DOB is noticeably understa ed. e department's headcount is 1,584 compared to the 1,861 positions allocated last year. Wait times for construction inspections have more than doubled, and the department’s ability to respond to non-emergency complaints has slowed, directly af-

PERSONAL VIEW

fecting the city’s operational e ciency and safety.

In April 2023, a parking garage on Ann Street collapsed, killing a man. e buildings department rushed to inspect hundreds of parking garages afterwards, re-

sulting in 13 full or partial vacate orders and 237 summonses — mostly under the category of “failure to maintain.” Inspecting these garages after-the-fact is insu cient and bordering on negligence.

e City Council is correct to spotlight this issue as a critical budget priority, arguing for the restoration of $19 million for 207 positions previously cut. However, despite the urgency conveyed by council members and optimism from Buildings Commissioner James Oddo, action seems elusive. Mayor Eric Adams' administration, while making strides in certain areas, appears to falter when bold visions meet the operational realities of city governance. e proposed sta ng enhancements — a modest increase of 36

full-time sta ers to manage compliance with Local Law 97 — are insu cient. As Councilwoman Pierina Sanchez noted, the department needs more than a “couple more people” to e ectively manage these critical areas.

Align administrative capacities

e time for half-measures and delayed decisions must end. New York’s housing and climate agendas are too crucial to be stymied by inadequate sta ng. It is imperative for the administration to prioritize and equip the DOB su ciently to ensure these ambitious initiatives do not remain unexecuted theories. As the city positions itself as a leader in urban innovation and sustainability, it must align its administrative capacities with its ambitions. is moment calls for a reassessment of priorities within City Hall. Failure to do so not only jeopardizes the success of Local Law 97 and the City of Yes initiatives but also re ects poorly on the city’s commitment to its future.

Beyond the bars: Sentencing reform for second chances

On the heels of Second Chance Month and National Small Business Week, it is a time to re ect as a state and raise awareness on the importance of second chance opportunities for people returning to their communities from incarceration. As a business owner, a New Yorker, and someone who has been incarcerated, I am a living testament to the value of meaningful second chances. e mistakes I made as a young person did not de ne me, because there were opportunities for me to succeed and contribute to my community.

Since my own release, I’ve become a proud community member of the city and the owner of a thriving business that’s all about second chances. At Untapped Solutions, we connect justiceimpacted individuals and other folks from marginalized communities to employers and job opportunities, harnessing the potential of traditionally untapped talents to create more diverse, dynamic, and stronger workplaces. Connecting people to quality jobs drives economic growth, reduces recidivism, and promotes social equity by providing meaningful employment opportunities to talented individuals who want to work

and take care of their families.

And I see the opportunity for so many more businesses and our communities overall to bene t from the contributions of formerly incarcerated people if we can pass commonsense sentencing reform this year. New York has not passed meaningful sentencing reform in more than 15 years. Long prison sentences keep people away from their families and locked out of the workforce, without improving public safety. While other states — including Oklahoma and Texas — have passed laws expanding opportunities to reconsider or earn time o sentences, New York has fallen behind. At the same time, many businesses are struggling to hire quali ed candidates amidst a persisting workforce shortage.

New York’s elected leaders have the opportunity to address both of these problems by passing a package of sentencing reforms, including the Earned Time Act (S774/A1128) and the Second Look Act (S321/A531), and the Marvin May eld Act (SS6471A/ A2036B). Advancing these policies will help us strengthen our state’s workforce without compromising public safety.

e Earned Time Act would allow people

to earn more time o their sentences for participation in educational and vocational programs that provide them with skills to be ready to rejoin the workforce upon release. e Second Look Act would allow judges to review extremely long sentences to see if a person’s demonstrated rehabilitation means they should be given a reduced sentence, recognizing that people should be given a second chance and that long sentences don’t make us safer.

Every day, I see how supporting justiceimpacted people is better for our community as a whole. Employers who utilize Untapped Solutions often tell us how impressed they are with the commitment and work ethic of the employees they nd through our platform. Given the right tools and opportunities, formerly incarcerated individuals want to and can thrive in the workforce.

Unfortunately, the longer someone stays behind bars, the more they can fall behind modern technology and the job

market. Every year locked away makes it exponentially more di cult to reintegrate into the workforce. With these sentencing reforms that can reduce recidivism and increase job skills, we can make impactful change.

Passing sentencing reform will bring valuable community members back to the workforce and continue to prioritize public safety. Business leaders across the state see the value of second chances. Now, it’s up to New York lawmakers to pass these data-backed sentencing reforms to provide meaningful second chances, strengthen our workforce, and make our communities safer.

The City Council is holding hearings now on various department budgets for the coming scal year, which begins July 1. | FLICKR/EMIL COHEN/NYC COUNCIL MEDIA UNIT

Andre Peart is the CEO and founder of Untapped Solutions,

Passing sentence reform policies will help us strengthen our workforce without compromising public safety, writes Andre Pert, CEO and founder of Untapped Solutions. UNSPLASH/CYTONN PHOTOGRAPHY

PERSONAL VIEW

We need to educate, empower the next generation of New York’s unsung heroes: Our tradespeople

With commencement time upon us, almost 300,000 students throughout New York state are preparing to enter the workforce after graduating—a sizable amount that accounts for more than the population of Bu alo, N.Y. While our newly graduated students will join industries such as life sciences, nance, education and more, there is an essential industry and workforce in New York City that is often overlooked and understa ed.

e New York Building Congress forecasts citywide construction spending to grow to $88 billion in 2024. As a result of this anticipated surge, construction jobs are poised to reach 160,000 in 2024. While this projected boom is promising, NYC Comptroller Brad Lander has found inconsistencies with the city’s annual infrastructure assessment that underestimate the need for tradespeople. Lander’s analysis highlights a foreboding trend, in which the city’s true infrastructure needs could be even greater than current projections. As New York’s more than 150,000 tradespeople are responsible for building our skyline and maintaining our infrastruc-

PERSONAL VIEW

State

ture, the city’s future will increasingly depend on them. Now is the time to educate and empower the next generation to join this high demand, rewarding, and growing industry, and to take a moment to thank current tradespeople showing up each day to build the future.

Engaging our audience

It’s critical that we convey to current high school students and graduates that trade school can o er a less expensive path to a satisfying career than a traditional college education. e building industry is expected to add almost 19,000 new jobs within three years, according to New York Building Congress research, yet the enrollment rate for programs to train for these skilled jobs in New York is lower than the national average.

Nationally, enrollment for two-year trade institutions focusing on construction training is up 10.01% from 2021. However, New York's enrollment is signi cantly lower than the national average, as its two-year institution enrollment has only risen 2.1% from 2021.  is trend only rein-

forces the need to communicate the benets of a trade-school education to ll the growing void of tradespeople.  e average cost of carpentry school in New York ranges anywhere from $12,000–$24,000, these gures pale in comparison to tuition costs as high as $63,000 per year in the NYC area. Additionally, construction ranked fourth among New York City's highest-paying employment sectors, boasting an average salary of $87,200.

According to another report from New York City’s comptroller, only 57% of NYC’s high school graduates were ready for college in 2019. Considering this data, promoting trade school as a nancially friendly path to building a stable career could help decrease unemployment and lead people toward solid careers.

New York bene ts from promoting the skilled trades locally

Filling these important jobs will contribute to the city and surrounding areas’ economic growth, and there is a signicant opportunity to build this workforce locally. Take these stats for perspective on the importance of tradespeople to NYC: It takes 129,935 miles of electrical cable to power a New Yorker’s cell phone — thank you electricians!

budget is done, but more action is needed

to combat homelessness

Homelessness in America is hitting record highs. e poverty rate in New York City is now nearly double the national average and rising evictions threaten the housing security of thousands of our neighbors. e reality of New York’s housing a ordability crisis is visible in the city’s overcrowded shelters and strained public resources. Something must change.

Now, with Grants Pass v. Johnson before the Supreme Court, justices have an opportunity tonally address America’s homelessness crisis in a serious way by answering one question: Is it a crime to be homeless? For decades, criminalizing housing insecurity has been the de facto solution enforced by state and local leaders in states across the country, even though we know from experience that criminalizing unhoused people will not eradicate homelessness. If our elected leaders are serious about moving people o the streets and into homes, increasing access to a ordable housing must be our top priority.

ing new tenant protections, zoning changes, and tax incentives to spur housing development. Unfortunately, most of these reforms will take years to implement and fail to address the urgent needs of housing insecure New Yorkers today. Meanwhile, skyrocketing rent is eating into New Yorkers’ income as millions of tenants struggle to pay rent. ey do not have years for state policies to wind their way into force — they require immediate action at the city, state and national levels.

Thehbia Hiwot is managing director for Housing and Homelessness initiatives at Trinity Church Wall Street.

e housing crisis requires both longterm and short-term solutions. Here in New York, lawmakers passed a $237 billion budget with signi cant housing reforms includ-

at’s why Trinity Church Wall Street and the broader Housing Access NY coalition were so disappointed to see lawmakers yet again fail to enact the Housing Access Voucher Program (HAVP). With a $250 million investment, a mere .1% of the state budget, lawmakers could have created a Section 8-like voucher to help 30,000 New Yorkers access permanent housing. Long-term rent subsidies like those o ered by HAVP are proven to reduce homelessness and promote bene cial outcomes for family well-being. Studies show that only 1% of families with long-term rental vouchers returned to shelter after one year compared to over 15% for families without.

e legislature must also leverage its

It takes 1 billion gallons of clean water per day to make the world’s best pizza — thank you, plumbers!

4 out of 5 rush-hour commuters use mass transit — thank you, mechanics!

