NYC Real Estate News

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

Transit officials were supposed to build 80 miles of bike lanes and 50 miles of bus lanes, among other traffic upgrades, within the first two years of Mayor Eric Adams’ administration, under the Streets Master Plan, which became law in 2019. DOT has struggled to meet the mandates, with the city reporting in a February update on the law that it has rolled out roughly 60 miles of bike paths and not even 10 miles of bus lanes.

The Adams’ administration has taken heat for waffling and failing to deliver on street safety upgrades, and has been quick to capitulate to critics of individual projects, but during a tense Wednesday City Council budget hearing DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez sought instead to blame his agency’s shortcomings on the Council.

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

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

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

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

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

“Laws and policies are only as good as their implementation,” Speaker Adams said during her March State of the City speech. “New Yorkers can wait no longer.”

Margaret Forgione, DOT’s first deputy commissioner, added during Wednesday's hearing that “we could probably do more if we implemented projects, say Fordham Road, in spite of strong opposition.” To do so would open a political can of worms the Adams administration has not shown an appetite for.

The Adams administration, for instance, initially pushed a plan to shift a bus lane on Fordham Road from the curb, where it is frequently blocked by cars, into what’s known as an offset lane beside curbside parking for faster service. DOT dropped the plan in the wake of opposition from Bronx council member Oswald Feliz and local institutions such as Fordham University and the Bronx Zoo.

The relatively modest streetscape change would have increased bus speeds by some 20%, transit officials estimated at the time, and was a compromise from an earlier, more ambitious proposal for a car-free busway, similar to the one on 14th Street in Manhattan.

Mayor Eric Adams’ administration is mounting a push for state lawmakers to pass a set of bills loosening some of the rules that govern the city’s notoriously slow capital process, which city leaders say would allow major projects to get done more quickly and cheaply.

The city needs permission from the state to make many changes to how it signs contracts with builders and contractors. The Adams administration wants the ability to use two contracting models that pair designers with builders earlier in the process, allowing for smoother collaboration, rather than handing off a completed design for a contractor to build.

“Think of your kitchen — it’s past its prime, it’s got leaks, it’s got flaws. Would you hire someone who’s never seen it to design it?” said Meera Joshi, deputy mayor for operations, at a City Hall event on Wednesday.

Also on the city’s agenda is another bill that would convert the Department of Design and Construction from a city agency to a public authority, akin to the Economic Development Corp. or the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Doing so would give DDC — which handles some $33 billion in capital projects — the ability to procure goods more quickly, the administration says.

City officials say the change would be especially useful for huge climate-oriented projects like seawalls, sewers and stormwater infrastructure. But it’s unclear whether state lawmakers, who tend to resist the city’s efforts to take on more autonomy, will have the appetite to let the city make such a major change to an agency like DDC.

Rachel Fauss, senior policy advisor for watchdog group Reinvent Albany, noted that increasing the use of design-build might limit the bidding pool to contractors with the ability to use that system, potentially resulting in less competition and higher costs for the city.

“We want to make sure that the process isn’t made less competitive,” Fauss said. State lawmakers, she added, will “have to weigh the pros and cons.”

As for making DDC an authority, Fauss noted that the quasi-public entities are infamous for being less than transparent with their finances. Adams’ administration has said that the future DDC authority would be subject to audits and reporting rules, but “the devil’s in the details,” Fauss said.

City leaders will push for two additional bills that would relax public comment requirements for new contracts, removing weekslong delays; and invite more small and minority-owned businesses to compete for projects by giving them insurance.

Much of the agenda stems from recommendations made by a task force Adams convened at the start of his term, charged with coming up with ideas to improve the capital process. The city succeeded in passing four of its desired state-level reforms last year — including allowing electronic bidding and raising the threshold for no-bid contracts to minority- and women-owned businesses to $1.5 million — and will now spend the last month of the state’s legislative session pushing for its remaining five policies.

New York City first won the ability in 2020 to use design-build contracts on public works projects, saving costs by letting a single entity handle both design and construction. The city is using the method to build the increasingly costly borough-based jails set to replace Rikers Island, which are now expected to cost a combined $16 billion.

The two new contracting processes the administration wants are called progressive design-build and construction manager-build. CM-Build lets a single construction firm manage a project and control underlying contracts for materials and labor, shaving time off the procurement process. The city already used the method to build vaccination centers during the pandemic, and now wants to use it to outfit libraries and cultural institutions with climate-resilient materials.

