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2 | CRAIN’S NEW YORK BUSINESS | FEBRUARY 20, 2017

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Good intentions gone badMAYOR BILL DE BLASIO’S “new front line in the battle to keep New York City affordable” is jobs, as he said in his State of the City address last week. But in his quest to create more of them, he should be mindful not to hurt the private sector he’s purportedly trying to help.

A case in point is the 300,000-square-foot facility in Sun-set Park, Brooklyn, that the mayor announced last week will be used to help manufacturers grow and hire. The city says the $136 million investment will lead to 1,500 permanent

fashion, film and television jobs, helping the mayor achieve his goal of creating—over more than a decade—100,000 positions that pay $50,000 and up. That seems eminently doable. After all, since he took office, the private sector has created nearly three times that amount—a record gain of 280,000. (See our editorial, page 3, on how we think the mayor ought to refine his approach to job creation.)

The question for me is whether the proposal supports or competes with private-sector companies already oper-ating in film and television. For garmentos, it’s clear that subsidized maker space is needed, just as food manufac-turers and companies in the construction supply chain need space if they are to build their products nearby.

It’s less clear to me why the city is subsidizing the film and television industry, which has grown like gangbusters into a $12.5 billion sector in the dozen years since the state tax credit—now $420 million annually—was implemented.

Julie Menin, commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, said that despite property owners’ willingness to build large stages here—which they are currently doing—few have the kind of room offered by the vast Sunset Park facility. “Right now we are getting calls from productions that want to film in New York, but honestly there isn’t enough space,” she said, adding that the Sunset Park soundstage will “equal 5% of existing soundstage stock—and we need it.” It’s important to note, Menin said, that a company will be selected through competitive bidding to operate the stage.

But the Sunset Park project may ultimately undermine the film and TV industry by fueling criticism that it is being lavished with things it can do without. And that is ironic because the one freebie that executives deem essential is the tax credit. Without it, they say 80% of the city’s production work will dry up. “Why is the city intervening in an area where it’s not needed?” one industry source asked. “If you overdo it, it actually hurts the industry.”

We are getting calls from productions that want to film in New York, but honestly there isn’t enough space

“

IN THIS ISSUE

P.8

4 IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

5 HEALTH CARE

6 WHO OWNS THE BLOCK

7 REAL ESTATE

8 ASKED & ANSWERED

9 VIEWPOINTS

10 THE LIST

FEATURES

12 RETAIL POLITICS

14 CAN DO

24 GOTHAM GIGS

25 SNAPS

26 FOR THE RECORD

27 PHOTO FINISH

To solve the housing crunch, look in the basement

ON THE COVER

PHOTO: BUCK ENNIS

DIGITAL DISPATCHES

READ Smith Elec-tric Vehicles Corp. shuttered its opera-tions due to a lack of funding. The company had been considered a promising source of emission-free delivery trucks.

■ Cuomo administration officials defended the governor’s plan to save $55 million in pharmaceutical spending by capping prices on high-cost drugs. The cap is intended to target companies whose products are exorbi-tant because they do not face competition.

■ Financial firm Tullett Prebon is moving from one lower Manhattan office to another. The deal to lease a 125,000-square-foot space at 200 Vesey St. will last 15 years.

>

Go to CrainsNewYork.com

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CONFERENCE CALLOUT

Vol. XXXIII, No. 8, Feb. 20, 2017—Crain’s New York Business (ISSN 8756-789X) is published weekly, except for double issues the weeks of June 26, July 10, July 24, Aug. 7, Aug. 21 and Dec. 18, by Crain Communications Inc., 685 Third Ave., New York, NY 10017. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to: Crain’s New York Business, Circulation Department, 1155 Gratiot Ave., Detroit, MI 48207-2912. For subscriber service: Call (877) 824-9379. Fax (313) 446-6777. $3.00 a copy, $99.95 one year, $179.95 two years. (GST No. 13676-0444-RT) ©Entire contents copyright 2017 by Crain Communications Inc. All rights reserved.

MARCH 1MEET CITY HALL’S

HOMELESSNESS CZARSteven Banks, commissioner of

the city’s Human Resources Administration, will discuss the

mayor’s plan to address the rise in homelessness as well as

his efforts to change the city’s approach to welfare programs.

THE NEW YORK ATHLETIC CLUB

8 to 9:30 a.m. [email protected].

FROM THE NEWSROOM | JEREMY SMERD


STEVEN BANKS

MARTA MARTINEZ

P002_CN_20170220.indd 2 2/17/17 8:01 PM

AGENDAWHAT’S NEW FEbruAry 20, 2017

FEbruAry 20, 2017 | CrAIN’S NEW yOrK buSINESS | 3

Bill de Blasio has spent much of his mayoralty talking about af-fordable housing, prekindergarten, paid sick leave and a rise in the minimum wage as antidotes to inequality. Oddly absent from his talking points has been the creation of quality jobs,

which must be part of any plan to help the poor and the working class. The omission has been ironic because employment growth has turned out to be a highlight of de Blasio’s first term: About 280,000 private-sector jobs were added in the city during his first three years—a historic achievement, although not one attributable to his policies and perhaps despite them.

It’s possible that the mayor did not initially emphasize jobs because of a prevailing sentiment that the economy was largely creating positions in fast food, retail, home health care and other low-wage industries. That may have been true in the aftermath of the Great Recession. But it turns out, retail employment has fallen slightly during de Blasio’s tenure, the only job category to decline. And wage growth was strong in 2015 for the first time in years, a sign that a shrinking pool of available workers is pressuring the city’s employers to raise pay.

Whatever the case, de Blasio last week suddenly made job creation the central pro-posal of his re-election year. He set a goal of fostering 100,000 good jobs—that is, po-sitions paying $50,000 or more—over a de-cade. These jobs would result directly from city initiatives, he indicated, and be available even to New Yorkers who currently lack the skills to fill them. “We’re going to provide the training and the support,” he vowed, offering few details but naming film and television production, life sciences, technology, advanced manufacturing, construction and garment making as areas of focus.

This is a welcome effort, albeit peripheral to government’s two pri-

mary obligations to businesses: to create the conditions in which they can thrive and to steer students on a path to employability. The city has improved in those two areas but still has far to go. It is infamous for red tape, and of the 70% of high schoolers who graduate on time, only 37%

are college-ready when they do. Sustaining recent gains on these metrics is essential. But de Blasio is right not to give up on the vast pool of underskilled, undereducated New Yorkers. Two keys for the mayor are work-ing closely with employers to design training programs and focusing resources on New

Yorkers with ambition and potential. Once these career ladders are built, however, people typically need support to climb the rungs because of var-ious issues in their personal lives. That is what makes these undertakings so challenging. We wish the mayor luck, but it will take more than that.

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FINE PRINT A day after a city official mused at a Crain’s forum that his agency might not be needed to regulate a consolidated carting industry, his policy director walked back the statement. Daniel Brownell, head of the Business Integrity Commission, had said, “I’m not even sure you’d need a BIC” if the city carries out a plan for zoned collection of commercial waste. The policy director said the BIC would continue to regulate the industry.

Once career ladders are built, many New Yorkers need support to ascend them because of issues in their lives

BY GERALD SCHIFMAN

ROAD WORRIERSAS SUPPORTERS of an area traffic-reduction plan try again to get a bill through Albany, new figures show New York City's congestion is worsening.

Hours the average New York City driver spent in peak-hour congestion last year. Worldwide, only drivers in Los Angeles (104 hours) and Moscow (91) were stuck more.89

216%

4 $17B

New York’s rank among most congested U.S. cities, behind Los Angeles. NYC was fifth in 2015.

Portion of each weekday that NYC arteries and streets are congested, which is the highest in the country

Number of New York corridors among the nation’s top 10 most congested. The Cross Bronx Expressway ranks worst.

Cost in fuel, time, freight and business fees caused by New York congestion last year

STATS AND

THE C

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— THE EDITORS

NEW YORKERS are going to work in record numbers, but the mayor says good jobs are those paying at least $50,000.

We were from the community. We wanted to do it for the neighborhood. Ultimately we failed.—Robert Hammond, co-founder of

Friends of the High Line, who feels the

elevated park has become more of a

tourist attraction than a local amenity

Mayor de blasio talks jobs, finally. but he should focus on what works

ADDICTED TO NUMBERS? GET A DAILY DOSE AT @STATSANDTHECITY. SOURCE: INRIX

P003_CN_20170220.indd 3 2/17/17 7:46 PM


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Durst trial revelationA witness testified that New York real estate scion Robert Durst admitted killing their mutual friend Susan Ber-man. “It was her or me,” Nick Chavin recalled Durst saying. The murder trial is not scheduled to begin for a year.

Oscars telecast is dressed in blackABC has sold out the commercial time for the Feb. 26 Academy Awards tele-cast hosted by Jimmy Kimmel. Thirty- second spots are again going for about $2 million each, despite a 7% decline in viewers last year and the #OscarsSo White controversy. Advertisers include Anheuser-Busch InBev, AT&T, McDon-ald’s, Samsung, Verizon and Walmart.

Friars not laughing about this raidU.S. Postal Service investigators raided the Friars Club as part of an embezzle-ment probe. Billionaire John Catsima-tidis said some of his fellow members suspected someone was embezzling funds and shared that suspicion with the U.S. attorney’s office in the fall.

Port agency finally showing the moneyThe Port Authority of New York and New Jersey approved a $32.2 billion 10-year capital plan that includes $3.5 billion in funding for a new West Side bus terminal and $4.8 billion for JFK, LaGuardia and Newark airports.

Kushners might walk from Marlins dealIf Jeffrey Loria becomes President Donald Trump’s ambassador to France,

the Kushner family announced it will rescind its reported $1.6 billion offer for Loria’s Miami Marlins. The family said it does not want the complication of an “unrelated transaction to compli-cate” the diplomatic appointment.

Cybersecurity mandatedGov. Andrew Cuomo said new regula-tions will take effect March 1 requiring banks and insurers to create and main-tain cybersecurity programs intended to prevent illegal access to sensitive personal information.

Bonus onusGoldman Sachs didn’t pay 2016 bonuses to about 100 of their lowest-performing bankers. The number of employees denied a bonus is higher than a year ago. Management rewarded top per-formers and took bonuses away from less productive workers.

In Kind donationDaniel Lubetzky, founder of snack bar maker Kind, pledged $25 million to

create Feed the Truth, a group charged with educating consumers and support-ing journalism that investigates corpo-rate influence on the nutrition field. Kind itself was warned it was inappro-priately labeling its bars as healthy.

Apology acceptedColumbia University accidentally emailed acceptance notices to 277 pro-spective students and then recalled them. The erroneous messages were sent to applicants to the master’s pro-gram at the Mailman School of Public Health. About an hour later, a retrac-tion and apology were sent out.

As lender falls, taxi revenues continue to go downhill

HOW MUCH WORSE can things get for the city’s taxi drivers? It appears that their business, in free fall since the rise of Uber and other ride-hailing apps,

hasn’t bottomed out yet. Daily fare-box revenues for the city’s 13,587 yellow cabs were 10% lower in December than in the prior year and 25% lower than in December 2012, accord-ing to the Taxi & Limousine Commission. Those numbers help explain why the value of a medallion has plunged from $1.1 million in 2013 to about $600,000.

Yet the number of cabbies on the road has fallen by only 10% during the past five years, and only 1% of medallions have been taken out of circulation—meaning drivers are fighting over a steadily shrinking pie.

The taxi industry’s sinking fortunes are dragging down its lenders. State regulators this month seized Melrose Credit Union of Queens, one of the area’s largest medallion lenders, after delinquencies soared nearly tenfold in 18 months. Last month ConnectOne Bancorp of Englewood Cliffs, N.J., deemed about one-third of its taxi loans a total loss and said it’s trying to sell the remaining $66 million of its portfolio, most of which it designated “non-accrual”—often a euphemism for “bust.”

This week the city’s pre-eminent taxi lender, Medallion Financial, is expected to report grim fourth-quarter and full-year results. Its stock has fallen by about 75% in the past year, to $2.35 per share, as President Andrew Murstein tries to wean his company off taxi loans, which comprise 49% of the firm’s loan portfolio. Murstein, who declined to comment, sought to reassure investors during a November conference call. “The company is doing extremely well, except for the stock price,” he said.

The good news for New Yorkers is that the rise of Lyft, Uber and similar services has increased by 40,000 the number of drivers licensed by the city to take them around town—to 150,000 licensees—underscoring how quickly the industry has changed. — AARON ELSTEIN

Oakley welcome back in the paintMadison Square Garden lifted its days-old ban on former Knicks star Charles Oakley. But Oakley responded by saying he will not return until Dolan publicly apologizes to him and the fans.

DATA POINT

FLEET DESCENT: A cab medallion is worth a bit more than half of what it was in 2013.

RENTS DECREASED 0.9% LAST

YEAR WHILE JOBS GREW 1.5%,

ACCORDING TO APARTMENT MARKET

DATA PROVIDER AXIOMETRICS.

NEW YORK’S METRO AREA HAD THE

HIGHEST ANNUAL JOB GAINS.