Our tradespeople are the backbone of the city. Equipping and empowering the next generation of New Yorkers to explore opportunities in trade careers will not only help meet the industry's increasing demand but also stabilize our infrastructure and make room for more development. Let’s continue supporting local investment in talent, entrepreneurship, and the education of our newer generation about the bene ts of joining a stable industry in an ever-growing city.

considerable resources to boost a dwindling housing supply that no longer meets the needs of New Yorkers. We call on lawmakers to pass the Faith-based A ordable Housing Act, which would enable faithbased organizations to more easily develop a ordable housing on their land. Faith institutions of all denominations are trusted pillars of their communities, and we stand ready to help upgrade underutilized spaces into a ordable and mixed-used housing that is responsive to community needs. A good start would be reforming our outdated and burdensome zoning restrictions. A supermajority of New Yorkers agrees: a Pew Charitable Trust study found that 75% of New Yorkers support building new homes on faith owned land.

With the State unlikely to enact additional housing reforms in this year’s legislative session, it’s more important than ever that Mayor Eric Adams and the City Council move the needle on policy changes to address the housing crisis.

Mayor Adams’ City of Yes for Housing Opportunity plan is an ambitious vision to facilitate housing growth across the city, encouraging all neighborhoods to add affordable housing. Trinity is proud to be a member of the Yes to Housing Coalition urging our partners in government to spur housing creation. We’re especially ex-

cited to see Mayor Adams’ proposal to allow churches to develop housing on existing campuses, mirroring the vision of the state Faith-based A ordable Housing Act. It’s also a meaningful e ort to ensure we can keep as many unhoused New Yorkers sheltered as possible. New York City’s right to shelter laws are among the strongest in the nation, and they are a critical part of our safety net. at’s why it’s imperative to fully uphold and strengthen this crucial policy. Homelessness is one of our nation’s most pressing challenges. As a faith-based organization, we hold a strong commitment to advancing an equitable society. We believe in God-given dignity and learning from the experiences of every human being. Too often, unhoused people are treated as invisible. You may even be surprised to learn that some of your peers are homeless or have experienced homelessness. We must approach this crisis with compassion and care.  e status quo of skyrocketing homelessness can no longer continue. We urge our leaders at all levels of government to enact bold, creative solutions that will meet this moment with urgency and get our neighbors on the pathway to housing and stability.

Maria Ford is the president of commercial, industrial and farm & hardware at Stanley Black & Decker.

Our tradespeople are the backbone of the city, writes Maria Ford of Stanley Black & Decker. ISTOCK

It’s time for city government to address the housing crisis, writes Thehbia Hiwot, managing director of the Housing and Homelessness initiatives at Trinity Church Wall Street. BUCK ENNIS

PEOPLE ON THE MOVE

To place your listing, visit www.crainsnewyork.com/people-on-the-move or, for more information, contact Debora Stein at 917.226.5470 / dstein@crain.com

ARCHITECTURE

Corgan

Brent Capron joins Corgan as Interiors Studio Design Director and Associate Principal in New York. With 25+ years’ experience, his portfolio includes iconic projects that have earned multiple Interior Design Magazine Best of Year awards. Capron is a LEED AP and is a member of AIA, ASID, and ANFA. Founded 86 years ago, Corgan is a global architecture and design rm with 18 locations and nearly 1,000 employees.

LAW

PM Law PC

NONPROFIT

Pratt Institute

Pankaj Malik, an attorney with 30 years of experience in a vast array of complex legal issues, has opened PM Law PC. The rm, with of ces in Manhattan, Forest Hills and Long Island, will work with clients in New York State and throughout the country for federal matters. The PM Law team has deep experience in corporate work, complex litigation (commercial, real estate, bankruptcy, federal, employment and business), foreclosure defense, immigration and matrimonial law. www.pmlawpcny.com

LEGAL

Benesch

FINANCIAL SERVICES

Land Advisors Capital

Logan Embry joins Land Advisors Capital to lead the rm’s newly established NYC operations. She has over a decade of experience developing and managing capital relationships. A Yale University alumna, Logan specializes in investment advisory and equity placement services, facilitating over $6B commercial capital markets investments at JLL Capital Markets and HFF. Land Advisors Capital provides and facilitates access to capital market nancing for homebuilders and land developers across the U.S.

IN MEMORIAM

Lewis & Bockius LLP

Morgan Lewis mourns the passing of our partner, friend, and mentor Jonathan D. Morris, deputy leader of our rm’s global corporate and business transactions practice. Jon spent his entire career in our rm’s New York of ce and served on the Advisory Board and as a member of the Diversity and Recruiting committees. An important part of his practice, Jon devoted many hours to representing pro bono clients and was involved in the Jewish youth organization Moving Traditions.

Stephanie Cook, a seasoned fundraising professional, takes on the role of Vice President for Institutional Advancement at Pratt Institute. With a wealth of experience spanning the non-pro t, cultural, and higher education sectors, she aims to elevate Pratt’s mission through strategic fundraising and collaboration.

POLITICS

Gerstman PLLC

Andrew Glickman has joined Benesch as a Partner in the rm’s Corporate & Securities Practice Group. A former Big Law attorney and general counsel at both public and private companies, Andrew combines extensive corporate and M&A experience with a rsthand perspective, helping clients identify opportunities and overcome hurdles. His experience spans mergers, acquisitions, private equity, capital raising, IPOs and corporate governance matters.

LEGAL

Benesch

Molly Carroll has joined Benesch as an Associate in the rm’s Corporate & Securities Practice Group. Molly focuses her practice on a spectrum of corporate legal areas including public and private company mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, nancings, commercial transactions, and general corporate advisory.

Joel Pruett has joined Benesch as a Managing Associate in the rm’s Corporate & Securities Practice Group. Joel works on corporate matters, assisting in the representation of strategic buyers and sellers, private equity sponsors, and portfolio companies in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, equity nancings and other investment transactions.

Manhattan-based government relations law rm, Gerstman PLLC, has announced the launch of its newest division: Grant Writing and Management. “Our longstanding history in State, local, and Federal government means that we have our nger on the pulse of what’s happening within our communities,” began Brad Gerstman, founding partner.

PROMOTE.

Why not?

Celebrate your success with promotional products!

• Digital Reprint

• Logo Licensing

• Social Media Images

• Plaques/Frames

Contact: Lauren Melesio Sales Manager lmelesio@crain.com

Carroll Pruett

Adams’ 60-day shelter cap leaves migrant families without a safety net, comptroller’s investigation nds

Nick Garber

Mayor Eric Adams’ administration says the city has saved money by putting limits on how long migrant families can stay in shelters. But that 60-day cap has come at a humanitarian cost and its consequences have been poorly tracked, according to an investigation by City Comptroller Brad Lander.

e city does not formally track whether the limits help migrants nd stable housing, the investigation found. And despite the mayor’s promise to o er “intensive case management” to help families plan their next steps, Lander said those services are lacking, focused mainly on driving families out of the shelter system and often away from New York City. e city does “very little” to help families nd stable housing once they reach the limit, and may hurt migrants’ ability to apply for work permits by booting them to a new address without tracking their location or forwarding their mail, Lander’s report concluded.

Since January, the administration has required migrant families with children to leave city shelters after 60 days — part of an e ort to cut costs by encouraging asylum seekers to nd their own

ises as it implemented the policy “in a haphazard and arbitrary way.”

“Every other time in history when we have seen an in ux of immigrants to New York City, the city has done better.”

accommodations. But Lander, who began an investigation as soon as the policy took e ect, said May 9 that the administration failed to keep its own prom-

As of late April, the city had issued 60-day eviction notices to more than 10,200 families, a ecting about 19,500 adults and 18,100 children. It has seemingly achieved its central goal — 51% of families have left the shelter system entirely after receiving a notice, even though they are allowed to re-apply to stay in shelter. Another 40% moved to another shelter and 9% remained in the same shelter they began in, Lander’s o ce found.

e Adams administration has credited the 60-day policy, along with a stricter 30-day cap for adult migrants, with helping the city cut more than $2 billion in expected

spending on the migrant crisis between this year and the coming year. at “prudent approach” helped stave o the need for more painful budget cuts to services like police and early childhood programs, Adams said when announcing his latest spending plan in April.

Other aws

But Lander, a progressive and frequent foil of the mayor’s, also faults the administration for admitting that it evaluates the 60day program only in terms of whether it drives down costs — without studying whether the limits achieve another stated goal of helping migrants nd permanent housing.

“ e city does not track outcomes for families who are impacted by the 60-day notice unless they return and reapply for placement,” Adams wrote in a February

letter to Lander in response to the comptroller’s questions.

City Hall spokeswoman Kayla Mamelak defended the administration’s policies in a statement, calling the 60-day limit “one tool in our very limited toolbox to help migrants to exit shelter.”

“Nearly half of all families who have seen their 60-day notices expire, and more than 65 percent of all migrants that have come through our care, have moved out of our shelter system — without a single migrant family with children being forced to sleep on the street,” Mamelak said. “While several suggestions made in the comptroller’s report are already part of our policy, any ideas on how to improve our herculean work are welcome and will be considered.”

More than 65,000 migrants remain in the city’s care out of some 195,000 people who have entered the city since 2022. Adams and his aides have repeatedly defended the city’s response to what they call a fast-moving emergency, during which the city has gotten little help from the federal government.

e comptroller pointed to other aws: the 60-day cap was implemented without any written policies to uphold some of the administration’s promises, like exempting pregnant women in their third trimester or transferring migrants’ belongings. And the eviction notices themselves do not inform migrants that they have a legal right to reapply for shelter or request an accommodation for a disability.