The other new method, progressive design-build, would let the city choose contractors before finalizing a project’s scope and price. Adams has said the city would use the method to construct nearly $9 billion in climate projects, including completing the greenway around Manhattan and resurfacing a buried stream in the Bronx.

A bill that would authorize the two new methods, known collectively as alternative delivery, has not yet been introduced in Albany, but a DDC spokesman said the city said the legislation is being drawn up by Assembly and Senate leaders. The legislation to make DDC an authority is also still pending, but the bills relating for public hearings and insurance have both been introduced.

Most of the proposals appear to face little organized opposition. Instead, the city’s failure to pass them in Albany last year was due to simple “inertia,” City Comptroller Brad Lander said at Wednesday’s rally.

“There just wasn’t time to move these across the line,” said Lander, an antagonist of the mayor’s who has nonetheless teamed up with him on efforts to improve the capital process.

But red-tape-cutting contract reforms have been known to backfire in some cases. The bribery scandal that hit the New York City Housing Authority in February, resulting in 70 indictments, stemmed from a system of no-bid micropurchase contracts originally intended to facilitate repairs more quickly.

Well, the lull was nice while it lasted.

New York rents were back at record highs last month after dropping slightly in March, indicating another painful spring and summer could be in store for the city's apartment hunters, according to the latest report from Douglas Elliman and Miller Samuel.

In Manhattan, the median rent rose to $4,250, a record high for April and a 3.7% increase month over month, the report says. This was the third time in the past four months that it rose year over year. The listing discount was the lowest for the month on record at -0.1%, meaning many apartments went for more than their initial asking rent.

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

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

The median rent did not set a record in northwest Queens but still rose month over month to $3,244, the second-highest it has been for April. New lease signings were the second-highest on record at 678, up almost 150% year over year, while listing inventory rose more than 65% annually to hit 754 apartments.

The city's all-time record highs for rents were set in July and August last year, at $4,400 in Manhattan, $3,950 in Brooklyn and $3,900 in northwestern Queens, according to the Elliman reports. And with high interest rates keeping many potential buyers out of the housing market and in the rental market, it could just be a few months before even these records are broken, said Jonathan Miller, CEO of Miller Samuel and author of the report.

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

A bill that would allow physicians to prescribe medication to help terminally ill patients end their lives may finally become law in New York state, lawmakers say — nearly a decade after it was first introduced.

Legislators are making a final push to pass the Medical Aid in Dying Act, which would allow New Yorkers with less than six months to live to request life-ending medication from their doctors. The bill’s lead sponsors, Assemblywoman Amy Paulin and Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal, have held rallies and amended the bill to quell concerns ahead of the legislative session’s close in the coming weeks.

Proponents of Medical Aid in Dying say it’s a critical and compassionate end-of-life care option that could stop terminally ill patients from suffering in their final days. But despite evidence of its benefits from the 10 other states with such laws, including New Jersey, Vermont and Washington, D.C., some legislators have outstanding concerns about potential harms of allowing patients to end their own lives.

Legislators are trying to ease those concerns before the bill comes up for a vote. Paulin, who represents parts of Westchester and has sponsored Medical Aid in Dying since it was first introduced in 2016, said that she has answered “every question” put forth by her colleagues in the legislature, including concerns about whether insurers would have financial incentives to deny life-saving care and potential liabilities for physicians.

Paulin and Hoylman-Sigal amended the bill three times this legislative session. In April, they changed the language to ensure that insurance companies would not be incentivized to deny coverage for life-saving care once a patient requested to end their life. They also changed the bill to ensure that physicians will be able to opt out of prescribing lethal medications if they have personal objections. The law would make doctors immune to any liability lawsuits if they participate, or choose not to participate, in providing medical aid to dying people.

The latter change was enough to get the physician trade group Medical Society of the State of New York on board – which has opposed the bill for years. Dr. Jerome Cohen, president of the Medical Society of the State of New York, said that his organization historically expressed concerns that allowing physician-assisted suicide was a “slippery slope,” as it could leave patients vulnerable to wrongful death.

But recent changes to the law, including the provision that would ensure physicians’ ability to decline to offer the medication, pushed the physician group to flip its stance, Cohen said, adding that the organization supports the effort to allow patients who are suffering at the end of life to choose how they die.