EDITOR IN CHIEF Rance Crainpublisher, vp Jill R. Kaplanexecutive assistant Devin Arroyo, 212.210.0701

EDITORIALeditor Jeremy Smerdmanaging editor Brendan O’Connorassistant managing editors Erik Engquist, Jeanhee Kim, Robin D. Schatzweb editor Amanda Fungcopy desk chief Telisha Bryanart director Carolyn McClainphotographer Buck Ennissenior reporters Joe Anuta, Aaron Elstein,Matthew Flamm, Daniel Geigerreporters Rosa Goldensohn, Jonathan LaMantia, Caroline Lewisdata reporter Gerald Schifmanweb producer Peter D’Amatocolumnist Greg Davidcontributing editors Tom Acitelli, Theresa Agovino, Erik Ipsen, Cara S. Trager

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CRAIN COMMUNICATIONS INC. BOARD OF DIRECTORSchairman Keith E. Crainpresident Rance Craintreasurer Mary Kay Crain, Cindi Crainsenior executive vp, William Morrowexecutive vp, director of strategic operations Chris Crainexecutive vp, director of corporate operations K.C. Crainsenior vp, group publisher David Kleinvp/production, manufacturing David Kamischief financial officer Bob Recchiachief information officer Anthony DiPonio

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P004_CN_20170220.indd 4 2/17/17 7:46 PM

AGENDA HEALTH CARECO

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A new bill could make New York the first state in the country to directly compensate living organ donors—who typically

donate a kidney or a portion of their liver to a transplant patient—for lost wages, child care and other expenses.

The Living Donor Support Act, intro-duced by Democratic Assemblyman Richard Gottfried of Manhattan and Republican Sen. Kemp Hannon of Long Island, chair of the Senate Health Commit-tee, has broad support from lawmakers. It already unanimously passed Hannon’s committee, and it has 18 Senate co-spon-sors and 27 Assembly co-sponsors.

In addition to helping donors with expenses, the bill seeks to increase educa-tion about the option of living transplants for patients, who are disproportionately poor and members of minority groups.

“Our goal is to make transplants easy to ask for and easy to give,” said Josh Mor-rison, executive director and co-founder of Waitlist Zero, a Brooklyn-based non-profit that championed the bill. Morrison donated one of his own kidneys as a good Samaritan five years ago at the age of 26.

Acute organ shortageMany state lawmakers and health

care groups are rallying behind the cause because of some dire statistics. New York ranks 50th in the United States for organ-donation registration, according to LiveOn NY, the metropolitan region’s federally designated organ-procurement organization. A New Yorker dies about every 18 hours due to the lack of a trans-plant organ, according to the United Net-work for Organ Sharing.

The proposed legislation would cost the state about $3 million per year, and donors

would receive on average about $4,400 each, according to Waitlist Zero.

If the bill becomes law, it could increase living organ donations in the state by 20%, saving 1,000 lives and $115 million in tax-payer expenses during the next decade, according to proponents’ estimates.

The proposed measure follows the pas-sage of various laws last year to increase organ donations, including one that took effect last week allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to register as organ donors.

New York is one of 20 states that cur-rently offer a tax incentive for expenses related to living donations. A 2014 study showed the New York tax break increased kidney donations to nonrelatives by 52%.

But there are limits to the value of a tax deduction, Morrison said. Many peo-ple don’t have the cash flow to cover their costs, and their total tax liability to the state likely would not equal the costs incurred in becoming an organ donor, he said.

Paying donors for their expenses would broaden the pool and allow more lower- income New Yorkers to participate. ■

Albany considers bill to pay live organ-donors’ costsSupporters want to remove economic barriers that they say keep many potential donors from coming forward BY ROBIN D. SCHATZ

New rules to help ACA insurers THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION last week proposed major changes to the Affordable Care Act aimed at keeping more insurers from heading for the exits.

The Centers for Medicare and Medic-aid Services would shorten the next open- enrollment period to six weeks, from three months. All plans would start Jan. 1, allowing insurers to collect premiums for 12 months, and insurers could secure any unpaid premiums before enrolling a mem-ber in coverage for the following year.

The changes would limit applications outside the enrollment period by requiring consumers to provide documentation of a life-changing event. Insurers have said that consumers have been gaming the system by waiting until they get sick to enroll.

“I think it’s a step in the right direc-tion,” said Alan Murray, chief executive of

CareConnect, the insurance arm of North-well Health. However, he added, “I don’t think it dramatically changes the risk pro-file of the members enrolling.”

New York has benefited from a fairly stable marketplace: Insurers have not fled as they have in other states. New York City residents had nine plans to choose from during the most recent enrollment period, which ended Jan. 31.

But consumer advocates such as Elis-abeth Ryden Benjamin, vice president of health initiatives at the Community Ser-vice Society of New York, said they worry that the proposed rule change to let insur-ers offer plans with fewer benefits could be disastrous for New Yorkers because it would increase their out-of-pocket costs. The public comment period on the rule ends March 7.

MORRISON of Waitlist Zero

FEbRUARy 20, 2017 | CRAIN’S NEW yORK bUSINESS | 5

Immigrant detainees get inadequate health care AMERICAN IMMIGRANTS AWAITING DEPORTATION hearings often are denied medical care while they are detained for months or even years at jails in the New York City area, according to a report released last week by New York Lawyers for the Public Interest.

The legal advocacy group issued its findings a week after U.S. Immigra-tion and Customs Enforcement officers arrested 41 people in the city and less than a month after President Donald Trump issued an executive order expanding who can be targeted by such raids to include people who have been suspected of or charged with criminal activity but not convicted.

NYLPI interviewed 47 immigrants with serious health conditions who had been detained for six months to three years.

One detainee at the Hudson County Correctional Facility in Kearny, N.J., referred to as Mr. Ahmed in the report to protect his identity, suffered from a heart condition and did not receive appropri-ate pacemaker monitoring while he was detained.

He was in such bad health at one of his immi-gration hearings that the judge called paramedics to take him to the hospital, where he had emergency surgery to replace the pacemaker’s battery, according to the report. “When I was detained, I thought that at some point I would be dead,” Ahmed told NYLPI.

ICE did not respond to Crain’s requests for comment.The legal group reported a lack of discharge planning, “particularly for

people who have mental illnesses,” said Laura Redman, director of the organization’s Health Justice program.

“Detention is supposed to be nonpunitive, just a place where people are held for immigration and removal proceedings,” Redman said. “People with health needs should not be there.”

NYLPI in July filed a lawsuit in the Southern District of New York on behalf of two green card holders with mental health diagnoses who were held at the Orange County Correctional Facility in Goshen, N.Y. The suit alleges that the plaintiffs were released without their regular medication and were not given access to doctors, in violation of the county’s constitu-tional obligation.

— JONATHAN LAMANTIA

— CAROLINE LEWIS

One man with a heart condition was not properly monitored while detained—which led to emergency surgery to fix his pacemaker

P005_CN_20170220.indd 5 2/17/2017 1:39:44 PM


AGENDA WHO OWNS THE BLOCK REAL ESTATE

City tries again in Jamaica Mixed-use project at NYPD garage could jump-start growth

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BY TOM ACITELLI

The city in late January selected devel-oper Omni New York to redevelop an underutilized New York Police De-partment garage occupying roughly

half a block along 168th Street in Jamaica, Queens. The winning proposal helps revive a yearslong effort to make Jamaica—which is served by four subway lines, a major Long Island Rail Road junc-tion and the AirTrain to John F. Kennedy Interna-tional Airport—more than just a way station.

Omni plans to build a 450,000-square-foot mixed-use development that will in-clude more than 350 residential units, all of them designated as affordable, as well as ground-floor retail and commercial space, underground parking for the NYPD and what the city’s Economic Development Corp. describes as “a substantial com-munity facility.”

The project is part of the de Blasio administration’s nearly two-year-old economic- development initiative called the Jamaica Now Action Plan, which aims to foster job growth and retail development in the Queens neighborhood. The $153 million effort in-cludes streetscape and transit improvements along with new development, directional maps for pe-destrians and select bus service from Jamaica to Flushing’s central business district.

Jamaica Now marks the city’s second recent at-tempt to revitalize the area. In 2007 the Bloomberg administration rezoned 368 blocks of central Jamai-ca to allow for more commercial development—and put out a request for proposals for the same garage on 168th Street.

But then the Great Recession struck, financing dried up, the city shelved the RFP for the garage and, by the city’s own analysis, significant job growth eluded the area.

Now the timing seems ripe. Another mixed-use development is under construction less than a mile away. The Crossing at Jamaica Station, being built by BRP Cos. on a 50,000-square-foot site at the corner of Archer Avenue and Sutphin Bou-levard, will include a Hilton Garden Inn and 580 residential units. ■

168-05A JAMAICA AVE.

The Porta Bella Group, a Manhattan-based retailer, bought the 2,920-square-foot space currently hosting a RadioShack and a Sprint service counter for $2.1 million in 2004.

168-42 JAMAICA AVE.

Bobby Cayre, a private in-vestor who heads Aurora Capital Associates, and Alex Adjmi, who runs A&H Acquisitions, got this 110,068-square-foot retail property for $2 million in 2008. It currently houses a Planet Fitness and a Family Dollar. Cayre’s and Adjmi’s respective firms often part-ner on retail deals.

88-45 163RD ST.

Transitional Services for New York, a nonprofit, broke ground in January on a 7-story, 44-unit residential build-ing at this site, which it acquired for $1.25 million in 2014. (A 2-story house there had been demolished in 2013.) All the units will be studios, and 33 will be set aside for patients in the nonprofit’s mental health pro-gram. The remaining 11 will be leased at below-market rates. Construction is expected to wrap in early 2018.

92-29 168TH ST.

Omni New York, started by Eugene Schneur and former Major League Baseball player Mo Vaughn, was se-lected to develop this 110,125-square-foot, city-owned garage. The Manhat-tan-based development firm will build 350 affordable apartments, 65,000 square feet of retail space and 50,000 square feet of community space. Omni expects to close the deal for the garage before the end of 2017 and complete the project by 2020.

RENDERING OF 92-29 168TH ST.

166-36 JAMAICA AVE.

Developer Moris Yero-Shalmi acquired this 6-story, 33,000- square-foot commercial prop-erty for $3 million in 2014. Yero-Shalmi, perhaps best known for developing bou-tique hotel BKLYN House in Bushwick, said he is waiting to secure a retail and/or com-mercial anchor tenant before building out the property.

147-22 ARCHER AVE.

BRP Cos., a Manhattan-based development firm founded by Geoff Flournoy and Mere-dith Marshall, acquired this 50,000-square-foot site for $19.5 million in 2015. BRP is developing a 730,000-square-foot, 669-unit apartment com-plex at the site, which is directly across from Jamaica Terminal. The developer plans to include a range of price points in the project, which is expected to be ready for occupancy in 2019.

168-09 JAMAICA AVE.

Investor Eli Chetrit bought this 2-story, 24,500-square-foot com-mercial building for $6.2 million in 2007. Chetrit owns and develops office properties with his brother Isaac. (The pair are the cousins of Joseph Chetrit, one of the city’s biggest private developers.) There are no development plans filed with the city at this time.

P006_CN_20170220.indd 6 2/17/2017 1:40:58 PM

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BELIEVE IT OR NOT, New York City land-lords have never been required to post street addresses near each entrance to their buildings. But a law passed last week � nally changes that, a mere 13 years a� er the mea-sure � rst came before the City Council.

Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, then a council member, penned the legislation in 2004 to help ensure that � re� ght-ers and police were not delayed in responding to emergencies at un-marked buildings—of which there are many. A 2010 study found that nearly half of all buildings along several Manhattan commercial corridors did not display a building number that was clearly visible from the street.

In the know“For years, New York City’s streets have

been like something out of a Harry Potter book, with storefronts and whole build-ings that are only easy to � nd if you already know where they are,” Brewer said in a statement announcing the bill, which was

approved by the council Wednesday before heading to the desk of Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Previous regulations required building owners to post an address only at the front entrance—which has o� en complicated ef-forts by � rst responders. “Given the nature of many New York City buildings,” the Fire

Department’s John Sar-rocco said last fall in testi-mony supporting the bill, “sometimes the ‘front’ … may mean di� erent things to di� erent people.”

� e new law requires an address to be posted at any doorway used by pedestrians, and increas-es the initial � ne for a missing address to $250

from $25. If a required address is not post-ed within 30 days, a $50 � ne will accrue for each day a� erward.

But just because the law has � nally been passed doesn’t mean it’s going to be en-forced anytime soon. When it was � rst pro-posed, borough presidents had been tasked with enforcing the law through the Bureau of Encroachments and Incumbrances. � at department has since been eliminated.

—J.A.

There are up to 210,000 base-ments and cellars across the city that could be convert-ed into legal apartments —

enough to move the needle on the city’s housing crisis without pouring a single new building foundation.

But the legalization process is fraught with political and technical pitfalls, which is why a study released last week suggests that the de Blasio administration should start with a pilot program to capture the lowest-hanging fruit: the roughly 38,000 basements in single-family homes that could be con-verted without any major changes to city or state law.

“� ere is a convincing scale to this,” said Sarah Watson, deputy director of the Citizens Housing and Planning Council, which authored the report. “We’ve set out the major arguments for conversions and our recommendations about how a pilot program could be structured.”

Trouble is, an interactive map pro-vided along with the study shows that there is no ideal place to launch the pilot project. While the simplest conversions

can be found in Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn and the Bronx—neighbor-hoods where homeowners would not be legally required to provide an addi-tional parking space for each housing unit added—these areas are not � ush with suitable basements.