Lander’s report also found what he called speci c discrimination against families with elementary school-aged children. When those families apply for re-intake after hitting the 60-day limit, the city refuses to place them in shelters run by the Department of Homeless services, where the limits do not apply, increasing the chance that

children’s education will be disrupted by future moves. ( e 60day limit applies only in emergency shelters run by city agencies other than DHS, including Health + Hospitals and Housing Preservation and Development.)

e mayor’s o ce countered that more than 80% of children whose families reached the shelter limit have been able to stay at the same school, and that the administration does keep written policies governing pregnant women and other reasonable accommodations.

“I found this really stunning,” Lander said of that particular policy during a press conference outside the Row Hotel in Midtown, where some of the rst eviction notices were issued in January. “ e administration o ered no rationale whatsoever for that especially cruel and disruptive policy.”

Lander called for the 60-day limit to be scrapped and replaced with a program that “genuinely coordinates” legal help and shelter placement for migrants. He was joined May 9 by representatives from the Legal Aid Society, which recently opposed Adams’ attempts to curtail the city’s rightto-shelter mandate; and Christine Quinn, the former City Council speaker who now leads the shelter provider Win.

“You’re uprooting children who have gone through the trauma of having to ee their country of origin,” Quinn said. “Every other time in history when we have seen an in ux of immigrants to New York City, the city has done better.”

e Adams administration reached a legal settlement in March over its request to amend the decades-old right-to-shelter rule. In the accord with Legal Aid, the city won the right to deny adult migrants a new shelter placement after 30 days, while keeping the shelter guarantee in place for unhoused people generally.

Christine Quinn, former City Council speaker who now leads the shelter provider Win

City Comptroller Brad Lander (left) says the Adams administration’s 60-day time limit for migrant families to stay in city shelters has been applied “in a haphazard and arbitrary way.” | BUCK ENNIS

Migrant family at the Roosevelt Hotel GETTY IMAGES

City falls short on mandates for building bus, bike lanes

Caroline Spivack

e city’s Department of Transportation is failing miserably to hit annual mileage targets for bus and bike lanes, and elected o cials are squabbling over who is to blame.

Transit officials were supposed to build 80 miles of bike lanes and 50 miles of bus lanes, among other traffic upgrades, within the first two years of Mayor Eric Adams’ administration, under the Streets Master Plan, which became law in 2019. DOT has struggled to meet the mandates, with the city reporting in a February update on the law that

“Laws and policies are only as good as their implementation. New Yorkers can wait no longer.”

it has rolled out roughly 60 miles of bike paths and not even 10 miles of bus lanes.

e Adams’ administration has taken heat for wa ing and failing to deliver on street safety upgrades, and has been quick to ca-

pitulate to critics of individual projects, but during a tense City Council budget hearing May 8 DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez sought instead to blame his agency’s shortcomings on the Council.

“I want to say this, if I will have the support of every single council member to do the bus lanes and bike lanes, we will accomplish these goals,” Rodriguez told lawmakers at the hearing.

Compliance concerns

Queens Council member Selvena Brooks-Powers, who chairs the council’s committee on transportation and infrastructure, pushed back on DOT’s critique. BrooksPowers called on the Adams administration to be more proactive in its community engagement on bus and bike lane projects, and “leaving room to make adjustments.”

“ e law stipulates that DOT is mandated to implement bus lanes and bike lanes; it does not mandate the City Council to do that,” said Brooks-Powers, who herself pushed back against a Jamaica busway in 2022. “ e City Council passed this legislation for DOT to implement.”

Concerns over slow progress on the Streets Master Plan

spurred City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams to unveil plans in March during her State of the City address for legislation for transit officials to create a public streets plan project tracker that would be updated monthly.

Speaker Adams said earlier this year she’s open to exploring a lawsuit against the Adams administration to force compliance.

“Laws and policies are only as good as their implementation,”

Speaker Adams said during her March State of the City speech. “New Yorkers can wait no longer.”

Margaret Forgione, DOT’s rst deputy commissioner, added during the May 8 hearing that “we could probably do more if we implemented projects, say Fordham Road, in spite of strong opposition.” To do so would open a political can of worms the Adams ad-

ministration has not shown an appetite for.

e Adams administration, for instance, initially pushed a plan to shift a bus lane on Fordham Road from the curb, where it is frequently blocked by cars, into what’s known as an o set lane beside curbside parking for faster service. DOT dropped the plan in the wake of opposition from Bronx council

member Oswald Feliz and local institutions such as Fordham University and the Bronx Zoo. e relatively modest streetscape change would have increased bus speeds by some 20%, transit o cials estimated at the time, and was a compromise from an earlier, more ambitious proposal for a carfree busway, similar to the one on 14th Street in Manhattan.

Adrienne Adams, City Council speaker

A city bus traveling on a Manhattan street. | BUCK ENNIS

How ‘Sammy’s Law’ could change speed limits on city streets

Gov. Kathy Hochul on May 9 signed a much-anticipated bill that will empower New York City to set its own speed limits below the state minimum of 25 mph.

A lbany lawmakers passed Sammy’s Law last month as part of the state budget

WHAT’S THE MAYOR’S TAKE ON THE LAW?

W HILESUPPORTIVEOF making drivers slow down, Mayor Eric Adams indicated at a May 9 bill signing that he’s wary of a blanket speed limit reduction. “A ll streets are not the same and we should not have speed limits within the entire city based on the makeup of one belief or one philosophy,” A dams said.

HOW DOES THIS FIT IN WITH CONGESTION PRICING?

following a multi-year campaign pushed by street safety advocates. The bill is named for 12-year-old Sammy Cohen Eckstein , who in 2013 was fatally struck by a motorist in Park Slope, Brooklyn. How the law reshapes city speed limits will play out as implementation begins this summer.

| By Caroline Spivack

WHERE WILL THIS LAW LIKELY TAKE EFFECT?

Y DANIS R ODRIGUEZ , the city’s transportation commissioner, said recently that his agency doesn’t have a list of streets to target for speed limit changes when the law takes effect on June 19. Identifying streets will come down to “following the data” on crashes, speeding tickets and other metrics, he said. Major thoroughfares that currently have a speed limit of 25 mph and have a violent history of crashes include Second A venue, which runs the length of Manhattan; Broadway in Brooklyn; and East Gun Hill Road in the Bronx.

The law empowers the Department of Transportation to lower speed limits on a street-by-street basis without the City Council — so long as the local community board is given a 60-day notice. DOT says it intends to work with communities on speed limit changes and obstacles to implementation include time to manufacture and post new speed limit signs, recalibrate traf c signals and adjust speed cameras. A second possibility is lowering the speed limit citywide, but the council would need to introduce and approve such a measure, according to council spokeswoman Mara Davis

ARE THERE ROADS WHERE SAMMY’S LAW WON’T APPLY?

Y ES , THEREARESOMEEXCEPTIONS . It can’t apply to roads that have three lanes or more going in one direction outside of Manhattan.

T RANSPORTATIONADVOCATES contend that lowering the speed limit is not in conflict with the expected late-June launch of congestion pricing . The tolling program will charge most drivers $15 to enter Manhattan’s core.

City data shows that the average speed of traffic in Manhattan’s Central Business District is roughly 7 mph due to the glut of car traffic. Congestion pricing might free up more space for drivers and allow for faster speeds.

“This won’t stop people from being able to get around,” said Rachel Fauss , senior policy advisor for Reinvent A lban y. “It’s about people being able to get around more safely.”

WILL THIS CHANGE HOW I DRIVE ON

CITY STREETS?

T HEEARLIESTPOSSIBLECHANGES could take effect on June 19, and even then the political process will likely drag out for weeks if not months longer. So until this summer at the earliest, Sammy’s Law won’t change how drivers cruise through the city’s streets.

WHY IS THIS A BIG DEAL?

THELEGISLATIONISMODELEDAFTER research showing that people hit by cars traveling less than 25 mph are less likely to die or be seriously injured. At an impact speed of 25 mph, an estimated 30% of pedestrians sustain severe, critical or fatal injuries, according to the AAA Foundation for Traf c Safety. Sammy Eckstein was struck by a motorist traveling at 25 mph.

Street safety advocates have pushed for Sammy’s Law for several years. The measure nearly made it into last year’s budget but was left out at the eleventh hour.

“Lower speed limits save lives,” said Amy Cohen , co-founder of Families for Safe Streets and Sammy’s mother, during the May 9 bill signing. “That protective shield for our loved ones is really a communal responsibility and requires laws and policies, such as this one.”

Ydanis Rodriguez BUCK

Mayor Eric Adams

Business groups rail against crackdown on plastic waste as Albany session winds down

Nick Garber

A bill that would force New York companies to pay for the amount of plastic packaging waste they produce is up against strong pushback from in uential business groups, making it one of the biggest unsettled topics in the waning days of this year’s Albany session.

e bill, targeting the single-use plastics that litter land lls across the state, would shift the cost burden of dealing with plastic waste from local governments to the companies that sell the packaged products. By requiring those companies to pay into a fund for the

“Using more reusable commodities is smart business.”

Deborah Glick, Manhattan lawmaker

amount of packaging they produce, supporters say the legislation will reduce the nearly 5 pounds of trash that the average New Yorker produces each day, and encourage the use of more environmentallyfriendly materials.

But its foremost opponents include the Business Council of New York and the American Chemistry Council, both of which have lobbied lawmakers heavily against the bill this year and opposed it when the legislation was discussed in previous years.

e Business Council argues that consumers will ultimately be forced to pay higher costs for products if the rules go into e ect, and that some provisions would be impossible for companies to

comply with. In recent days, industry groups have marshaled a study by York University in Toronto that found the bill could add $1 billion in annual costs to consumers over ve years.

“ e current legislative proposal is not workable,” said Ken Pokalsky, the Business Council’s vice president of government affairs, in a statement on May 13.