The society joins 50 other organizations, including the New York State Bar Association, and 80 legislators who have openly expressed support for the Medical Aid in Dying Act. Roughly 100 lawmakers from both houses need to vote yes for the law to go through – a number that advocates and lawmakers are cautiously optimistic that they will reach. Paulin said she has a few more votes to secure, but is continuing to push leadership to bring the bill up for a vote. 

Hoylman-Sigal, who represents parts of Manhattan, said in a statement that he is confident that “the overwhelming majority of Senators” support this end-of-life care option.

The senator added that a majority of New Yorkers support the legislation. A Siena College poll conducted last fall found that 60% supported allowing doctors to prescribe lethal medication to people with terminal illnesses.

Corinne Carey, senior New York campaign director of the advocacy group Compassion and Choices, said that despite efforts to ease concerns, the overriding hurdle remaining before passing the bill is lawmakers’ discomfort. That discomfort, she said, is the main obstacle from helping patients with terminal diseases access peace and dignity at the end of their life.

“More people are not going to die as a result of passing the Medical Aid in Dying Act,” Carey said. “Fewer people will suffer.”

The Medical Aid in Dying Act is expected to go up for a vote before the legislative session ends in early June.

A federal jury decided Wednesday that former urologist Dr. Darius Paduch was guilty of sexually abusing seven former patients – five of which were minors – under the guise of medical care. He now faces life in prison.

Paduch, who previously worked at New York-Presbyterian’s Weill Cornell Medical Center and Northwell Health, was convicted on 11 counts of sexual abuse in Manhattan federal court. 

Federal prosecutors indicted Paduch in April of last year, charging him for luring patients to travel across state lines to engage in sexual activity and abusing minors. The prosecutors said that Paduch repeatedly abused male patients between 2007 and 2019, forcing them to masturbate and playing pornography during medical exams.

“As a unanimous jury has just found, Darius A. Paduch leveraged his position of trust as a medical doctor for his own perverse gratification,” U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams said in a statement. “For years, patients seeking needed medical care, many of them children, left his office as victims.”

"Dr. Darius Paduch has maintained his innocence since the start of this case," said Michael Baldassare, a lawyer representing the physician. Baldassare added that he will file an appeal and seek all available relief on behalf of Paduch. 

Patients involved in the criminal case against Paduch are just a fraction of those who have alleged sexual abuse by the former physician. Hundreds have accused Paduch of sexual abuse in civil suits, the bulk of which were filed under the Adult Survivors Act, a law in New York that extended the statute of limitations for sexual abuse cases until last November. Many of the cases filed against Paduch also target New York-Presbyterian and Northwell for allowing the abuse.

Mallory Allen, a lawyer who represents more than a hundred cases filed by Paduch’s former patients, said that her clients feel vindicated by the jury’s verdict on Paduch’s criminal charges – a decision that they deliberated for just a few hours.

“The jury spoke loud and clear,” Allen said. “This was abuse.”

The sentencing hearing for Paduch’s case is expected to occur later this summer, Allen said.
 

TRIAL SUCCESS: New York Attorney General Letitia James has won a trial against Quincy Biosciences, a Wisconsin-based biotechnology, her office announced Wednesday. The attorney general’s office first filed a lawsuit against Quincy along with the Federal Trade Commission, arguing that the company made fraudulent and deceptive statements about its supplement Prevagen while selling it to New Yorkers across the state. The Manhattan judge found that Quincy did not substantiate its claims – that Prevagen can improve memory and support cognitive health – with scientific evidence. James’ office will now seek for the court to permanently block Quincy from continuing to make misleading statements when selling the supplement in New York.

PILOT PROGRAM: New York has launched a climate action pilot program for hospitals that are insured by the New York State Insurance Fund, which gives businesses credits for workers’ compensation and disability insurance, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Wednesday. The program provides premium credits of up to $1 million per hospital to facilities that pledge to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and enhance their resilience to extreme weather events. Hospitals are the most significant contributors of greenhouse gas emissions in the state’s health care sector, according to the governor’s office.

ADAMS CHALLENGE: State Sen. Zellnor Myrie, a vocal opponent of closing SUNY Downstate, is moving to run against Mayor Eric Adams in 2025’s mayoral election, he confirmed Wednesday. The 37-year-old progressive, who represents Central Brooklyn, joins former comptroller Scott Stringer in challenging Adams. Read more about Myrie’s opposition to state plans to close the struggling Brooklyn hospital here.

FLU CASES DROP: Influenza is no longer prevalent in New York, state health commissioner Dr. James McDonald announced Wednesday. Cases have continued to fall since the department declared the disease prevalent in December, leading the state agency to rescind the mask requirement for workers in hospitals, nursing homes and adult residential care facilities.