Driving in� uenceFar more potential exists in Staten

Island, southeast Brooklyn, Queens and the eastern portion of the Bronx. � ese are also areas with high rates of foreclosure, suggesting that home-owners there would bene� t from sup-plemental rental income. � e only catch? By law, adding an apartment to a single-family home in many of these areas would require the creation of a parking space, posing signi� cant eco-nomic and logistical challenges.

� e study suggests � nding a com-munity that both supports the concept and has the inventory of basements, and calls on the city to provide home-owners with � nancial incentives, a list of knowledgeable contractors, expedit-ed permits and waivers or modi� ca-tions for certain building regulations

that could be changed without city or state ap-proval.

If a pilot program proves successful, the re-port argues, then the city could take bigger steps to change zoning and hous-ing laws and unlock more apartments that would not be legal today. Cel-lars, for example, which are typically sunk deep-er into the ground than basements, cannot be occupied under current law.

� e potential is huge. It is unclear how many of the city’s 210,000 be-low-grade units could be cost-e� ective-ly converted, but bringing even a frac-tion of them up to code would provide a serious amount of housing that would likely rent for less than the market rate. Of course, many of these units are ille-gally occupied today. Bringing them up to code would make them safer for res-idents and emergency responders, and give the city a better idea of a neighbor-hood’s population, but would not ease

the housing crunch.In many areas, Queens in particular,

opposition to the idea is � erce, which could be one reason why Mayor Bill de Blasio has been largely mum on the subject despite including it in his 2014 Housing New York plan.

But de Blasio’s o� ce is working with Councilman Rafael Espinal on a sepa-rate pilot project in East New York. A task force including the departments of Buildings and City Planning and the Fire Department, which is wary of basement units for safety reasons, has been meeting regularly to hash out the � rst steps. ■

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You are here: Council requires landlords to display addresses

Is a solution to the housing crisis right below our feet?

Law � rst proposed 13 years ago � nally gets approval

Study calls for legalizing more basement apartments. But challenges abound BY JOE ANUTA

“Given the nature of New York City

buildings, the ‘front’ may mean different things to different

people”

GROUND SWELL: Pushes to legalize more base-ment apartments are gaining momentum.

FEBRUARY 20, 2017 | CRAIN’S NEW YORK BUSINESS | 7

P007_CN_20170220.indd 7 2/17/17 7:46 PM


AGENDA ASKED & ANSWERED TECHNOLOGYINTERVIEW BY MATTHEW FLAMM

MARTA MARTINEZ INTERSECTION

The old phone booth ads made the city money. How will LinkNYC do this? Consumers want value when it comes to marketing. We will be able to bring traf� c and transit information or the weather but also more emotional things [such as] allowing the kids of New York to call Santa, which we tested this holiday season. Over time you will see marketers enable and sponsor these programs.

How are you working with retailers?Retailers have found that the longtime value of a customer triples if they interact through both the website and a physical store. We can map data showing who those consumers will be and then drive them through our advertising messages into the stores.

So far the ads look the same as the ones on the old phone booths.Last year we were laying the foundation. This year we are � guring out what happens on the screens. You will see a lot of experimen-tation over the next six months. We’ll be programming content like you program for television. It will be different in the morning than at night. We want both the advertising and the content to be useful. Another campaign we’re doing with an advertiser goes: “There’s a delay on the N and the R. Come have a beer with us.”

Parents had complained about people watching porn on the LinkNYC tablet screens. Are you worried about any other unintended consequences?We are doing something that has never been done before: We gave high-speed connectivity to people who had never had it. It was not an issue once we changed the functionality by permanently dis-abling the kiosks’ [web] browser. I wasn’t here, but I know it wasn’t fun. I hope we continue to learn. Are there other uses that will surprise us? I hope they surprise us in a very positive way.

Is the kiosk program expanding to other cities?We just announced our international expansion, to London. But New York City is the biggest market, and this is our R&D hub. We are inventing here for the rest of the world.

You’ve held senior positions at AOL. Why come to a startup? Clearly there’s a lot of innovation now around smart city technolo-gy: connecting the physical reality to what we do digitally and using technology to humanize a city, turning it into a community. The opportunity to take the traditional billboard business and connect it to our digital experiences—that is what brought me here.

How do you connect the physical with our digital experiences?We did a campaign with MillerCoors in partnership with [music app] Shazam that enabled consumers to download the songs that each neighborhood was listening to that day.

What were people listening to?David Bowie passed away during the campaign. The entire city was listening to him! ■

DOSSIER

L inkNYC began rolling out across the city about a year ago, replacing old-fashioned pay phones with kiosks that provide free phone calls and high-speed Wi-Fi and carry ads on digital screens. More

than 500 are up, with thousands more to come. The de Blasio administration is already calling the public-private partnership a success, but LinkNYC still has to generate $500 million in ad revenue on behalf of the city during the next 12 years. That’s where Marta Martinez comes in. The veteran digital-advertising executive was recently named chief revenue of� cer of Intersec-tion, the company that manages LinkNYC’s ad program.

We will bring traf� c and transit information or the weather but also more emotional things—allowing the kids of New York to call Santa

“

WHO SHE IS Chief revenue of� cer, Intersection

AGE 47

BORN Lleida, Spain

GREW UP Barcelona, Spain

RESIDES White Plains

EDUCATION M.B.A., NYU Stern School of Business; M.S., ESADE in Barcelona

COMING TO AMERICA Martinez was a digital consultant in Barcelona for brands such as Spanish clothing chain Zara when she realized “technology was going to grow faster in the U.S. than in my beautiful Spain.” To smooth her way here, she enrolled in the Entertainment, Media & Technology program at NYU Stern, which eventually led to digital marketing and advertising positions at Havas, MediaMath and AOL.

CONSUMER BEHAVIOR The kiosks are used mostly for Wi-Fi. On Jan. 1 at 12:05 a.m., a kiosk in Times Square set a record for Wi-Fi users logged in to a single location. “You can imagine all the Snapchats, tweets and Instagram posts that were shared from there!”

IF SHE BUILDS IT, THEY WILL COME “A lot of advertising people grew up in physical or digital advertising. We’re going to build a bridge.”

Chief revenue

Barcelona, Spain

White Plains

M.B.A., NYU Stern School of Business; M.S., ESADE

COMING TO AMERICA Martinez was a digital consultant in Barcelona for brands such as Spanish clothing chain Zara when she realized “technology was going to grow faster in the U.S. than in my beautiful Spain.” To smooth her way here, she enrolled in the Entertainment, Media & Technology program at NYU Stern, which eventually led to digital marketing and advertising positions at Havas, MediaMath and AOL.

CONSUMER BEHAVIOR The kiosks are used mostly for Wi-Fi. On Jan. 1 at 12:05 a.m., a kiosk in Times Square set a record for Wi-Fi users logged in to a single location. “You can imagine all the Snapchats, tweets and Instagram posts that were shared from there!”

IF SHE BUILDS IT, THEY WILL “A lot of advertising people grew

up in physical or digital advertising. We’re going to build a bridge.”

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P008_CN_20170220.indd 8 2/17/2017 1:42:23 PM

AGENDA VIEWPOINTS

A NY1 HEADLINE perfectly captured Mayor Bill de Blasio’s big annual address last week. “Returning to 2013 Campaign Theme Ahead of This Year’s Election, Mayor Decries ‘Affordability Crisis’ in State

of the City Speech,” it said.That is not the speech I would have

given, nor my take on the state of the city. Here is what de Blasio could have emphasized.

● The economy is doing great. Readers know there is much data to prove this point. Here are two figures—both of them records: The city has added almost 700,000 jobs since the end of the recession, including 300,000 in de Blasio’s first three years as mayor. And despite the stronger dollar, more than 60 million tourists arrived last year, boosting the city’s second most important industry (finance is first).

● Crime is as low as it has been in a long time. Last year the city recorded 335 murders, only two more than the modernrecord low from de Blasio’s first year as mayor, 2014. Shootings fell below 1,000—the fewest since the NYPD began counting them in 1993 (when there were more than 5,200). Overall, major crimes declined by about 4%. By comparison, 762 people were killed in Chicago, a city with about a third of New York’s population—the Windy City’s highest total in two decades.

● Public education is improving some. The city’s graduation rate topped 70% for the first time. Although the standards have changed somewhat, there is little doubt city schools are better than they were. The mayor won’t want to talk about it, but the charter school movement has now been around long enough that its students are entering higher grades, with test scores that

certainly predict high graduation rates and college success as well.

● The building boom signals confidence in the future. Construction activity last year likely topped $40 billion for the first time ever, the New York Building

Congress says, and should continue at that pace for two more years. It’s not just that building is fueling the economy (and making inconvenienced New Yorkers a touch sour); it is a clear sign that developers and the people who lend them money are confident about the city.

● New Yorkers are, on the whole, satisfied. The mayor’s speech seemed designed to appeal to dissatisfied voters, as if Donald Trump voters were numerous here. In the most recent Quinnipiac poll, 55% of voters said the city’s quality of life is good. A whopping 67% said they want to continue living here.

If I were de Blasio, I would be talking about the things I have accomplished:

instituting universal prekindergarten, expanding afterschool programs, helping enact a $15 minimum wage, extending livingwage requirements to any firm with a city contract, requiring paid sick leave and launching the most ambitious affordablehousing plan of any mayor. I’d also be using my bully pulpit to make New Yorkers feel better about their city and to propose a few realistic programs.

Without a strong challenger, however—and one has yet to step forward—the mayor’s pessimistic rhetoric isn’t likely to affect his reelection chances. ■

G ov. Andrew Cuomo’s budget proposal includes a new law allowing ridesharing companies such as Uber and Lyft

to operate outside of New York City. It is a welcome step forward, one that promises to provide new transportation options for millions of New Yorkers by allowing car owners to turn an asset in their driveway into money in their pocket.

As the governor said during his State of the State speech in Buffalo, “embracing the new innovation economy” is critical to building the middle class. However,

he noted, existing law creates “unfair duality” between upstate and downstate, with New York City residents enjoying the benefits of ondemand transportation while the rest of the state waits for the 21st century to arrive.

In the case of ride sharing, the governor declared, “What’s good for downstate is good for upstate.” For home sharing, the reverse is true: What’s good for upstate is good for downstate.

Even though tens of thousands of people across the state are using home sharing to turn their greatest

expense—their home—into an asset, Airbnb hosts in New York City are still waiting for the 21st century.

Currently a state law applying only to New York City fails to distinguish between middleclass New Yorkers who occasionally rent out their home and bad actors who remove permanent housing from the market. Worse, a law that went into effect last year threatens thousands of residents with historically high fines for simply advertising their home for shortterm rentals.

There’s a better way. We at Airbnb call it Sharing for a Stronger New York. It is our vision of comprehensive reform that works for the Empire State.

At the heart of the proposal is our One Host, One Home policy, which limits New York City hosts to a single, entire home listing. Since November 2015, we have voluntarily removed more than 4,000 listings that violate this policy. Today, 96% of Airbnb hosts in the city share a single home.

As part of a recent settlement agreement with New York City, we agreed to cooperate on ways to address the city’s permanent housing shortage, including through compliance with One Host, One Home. That’s an important step, but we still need Albany to act.

State law should limit the activities of commercial actors such as illegal hotels and landlords who turn permanent housing into shortterm rentals, not senior citizens on fixed incomes who rely on hosting to pay medical bills, millennials trying to pay off student debt and achieve the dream of homeownership, and families in the city’s lowincome communities.

Moreover, our comprehensive reform plan would require Airbnb hosts to register to aid enforcement efforts and ensure that lodging and sales taxes are collected on shortterm rentals.

That’s common sense, and it would be big money for the state—nearly $100 million in the first year alone.

The vast majority of New Yorkers recognize the difference between a middleclass family sharing their home and a landlord who evicts tenants to churn apartments as fulltime shortterm rentals. It is long past time for New York state law to recognize this fundamental distinction by permitting the vast majority of hosts to rent their own homes while cracking down on bad actors who threaten our communities. ■

Josh Meltzer is Airbnb’s chief of public policy in New York.RE

UTER

S

What the mayor should have saidDe Blasio’s State of the City speech missed the mark

I’d be using my bully pulpit to make New Yorkers

feel better about their city and to propose a few

realistic programs

Innovation economy can build middle class—if NY unleashes itCuomo backs ride sharing upstate. How about home sharing downstate? BY JOSH MELTZER

GREG DAVID

GREG DAVID blogs regularly at CrainsNewYork.com.

$40BCONSTRUCTION activity last year, the most ever

FebruarY 20, 2017 | CraIN’S NeW YOrK buSINeSS | 9

P009_CN_20170220.indd 9 2/17/2017 1:36:08 PM


AGENDARanked by the number of investments in New York metro startups in 2016

THE LIST THE MOST ACTIVE VENTURE CAPITAL FIRMS

TRENDS

In the past year and nine months, the number of venture capital investments in New York metro area firms has tumbled by 32.5%.

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Meanwhile, the total investment amount plummeted by more than $1 billion from Q1 to Q2 of 2016 before rising back upward later on.

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RETAIL POLITICSMacy’s is facing many challenges, but its commitment to being “the store for all people” may be chief among them BY MATTHEW FLAMM

Sara, a Manhattan psychotherapist, has shopped at Macy’s for most of her life. But her trips to Herald Square ended in Octo-ber with the launch of #GrabYourWallet, an online campaign urging consumers

to boycott companies that do business with Pres-ident Donald Trump or members of his family.