Gov. Kathy Hochul has supported versions of the bill in the past, and Mayor Eric Adams’ administration is backing the proposal as well. But time is running out: is year’s legislative session ends June 6.

Deborah Glick, a Manhattan lawmaker who sponsors the bill in the Assembly, said in an interview that New York is “running out of space” to store plastic waste.

“Using more reusable commodities is smart business,” Glick said. “Younger people in particular will make choices based on that, and we are giving industry an opportunity, in a stepped fashion, to make better decisions about packaging design.”

e bill would require companies to reduce their volume of plastic packaging waste by 10% within three years, and 50% within 12 years. Although other states including California and Oregon have passed similar so-called “extended producer responsibility” laws, industry critics say the New York bill oversteps by also restricting speci c chemicals.

Pokalsky has said the Business Council and its industry allies are open to some version of an EPR bill, but not one that “bans essential materials used in packaging.”

Lawmakers have softened the

Last Nordstrom Rack store in Brooklyn to close this summer

Julianne Cuba

Discount retailer Nordstrom Rack will close another one of its New York City locations this summer, according to an unemployment ling made public on May 8 — just months after the Seattle-based parent company turned the lights o in Downtown Brooklyn.

e Nordstrom Rack at Gateway Center Mall in East New York will shutter for good Aug. 31, ahead of its lease expiration later this year in the 500 Gateway Plaza Drive shopping center, according to the public notice and a spokeswoman for the company.

irty-nine of the location’s 44 employees will be handed the pink slip, the ling indicates. A company spokeswoman, who declined to provide a name, said that some employees elected to transfer to other Nordstrom locations.

a statement to Crain’s after the initial publication, the company said only that “Decisions like this are never easy.” e company provided the same statement to Crain’s May 8 following the announcement about its second Brooklyn closure at the Related Cos.-owned mall — the last in the borough. e Manhattan-based developer, who is eyeing building a massive casino development in Hudson Yards, said in a statement that it looks forward to announcing a new tenant later this year and that “demand for retail space at Gateway Center remains exceptionally high,” according to Related Cos. spokeswoman Kathleen Anne Corless. And the spokeswoman for Nordstrom declined to provide details of the company’s lease at the mall.

Growth projections

bill in recent weeks by making it apply only to businesses with more than $5 million in annual revenues — up from the previous threshold of $1 million — and exempting companies that produce less than two tons of packaging material per year, an increase from one ton previously. Glick said those changes were based mostly on testimony from small-business owners, rather than feedback from major groups like the Business Council.

Prominent companies

Others who have lobbied lawmakers on — and presumably against — the bill this year include Coca-Cola, the Clorox Company, Procter & Gamble and Anheuser-Busch, records show. It is strongly backed by environmental groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, which says the legislation would protect against harmful “forever chemicals.”

Critics have pointed to individually-wrapped cheese slices and bags of frozen vegetables as products that could become infeasible if the bill passes. Backers of the bill counter that simple cardboard or paper containers would solve that problem.

No oor votes have been scheduled yet for the bill, which is sponsored by more than half of the Senate and just under a majority of the Assembly. But Glick said May 10 that she is an “optimist” about the chances of passing it this year.

“I know that the City of New York is very anxious for this to get done,” she said.

e unemployment warning comes after Crain’s reported in February that the discount retailer’s parent company, Nordstrom, which also operates a luxury department store chain of the same name, was pulling the plug on a Fulton Street Nordstrom Rack,

Thirty-nine of the location’s 44 employees will be handed the pink slip, according to an unemployment ling.

with all 51 employees who worked there slated to lose their jobs. A month before that, discount retailer T. J. Maxx also announced it was vacating its 25,000-square-foot location on Fulton Street, in the same structure as the Nordstrom Rack. It’s still not totally clear why Nordstrom Rack closed in Downtown Brooklyn earlier this year. In

As of February, the 51-year-old department store rm reported that it had 258 Nordstrom Racks in operation across the U.S., according to its most recent nancial statements, and that it recorded net earnings of $134 million for the fourth quarter of 2023 — up from the $119 million it made during the same three months in 2022. In that same report, the parent company said it expected 2024 to be a “year of continued momentum in its growth and pro tability drivers, including opening new Rack stores.” e company still operates a handful of Nordstrom locations in Manhattan — two Rack stores, in Union Square and Chelsea; its agship luxury department store, which includes the men’s shop next door, at 57th Street and Broadway; and two Nordstrom sites for online pickups and returns, on the Upper East Side and in the West Village. ey are all that remain in the ve boroughs.

The Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act would require companies to pay into a fund for the amount of plastic packaging they produce. BUCK ENNIS

The Nordstrom Rack at Gateway Center Mall

700-plus MTA workers made over $100K in overtime pay last year as government watchdogs raise concerns

Julianne Cuba

A whopping 724 Metropolitan Transportation Authority workers raked in more than $100,000 in overtime pay last year, contributing to a $663 million, or 9%, jump in the MTA’s payroll — the highest-ever level, according to a new report from Albany think tank Empire Center.

Government watchdogs warn that the troubling gures raise questions about sta ng strategies at the state-run agency.

“It’s always a worrying trend when you see it increasing — it shows the MTA sta ng levels may be out of balance, and having more workers in some areas could be more important if there are sta shortages,” Rachel Fauss, senior policy advisor for Reinvent Albany, told Crain’s on May 9. “It’s expensive and raises a lot of questions.”

For the second year in a row, in 2023, Metro-North Railroad super-

hours — almost $25,000 more than he collected in 2022 — on top of his annual salary of $117,183, growing his overall take-home pay to $381,255.

Dobson was one of 13 MTA employees last year who were cut checks for more than $200,000 in overtime, including ve at the Long Island Rail Road, three at both Metro-North and MTA Police, and one each at the NYC Transit Authority and MTA Bridges and Tunnels, according to the analysis, which was released on May 8.

Similar trend

e hefty paychecks follow a similar trend from the previous year. In 2022, 566 employees brought in at least $100,000 in overtime pay, up from 320 in 2021. Another eight workers collected $200,000 in overtime in 2022, rising from four in 2021, Crain’s reported last year.

“It’s always a worrying trend when you see it increasing — it shows the MTA staf ng levels may be out of balance, and having more workers in some areas could be more important if there are staff shortages.”

Rachel Fauss, senior policy advisor for Reinvent Albany

visor Harry Dobson pulled in the highest amount of overtime of any MTA employee. He collected $254,638 for working the extra

LIRR employees took home the highest per-worker amount in overtime last year, with an average of $26,028. Bridges and Tunnels ranked second with an average of $25,839 and MTA Police with an average of $21,221 in overtime — helping bring the total to $1.37 billion last year, or up 6% from 2022, the analysis reveals.

“ ere are concerns around certain employees more than others — it’s the police who are particu-

larly expensive,” said Fauss. e MTA’s overall budget in real dollars, however, is down compared to prior years — even when taking into account labor agreements that have included wage hikes, according to Joana Flores, a spokeswoman for the MTA. Flores also pointed to the fact that a large chunk of the record increases came from retroactive pay. Police o cers, detectives, sergeants and lieutenants at the MTA Police Department, who are represented by the Police Benevolent Association, worked under a contract that expired in 2018 and was

Mortgage on SL Green’s 245 Park Ave. deemed a ‘loan of concern’

Aaron Elstein

e mortgage for the 44-story, 1.8-million-square-foot tower at 245 Park Ave. is a “loan of concern” because two high-paying tenants could soon leave for other rstclass o ce buildings in Midtown, a ratings rm said May 9.

ceeds to help renovate the lobbies, elevators, outdoor plaza, plus install a new golf lounge and rooftop restaurant.

Leases for investment rm Ares Management, the building’s second-largest tenant, and Dutch lender Rabobank, the fourth-largest, expire in two years.

SL Green acquired the building near Grand Central Terminal in 2022 from the bankrupt Chinese conglomerate HNA. e developer sold a 50% stake in the building last year to Japan’s Mori Trust for $1 billion and is using the pro-

at work is being done to keep tenants such as investment rm Ares Management, the building’s second-largest, whose lease for 210,000 square feet of space expires in two years. e lease for Dutch lender Rabobank, the fourthlargest with 110,000 square feet, also expires in two years. Together the companies lease 18% of the building’s space and pay about 30% of the rent, KBRA said in a report on May 9.

It’s never been more vital for landlords to hang onto top-paying tenants as demand for o ce space continues to weaken.

Another major Manhattan o ce owner, Vornado Realty Trust CEO Steven Roth, drove that point home recently when he talked

about Bloomberg LP agreeing to extend a massive 950,000 squarefoot lease in his building at 731 Lexington Ave.

“Every developer in town tried to poach Bloomberg,” he said on a conference call. “And of course, they looked at every opportunity.”

Biggest tenant

anks to investment rms Stonepeak Partners and EQT Partners each signing on for nearly 80,000 square feet last year, 245 Park Ave. was 81% leased at the end of 2023. at was higher than 73% a year earlier but lower than the prepandemic 91%, KBRA said. Its biggest tenant, Paris-based nancial institution Societe Generale, leases 500,000 square feet through 2032.

245 Park carries $1.8 billion in mortgage and other debt. e mortgage carries a 3.7% interest rate and matures in 2027.

SL Green had no immediate comment.

settled in 2022, meaning covered employees took home four years’ worth of retroactive pay in 2023.