Health programs run by city agencies have some of the highest employee vacancy rates of all programs as of January, according to a new report from state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.

The report, released Wednesday, details the progress made by various city agencies in filling staffing gaps from the pandemic. It shows that health care programs run by the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene had a 9.3% average vacancy rate for fiscal year 2024 as of January. Health programs fall behind only environmental protection programs run by various agencies, which had an overall vacancy rate of 11.5%, and transportation services initiatives at 10%. Historically, health programs have had an 8.6% average vacancy rate each fiscal year.

By contrast, the report shows that the health department’s vacancy rates have improved from fiscal year 2023 to 2024. The department experienced a 9.3% rate for FY24 to date as of January, a four percentage point improvement over FY23’s rate of 13%.

The department’s employee count stands at 5,355 as of January, about 175 individuals lower than prior to the pandemic. However, there are some signs of progress: the report shows that the agency has 139 more employees in FY24 than in FY23.

Patrick Gallahue, a representative for the health department, said it has worked to reduce vacancies and turnovers by making recruitment materials available in 13 languages and working through colleges and universities and elected officials to fill positions. The department’s turnover rate dropped to just under 8% in FY24, he said, a 4 percentage point improvement over FY23. Gallahue did not comment on health initiatives having the third-highest vacancy rate of all city-run programs.

The city’s total government workforce headcount stood at 284,000 in January, an 11% increase over the year before. If that count holds through the end of the fiscal year in June, DiNapoli said, the workforce is expected to increase year-over-year for the first time since the pandemic, signaling efforts to fill positions are working.

City officials filed plans to adjust a proposed life sciences development in Kips Bay last week, attempting to leverage potential rules under the mayor’s City of Yes plan before it goes up for a vote later this month.

The New York City Economic Development Corp. filed an application last week to advance the development of its proposed life sciences development at 455 First Ave, a project known as Innovation East. The building would serve as a commercial life sciences space, providing an incubator for start-ups and expanded lab space for growing companies, zoning documents show. 

Innovation East has been in the works for a while. But as Mayor Eric Adams’ City of Yes for Economic Opportunity proposal is set to advance to the City Council for a vote later this month, the EDC submitted a new application in the hopes that it could leverage potential zoning rules that would allow it to build a space "necessary to accommodate the programmatic needs of a laboratory building." The regulations have yet to get the Council's approval.  

The EDC requested a special permit under the mayor’s City of Yes plan that would allow it to modify the dimensions of the 13-story building, which it expects to stand at a maximum of 270 feet tall. The changes would create a wider floor plan that to accommodate medical research, documents show.

These changes could happen under the current zoning laws that are already in place, said Casey Berkovitz, a spokesman for the Department of City Planning. But the EDC is filing plans under new rules that could come to fruition if City of Yes for Economic Opportunity as the projects are advancing at the same time – getting a jumpstart on regulations that the city says will boost life sciences development in the five boroughs.

Currently, 455 First Ave. is occupied by the city Health Department’s old Public Health Laboratory, the application says. The laboratory is moving to a site adjacent to Harlem Hospital to make space for a modernized, 440,000 square-foot medical research facility that will become Innovation East. The city announced in 2022 that it would partner with Taconic and DivcoWest on the project.

The proposed development is designed to accommodate life sciences businesses at different growth stages, and developers are planning to build incubation space for life sciences start-ups, graduation space for developing companies, dedicated research space and an anchor for the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, according to the application. It will also include programming space on the first floor for meetings and presentations.

Innovation East is one of a handful of developments that make up a cluster of planned life sciences buildings in Kips Bay, including the $1.6 billion Science Park and Research Campus. The initiatives, which are led by the EDC, are a part of the city’s $1 billion LifeSci NYC initiative to grow the number of biomedical research firms and pharmaceutical companies doing business in the city.

Adrien Lesser, a spokeswoman for the EDC, said that New York City is “poised to become the global leader in the life sciences industry” with such developments.  

The City of Yes for Economic Opportunity proposal is expected to go before the City Council for a vote later this month. Although the plan is not yet finalized, Deputy Mayor for Housing, Economic Development and Workforce Maria Torres-Springer said in response to a question from Crain’s at a press briefing Tuesday that getting projects in the pipeline will help kickstart growth in the city’s life sciences industry. “There is really no time to waste,” she said.