“I don’t see any difference between Ivanka and Donald,” said Sara, who asked that her real name not be used to avoid having her political views intrude on her practice. “She is part of the problem.”

Not all of the store’s shoppers feel that way. “Macy’s, don’t pick sides!” one woman wrote recently on the re-tailer’s Facebook page. “Be the store for ALL people!”

The hypercompetitive retail in-dustry has suddenly become hyperpartisan, as shop-pers vote with their wallets. That leaves Macy’s in a difficult place. Offering a little something for every-one, the company has long been the quintessential midpriced department store. But the business has

been struggling. Macy’s plans to lay off 10,000 work-ers and shut 65 of its 729 stores this year as part of a plan to close 100 of them. With consumers so di-vided over Trump, it seems that appealing to both red- and blue-state shoppers is no longer a winning formula.

But giving up its nonpartisan identity may not be so easy for Macy’s. While Nordstrom, its biggest

rival, announced earlier this month that it would stop carrying Ivanka Trump clothing and accesso-ries, Macy’s took no action. And that left neither side happy. Conservatives continue to deride the retail-er for its decision to dump Donald Trump–brand

merchandise in 2015, after the then-nominee made derogatory comments about Mexicans. Now liberals are equally outraged that the chain has yet to cut ties with merchandise bearing the name of his daughter.

“The politics of retail and the politics of brand-ing have gotten a lot more complicated in the last month,” said Greg Portell, lead partner in the re-tail practice of consulting firm A.T. Kearney. “You

have a president who is a brand and views himself as such. Anything that impacts the brand will trigger a re-sponse.”

Headquartered in New York and Cincinnati, the retail giant has been losing customers to Amazon and to smaller, more specialized chains, like H&M and T.J.Maxx. Amid the over-all slowdown in apparel sales, Macy’s is reportedly considering selling it-

self to Canadian retailer Hudson’s Bay.Now it finds itself in the crosshairs of boycotters

on both sides of the Trump divide, highlighting the challenges of its longstanding strategy to be the brand for all Americans. Not only does Macy’s have


RETAIL | POCKETBOOK POLITICS

“AS POLITICS BECOME MORE POLARIZING, PEOPLE MAY BE MORE

WILLING TO ENDURE INCONVENIENCES TO MAKE A POINT”

STAYING ABOVE the political fray is no longer business as usual.

P012_P013_CN_20170220.indd 12 2/17/2017 5:16:53 PM

a large number of stores, but it also has them in 45 states plus the District of Columbia, with as many in Texas as in New York.

“They’re in a very tough position and a lot hard-er a position than Nordstrom,” said Matt Sargent, a senior vice president at Frank N. Magid Associates. Nordstrom has 123 regular stores plus 215 Nord-strom Rack outlets, and most of them are in pros-perous enclaves in the heartland and metropolitan areas on the coasts. The more upscale retailer’s cli-entele doesn’t expect the company to be all things to all people.

“Macy’s is speaking to a very broad populace, which is very, very polarized,” Sargent said. “Either direction they go regarding Ivanka is likely to land them in trouble.”

Macy’s also may not want to spark a repeat of the Twitter-lashing that it suffered when it dropped Trump’s products 18 months ago, prompting the then-candidate’s #BoycottMacys campaign.

As president, Trump denounced Nordstrom in an angry tweet that possibly drove a brief dip in the company’s stock price. But the Seattle-based retailer took care to insist that the decision was not person-al—for the company, at least—regardless of how its customers may have felt about it. According to Slice Intelligence, which tracks digital purchasing trends, sales of Ivanka’s goods at nordstrom.com plunged 63% in the fourth quarter of 2016, one of several data points that backed up the company’s claim that the move was driven purely by poor sales.

One size doesn’t fit allThe data for Macy’s paint a more complex pic-

ture. While sales of Ivanka’s brand grew 30% on the retailer’s website in the same quarter, the growth was considerably slower than earlier in the year. If the company were to decide that its continued associa-tion with the Trump name isn’t worth the headaches, it would be hard “for Macy’s to claim that dropping the line is a business decision,” Sargent said.

Macy’s did not respond to requests for comment, but analysts say that assessing the cost/benefit of carrying the Trump family’s brands is not the only challenge. “It’s the least of their problems on a long list of problems that they have to deal with,” said Richard Jaffe, a research analyst at Stifel, which has given Macy’s stock a “hold” rating.

In a statement, the Ivanka brand insisted that re-ports of its demise have been greatly exaggerated: “Our brand experienced a double-digit growth in revenue last year. We’ve expanded our categories, distribution and offerings, with plans to continue this growth in 2017, and we’re reaching more wom-en than ever before.”

That growth may have come mostly in the first half of last year, however, and may not indicate a trend. In addition to double-digit sales declines in the fourth quarter on amazon.com and zappos.com and at Nordstrom, the brand’s combined online sales at its top five retailers slid 26% in Jan-uary compared to the same period a year ago, according to Slice data.

Ivanka’s Manhattan-based brand insists that its mission is to “inspire and empower women” and disputes the notion that it plays any kind of political role. “In recent days, we’ve seen our brand swept into the politi-cal fray, becoming collateral damage in others’ efforts to advance agendas unrelated to what we do, which is produce accessible, solution-orient-ed products for our loyal custom-ers,” the company said.

The people who are behind #GrabYourWallet also insist that

their venture is nonpartisan. “This isn’t a Democrat-ic versus Republican thing,” said Shannon Coulter, the San Francisco–based marketing executive who co-founded the campaign. “This is a human decency thing. It’s about the divisiveness and disrespectful-ness of Donald Trump.”

Brand identityCoulter and other critics argue that Ivanka—the

person—hasn’t stood up for women when her father has insulted them. And by aligning herself with his

presidency, she has made her compa-ny fair game for a boycott. The #Grab YourWallet campaign focuses on re-tailers such as Macy’s because “these companies rely on women,” Coulter said. “We’re here to put them on no-tice and say they have to move toward a more ethical, respectful and inclusive approach to inventory in order to keep us as customers.”

Coulter said she believes the anti-Trump faction has an advantage in pressuring retailers to take its side. The counties that Hillary Clinton won in November generated two-thirds of the nation’s economic activity in 2015, according to a Brookings Institution study. Coulter also says the cam-paign is gaining momentum. Since it launched in October, 18 companies

have been removed from the boycott list—because they’ve stopped carrying Trump-brand products—including 11 within the past three weeks.

Most analysts, though, tend to dismiss the pow-er of boycotts, arguing that the majority of shoppers are far more concerned with convenience and price than with social and political issues. But one often- cited study by professor Brayden King at North-western’s Kellogg School of Management found that while a boycott may not affect a company’s bottom line, it can hurt its stock price—provided the move-ment gets plenty of media coverage. Two weeks be-fore Trump urged his supporters to boycott Macy’s, the company’s stock approached $74 a share, a near 10-year high. As those supporters like to point out, the company’s stock price today is around $32.

“As politics become more polarizing, people may be more willing to endure inconveniences to make a point,” said Eric Greenleaf, a professor of marketing at NYU’s Stern School of Business. “And with online shopping, consumers have more alternatives.”

But whatever impact boycotts may have, some observers say the president may prove to be the ulti-mate undoing of his own brand.

“Someone who has behaved in as polarizing a fashion as anyone in modern history would be tagged with a large number of citizens who don’t want any part of him,” said Mark Cohen, director of retail studies at Columbia Business School. “They don’t want to buy products with his name on them, and they don’t want to buy his daughter’s stuff.” n

FACTS

58NUMBER of companies currently on the boycott list of #GrabYourWallet

11NUMBER of previously list-ed companies that have dropped Trump products in the past three weeks


STAYING ABOVE the political fray is no longer business as usual.

PARTISAN politics is playing a bigger role than ever in retail.

BUYING AT MACY’S BUT AVOIDING IVANKAbOyCOTTS TeND TO MaKe a lot of noise, and the #GrabYourWallet campaign, which targets stores that sell brands associated with President Donald Trump or his family, might be noisier than most. Its website gets as many as 30,000 visits an hour, according to co-founder Shannon Coulter, and the campaign’s “reach” on Twitter—the number of times users have interacted with the hashtag—has topped 750 million since October, according to Retweet Rank.

But on an afternoon last week at Macy’s Herald Square, a random sampling of half a dozen women found only one who knew there was a boycott of the retailer. All of them, however, said they wouldn’t buy Ivanka Trump products.

Morgan, a Manhattan resident, does not support President Trump. But shopping in the women’s clothing department on her lunch hour, she said Macy’s proximity to her workplace trumped her pol-itics. “I’d prefer to shop at Nordstrom,” she said, referring to the retail chain that recently announced it would no longer carry the Ivanka Trump brand. “But there isn’t one near my office.” Like the other women interviewed, Morgan preferred to give only her first name. “I support boycotting Ivanka Trump,” she added.

Others also said they wouldn’t buy Ivanka’s brand, but they saw no need to boycott Macy’s. “It’s a department store,” said Charlene, who had traveled from Connecticut for a day of shop-

ping. “If people want to buy her clothing, it’s their choice.” She likes the Ivanka brand’s styles but not Donald Trump. “I wouldn’t choose her brand now, but I would have before,” Charlene said.

Lisa, a furniture designer from Park Slope, dropped into Macy’s just to pick up some Nespresso coffee pods and was surprised to learn that the entire store had been targeted for a boycott, not just Trump-branded goods. But she agreed with the principle. “My little bit of money has power,” she said. “I’m just going to buy the Nespresso pods and leave.”

P012_P013_CN_20170220.indd 13 2/17/2017 5:18:27 PM

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SWEET REDEMPTION: Cutler with his cache of empties

CAN DO

One entrepreneur collects so many cans and bottles, he’s putting a dent in the city’s

recycling program

BY AARON ELSTEIN

Conrad Cutler drives a Porsche Macan, which seems fitting considering the 26-year-old entrepreneur has made his money one can—and bottle—at a time.

Less than five years out of college, Cutler runs Galvanize Group, a four-year-old business that generates almost $10 million in annual revenue from collecting recyclable cans and bottles around the city and returning them to the distributors, who pay the 5-cent deposit plus a state-mandated 3.5-cent handling fee for each one. In the winter about 1 million empty containers of Coke, Poland Spring and other beverages con-sumed in the city are sorted weekly by about 35 full-time employees at his Mount Vernon warehouse. Volume doubles during the warmer months, when New Yorkers tend to consume more cold drinks, so he keeps his shop open 24 hours in the summer.

“My friends make fun of me, saying I go through people’s garbage for a living,” said Cutler, whose com-pany processes about 110 million empty bottles and cans every year.

Cutler’s pals may mock him, but to city officials, his bustling business is no laughing matter. In their eyes he and the collectors who supply him are under-mining the municipal recycling program by seizing the most valuable items before the city can pick them up and resell them as a commodity. Metal, glass and plastic collected by sanitation department crews are routed to a private company called Sims Municipal Recycling, which has a multiyear agreement with the

city to process recyclables at a Brooklyn facility.

In a trade pub-lication in 2012, Robert Lange, a former head of the city’s Bureau of Waste Preven-tion, Reuse and Recycling, labeled outfits like Cut-ler’s a “sophis-ticated mob of

scavenger collectives that systemically removes valu-able recyclables…and leaves the worthless and cost-ly-to-collect rest for the Department of Sanitation.”

A less harsh critic, Wayne DeFeo, an industry expert and founder of consulting firm DeFeo Asso-ciates, said Cutler operates in an “ethical gray zone.”

The controversy rests on how Cutler goes about gathering his millions of bottles and cans. Some

RECYCLING | CAN MAN

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“ONE PART OF THE GOVERNMENT ENCOURAGES REDEEMING RECYCLABLES;

ANOTHER PART DISCOURAGES IT. AND WE’RE CAUGHT IN THE

MIDDLE.”

P014_P015_CN_20170220.indd 14 2/17/2017 3:10:55 PM

come from large retail outlets, such as CVS stores. Most, however, are sourced via a network of 100 subcontractors who have relationships with apart-ment supers and property managers and give Cut-ler’s crews first dibs on recyclables before they’re hauled to the curb. (It’s illegal to rummage through recyclables once they’re curbside, but it’s impossible for Cutler to police that.)

Bars and restaurants are less important sources, as those establishments seldom generate more than a few hundred empties per day. The largest volume comes from office buildings.

“A big tower will have thousands of people work-ing in it and consuming two or three bottled bever-ages every day,” said Cutler, adding that a dedicated collector can bank up to $200 a day, which translates to 4,000 bottles or cans daily.

Plus, Cutler said, his firm helps make the city cleaner by picking up recyclables that might other-wise litter the streets. Such litter remains common even though the state has imposed a refundable nickel deposit on every bottle and can of soda or beer since 1982. (Plastic noncarbonated beverage bottles were added to the mix eight years ago.)

But according to the state Department of Envi-ronmental Conservation, deposits went uncollected on 34% of returnables, or about 2 billion containers, last year. That return rate has held steady over time, and Cutler said both the state and beverage distrib-utors have a vested interest in keeping it down. To understand why, it helps to know how New York’s recycling economy works.

Going with the flowRetailers pay a 5-cent deposit on every beverage

they buy from distributors such as Coca-Cola, Nestlé and Manhattan Beer Distributors, then pass the cost along to consumers. If a consumer—or a collec-tor—fails to redeem the bottle or can, the distribu-tor gets to keep one penny of the deposit and sends the state 4 cents. Multiply those cents by billions of containers and you’re talking about real money. Un-redeemed deposits result in more than $100 million in revenue every year for the state, according to DEC data, for a total of $770 million since 2009. About $20 million of that money annually goes to support environmental protection programs, with the bal-ance flowing to the general fund.