Also worth noting, Flores said, is the MTA’s improved service. “ e MTA is providing a ton more service with record on-time performance, and overtime, which is authorized in accordance with collective bargaining agreements, is a strategic tool used to keep trains running and the system safe,” said Flores. “ at strategy has paid o — crime is down and on-time performance has surged, with schedules that include a substantially higher num-

ber of trains.” Mayor Eric Adams in February again ooded the subway with more cops after an uptick in crime the month before. Relying on overtime spending, Adams assigned an additional 1,000 o cers to the underground system, Crain’s reported at the time. Gov. Kathy Hochul also recently decided to send hundreds of the National Guard into the city’s subway to check bags for weapons — a move that proved to be particularly unpopular for raising concerns among would-be tourists that New York is unsafe.

An MTA employee aboard a Metro-North Railroad train | BLOOMBERG

KEYNOTE SPEAKER:

Brendan G. Carr, MD, MA, MS Chief Executive Officer, Mount Sinai Health System

Join Crain’s and Healthcare Financial Management Asso ciation, Metro NY Chapter (HFMA) for a day of live interviews and panels with the city’s top health care leaders and decision makers. We’ll engage in li vely discussions on a wide range of topics, including regula tory changes coming to Medicaid and Medicare Advantage, the current state of the pharmacy benefit manager industry and how technology is reshaping the health ecosystem in the city

ADDITIONAL SPEAKERS:

Bunny Ellerin Co-Founder & CEO, Digital Health New York

Stephen B. Hanse, Esq

President & CEO, NYS Health Facilities Association I NYS Center for Assisted Living

Arel Lidow Technical Co-Founder, Cedar

Wyley McCoy, PharmD, MBA Senior Vice President, The Craneware Group

Elisabeth Wynn EVP, Health Economics and Finance, Greater New York Hospital Association

SUPPORTING SPONSOR

Kips Bay cancer biotechnology rm focuses on building gene therapies for solid tumors, raises $16M seed round

Jacqueline Neber

OverT Bio, a Kips Bay-based biotechnology company focused on building gene therapies for solid tumors, has raised a $16 million seed round. e all-equity funding, announced May 6, was led by Artis Ventures and Wing VC. OverT aims to use cell engineering to create better treatments for solid tumors, said Mat Legut, the

trials by the end of 2026. OverT currently has 10 employees in New York and aims to have 14 by the end of the year, Legut added.

Dif cult to treat

“Instead of going after some target from a textbook, we’re letting the biology lead the way and seeing, without any assumptions, what is the best possible gene that we can use.”

Neville Sanjana, co-founder, Legut

rm’s co-founder and chief executive. e round will allow the company to continue developing two types of technology, make additional hires and move toward getting drug candidates into clinical

Solid tumors are currently considered di cult to treat because they’re made up of multiple types of cells, making it hard for drugs to target certain ones and eradicate the diseases, and their microenvironment suppresses the immune system. To that end, Legut’s co-founder Neville Sanjana, who is a pioneer of CRISPR gene editing technology, developed a DNA sequencing platform that screens more than 20,000 genes to see which are best-suited to make medications, Legut said. e platform is called OverTarget.

“Instead of going after some target from a textbook, we’re letting the biology lead the way and seeing, without any assumptions, what is the best possible gene that we can use,” he added.

Scientists at OverT have also de-

veloped a second platform, called OverTune, to help T cells in patients’ immune systems work with the therapies. is would help avoid the pitfalls of other therapies which kill cancer cells but also de-

stroy healthy parts of the body, Legut said. He estimated that the seed round would give OverT enough runway to continue operations through the end of 2026 before fundraising again.

OverT was founded in 2022 and counts Alexandria Venture Investments and Civilization Ventures among its investors. It is located inside the Alexandria Center for Life Science.

OverT Bio was founded in 2022 and is located inside the Alexandria Center for Life Science. | BLOOMBERG

went in full throttle, becoming one of its largest private landlords in just a few years’ time.

But the company received a mixed greeting. Activists targeted the rm for allegedly trying to clear out lower-rent tenants; ocials imposed nes over Kushner Cos. supposedly concealing the existence of rent-stabilized tenants; and tenants launched rent strikes over living conditions.

Company CEO Laurent Morali, who has helped run the rm since Jared Kushner stepped down in 2017 to work as a senior adviser in the Trump White House, has downplayed the problems while adding that its decade-long run in the neighborhood has been pro table.

But some industry observers say Kushner’s exit is understandable. “Developers often realize that their time is better spent elsewhere. ey don’t want to get too bogged down,” said David Ash, a managing director of the broker-

“They may have decided the juice was simply not worth the squeeze.”

David Ash, managing director, Walker & Dunlop

age Walker & Dunlop who has handled many apartment sales but is not involved with Kushner Cos. “ ey may have decided the juice was simply not worth the squeeze.”

e East Village may still bear fruit; the rm maintains a sizable portfolio there for now.

But in size, speed and symbolism, the winter sales spree seems notable for a company that in some ways owes its brand to the neighborhood.

Astor Place origins

As it does for so many young people fresh out of school, the trendy blocks between East 14th Street and East Houston Street beckoned Jared Kushner on a personal and business level soon after he earned a J.D. and an MBA from New York University, which has a major presence in the area.

In 2009, a year out of NYU and newly married to Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka, Kushner bought a two-bedroom duplex at 21 Astor Place, a prewar conversion whose arched windows o er views of the

spinning Alamo sculpture.

Even in the worst of the Great Recession, the not-yet-30-year-old had a knack for making a deal. e unit cost $3.3 million, according to the city register, and managed to sell for $3.9 million in 2011, when some real estate executives were losing their shirts. ( e couple moved to a four-bedroom penthouse in a Trump building on Park Avenue.)

Around the same time, Kushner took the reins of his family-owned company. Its founder, Joseph Kushner, had established it as a home-building business in suburban New Jersey, and Jared Kushner took it in a new urban direction. Indeed, though the company had previously owned a handful of rental sites in Harlem and on the Upper East Side, he began snapping up multibuilding portfolios in the East Village in 2012. And selling 17,500 apartments in places such as Maryland nabbed the rm $2 billion, which helped power its New York moves.

“We are upping our presence in Manhattan,” Kushner told e New York Times around that time. “It’s a logical expansion for us.”

Early purchases in the East Village included 318 E. Sixth St., a skinny former tenement on a stretch known for its many Indian restaurants, for $5.1 million, as well as 267 E. 10th St., an Italianate edi ce by Tompkins Square Park, for $5.7 million. Kushner Cos. still owns the sites, where renovated two-bedrooms at No. 318 rent for around $5,300 a month.

Bigger deals followed. In 2013

Ben Shaoul sold Kushner Cos. six properties, including four along East Fourth Street between Second Avenue and Avenue B, for $52 million. e rm o oaded the same half-dozen buildings in the winter to Targo Capital Partners for about $58 million, about a 12% return.

Other investments from that era, however, don’t seem to have enjoyed the same upside. Nos. 504 and 508 E. 12th St., for instance, which the rm picked up in 2013 for $21.3 million, sold in the fall to the Sabet Group, a real estate arm of the Sabetfard family, for $19.5 million, according to the city register. (Morali declined to address Nos. 504 and 508 speci cally but said that most of the East Village sites have been pro table “with very few exceptions.”)

All told, Kushner Cos. has sold 14 East Village properties in recent

months, according to a Crain’s analysis, and still owns 38, a list that includes 143 First Ave., 211 Ave. A and 318 E. 11th St, according to the city register. But that may soon change. Joe Koicim, a broker with the rm Marcus & Milichap, which is marketing the company’s portfolio, said contracts are out on other properties, and closings should happen soon, though Koicim declined several requests for details. And Morali had no comment on the remaining portfolio.

Bumps in the road

Critics of Kushner Cos.’ tenure admit that the rm was not the neighborhood’s worst landlord. Although “construction as harassment” to evict rent-regulated tenants has been a problem in recent decades, Kushner Cos. was more like an “apex scavenger,” coming in after buildings were deregulated to reap the rewards, according to Cooper Square Committee, a tenant advocate group.

Still, Kushner Cos. did experience turbulence at some sites after undertaking large-scale renovations to boost capacity, add highend nishes and install amenities, court lings and other public records show.

City o cials, for instance, imposed a $210,000 ne at 17 properties after the rm apparently failed to mention the existence of rent-stabilized tenants on work permits, which critics say is done to make evictions easier. e rm said the omissions were mistakes.

Some of those properties were part of the four-building, side-byside complex Nos. 329-335 E. Ninth St., where Kushner Cos. began adding penthouses within months of purchasing the properties for $20.3 million in 2013.

e work at one building, No. 331, caused ceilings to collapse in the second- oor apartment of Uta Winkler, a longtime rent-stabilized tenant. “Water started gushing like from a waterfall,” Winkler told Crain’s. “I literally still have PTSD from it.” In 2014 she sued Kushner Cos. to recover damages while withholding rent, a suit that is still active. Along the way, six other tenants in the buildings launched a class-action lawsuit alleging the construction has made the building unsafe.

In 2023 Kushner Cos., which denied wrongdoing, won the suit on the state Supreme Court level, though an appeal is in the works.

Construction problems also dogged other properties, such as 500 E. 11th St., a 27-unit rental at Avenue A that Kushner still owns.

e rm owes $1,500 in Department of Buildings nes at the sites and has years-long stop-work orders in place for the landlord failing to replace architects and contractors who left midway through renovation jobs, permits indicate. Similarly, 170 and 174 E. Second St. su ered from collapsed ceilings, damaged hallways and water service disruptions allegedly caused by construction work done by Kushner Cos. after it snapped up the sites for $17 million in 2013.

“You have to wonder, did Kushner put its toe in the water here and then decide to get out?” said

Brandon Kielbasa, director of organizing and policy for Cooper Square Committee. e tenants’ rights group organized a protest at the Second Street buildings, which he said experienced a suspiciously high turnover rate of 70% because of the harsh conditions.

“I think these kinds of incidents served as an indication that this neighborhood was not going to stand for tactics like this,” Kielbasa added. “It was a major pushback on their business plan.”

A plan comes together

And yet, for all the friction, Kushner Cos. appears to have achieved great success.

Earlier this year it o oaded those same two Second Street buildings, where two-bedrooms lease for more than $4,000 a month, to developer Penn South Capital, which paid $22 million, nabbing Kushner Cos. a substantial 30% pro t. Messages left with Penn South managing partner Ray Chera were not returned.

For his part, Morali, who joined the rm in 2008 and helped assemble the East Village portfolio, pushed back on the idea that his rm is beating a retreat. e exits, which were always envisioned as part of a 10-or-so-year plan, he said, have allowed the rm to realize a long-held goal: national expansion. Indeed, the sales freed up capital for investments in Southern states where Kushner Cos. had zero presence until a couple of years ago.

“I do not overthink it. We are investors, and we have to do arbitrage sometimes. I think the motto of going into something and saying, ‘I will never sell it’ may make you feel good at the closing. But I don’t buy it,” Morali said. “If there is an opportunity to sell, we will absolutely do it.”

Yes, tenants often clashed with the developer, but no more so than what happens at other buildings when there’s a changing of the ownership guard, added Morali, who helms the rm alongside Nicole Kushner Meyer, Jared’s sister, who serves as its president.

Fierce anti-Trump sentiment in the East Village also fanned the ames. “We had a target on our back because of our name, because of the high-pro le nature of our company,” he said.

Macro-economic factors probably played a part too. Elevated interest rates have made many investors skittish about taking on debt, brokers and landlords say.

Plus, the disappearance of dependable multifamily lenders such as Signature Bank, which regulators closed in 2023, has also hurt the sector. And the 2019 state rent-reform laws designed to protect tenants against steep price increases curtailed revenues for some multifamily owners, taking some of the shine out of New York.

“Politicians keep making rules that make it impossible to create new supply here,” said a top investment sales broker who has worked with the Kushner family but asked to remain anonymous so as not to jeopardize their business relationship. “But the Kushners are very smart people.”

“Everybody has di erent motivations for leaving a market,” the broker added. “And people don’t make money on every single real estate deal they do.”

Fresh start

“Resilience is one of our chief hallmarks,” wrote Morali in the 2024 prospectus of the privately held company. And since its East Village sell-o , Kushner Cos. has directed its attention to multifamily projects in high-growth, lower-regulation states such as Tennessee, Virginia and Texas, as well as Florida, where Jared and Ivanka Kushner live today, in a mansion in the Indian Creek Island section of Miami.

All told, since 2021 Kushner Cos. has acquired 10,000 apartments in the South and now owns 26,500 apartments in 14 states and Washington, D.C., Morali said. e rm, which continues to have o ces in Midtown and New Jersey, also seems to be appreciating its Garden State roots anew. Projects expected to come online this year include a 265-unit rental complex in East Hanover and a 307unit version in Fair Lawn, according to the company. If suburbs made Kushner Cos., the rm may now be betting on their reinvention. In May the company broke ground on a sweeping $500 million plan to demolish about half of Long Branch’s Monmouth Mall in order to make way for 1,000 new units of housing surrounding a public green. At the same time, Kushner Cos.’ Manhattan and Brooklyn portfolio now stands at 1,000 apartments, according to the company’s website, though the estimate seems to include some East Village properties that have recently left the fold. “ e city is a terri c place to live,” Morali said. “It’s just a less-hospitable place to do business.”

Company CEO Laurent Morali (right) has helped run the rm since Jared Kushner (left) stepped down in 2017 to work as a senior adviser in the Trump White House. | BLOOMBERG, KUSHNER COS.

CLASSIFIEDS

Quantitative Research Engineer (Citadel Americas Services LLC – New York, NY); Mult. Pos. Avail. Collab with research teams to design and implement quant tools and strat for trading innovations across asset classes. F/T. Reqs a Bachelor’s degree (or foreign equiv) in Comp Sci, Stat, Eng’g, Math, Physics or a related field. Edu, trng or exp must incl the following: End-to-end software dev; Distributed Computing, Machine Learning, Platform Dev, Networking or Sys Design; Big data analytics; Programming with C, C++, C#, Java, Python, Perl, SQL or Kdb+/q; Stat pkgs incl R, S-PLUS, Matlab, SAS, Pandas, NumPy, SciPy, SciKit-Learn, statsmodels, or sim; Object-oriented programming; and Working with data structures, algorithms and comp arch paradigms. Salary range $150,000 to $225,000/yr. Resumes: citadelrecruitment@citadel.com. JobID: 7997497.

Software Engineer (Citadel Enterprise Americas Services LLC – New York, NY); Mult. Pos. Avail. Des, dev, test, and deploy next gen software sol for various bus ops activities across the firm. F/T. Reqs a Bach degree (or foreign equiv) in Comp Sci, Eng’g, or a rel field. Edu, trng, or exp must incl the following: End-to-end software dev; Object-oriented prog and design; C, C++, Python, C#, or JavaScript; Data structures and algorithms; and Distributed Computing, Natural Lang Proc, Machine Learning, Platform Dev, Networking, Sys Design, or Web Dev techniques. Salary range $150,000 - $225,000/yr.

Resumes: citadelrecruitment@citadel.com. JobID: 7997457.

Software Engineer (Citadel Americas Services LLC – New York, NY); Mult. Pos. Avail. Design, dev, test, and deploy next gen software sol for research, trading and bus ops activities across the firm. F/T. Reqs a Bach degree (or foreign equiv) in Comp Sci, Eng’g, or a rel field. Edu, trng, or exp must incl the following: End-to-end software dev; Object-oriented program’g and design; C, C++, Python, C#, or JavaScript; Data struct and algorithms; and Distributed Computing, Natural Language Proc, Machine Lrng, Platform Dev, Networking, Sys Design, or Web Dev tech. Salary range $150,000 to $225,000/yr.

Resumes: citadelrecruitment@citadel.com. JobID: 7997498.

Site Reliability Engineer (Citadel Securities Americas Services LLC – New York, NY); Mult. Pos. Avail. Collab w/ cross-functional teams, incl trading, quant, and software eng’g teams, to supp and enhance Citadel's core suite of trading apps w/ the latest, most cutting edge tech in order to proactively diag and resolve prod issues. F/T. Reqs a Bach degree (or foreign equiv) in Comp Sci, Comp Eng’g, Elec Eng’g, Math or a rel tech field. Edu, trng, or exp must incl: Unix/Linux based sys; Shell scripting; SDLC workflows; Prog with SQL; and supporting large-scale distributing apps. Salary range $175,000 - $250,000/yr.

Resumes: citadelrecruitment@citadel.com. JobID: 7997475.

Site Reliability Engineer (Citadel Enterprise Americas Services LLC – New York, NY); Mult. Pos. Avail. Collab with cross-functional teams, incl trading, quant, and software eng’g teams, to support and enhance Citadel's core suite of trading apps with the latest, most cutting-edge tech in order to proactively diagnose and resolve prod issues. F/T. Reqs a Bachelor’s degree (or foreign equiv) in Comp Science, Computer Eng’g, Elec Eng’g, Math or a related tech field. Edu, trng, or exp must include: Unix/Linux based sys; Shell scripting; SDLC workflows; Programming with SQL; and Supporting large-scale distributing apps. Salary range $175,000 to $250,000/yr. Resumes: citadelrecruitment@citadel.com. JobID: 7997455.

Quantitative Research Analyst (Citadel Americas Services LLC – New York, NY); Mult. Pos. Avail. Analyze and solve complex mkt prob through the use of tech, math and stat modeling, and comp sys. F/T. Reqs a Bachelor’s degree (or foreign equiv) in Stat, Comp Science, Eng’g, Math, Physics, Ops Research, or a rel quant field. Edu, trng, or exp must incl the following: Conducting data-intensive investment-related research and analysis; Advanced math and stat modeling incl time-series analysis, cross-sectional analysis, Stat Machine Learning, Natural Language Proc, pattern recognition, or sim; Performing computations and research with programming languages incl Python, R, C++, Matlab, Julia, or similar. Salary range $150,000 to $190,000/yr. Resumes: citadelrecruitment@citadel.com. JobID: 7997496.

Analyst (Citadel Americas Services LLC – New York, NY); Mult. Pos. Avail. Analyze fin statements and bus strategies, build detailed fin models and conduct co. due diligence and channel checks. F/T. Reqs a Master’s degree (or foreign equiv) in Finance, Acct’g, Econ, Stat, Tech, Fin Eng’g or a related quant field and 2 yrs of exp in the job offered or perf fundamental equity research and analysis. In lieu of a Master’s degree and 2 yrs of exp, will accept a Bachelor’s degree (or foreign equiv) in Finance, Acct’g, Econ, Stat, Tech, Fin Eng’g or a related quant field and 5 yrs of exp in the job offered or perf fundamental equity research and analysis. Edu, trng, or exp must incl: Conducting equity valuations, corp fin statement analysis and linear regression calculations on behalf of a global financial svcs institution; Fin modeling using MS Excel and VBA to project industry growth and forward company earnings; Obtaining and analyzing data from Bloomberg or sim third party source; Working as a long/short hedge fund analyst; and Presenting investment recs to clients or portfolio managers. Salary range is $200,000 - $250,000/year. Resumes: citadelrecruitment@citadel.com. JobID: 7997492.