This complex ecosystem means that although recycling keeps streets clean and helps the environ-ment, when people don’t redeem their bottles and cans, there is a financial benefit for the state.

“One part of the government encourages redeem-ing recyclables; another part discourages it,” Cutler said. “And we’re caught in the middle.”

A logistics major at Syracuse University, Cutler recognized the opportunity in recycling after ob-serving how many beverages his fraternity brothers were consuming. He launched Galvanize Group four years ago and said he has funded operations with his own money. (He also owns a laundry service.)

His warehouse is constantly abuzz with trucks making drop-offs or pickups, as staffers furiously sort containers based on which distributor handles the brand. Some employees are deaf or hearing- impaired, so they aren’t bothered by the din.

Cutler’s is one of about 30 area companies—known as redemption centers—where scavengers unload the bottles and cans they’ve picked up off the streets or from garbage cans. Those redemption cen-

ters got a big boost in 2009, when Albany adopted a law called the Bigger Better Bottle bill. The statute was designed to improve recycling infrastructure by raising the fee consolidators like Cutler could charge distributors who pick up recyclables from 2 cents per container to 3.5 cents.

Metal urgencyBut that well-meaning rate increase had the per-

haps unintentional consequence of hurting the city’s recycling efforts by making it more lucrative for re-demption centers to gather as many bottles and cans as they possibly can, however they can. And while redeemers like Cutler aren’t concerned about what exactly they collect, because they get paid the same for either a bottle or a can, the city cares a lot about cans because their valuable aluminum helps cover the cost of picking up less lucrative plastic and glass, considered the bane of municipal recycling.

“Aluminum is the lifeblood of any recycling pro-gram,” DeFeo said.

A report last year by the Independent Budget Office found that the city captures only 28% of re-cyclable cans, about half the national average. The shortfall in aluminum goes a long way toward ex-plaining why the city’s metal, glass and plastic recy-cling program posted a $20 million deficit in fiscal

2016. Collecting more cans could close that gap, because the market value of an aluminum can is 2 cents, while a plastic water bottle is worth one-third of a cent, and used glass has very little value because it is expensive to handle and often comes contami-nated with garbage.

Cans could become even more valuable as the price of aluminum recovers from a long slump. The commodity rose by 14% last year, the first increase since 2012, and is forecast to climb by another 9% this year, according to research firm CPM Group. “There has been a correction of the oversupply prob-lem that weighed on prices,” said Mu Li, CPM’s di-rector of base and specialty metals research.

As the quest for cans intensifies, so do hostilities between Cutler and government officials. He said his application to open a new processing center in the Bronx has been met with silence by the state, while sanitation inspectors frequently fine his driv-ers for improper collecting and have impounded his trucks seven times. The rising minimum wage also threatens to swallow his profits, so Cutler is lobbying members of the state Legislature to raise the han-dling fee he can charge distributors.

“Do we want to encourage recycling or not?” he asked. “We need to think about what kind of mes-sage is being sent.” ■

REDEMPTION STORY

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Nickel backs

$10 MILLIONCUTLER’S ANNUAL REVENUE FROM REDEEMING CANS AND BOTTLES

CONSuMerS buy the drinks and on top of the purchase price pay 5 cents per container. The consumer either returns the empties to redeem the deposit or tosses them in a garbage can or recycling bin, where they are picked up by city sanitation crews or by enterprising scavengers.

SaNITaTION workers send bottles and cans to Sims Municipal Recycling, which has a contract to process recyclables and share the revenue with the city. Scavengers take their wares to someone like Conrad Cutler, who pays them the 5-cent deposit per container.

CuTLer then calls a beverage distributor, such as Coca-Cola, Nestlé or Manhattan Beer Distrib-utors (left), to pick up its bottles or cans at his warehouse. By law distributors must pay Cutler the 5 cents plus another 3.5 cents per item to help cover his overhead.

WHeN bOTTLeS and cans aren’t redeemed, distributors get to keep 20% of the deposit and return the other 80% to the state. New York makes about $100 million in revenue annually from unredeemed bottles and cans. About $20 million goes to environmental programs and the rest to the general fund.

reTaILerS, such as supermarkets or bodegas, buy beverages and pay the distributor a state-mandated 5-cent deposit per container.

P014_P015_CN_20170220.indd 15 2/17/2017 3:11:46 PM

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ADVERTIS ING SUPPLEMENT TO CRAIN’S NEW YORK BUSINESS

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New York business professionals crave

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Crain's 2017 Higher Education Special Section MECH.indd 1 2/15/17 6:40 PM

New York University is an affirmative action/equal opportunity institution. ©2017 NYU School of Professional Studies.

Business and career opportunities in NYC and around the world are growing and changing.

What’s your plan for professional success? The NYU School of Professional Studies offers

Career Advancement Courses that take your career to the next level by deepening your knowledge,

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Distance learning is hardly a new concept. In the 1800s, correspondence courses proliferated in England and the United States

in an effort to offer affordable education to those who didn’t live near institutions of higher learning. Students would mail in exams – learning shorthand was a common course of study – and receive instructors’ corrections, also by mail. Today’s online education options have expanded upon that model. But the purpose remains the same: to offer an additional degree or skills to professionals in a flexible, budget-friendly manner.

St. Joseph’s College, which has campuses in Brooklyn and Patchogue, Long Island, has made that goal its mission by developing a variety of graduate programs available exclusively online. An extension of its MBA program, which launched in 2004, the distance learning courses offered by the school are both innovative and affordable.

Amy Poland, Ph.D., associate dean for online learning at St. Joseph’s, said the college’s distance learning program is different from many other online offerings, because “it looks at the individual abilities of the students” at the time of enrollment. Poland added that St. Joseph’s also “does an assessment at the beginning of each class.”

Extending the Physical Campus In recent years, MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) have dominated the public discourse regarding distance learning. Companies such as Coursera and Udacity have made admirable strides in providing online access to in-depth courses in a variety of subjects from the country’s leading universities. While some of those courses are available for credit, they cater primarily to the self-starter.

In contrast, New York area colleges such as St. Joseph’s are using their online programs to address specific career pursuits and cater more specifically to local students who may have full-time jobs. For example, St. Joseph’s offers dual-degree online courses that combine pre-existing programs such as a B.S. in health administration

with an M.B.A. in health care management, as well as a B.S. in Organizational Management with an M.S. in Human Resources.

Some students take classes solely online, while others choose to supplement their enrollment in courses on campus with additional online classes. The maximum online class size is 19 students, the same as campus-based classes. Poland cites the flexibility of the college’s online curriculum as one of its main draws. Affordability is also a factor, with online graduate course tuition priced at $490 per credit, compared with general graduate program tuition rates ranging from $732 to $1,001 per credit.

Poland said innovation is always a priority at St. Joseph’s, as reflected in the school’s continual attention to technology. Recent upgrades include transmitting remote live feeds of classes from one campus to the other, and switching from the Blackboard LMS (learning management system) to Canvas, which can be used on mobile devices. “We’re always looking toward the future,” said Poland. “We’re adding new programs all the time and constantly looking at a way to augment exisiting programs with technology.”

Online Learning as an Adjunct to Traditional Classes When Raymond Manganelli, Ph.D., Chair of Graduate Business at Mercy College, a private institution with campuses in Manhattan, the Bronx and Dobbs Ferry, arrived in 2013, his mandate was to make the school’s business graduate programs “fast, inexpensive, and flexible,” he said. Shortly after, Mercy introduced its Turbo-start M.B.A., a one-year accelerated degree program that includes the option of completing all or some of the coursework online. “In this market, we thought a one-year graduate program would be attractive,” said Manganelli.

The cost for the program, between $28,000 to $34,000, is the same for online and on-campus enrollment, as Manganelli points out. However, it is still one of the lower private-school tuitions for an M.B.A. in the country.

Mercy has two other graduate business programs that incorporate distance learning as part of their curriculum, an M.S. in organizational leadership (MSOL) and an M.S. in human resource management (MSHRM). What these online options have in common is flexibility.

“For example, the M.B.A. students are looking for total immersion,” said Manganelli. So classes are available at nights and on weekends. And through the school’s Turbo program, students can place out of or earn up to seven course waivers for seven courses, as allowed by state regulations, enabling them to obtain an M.B.A. in one year.

More MSOL and MSHRM students attend exclusively online, while M.B.A. students are more likely to attend at least some courses on-campus, said Manganelli.

What’s most striking about Mercy’s approach to distance learning is how it has incorporated the online learning experience into what it is already doing, to give its students more of what they’re asking for, including increased schedule flexibility. “We have come up with a creative and innovative way to deliver an M.B.A.,” Manganelli said. “I’m not telling them that they have to do it online or in person. We think our students are smart enough to figure out what is right for them.”

Boot Camps Join the Online Revolution As the number of quality tech boot camps continues to increase in New York, some are seeing the advantages of expanding their reach into the online universe. Adam Enbar, CEO of the Flatiron School, and his co-founder, Avi Flombaum, launched their Manhattan-based coding boot camp in 2012 for many of the same reasons as their competitors. “We wanted to teach people how to get marketable skills in three months,” he said. “At the time, there were not a lot of boot camps out there.”

Times have changed since 2012, and now boot camps seem to be everywhere (a survey by Course Report reveals the total number of coding boot camps in the U.S. and Canada grew from 67 to 91 between 2015 and 2016 alone), and most cost around $15,000 for a three-month intensive program (as does Flatiron). Last year, Flatiron began offering online versions of its courses at prices ranging from $150 to $1,500 per month. Thanks to this distance-learning initiative, the school now claims students in 30 states and 11 countries. Enbar said Flatiron also runs a lot of scholarship programs for minorities and veterans, among other groups.

“We’re maniacally focused on helping people find jobs,” said Enbar, who adds that Flatiron publishes independently audited data about its job placement record. According to those records, the school’s job placement numbers for online students aren’t that different from those of students who attended onsite classes. “There is a skill gap in most of America today,” Enbar said. “Technology companies are more willing than ever to look at people with nontraditional backgrounds.”

Distance Learning Programs for Every Budget




“Public university” and “virtual reality” are two phrases not usually heard together. Yet CUNY’s Lehman College in the

Bronx has found a great way to associate them with the launch of an 11-month training program at its new Virtual Reality Training Academy and Development Lab. The product of a partnership with EON Reality Inc., a Seattle-based virtual and augmented reality firm, the non-credit program will train students and professionals for careers in the fields of virtual reality and augmented reality. Another goal of the school is to have graduates of the program help develop virtual-reality-based learning tools that can be used by Lehman’s faculty and students.

Developing innovative ways to educate today’s workforce has always been a priority for higher-education institutions in the New York area, many of which act as feeder schools for cutting-edge industries. But the Bronx has lagged behind the rest of the city in creating jobs in the tech sector. For that reason, Lehman views itself as a critical institution, said Lehman’s president, José Luis Cruz. “The virtual reality course is open to anyone who wants to learn the

program,” he added. “There’s not a very high bar to join.”

Tuition for the non-degree program is $599 for the general public and $499 for current CUNY students. It will meet nights and weekends, to accommodate attendees who work or go to school during the day, including some faculty.

“We can engage some of our educators to create tools for their classrooms,” Cruz said. He envisions, for example, faculty members in the school’s department of nursing creating virtual labs for students.

Other area institutions are pushing the envelope even further by creating more mobile learning experiences tailored for the way people actually live today. “Snackable” educational models such as mobile learning, acknowledge that more and more people consume information primarily through their smartphone, tablet and laptop devices. So why not advance your professional education in the same way?

Codecademy, a Manhattan-based education

company, was started in 2011 by two Columbia University students who believed coding could be taught exclusively online. CEO and co-founder Zach Sims said Codecademy’s goal from the beginning was to provide immediately marketable tech skills to professionals primarily through interactive content. Codecademy allows individuals to sign up for free courses in which they learn through a series of automated online exercises. It currently claims 25 million students around the world. For $20 per month, students get access to Codecademy Pro, which offers feedback from live instructors. If students decide they want a more high-touch learning experience, they can sign up for Codecademy Ready, which pairs students with a mentor to learn how to “design, build and deploy websites” for $500 per month.

Sims is convinced that companies such as his will be the norm in the future, for certain types of training, since it’s “super-difficult to learn coding in a traditional educational environment.” An added advantage of Codecademy’s business model is that the company spends virtually nothing on marketing and can pass that savings onto its students. “By lowering the barrier of entry,” said Sims, “we’re able to offer learners more for much lower prices.”

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When Jake Schwartz was in his twenties, a few years after graduating from Yale University with a bachelor’s degree in

American studies, he came to a stark realization: He had no marketable skills. So Schwartz, now 38, CEO and co-founder of New York-based tech boot camp pioneer General Assembly, did what generations of young college grads have done: he enrolled in graduate school, in his case, an MBA program at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

At Wharton, Schwartz had another revelation: a lot of students attended such reputable, big-name institutions to get an Ivy League credential or degree, yet post-graduation, many flailed.

In the old days, attending graduate programs at schools held in such high esteem nearly guaranteed grads high-paying jobs. But in today’s rapidly changing job world, employers are more interested in what people know and how they can use that knowledge than from what school they hold a degree.