Associate (Citadel Americas Services LLC – New York, NY); Mult. Pos. Avail. Conduct differentiated, bottom-up fund fin research and analysis of companies, bus models and industries. F/T. Reqs a Bachelor’s degree (or foreign equiv) in Finance, Econ, Eng’g, Computer Science or a related field. Edu, trng, or exp must incl the following: Performing sell-side equity research, invstmt banking, or invstmt mgmt; Maintaining detailed inc statement models and rel market data spreadsheets in MS Excel or sim; Bldg, assessing and manipulating models and communicating them to internal mgmt and cross-functional stakeholders; Analyzing info in SEC docs, earnings transc and sell side research repts; Conducting research proj that examine industry growth and competitive dynamics, including regulatory and tax dev; and Conducting mtgs and phone calls to comm with sr mgmt of companies under coverage. Salary range $125,000 - $175,000/yr. Resumes: citadelrecruitment@citadel.com. JobID: 7997493.

Data Engineer (Citadel Americas Services LLC – New York, NY); Mult. Pos. Avail. Coord the design, devmt and maintce of complex data ingestion processes and data prod that assist in the invstmt research proc. F/T. Reqs a Bachelor’s degree in Comp Science, Info Tech, Eng’g Physics, Math, Stat, Econ or a related field. Edu, trng or exp must incl the following: Software eng’g; Performing data mining and transformation as well as Web data extraction; Systems design incl translating bus reqmts into systems functionalities and bldg clear user interfaces; Prog’g in Python or sim; Data structures, algorithms or comp arch; Big data proc and cloud technologies incl Spark, Hadoop, AWS S3 or sim; and Database devmt in MS SQL Server, HP Vertica, Snowflake, MongoDB or sim. Salary range is $150,000 to $225,000/yr. Resumes: citadelrecruitment@citadel.com. JobID: 7997494.

Quantitative Developer (Citadel Americas Services LLC – New York, NY); Mult. Pos. Avail. Collaborate with res teams to design and implement quant tools and strat for trading innovations across asset classes. F/T. Reqs a Bachelor’s degree (or foreign equiv) in Comp Science, Stat, Eng’g, Math, Physics, or a related quant field. Edu, trng, or exp must incl the following: Working in software dev; Stat modeling tech incl time-series analysis, Stat Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, pattern recognition, or sim; Data collection, cleansing, and processing; Big data analytics; Programming with C, C++, Java, Python, SQL, R, or Kdb+/q; Objectoriented analysis and design; and Data structures, algorithms, and comp architecture paradigms. Salary range $160,000 to $200,000/yr. Resumes: citadelrecruitment@citadel.com. JobID: 7997495.

Quantitative Risk Analyst (Citadel Enterprise Americas Services LLC – New York, NY); Mult. Pos. Avail. Analyze marginal impacts of risk factors and new strategies. F/T. Reqs a Bachelor’s degree (or foreign equiv) in Stat, Math, Comp Science, Engineer’g, Physics or a rel quant field. Edu, trng, or exp must incl the following: Compiled languages incl C++, C or sim; Scripting languages incl R, Python, Perl, Ruby, Smalltalk, JavaScript or sim; Risk and stat (SD, regression analysis) VAR, stress tests, and tail exposure; Market and fin prod incl interest rates, FX options or sim; and Creating and using algorithms to investigate and work through large data or error-checking problems. Exp may be gained concurrently. Sal range $150,000 - $200,000/yr.

Resumes: citadelrecruitment@citadel.com. JobID: 7922520.

Notice of Qualification of ChargeTab Acquisition LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 04/18/24. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 04/09/24. Princ. office of LLC: 101 Ave. of the Americas, 9th Fl., NY, NY 10013. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC at the princ. office of the LLC. DE addr. of LLC: Corporation Service Co., 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with DE Secy. of State, Div. of Corps., John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Qualification of FOUR TREES STUDENT HOUSING LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 03/29/24. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 02/28/24. Princ. office of LLC: 28 Liberty St., 44th Fl., NY, NY 10005. 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: Student housing investment management

Notice of Qualification of CRYSTAL SCREENS MEDIA LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 04/17/24. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 01/27/06. Princ. office of LLC: 125 W. 55th St., Level 23, NY, NY 10029. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co. (CSC), 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. DE addr. of LLC: CSC, 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with DE Secy. of State, Div. of Corps., John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity

Notice of Formation of H-MAP LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 04/11/24. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Kevin Ryan, 270 Bowery, NY, NY 10012. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of Business of Trouble LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 03/28/24. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to; Shine Global, 350 W. 42nd St, 33B, New York, NY 10036. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Qualification of ALLEN OVERY SHEARMAN STERLING US LLP Notice of Reg. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 04/01/24. Office location: NY County. LLP formed in Delaware (DE) on 02/22/24. Princ. office of LLP: 599 Lexington Ave., NY, NY 10022-6069. SSNY designated as agent of LLP upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., 10th Fl., Albany, NY 12210. DE addr. of LLP: 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Stmt. of Qual. filed with DE Secy. of State, John G. Townsend Bldg., P.O. Box 898, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Law.

Notice of Qualification of STRATEGIC PARTNERS INFRASTRUCTURE IV-G (OVERAGE) L.P. Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 01/04/24. Office location: NY County. LP formed in Cayman Islands (C.I.) on 11/30/23. Duration of LP is Perpetual. SSNY designated as agent of LP upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. Name and addr. of each general partner are available from SSNY. C.I. addr. of LP: Maples Corporate Services Limited, PO Box 309, Ugland House, Grand Cayman, C.I. KY1-1104. Cert. of LP filed with Registrar of Exempted Limited Partnerships of the C.I., Ground Fl., Government Admin. Bldg., 133 Elgin Ave., George Town, Grand Cayman, C.I. KY1-9000. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Overdose deaths see modest decline but maintain crisis level

Amanda D’Ambrosio

Overdose deaths across New York state decreased slightly according to newly released federal data, but experts say they are still at crisis level.

“ ese are still record breaking numbers,” said Toni Smith- ompson, New York state director of the advocacy nonpro t Drug Policy Alliance. “We don’t want to normalize what crisis levels are.”

e CDC says its provisional overdose data counts are an underestimate, as ongoing death investigations could add to the tally.

“It’s great that more people are carrying Narcan and more people are carrying fentanyl testing strips. Those things alone are not going to get us out of the crisis.”

Toni Smith-Thompson, NYS director of the advocacy nonpro t Drug Policy Alliance

More than 6,000 New Yorkers still died from a drug overdose in 2023, data released May 15 by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows. Counties outside of the ve boroughs recorded an estimated 3,362 overdose deaths in 2023, down 3.5% from 2022.

e number of overdose deaths in the city had a more meager decline. ere were a predicted 3,156 deaths in the ve boroughs last year, a less than 1% decrease from the year before.

e agency publishes predicted overdose counts that convey the expected toll of the crisis. e data includes drug overdoses linked to opioids, as well as other substances such as cocaine and methamphetamine.

e provisional numbers are an indication of a relentless opioid epidemic that’s been driven by the presence of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that’s 50 times stronger than heroin. Last year marks the third year in a row that the U.S. saw more than 100,000 overdose deaths — a bleak milestone set for the rst time on record in 2020.

e crisis takes a disproportion-

CLASSIFIEDS

NOTICE OF FORMATION of Duffy + Boyd LLC. Arts of Org filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 2/9/23. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent upon whom process may be served and shall mail copy of process against LLC to 4 44 E 88th St, Apt 3E, New York, NY 10128

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 Formation of SHUO PHOTOGRAPHY LLC

Arts of Org filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 3/18/24. Office

Loc: NY County. SSNY designated as agent upon whom process may be served and shall mail copy of process against to 310 W. 56 Street, 6D, NY, NY 10019-5406

USA, shuo@shuo.photography

Purpose: any lawful act

ate toll on low-income New Yorkers and people of color, a nuance that’s not often re ected in statewide data, Smith- ompson added. Sizable death tolls have continued as New York state scrambles to distribute opioid settlement funds, a sum of money won from settlements with opioid manufacturers and distributors that will amount to roughly $2.9 billion in the coming decades. So far, the state has made $335 million of those funds available to local governments, medical providers and nonpro ts that provide harm reduction and substance use disorder treatment services.

New York City has its own pot of funding amounting to roughly $300 million in the next 20 years. But in contrast with the state, the city has opened up settlement funds to a small pool of providers and has dedicated most of the funds to agencies including the public hospital system, the city’s health department and the O ce of Chief Medical Examiner.

More than a year since the state started distributing settlement fund payments to providers, Smith-Thompson said advocates and medical experts are looking to see which interventions

are working — information that’s di cult to glean from a death count that’s moved so little.

e state’s spending of opioid settlement funds is guided by the settlement fund’s advisory board, a group of government-appointed experts that makes recommendations to the state’s substance use o cials. Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration and that board have been at odds over the use of settlement funds for supervised drug use sites called overdose prevention centers, due to concerns around legality of supervised use of illegal substances.

e state’s O ce of Addiction Services and Supports has touted $35 million in spending on harm reduction services, including the

distribution of the overdose reversal medication naloxone and the widespread availability of strips that allow people to check their drugs for lethal substances.

“It’s great that more people are carrying Narcan and more people are carrying fentanyl testing strips,” Smith- ompson said, adding that she hopes those interventions contributed to declines in overdose deaths. “ ose things alone are not going to get us out of the crisis.”

She added that advocates have continually pushed the state for a comprehensive plan on substance use disorder spending and the declaration of an overdose public health emergency — a request that Hochul has not met despite years of persistent deaths.

PUBLIC & LEGAL NOTICES

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 Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 04/23/24 Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Ani Gabrellian, 450 E. 83rd St., Apt. 20B, NY, NY 10028. Purpose: Any lawful activity

App. for Auth filed with the SSNY on 05/03/24 Originally filed with the Secretary of State of New Jersey on 03/07/24. Office: New York County. SSNY designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served SSNY shall mail copy of process to the LLC, 161 Western Drive, Short Hills, NJ 07078. Purpose: Any lawful purpose.

Notice of Qualification of BIDDEO MEDIA SOLUTIONS

LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 04/23/24. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 04/08/24. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543 DE addr. of LLC: 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert of Form. filed with Jeffrey W. Bullock, DE Secy. of State, Div. of Corps., 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901

Purpose: Any lawful activity

Notice of Qualification of WEALTHCARE CAPITAL MANAGEMENT LLC

Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 04/22/24

Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 05/25/00. 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: 108 Lakeland Ave., Dover, DE 19901. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State, John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901

Purpose: Any lawful activity

Notice of Qualification of 99C CAPITAL PARTNERS LLC

Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 04/23/24. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 04/17/24. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Tarter Krinsky & Drogin LLP, Attn: Gina Piazza, 1350 Broadway,11th Fl., NY, NY 10018. DE addr. of LLC: c/o Corporation Service Co., 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with DE Secy. of State, Div. of Corps., John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St. - Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity

Notice of Qualification of 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

There were more than 6,000 drug overdose deaths across New York in 2023, according to data published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention May 15. | BLOOMBERG

revenue from bills; they say their partners have made just over $1 million from their users’ reservations.

But the platform, like many other early-stage startups in New York, has struggled to raise money from venture capitalists. e stagnant IPO market may be partly to blame. Stubbornly high interest rates, an unpredictable public market and

organization representing the city’s tech industry.

In the rst quarter of 2024, dealmaking slowed year-over-year by most measures in the New York market. ere was just $4.2 billion in capital invested, a 23% decrease from the rst quarter of 2023, and 401 deals, a 31% plummet from the same period last year, according to data from research rm PitchBook. e rm said it was the lowest count since the fourth quarter of 2018.

“People wanted that IPO so badly that they did not do the due diligence that would have stopped [them] from investing.”

an aggressive regulatory environment are sti ing activity. e hesitancy to go public leads to a trickle-down e ect on the local tech ecosystem: a lack of IPOs or mergers limits the ow of capital, and highly skilled tech employees who are tied up in equity can’t move forward in their careers or start new companies. “ ere are real risks to the broader tech ecosystem when you have fewer exits,” said Julie Samuels, president and executive director of Tech:NYC, an

e number of new venture capital-backed companies entering the New York ecosystem, in addition, has been o to a rough start in 2024. In the rst quarter, there were 128 deals among city startups raising VC funds for the rst time, a 24% decrease from the rst quarter of 2023. e deals were worth a total of $322.4 million, a 63% nosedive from the same period last year, PitchBook data says. ere have also been limited public o erings: Just six companies located in the city have had IPOs so far in 2024. ere were 24 exits – liquidity events which include mergers – in the New York-area in total in the rst quarter, a 38% fall from the rst quarter of 2023, according to PitchBook.IPOs and mergers bene t a local tech sector because they put capital back in the hands of people who have had experience building a successful company, ac-

cording to Maria Gotsch, president and CEO of the Partnership Fund for New York City, the $180 million investment arm of the city’s leading business membership organization.

She said there is a “dandelion e ect” among tech workers, where an employee cashes out and starts a new company or becomes an angel investor, helping early-stage startups get o the ground.

“Some retire to the Caribbean,” Gotsch said, “but others say, ‘I want to do that again, and I have an idea.'”

Getting the ‘tourists’ out

Local venture capitalists say that the slowdown isn’t cause for alarm, but rather a return to earth from the sky-high deal-making and subsequent IPOs that de ned 2020 and 2021.

Most of the rms that debuted during the deal-making bonanza that de ned 2020 and 2021 have seen their stock take a nosedive, said Brian Cohen, a founding partner of Kips Bay-based VC rm New York Venture Partners, which specializes in seed stage companies, and chairman emeritus of investor network New York Angels. He said that he “shed a tear” for many of them.

“People wanted that IPO so badly that they did not do the due diligence that would have stopped [them] from investing,” he said. Many investors are forced to apply

more appropriate scrutiny now that money is no longer “sloshing around in a bathtub,” he added.

Many of the companies that dened the golden age of IPOs in the city have since fallen from grace. To name a few, real estate platform Compass, which debuted in April 2021 at $20.51 per share has since tanked to $3.28. Rent the Runway, also listed in October of 2021 at $342, currently trades at $13.22. WeWork, which at rst traded for $392.80 per share, recently traded at 16 cents after its bankruptcy. West Village-based Squarespace, which IPOd in May 2021, lasted just three years on the public market; on May 13, London-based private equity rm Permira acquired the company for $7 billion. e website-builder, which had been valued at $10 billion at one point, had fallen about 24% from its debut.

However, there are signs that the frozen IPO market is thawing. ere have been several high-prole success stories this year, such as San Fransisco-based  Reddit, whose shares jumped 48% upon its debut in March. e company’s revenue also climbed by 48% in the rst quarter, according to Reddit’s inaugural earnings report led in May. Also, shares of Walmart-backed Ibotta, a Denver-based company that o ers cash-back rewards for grocery brands, jumped 17% during its April Wall Street debut. Reddit recently traded at $62, while Ibotta

was trading at just under $105. Some investors believe that the current environment culls the entrepreneurs who aren’t serious enough to ride out less-than-ideal market conditions.“I’m happy. You get the tourists out,” said Zach Aarons, co-founder and general partner at Midtown-based venture capital rm MetaProp. “ e only people crazy enough to start a company are not thinking about anything else. at’s what you need to be an entrepreneur.”

In the meantime, Cuculi has turned to a new group of fundraisers: their users. ose who have direct experience with the platform have so far given around $50,000, money that will go toward scaling the platform to other cities, according to chief nancial o cer and co-founder Aleksandar Tisinovic. “ at was really encouraging,” said Tisinovic. “It gave us more of a sense of responsibility to make this work.”

Brian Cohen, founding partner of Kips Baybased VC rm New York Venture Partners

Maria Gotsch BUCK ENNIS

Nomad startup seeks to be a LinkedIn for health care professionals, companies

Founder broke into world of health care startups in a very Zuckerberg-like fashion: from his college dorm room By |

Jacqueline Neber

AFOCAL POINTS

Company H1

Founded 2017 Full-time employees 400 Customers 250

Leadership Ariel Katz, co-founder and chief executive; Ian Sax, co-founder and president; Deb Schwartz, chief nancial of cer; Devin Basinger, senior vice president of people operations

launch the rm H1 in 2017. Its mission is to charge companies that want to connect with medical professionals — or, as Katz said, to “connect the world to the right doctor.” In other words, H1 serves as a “LinkedIn meets ZoomInfo” for the medical community; it has grown to amass more than 10 million pro les since 2017.

“These people are in real need of doctors who want to help. We thought, OK, great. This is something big. This is our mission.”

Ariel Katz, founder, H1

riel Katz, the founder of H1, broke into the world of health care startups in a very Zuckerberg-like fashion: from his college dorm room. As a junior at SUNY Binghamton, he and his friends launched e Research Connection, a site that scraped information from university websites to connect students with professors looking for grantees and mentees. Katz noticed that pharmaceutical companies were using e Research Connection to “spam” the professors.

“I was not smart enough at the time to be like, ‘I’m going to charge P zer money,’” Katz said. “I was just like, ‘Get o of our product. You’re annoying our users.’” Katz sold e Research Connection after college, but the experience taught him an important lesson about how to scale for new uses. He used that knowledge to

About 250 company clients use the platform to nd physicians, Katz said. e vast majority are life science and pharmaceutical rms that pay for the platform at rates based on the country and therapeutic area they’re interested in, he added. Katz declined to share speci c rates.

“We solve three problems for them. One is, who’s the right doctor that I should work with for research? Which doctor should work on my clinical trial? Pharma spent $60 billion a year answering that question. So that’s one use case,” Katz said. H1 also aims to connect companies to doctors that aren’t yet educated on their drugs and physicians who can help treat speci c types of diseases and cancers.

H1 has exploded since 2017, raising just over $200 million, in-

cluding a Series C extension funding round in 2022. e company counts Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Menlo Ventures, Y Combinator and Flatiron District-based Lux Capital among its investors.

New ways to connect

e funding has helped the company explore new ways to connect physicians and organizations. In April it launched H1 Connect, a platform that matches physicians searching for medical mission trips with the nongovernmental organizations that o er them. Miles Kirwin, the startup’s senior director of operations, said the idea for the initiative was born after war erupted in Israel and Gaza last October. e con ict left gaping holes in the workforce of doctors available to treat injuries and medical conditions, and physicians who were part of H1’s platform stepped up, Katz said.

“We found we had a lot of people that were willing to do that, and that’s really one of the most di cult things to volunteer for,” Kirwin added.

As Kirwin traveled and listened to nongovernmental organizations’ leaders in the aftermath of the con ict, he learned that many

Headquarters Nomad

Funding The company raised a $133 million Series C round in 2022, bringing its total raised to about $200 million.

don’t have reserves of doctors to respond when a crisis occurs. If they do, they don’t share their rosters with other organizations, he said. H1 Connect seeks to build a roster of physicians who are ready to travel and volunteer and ensure they’re ready for deployment. e company does not charge nongovernmental organizations to use the platform.

H1 Connect represents his company’s rst step in making its mission global, Katz said. In the seven years since he started it, H1 has made tremendous progress, but he said there is still work to be done, including helping more patients connect with doctors. He emphasized that he wants to ensure H1 represents a diverse set of physicians who are ready to respond to crises.

“ ese people are in real need of doctors who want to help,” he said. “We thought, OK, great. is is something big. is is our mission.”

Ariel Katz (center) founded H1 in 2017. BUCK ENNIS