Fast forward to 2011, the year General Assembly began conducting intensive classes in computer coding for business professionals in New York City. Schwartz and his co-founders discovered they could bridge the gap between traditional higher education and the realities of today’s economy by offering mid-career intensive learning experiences that give students tech skills that would immediately translate into higher-paying jobs.

“What we could create was lower cost, but also took less time,” said Schwartz, “and yet it was more relevant and with the actual skills that employers are looking for.”

The Birth of the Tech Boot Camp Judging from the recent surge in the number of tech boot camps in New York, the concept is proving to be a big hit. General Assembly, which has raised over $100 million to date, currently conducts classes in 16 cities, including New York, and has 20,000 students and 600 full-time employees.

Careers aren’t what they used to be, and the rise of so-called boot camps – affordable, short-term, intensive courses that appeal to mid-career professionals as a means toward higher-paying jobs – is proof. The idea of getting a job and sticking to it for a decade or two is so 20th century. Conversely, employers have become loath to invest in tech training for new hires when there’s no guarantee that they’ll stick around for more than a year or two. Better to hire employees who already have up-to-the-minute tech skills, and are fluent in the programming language and software they need right at that moment.

David Yang, co-founder of Fullstack Academy, a Manhattan coding boot camp that focuses on web development, recalls working for tech companies as a software engineer and how difficult it was to find new employees able to code from day one. “We talked to CTOs and started forming our curriculum,” said Yang. “We started with web development, because it’s the area that’s the biggest right now and is growing the most.”

Fullstack fully embraces the boot camp model, which typically involves an immersive, full-time classroom environment. Fullstack’s main course is 13 weeks, 6 days a week, for almost the entire day, and costs around $15,000. Yang said the academy has a rigorous admissions process: “We only let in 5 to 10% of applicants.” Once admitted, students attend classroom lectures, hands-on practical labs and seminars, as well as remote classes. When Fullstack started, the focus was on learning the Ruby on Rails programming language; it has since switched to Full Stack JavaScript, currently a preferred way to build websites.

“Companies are not investing in training like they used to,” said Yang. “So employers take this sector very seriously.”

A Replica of On-the-Job Training The idea behind most tech boot camps is to simulate the way programmers actually learn on the job, instead of trying to re-create a traditional academic environment. While some programs do feature traditional classroom environments, others take a more interactive approach.

Aditya Narayan, CEO at TurnToTech, a Manhattan-based tech boot camp that focuses on teaching students how to create mobile apps, recalls the training process in his previous career as a software engineer. “We would hire somebody relatively inexperienced and train them over a few months,” he said. TurnToTech’s courses attempt to mimic that accelerated trajectory.

The school’s students attend classes for 8 to 10 hours a day for two or three months, but the focus is more professional than academic. “They have to constantly learn in a variety of ways,” said Narayan. “The need to find information online, they have to collaborate, they need to network. There is no lecture. There’s a series of products that have to be finished.” TurnToTech also offers one-on-one programs that help students through tricky coding tasks “the same way you would train a new person at a company,” Narayan added.

TurnToTech’s programs, which average around 25 students at any given time, also include career counseling. “We have a few full-time people who reach out to companies in the area,” said Narayan. “There is a shortage of developers in mobile right now, so we have a good record of placing people [in that area].”

Better Than a Degree Forget about a framed degree for your office wall. Most of today’s tech boot camps don’t even bother issuing a certificate for completing their courses, primarily because their students don’t ask for them. Boot camp grads are more concerned about displaying their newly acquired skills to employers. “You don’t need a piece a paper,” said General Assembly’s Schwartz. “We tried post-modern certificates for a while, but most students didn’t care.”

Instead, General Assembly is developing an online credential network which allows its students to share what they have learned and created with employers. It also published a report last year on the outcomes of its graduates, which auditing firm KPMG reviewed and validated. According to the results of the report, 92% of students who enrolled in a full-time program graduated. And of the 76% of full-time grads who took advantage of General Assembly’s career-placement services, 99% got a job within 180 days.

“We’re not an assembly-line track to nowhere,” Schwartz said. “Our programs are always evolving and have a high placement rate.”

It’s also not surprising to these educational entrepreneurs that the boot-camp phenomenon has taken root in the Big Apple. “New York is the best place to start a start-up right now, and I used to work in Silicon Valley,” said Fullstack’s Yang. “You have a lot of engineering talent. And you get the tech-powered industries, like finance and retail, as opposed to the tech industry. It’s a great time to be in New York.”


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Notice of Qualification of MIRAVALGROUP, LLC Appl. for Auth. filed withSecy. of State of NY (SSNY) on01/05/17. Office location: NY County.LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on06/01/15. Princ. office of LLC:Miraval Group, 855 Third Ave., 9th Fl.,NY, NY 10022. SSNY designated asagent of LLC upon whom processagainst it may be served. SSNY shallmail process to c/o Corporation Serv-ice Co. (CSC), 80 State St., Albany,NY 12207-2543. DE addr. of LLC: c/oCSC, 2711 Centerville Rd., Ste. 400,Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form.filed with Secy. of State, Div. ofCorps., John G. Townsend Bldg., 401Federal St. - Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901.Purpose: Health club management.

Notice of Formation of M. STAROVICPSYCHIATRY, MD, PLLCArts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State ofNY (SSNY) on 10/14/16. Office loca-tion: NY County. SSNY designated asagent of PLLC upon whom processagainst it may be served. SSNY shallmail process to Corporation ServiceCo., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of JULIA HAARTHOLDINGS, LLC Arts. of Org. filed withSecy. of State of NY (SSNY) on12/22/16. Office location: NY County.Princ. office of LLC: 54 W. 40th St.,NY, NY 10010. SSNY designated asagent of LLC upon whom processagainst it may be served. Original addr.of process was 25 W. 17th St., Ste.502, NY, NY 10011; however, asamended by Cert. of Correction filedwith SSNY on 01/04/17, SSNY shallmail process to 26 W. 17th St., NY, NY10011. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Qualification of Dorilton CapitalManagement LLC. Authority filed with NYDept. of State on 12/12/16. Office loca-tion: NY County. Princ. bus. addr.: 131Varick St., Ste. 911, NY, NY 10013. LLCformed in DE on 12/7/16. NY Sec. ofState designated agent of LLC uponwhom process against it may be servedand shall mail process to: c/o CT Corpo-ration System, 111 8th Ave., NY, NY10011, regd. agent upon whom processmay be served. DE addr. of LLC: c/o TheCorporation Trust Co., 1209 Orange St.,Wilmington, DE 19801. Cert. of Form.filed with DE Sec. of State, 401 FederalSt., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: all lawfulpurposes.

Notice of Qualification of Maverick LienFund IV LP. Authority filed with NY Dept.of State on 11/10/16. Office location:NY County. LP formed in DE on9/15/16. NY Sec. of State designatedagent of LP upon whom processagainst it may be served and shall mailprocess to: c/o Maverick Real EstatePartners LLC, 315 Madison Ave., 3rdFl., NY, NY 10017, principal businessaddress. DE address of LP: 1209 Or-ange St., Wilmington, DE 19801.Name/address of genl. ptr. availablefrom NY Sec. of State. Cert. of LP filedwith DE Sec. of State, 401 Federal St.,Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: all lawfulpurposes.

NOTICE OF FORMATION of M5InvestLLC. Art. of Org. filed with NY Secy. ofState (SSNY) on 12/22/16. Office loca-tion: NY County. SSNY designated asagent of LLC upon whom processagainst it may be served. SSNY shallmail copy of process to c/o CT Corpora-tion System, 111 Eighth Avenue, NY,NY 10011, regd. agent upon whomprocess may be served. Purpose: Alllawful purposes.

NOTICE OF FORMATION of QuantizedMind LLC. Arts of Org filed with Secy. ofState of NY (SSNY) on 1/5/2017. Of-fice location: NY County. SSNY desig-nated agent upon whom process maybe served and shall mail copy of proc-ess against LLC to principal businessaddress: 199 E 7th St., #1B, NY, NY10009. Purpose: any lawful act.

J-KAY ASSOCIATES LLC. Art. of Org.filed with the SSNY on 12/14/16.Office:New York County. SSNY designat-ed as agent of the LLC upon whomprocess against it may be served.SSNY shall mail copy of process to theLLC, c/o Morici & Morici, LLP, 600Third Avenue, 15th Floor, New York, NY10016. Purpose: Any lawful purpose.

Notice of Qualification of AIF IX MAN-AGEMENT, LLC Appl. for Auth. filed withSecy. of State of NY (SSNY) on01/19/17. Office location: NY County.LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on12/13/16. SSNY designated as agentof LLC upon whom process against itmay be served. SSNY shall mail proc-ess to the LLC, Attn: John J. Suydam, 9W. 57th St., 43rd Fl., NY, NY 10019.DE addr. of LLC: c/o Corporation Serv-ice Co., 2711 Centerville Rd., Ste.400, Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. ofForm. filed with The Secy. of State ofthe State of DE, Dept. of State, Div. ofCorps., John G. Townsend Bldg., 401Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901.Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Qualification of Thor ASB155 Mercer LLC. Authority filed withNY Dept. of State on 10/19/16. Of-fice location: NY County. Princ. bus.addr.: 7501 Wisconsin Ave., Bethes-da, MD 20814. LLC formed in DE on10/17/16. NY Sec. of State designat-ed agent of LLC upon whom processagainst it may be served and shallmail process to: c/o CT CorporationSystem, 111 8th Ave., NY, NY 10011,regd. agent upon whom process maybe served. DE addr. of LLC: The Corpo-ration Trust Co., 1209 Orange St., Wil-mington, DE 19801. Cert. of Form.filed with DE Sec. of State, 401 Feder-al St., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: alllawful purposes.

Notice of Qualification of Emergent IV,LLC. Authority filed with NY Dept. ofState on 12/30/16. Office location: NYCounty. LLC formed in TX on12/30/13. NY Sec. of State designat-ed agent of LLC upon whom processagainst it may be served and shall mailprocess to: c/o CT Corporation System,111 8th Ave., 13th Fl., NY, NY 10011,regd. agent upon whom process maybe served. TX and principal businessaddress: 100 Commercial Circle, Bldg.B, Conroe, TX 77304. Cert. of Form.filed with TX Sec. of State, 1019Brazos, Austin, TX 78701. Purpose: alllawful purposes.

Notice of Qualification of Convene OneWorld Trade, LLC. Authority filed withNY Dept. of State on 1/11/17. Officelocation: NY County. Princ. bus. addr.:366 Madison Ave., 7th Fl., NY, NY10017. LLC formed in DE on11/9/16. NY Sec. of State designat-ed agent of LLC upon whom processagainst it may be served and shallmail process to: c/o CT CorporationSystem, 111 8th Ave., NY, NY 10011,regd. agent upon whom process maybe served. DE addr. of LLC: 1209 Or-ange St., Wilmington, DE 19801. Cert.of Form. filed with DE Sec. of State,401 Federal St., Dover, DE 19901.Purpose: all lawful purposes.

Notice of Qualification of Convene ParkAvenue Tower W5, LLC. Authority filedwith NY Dept. of State on 1/11/17. Of-fice location: NY County. Princ. bus.addr.: 366 Madison Ave., 7th Fl., NY,NY 10017. LLC formed in DE on7/6/16. NY Sec. of State designatedagent of LLC upon whom processagainst it may be served and shall mailprocess to: c/o CT Corporation System,111 8th Ave., NY, NY 10011, regd.agent upon whom process may beserved. DE addr. of LLC: 1209 OrangeSt., Wilmington, DE 19801. Cert. ofForm. filed with DE Sec. of State, 401Federal St., Dover, DE 19901. Pur-pose: all lawful purposes.

Notice of Formation of Bridgeview 126LLC. Arts of Org Filed with Secy. ofState of NY(SSNY) on 1/3/2017. Of-fice Location: NY County. SSNY desig-nated agent upon whom process maybe served and shall mail copy of proc-ess against LLC to principal businessaddress: 41 Elizabeth St., Ste. 505,NY, NY 10013 Purpose: any lawful act.

Notice of Formation of CGRAMSEYHOLDINGS LLC Arts. of Org. filed withSecy. of State of NY (SSNY) on01/24/17. Office location: NY County.Princ. office of LLC: 53 N. Moore St.,Apt. 2F, NY, NY 10013. SSNY designat-ed as agent of LLC upon whom processagainst it may be served. SSNY shallmail process to Patrick Ramsey at theprinc. office of the LLC. Purpose: Anylawful activity.

Notice of formation of US MARSHALLLLC. Art. Of Org. filed w. Secy of Stateof NY (SSNY) on 12/30/2016. OfficeLoc: New York County. SSNY designat-ed as agent of LLC upon whom processagainst it may be served. SSNY shallmail copy of process to: US MARSHALLLLC, 17 Stuyvesant Oval, New York, NY10009. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of Mad Happy LLC.Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State ofNY (SSNY) on 1/24/17. Office loca-tion: NY County. SSNY designated asagent of LLC upon whom processagainst it may be served. SSNY shallmail process to: The LLC, 8360Melrose Ave., Ste. 105, Los Angeles,CA 90069. Purpose: any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of Warren StreetAdvisors, LLC. Arts. of Org. filed withSecy. of State of NY (SSNY) on1/23/17. Office location: NY County.SSNY designated as agent of LLC uponwhom process against it may beserved. SSNY shall mail process to: 38Warren St., Apt. 8B, NY, NY 10007.Purpose: any lawful activity.

Notice of Formation of ISABELBEDOYA LLC. Arts. of Org. filed withSecy. of State of NY (SSNY) on1/24/17. Office location: NY County.SSNY designated as agent of LLCupon whom process against it may beserved. SSNY shall mail process to:2159 First Avenue, #2E, NY, NY10029. Purpose: any lawful activity.

Notice of Qualification of Quogue In-come, LLC. Authority filed with NYDept. of State on 1/27/17. Officelocation: NY County. LLC formed inDE on 6/10/16. NY Sec. of Statedesignated agent of LLC upon whomprocess against it may be servedand shall mail process to: 101 Cen-tral Park West, Suite 1F, NY, NY10023, principal business address.DE address of LLC: 1209 OrangeSt., Wilmington, DE 19801. Cert. ofForm. filed with DE Sec. of State,401 Federal St., Dover, DE 19901.Purpose: all lawful purposes.

Notice of Formation of Company nameof 1199 ROGERS LLC. Arts. Of Org.filed with NY Dept. of State on4/19/2016. Office location: KingsCounty. Sec. of State designated agentof LLC upon whom process against itmay be served and shall mail processto: 1199 ROGERS LLC, 135 EasternPkwy, Apt. 1D, Brooklyn, NY 11238,principal business address. Purpose:all lawful purposes.

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P022-23_CN_20170220.indd 22 2/17/2017 4:45:07 PM

TO PLACE A CLASSIFIED AD, CALL 1 800 444 6007 OR VISIT CRAINSNEWYORK.COMTO PLACE A CLASSIFIED AD, CALL 1 800 444 6007 OR VISIT CRAINSNEWYORK.COM


FEBRUARY 20, 2017 | CRAIN’S NEW YORK BUSINESS | 23

Notice of Qualification of Mobius Staff-ing Services, LLC. Authority filed withNY Dept. of State on 12/16/16. Officelocation: NY County. LLC formed in AKon 6/3/16. NY Sec. of State designat-ed agent of LLC upon whom processagainst it may be served and shall mailprocess to: c/o CT Corporation System,111 8th Ave., NY, NY 10011, regd.agent upon whom process may beserved. AK and principal business ad-dress: 11001 O’Malley Centre Dr., Ste.105, Anchorage, AK 99515. Cert. ofForm. filed with Commissioner, 333 Wil-loughby Ave., 9th Fl., Juneau, AK99811. Purpose: all lawful purposes.

The Articles of Organization of LUGAL,LLC were filed with the Secretary ofState of New York on December 20,2016. The registered office address inNew York is 16 Court Street, 14thFloor, Brooklyn, NY, 11241. The juris-diction office location is New York Coun-ty. The principal place of business ad-dress is 40 East 69th Street, NewYork, NY 10021. The Secretary of theState of New York is designated asagent upon who process against Lugal,LLC may be served. The Secretary ofthe State of New York shall mail proc-ess to: Blumberg Excelsior, Inc. at 16Court Street, 14th Floor, Brooklyn, NY,11241. Purpose: Any Lawful Purpose.

Notice of Qualification of NY AT HEARTLLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. ofState of NY (SSNY) on 01/04/17. Of-fice location: NY County. LLC formed inDelaware (DE) on 12/27/16. SSNYdesignated as agent of LLC upon whomprocess against it may be served.SSNY shall mail process to c/o ICONIQCapital, 15 E. 26th St., Ste. 602, NY,NY 10010. DE addr. of LLC: c/o Corpo-ration Service Co., 2711 CentervilleRd., Ste. 400, Wilmington, DE 19808.Cert. of Form. filed with DE Secy. of theState, Div. of Corps., John G. Town-send Bldg., 401 Federal St. - Ste. 4, Do-ver, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful ac-tivity.

OLDETOWNEHOUSE LLC. App. for Auth.filed with the SSNY on 12/14/16.Originally filed with Secretary of Stateof Delaware on 12/09/2016. Office:New York County. SSNY designated asagent of the LLC upon whom processagainst it may be served. SSNY shallmail copy of process to the LLC, c/o JillAllegretti, Morici & Morici LLP, 600Third Avenue, 15th Floor, New York, NY10016. Purpose: Any lawful purpose.

Notice of Formation of DDCM 104-106DELANCEY LLC Arts. of Org. filed withSecy. of State of NY (SSNY) on01/26/17. Office location: NY County.SSNY designated as agent of LLC uponwhom process against it may beserved. SSNY shall mail process toMaurice Kassimir & Associates, P.C.,1375 Broadway - Fl. 23, NY, NY10018. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of Qualification of 72 MAINSTREET ASSOCIATES LLCAppl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of Stateof NY (SSNY) on 01/19/17. Office loca-tion: NY County. LLC formed in Dela-ware (DE) on 01/18/17. Princ. office ofLLC: 712 Fifth Ave., 30th Fl., NY, NY10019. SSNY designated as agent ofLLC upon whom process against it maybe served. SSNY shall mail process toc/o Corporation Service Co., 80 StateSt., Albany, NY 12207-2543. DE addr.of LLC: 2711 Centerville Rd., Ste. 400,Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form.filed with Secy. of the State of DE, 401Federal Plaza, Ste. 1, Dover, DE19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

NOTICE OF FORMATION OF Darcy NewYork LLC. Articles of Organization filedwith the Secretary of State of NY(SSNY) on January 6, 2017. Office lo-cation: NEW YORK County. SSNY hasbeen designated as agent upon whomprocess against it may be served. ThePost Office address to which theSSNY shall mail a copy of any processagainst the LLC served upon him/heris: 111 E 14th St, Suite 420, NewYork, NY 10003 The principal busi-ness address of the LLC is: 8490 San-ta Monica Blvd, Suite 2, West Holly-wood, CA 90069 Purpose: any lawfulact or activity.

Notice of Qualification of PublicisHealth, LLC. Authority filed with NYDept. of State on 1/13/17. Office lo-cation: NY County. Princ. bus. addr.:35 W. Wacker Dr., Chicago, IL 60601.LLC formed in DE on 12/31/16. NYSec. of State designated agent of LLCupon whom process against it may beserved and shall mail process to: CTCorporation System, 111 8th Ave.,NY, NY 10011, regd. agent uponwhom process may be served. DEaddr. of LLC: 1209 Orange St., Wil-mington, DE 19801. Cert. of Form.filed with DE Sec. of State, 401 Feder-al St., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: alllawful purposes.

Notice of Formation of Company nameof 1297 ROGERS LLC. Arts. Of Org.filed with NY Dept. of State on4/19/2016. Office location: KingsCounty. Sec. of State designated agentof LLC upon whom process against itmay be served and shall mail processto: 1297 ROGERS LLC, 135 EasternPkwy, Apt. 1D, Brooklyn, NY 11238,principal business address. Purpose:all lawful purposes.

EXECUTIVEMOVESAdvertising Section

New hires, promotions and board appointments. Place your listing at crainsnewyork.com/execmoves or contact [email protected]

Huntsman Architectural GroupAndrew Witlin joined Huntsman Architectural Group as Senior Project Architect. He is a licensed architect with over 29 years of experi-ence in the architecture and interior design industry. He has worked on a number of large and small scale proj-ects in New York, Chicago, and Mexico City for a range of clients including financial, media, legal, and corporate interiors.and its users.

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COPE Health SolutionsTom Dougherty joined COPE Health Solutions as Executive Vice President. He was formerly President at Healthcare Innova-tors. Dougherty, MBA, FACHE, is an Executive President with more than 25 years of broad-based expe-rience in senior leadership roles for health care systems, hospitals, health plans, post-acute care, home health and hospice.

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KPMG LLPKelly Donovan joins KPMG as a Managing Director in the Risk Consulting – Forensic Advisory Services prac-tice in New York City. She will work with state and local government and serve legal sector private sector organizations to address the growing need for enhancing compliance programs, investigations and monitoring. She was formerly Executive Deputy Attor-ney General at New York State.

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YMCA of Greater New YorkJeff Vockrodt joined YMCA of Greater New York as Senior Executive Director for Board Engagement and Strategic Partner-ships. Vockrodt works closely with the Board of Directors, leading Board recruitment, orientation and overall engagement. He also plays a central role in citywide Y strategic initiatives, including managing the current Strategic Planning Initiative, and engages with foundations, think tanks and others on innovative ways to build stronger, more connected communities.

StevenDouglasJonathan Stiegler joined StevenDouglas as a Managing Director to launch and lead the Finance and Accounting Search and Interim Re-sources group in New York. He was former-ly a Director of Client Service for RGP.

❚ PROFESSIONAL SERVICESKatz, Sapper & MillerAdrian Whipple is a director in Katz, Sapper & Miller’s Transac-tion Services Group, working out of the firm’s New York office. Adrian provides buy- side and sell-side due diligence and transaction advisory services to private equity and strategic clients in a variety of industries, including manufacturing, hospitality, tech-nology and telecommunications.

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P022-23_CN_20170220.indd 23 2/17/2017 4:45:12 PM


GOTHAM GIGSBU

CK E

NN

IS

BY LANCE PIERCE

AGE 29

BORN Lower East Side

RESIDES Greenwich Village

EDUCATION B.A., Tufts University; M.B.A., NYU Stern School of Business

A FAMILY AFFAIR Martin Dell, along with his son Alan and son-in-law Fred Austin, bought the delica-tessen from the Katz family in 1988.

DELI DOCTOR Jake Dell had taken the MCAT and was applying to medi-cal school when he changed careers. “Now I’m cutting meat, not people.”

A NEIGHBORHOOD MAN Before he purchased a $1.9 million Green-wich Village co-op in 2014, he lived in his grandfather’s old apartment on the Lower East Side. “Everyone would recognize me as my grandfa-ther’s grandson,” he said. “They’d be like ‘What did you do last night?’ I needed to get out of there.”

JAKE DELL

TAKING A BITE: In 2009 Dell took over operations at one of the nation’s oldest Jewish delis.

A lthough he’s only 29, Jake Dell boasts some really old-school habits. The co-owner of the 129-year-old Katz’s Delicatessen, a Lower East Side staple, takes inventory by hand, tracking

the comings and goings of the 30,000 pounds of meat served in the restaurant weekly and the up to 2,000 packages of authentic Jewish foods like pastrami and matzo balls that might be shipped to homes around the world during a single week. “I like seeing it,” he said, sipping tea at a table in the cavernous, nostalgia-inducing hall on Houston Street that seats 300 customers. “Doing it by pen and paper allows me to think more critically about things.”

In 2009 Dell took over the business from his father, Alan, who in turn inherited it from his father, restaurateur Mar-tin Dell. The Dells bought the deli from the Katz family in 1988. The third-generation Dell to oversee day-to-day op-erations balances tradition—pen and paper, the unchanged pastrami recipe—with modernizing and expanding the business, inspired by ideas he had while earning an M.B.A. from NYU. “You can’t help but think stupidly big at busi-ness school,” he said. In addition to the growing mail-order business, Dell is building out Katz’s catering options, exper-imenting with pop-up shops abroad and launching an out-post at Dekalb Market in Downtown Brooklyn in March.

The takeout-only Brooklyn spot will mark Katz’s first permanent expansion, one driven in part by the changing demographics of New York City, specifically the Lower East Side. “I’m losing a lot of customers who would nor-mally drive in, grab a sandwich and eat it in the car,” Dell said. “They can’t find parking. Brooklyn is closer to a lot

of my base that kept us in business for a lot of years. You can’t turn your back on those peo-ple.” The plan is to cook food at the main kitch-en in Manhattan, then drive it across the river.

A three-week pop-up in Madrid in January was another initiative Dell took on because it was an interesting project with brand-build-

ing potential. He’d fallen in love with Madrid when he went there on vacation, so he was game to be part of a Seagram’s Gin–branded “New York hotel” near the Atocha train station. (Other local businesses in the space included the Blue Note jazz club and Leyenda, a Brooklyn cocktail bar.) It’s the first time Katz’s opened a pop-up outside the United States, and although there aren’t any more in the works, Dell won’t rule them out in the future.

“It’s a fun way to keep the brand fresh and young, to keep appealing to new people and to stay relevant,” he said. “The idea was to see how Spaniards react to knishes, and they seemed to enjoy them.”

Stacked to the futureThe young owner of Katz’s Delicatessen keeps old-world traditions alive

You can’t turn your back on Brooklyn

“

”

— NOAH DAVIS

P024_CN_20170220.indd 24 2/17/2017 4:02:25 PM

SNAPS


For monkey bars and swings

See MOre OF THIS WeeK’S SNaPS aT CraINSNeWyOrK.COM/SNaPS. GeT yOur GaLa IN SNaPS. eMaIL THereSa aGOVINO: [email protected].

Tanya rivero Warren, host of Lunch Break on Wall Street Journal Live, and Jill Kopelman Kargman, writer and star of the Bravo show Odd Mom Out, at the event, which raised $150,000 for Central Park’s 21 playgrounds.

Taking kids under their wing

The National Cares Mentoring Movement held a fundraiser Jan. 30 at Cipriani 42nd Street. Among the guests were Stacey Walker King and her husband, honoree Charles King, executive producer of Fences; Susan Taylor, founder of the youth-support organization; and Chivonne Williams, the nonprofit’s executive director.

The Playground Partners of the Central Park

Conservancy Women’s Committee held a

benefit lunch Feb. 1 at The Rainbow Room.

Suzie aijala, president of the committee, and

Douglas blonsky, president of the

conservancy, were among those in attendance.

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Entrepreneur russell Simmons, a gala honoree, with actress renée elise Goldsberry and activist Kemba Smith during the event, which raised more than $1 million.

Les Moonves with his daughter, Sara; his son Charlie; and his wife, Julie Chen, co-host of The Talk.

All hail the chairman and chiefLincoln Center kicked off its American Songbook series with a Feb. 1 gala that honored CBS and its chairman and chief executive, Les Moonves. The fundraiser featured performances by legends Julie Andrews and Carol Burnett and current CBS stars such as Stephen Colbert and Christine Baranski, as well as singers Faith Hill, LL Cool J and Tim McGraw. James Corden, host of The Late Late Show, was the master of ceremonies. The event raised $3 million for Lincoln Center programs, including the series, a slate of concerts highlighting different types of American music.

James Corden, Chelsea Clinton and LL Cool J at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall.

P025_CN_20170220.indd 25 2/17/2017 1:44:57 PM

NEW IN TOWN

■ De Maria19 Kenmare St.Top Chef contestant Camille Becerra and musician Grace Lee teamed up to open a 60-seat café in Nolita that serves breakfast and lunch.

■ Extraction Lab51 35th St., BrooklynThis new coffee shop and brewing machine show-room in Sunset Park serves what’s now known as Amer-ica’s most expensive cup of coffee, for $18. Visitors can try around 50 types of tea while watching the computerized coffee and tea machines get to work.

■ La Milagrosa149 Havemeyer St., BrooklynFelipe Mendez, chef and owner of La Superior and Cerveceria Havemeyer, opened a new restaurant in Williamsburg that’s a Mexican deli with a bar accessible only through a freezer door. The reserva-tions-only backroom bar specializes in agave- based spirits.

■ Malcriada185 Avenue CThe new Latin restaurant with a name that translates to “poor-mannered” opened in the East Village.

■ Rue La Rue Café4394 BroadwayThe Golden Girls–themed eatery that serves breakfast and lunch opened in Wash-ington Heights. Fans of the long-running sitcom can explore the memorabilia decorating the 40-seat café.

■ Vintage Wine Bar23-14 Ditmars Blvd., QueensThe Astoria wine bar and café opened in a storefront that used to house the Waltz-Astoria performance space. Vintage features New York breweries and vintners.

MOVES AND EXPANSIONS

■ Haru859 Ninth Ave.The upscale sushi chain opened its seventh location, in Hell’s Kitchen.

■ Perpetuum Café200 Church St.The coffee shop opened its second location, in TriBeCa.

■ SOSA 50 W. 17th St. The Tel Aviv, Israel–based innovation lab opened its first U.S. location, in Gramercy. It seeks to serve as a landing pad for global startups looking to expand into the U.S. market.

STOCK TRANSACTIONS

■ Estée Lauder Cos. (EL-N)John Demsey, executive group president, sold 20,322 shares of common stock for $82.07 per share on Feb. 3 in a transaction worth $1,667,827. He now directly holds 22,223 shares.

■ Sirius XM Holdings Inc.(SIRI-O)Joseph Verbrugge, executive vice president of sales and development, sold 156,035 shares of common stock for $4.77 per share on Feb. 3 in a transaction worth $744,287. He now directly holds 321,060 shares.

■ JetBlue Airways Corp. (JBLU-O)Robin Hayes, chief execu-tive officer, sold 2,000 shares of common stock for $19.64 per share on Feb. 1 in a transaction worth $39,280. He now directly holds 349,881 shares.

BANKRUPTCIES

■ 25-54 Crescent Realty 25-58 Crescent St., Long Island CityThe real estate firm filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Feb. 8. The filing cites esti-mated assets of $1,000,001 to $10 million and liabilities of $1,000,001 to $10 million. The creditor with the largest unsecured claim is C&R Elevator, owed $30,000.

■ Bella Havana Inc.3471 Bruner Ave., BronxThe company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Feb. 1. The filing cites esti-mated assets of $0 to $50,000 and liabilities of $100,001 to $500,000. The creditors with the largest unsecured claims are the state Department of Taxation and Finance, owed $36,840; Roberto Rosario, owed $17,563; and Oliver Camino, CPA, owed $16,555.

■ Global Universal Group Ltd.33-37 Farrington St., Queens

Global Universal Group filed for Chapter 11 bank-ruptcy on Feb. 2. The filing cites estimated assets and liabilities of $10,000,001 to $50 million. The filing included no creditors with unsecured claims.

REAL ESTATE

RETAIL■ Apparel giant Tommy Hilfiger signed a lease to re-locate its headquarters from 601 W. 26th St. to 285 Mad-ison Ave. The company will occupy nine floors, which make up 200,000 square feet of the 550,000-square-foot prewar office building. JLL represented the tenant and the landlord, RFR Realty. The asking rent was around $70 per square foot.

■ Korean fashion brand Åland inked a 10-year lease for 10,000 square feet at 92 N. 6th St. in Williamsburg. The new 3-story flagship store will be the brand’s first location in the U.S. Cushman & Wakefield represented the tenant. Lee & Associates repre-sented the building owner, RedSky Capital. The asking rent for the deal was $1.2 million per year.

■ 959 Retail purchased two retail condos at 959 First Ave. for $4.5 million. The two vacant ground-floor condos encompass 2,713 square feet at The Sutton, between East 52nd and East 53rd streets. Eastern Consolidated represented the seller, Toll Brothers, and procured the buyer.

■ French restaurant Le Bilboquet signed a 15-year lease to open a new café on 1,100 square feet at 26 E. 60th St. The asking rent was $350 per square foot. Cushman & Wakefield represented the tenant. The landlord, New York Park North Salem, represented itself in the deal.

COMMERCIAL■ AEG Live signed a 15-year lease for 28,128 square feet at 53 W. 23rd St. The world’s second-largest con-cert company will occupy the entire fifth floor of the 12-story building. The ask-ing rent was $66 per square foot. Newmark Grubb Knight Frank represented the tenant. Adams & Co. represented the building owners, the Belson family.

■ KPMG inked a 10-year expansion lease for 19,517 square feet at 1350 Sixth Ave. The global auditing firm will occupy the entire 11th floor in addition to the 112,000 square feet it already occupies in the building between West 54th and West 55th streets. CBRE represented the tenant. The landlord, SL Green Realty, was repre-sented in-house. Asking rent in the deal was from $75 to $95 per square foot.

■ Lighthouse Partners signed a lease for 17,750 square feet at 437 Madison Ave. The investment firm will occupy the entire 21st floor of the building and plans to relocate its head-quarters from 680 Fifth Ave. during the second quarter of this year. JLL represented the landlord, the William Kaufman Organization. CBRE represented the tenant. The asking rent was around $95 per square foot.

■ Sirius America inked a six-year lease for 8,371 square feet at 140 Broadway to expand its office space. The U.S. arm of the Swedish insurance firm already occupies 26,000 square feet of the 51-story tower between Pine and Cedar streets. The asking rent was in the mid-$60s per square foot. Cushman & Wakefield represented the landlord, Union Investment Real Estate. CBRE represented the tenant. ■


DEALS ROUNDUP

Selected deals announced for the week ending Feb. 10 involving companies in metro New York. SB M&A: Strategic buyer M&A represents a minority or majority acquisition of existing shares of a company without the participation of a financial buyer. GCI: Growth capital investment represents new money invested in a company for a minority stake.

ABOUT THIS SECTION

TRANSACTION SIZE BUYERS/TARGET/SELLERS [IN MILLIONS] INVESTORS TRANSACTION TYPE

Aon plc, benefits administration $4,800.0 Blackstone Group LP SB M&A and HR business process (Manhattan) outsourcing platform/Aon plc

Mauser Group B.V.; $2,300.0 BWAY Corp. SB M&A Clayton, Dubilier & Rice Inc. (Manhattan)

184-Property Cabot Industrial $1,070.0 DRA Advisors LLC SB M&A Portfolio/Cabot Properties Inc. (Manhattan)

Sentinel Data Centers, two enterprise- $490.0 CyrusOne Inc. SB M&A class data centers in North Carolina and New Jersey/Sentinel Data Centers LLC (Manhattan)

Radius/Greystar Real Estate $141.0 Kennedy-Wilson SB M&A Partners LLC Holdings Inc.; LeFrak Organization Inc. (Manhattan)

Invincea Inc./Aeris Capital AG; $120.0 Sophos Group plc SB M&A Comerica Bank; Dell Corporate Ventures; Grotech Ventures; Harbert Venture Partners LLC; New Atlantic Ventures; ORIX Growth Capital (Manhattan)

View Inc. $100.0 TIAA Global Asset GCI Management (Manhattan)

Greenwich Park Apartments LP/ $61.8 Avesta Real Estate SB M&A Waterton Associates LLC Holdings LLC

Better Mortgage $15.0 Goldman Sachs Group, GCI Merchant Banking division (Manhattan); Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers; Pine Brook Road Partners LLC (Manhattan)

TerrAvion Inc. $10.0 ICE Data LP; Initialized GCI Capital Management LLC (Manhattan); Merus Capital; Promus Ventures

Wiivv Wearables Inc. $4.0 Asimov Ventures GCI (Manhattan); Eclipse Ventures LLC; Evonik Venture Capital GmbH; Real Ventures

Cuebiq Inc. (Manhattan) $3.5 Angel Round Capital Fund LP; GCI individual investors

Capsule8 Inc. (Brooklyn) $2.5 Bessemer Venture Partners; GCI individual investors

SOURCE: CAPITALIQ

GET YOUR NEWS ON THE RECORDTo submit company openings, moves or real estate deals, or to receive further information, email [email protected].

For the Record is a listing to help businesspeople in New York find opportunities, potential new clients and updates on customers. Bankruptcy filings from the eastern and southern districts of New York are listed alphabetically. Stock transactions are insider transactions at New York companies obtained from Thomson Reuters and listed by size. Real estate listings are in order of square footage.

*

FOR THE RECORD*

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PHOTO FINISH

Open-door policy

PETE

R D’

AMAT

O

A frightened child peeks out from inside a half-buttoned winter coat, beneath the gaze of a weary man with unkempt hair. That im-age, emblazoned on the “Refugees Are Wel-

come Here” posters popping up in storefront windows across Brooklyn, has become a common sight, including at Playground Coffee in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

While New York’s business owners may be waiting with open arms, the city’s high cost of living makes it far less welcoming. Each refugee accepted into the United States receives a one-time federal grant of $1,125. Those dollars stretch a lot further in upstate cities like Buffalo, which took in 298 Syrian refugees last year, compared with just 36 who were resettled in the five boroughs, according to State Department figures.

But for Playground Coffee, the poster designed by Oakland, Calif.–based artist Micah Bazant is meant as a sign of welcome not just to refugees but to anyone feeling persecuted in the current political climate.

“It’s an immediate thing that people can see,” said Ally Severino, who organizes the café’s community events, which range from hosting forums about police brutality to mobilizing protests against President Don-ald Trump. “We’re at a time when people need a signal like that to feel safe.” — PETER D’AMATO


P027_CN_20170220.indd 27 2/17/2017 4:12:50 PM

For more information, visit crainsnewyork.com/heritage

NYC Awards Luncheon: May 22, 2017

Luncheon hosted by Richard Merkin, MD, President and CEO, Heritage Provider Network and Mark Wagar, President of Heritage Medical Systems, former CEO of Empire BlueCross BlueShield

Heritage Provider Network honors innovative New York metropolitan area healthcare leaders with the second annual Heritage Healthcare Innovation Awards.

JUDGING PANEL

NOMINATIONS NOW OPEN AT CRAINSNEWYORK.COM/HERITAGE

A DV E RT I S I N G S U P P L E M E N T TO C R A I N ’ S N E W YO R K B U S I N E S S

PRESENT THE

THE 2ND ANNUAL

Heritage Healthcare Innovation Awards 2017

Dr. Richard Merkin and

AWARD CATEGORIESHeritage Innovation in Healthcare Delivery Award

Heritage Research Investigators in Translational Medicine Award Heritage Healthcare Leadership Award

Heritage Healthcare Organizational Leadership Award Heritage Innovators in Healthcare Award

Winners will be profi led in Crain’s New York Business

Dr. Richard MerkinPresident and CEO, Heritage Provider Network

Mitra BehrooziExecutive Director, 1199SEIU Benefi t and Pension Funds

Maria GotschPresident and CEO, Partnership Fund for New York City

Stephen BergerChairman, Odyssey Partners

Jo Ivey Boufford, MDPresident, The New York Academy of Medicine

Mary O’Neil Mundinger, DrPHEdward M. Kennedy Professor of Health Policy, Dean Emeritus, Columbia University School of Nursing

Louise CohenCEO, Primary Care Development Corporation

Laurel Pickering, MPHPresident and CEO, Northeast Business Group on Health

Dr. Rosa M. Gil, DSWPresident and CEO, Comunilife, Inc.

Michael Stocker, MDRetired CEO, Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Former Board Chairman, New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation

Rainu Kaushal, MD, MPHProfessor and Chair, Healthcare Policy & Research Weill Cornell Medicine

2017 HERITAGE JUDGES FULL PAGE Ad MECH.indd 1 2/16/17 4:28 PMCN018171.indd 1 2/16/17 4:46 PM

p. 10 p. 12 p. 24

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